The Courage to Get Up and Do What Needs to Be Done: Reflections on Pentecost

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RCL Pentecost B

19 May 2024

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            Paula and I spent the first three years of our marriage in South Bend, Indiana.  I was studying for my doctorate at the University of Notre Dame and Paula worked at other jobs to bring in some necessary income.

 

            Almost every Saturday night we would listen to three programs on National Public Radio.  The first was ‘Roots and Wings’, a program of contemporary folk music.  The second was ‘Thistle and Shamrock’, a program of traditional and contemporary music and songs from the Celtic lands, hosted by the late Fiona Ritchie, a stalwart of the Celtic music revival.

 

            But our favourite was the third program, ‘A Prairie Home Companion’, hosted by the American humourist Garrison Keillor.  For an hour and a half we joined Garrison and his guests along with the residents of Lake Woebegon, Minnesota.  There was music and story and humour and a reminder of a neighbourliness and simplicity that most of us yearn to experience.

 

            One of the fictional sponsors of the program were the makers of Powdermilk Biscuits made ‘ . . . from whole wheat raised in the rich bottomlands of the Lake Woebegon river valley by Norwegian bachelor farmers’. [1]  We were assured that powdermilk biscuits were good for you, but most importantly they gave ‘shy people the strength to get up and do what needs to be done’. [2]  Over the years I have often reached out for a powdermilk biscuit so that I could get up and do what needs to be done!

 

            Two thousand years ago a community of Jewish women and men were keeping a very low profile in Jerusalem, the capital of Roman-occupied Judea.  Over the last fifty days they had been seeking to understand what it meant to be witnesses to the resurrection of their rabbi, Jesus son of Joseph of Nazareth.  Although some of their friends, neighbours and family members had received the news of Jesus rising from the dead with joy, the political and religious leadership saw the followers of Jesus as threats to peace, order and good government.

 

            But on this day there came such a powerful sign from God that remaining out of sight was no longer an option.  People from all the known world heard the message that Jesus had been raised from the dead and that there was now a new way of living in the world.  This new way, the way of Jesus, challenged all the values of Roman imperial status quo.

 

            On that day the first Christian received the most important gift of the Holy Spirit – courage.  Courage is not the absence of fear.  Courage is the decision to face one’s fears and to free oneself from bondage to those fears.  Courage takes its power from hope, a confident belief that God is at work in us, through us and for us to achieve God’s purposes – despite any evidence to the contrary.

 

            Along with the gift of courage, Pentecost brought the awareness that God has given to us the gifts of time, talents and treasures to undertake ‘ . . . more than we can ask or imagine’.  A fisherman by the name of Peter discovered that he could address a crowd with words of conviction.  A tentmaker by the name of Paul discovered that God was as interested in non-Jews as God was interested in Jews.  A woman by the name of Mary Magdalene discovered that her love for her teacher could empower her to share her encounter with Jesus in the garden even though, in the eyes of many, she was an unreliable witness because she was a woman.

 

            What was true on this day two thousand years ago is also true today.  Just as the first Christians in Jerusalem were uncertain about their future, fearful that everything might just tumble down on them, so too do we wonder what the future holds for us.  Some of us may be tempted to close the doors and windows – both physically and spiritually – hoping to keep our fears at bay.  But we cannot keep God out.

 

            Just as Jesus appeared to his apostles despite locked doors, so does Christ come into our midst and breathes new life into us.  Just as the Spirit burst into the open room and set the hearts of the disciples on fire, so does the Spirit blow into this gathered community to invite us to imagine a new chapter in the story of our witness to God’s love and faithfulness in this time and in this place.

 

            Today our prayer is the prayer that Harry Emerson Fosdick composed in 1930 for the dedication of Riverside Church in New York City.  Even though he was living in the midst of the Great Depression, as millions of people were unemployed and thousands of people displaced by drought in the American Midwest, Fosdick could write these words:

 

God of grace and God of glory,

on your people pour your power;

now fulfil your church’s story;

bring its bud to glorious flower.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

for the facing of this hour,

for the facing of this hour. [3]

 

            Here in this place we have experienced the grace and the glory of God.  Here in this place we have experienced the love and compassion of God.  Here in this place we have experienced moments when we caught a glimpse of what God intends for us and for all people.

 

            So, let us, shy people of God, welcome the Spirit blowing around us and in us today.  Let us embrace the Spirit’s gift of courage so that we can get up and do what needs to be done.  We have what it takes to do it and God is depending upon us.

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[1] https://lakewobegon.fandom.com/wiki/Powdermilk_Biscuits?veaction=edit&section=2 accessed on 17 May 2023.

 

[2] https://lakewobegon.fandom.com/wiki/Powdermilk_Biscuits?veaction=edit&section=2 accessed on 17 May 2023.

 

[3] Common Praise (1998), #577, verse 1.

 

Tending the Garden: Towards a Trinitarian Theology of Land

On Saturday, 11 May 2024, I had the privilege of offering my thoughts about a theology of tending the land to the participants in the Diocese of New Westminster's Mission Conference held at Saint Mark's Ocean Park.

If you want to read the presentation I gave, then click HERE for a PDF file.

If you want to hear the presentation with the ex tempore additions, then click HERE for an audio file.

I pray that my words might stimulate your thinking.

Richard +

 

 

Quality not Quantity: Reflections on Eternal Life

 

RCL Easter 7B

12 May 2024

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            When I was in seminary, I made some extra money by babysitting the children of my faculty adviser once a week when he and his wife drove into Milwaukee for their symphony choir rehearsals.  Despite my best efforts to cover my tracks, Professor Dunkley soon realized that I would explore his library after the children were in bed.

 

            One day after morning chapel he presented me with a copy of Caught in the Web of Words, the story of Andrew Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Professor Dunkley recognized in me something of himself:  someone who loves words and values precision in language.  While I would never consider myself a creative writer, I know that I am a pretty good editor and, in a pinch, I can pull together some decent prose or craft some appropriate liturgical texts.

 

            Words are important to all of us.  What we say has the power to heal or to hurt, the potential to clarify or to obscure, the possibility to be precise or to be unhelpfully ambiguous.  We also know when we should keep silent or when we should say little because we know that we cannot say everything that needs to be said.

 

            For example, how we talk with one another when there has been a misunderstanding or a difficulty or a conflict matters.  We could say to the other person, ‘Why did you say that?  Why did you do that?’  ‘Why’ questions often trigger anxiety or defensiveness, emotions guaranteed not to contribute to resolution.  However, we could say to the other person, ‘Please help me understand how you came to say that?  How you came to do that?’  ‘How’ questions tend to indicate to the other person that we are trying to understand what they are thinking or feeling.

 

            Over the Easter season one word with several variations has been appearing again and again in the readings from the Gospel of John and the First Letter of John.  In the Greek of the New Testament the word isaiōn ‘eternity’ or aiōnios ‘eternal’.  Unfortunately sometimes these two words are translated into English as ‘everlasting’, a translation which does not capture the precision of the original Greek.  The difference really does matter at any time, but in times such as those in which we live, the difference is about words being life-giving or life-sapping.

 

            In English ‘everlasting’ means ‘time without end’.  It’s a description of the duration of time, a matter of the quantity of time.  In the ancient world the word used was chronos, measurable time.  It’s worth mentioning that in Greek mythology the god Kronos attacked, mutilated and overthrew his father and, in poetic justice, was later overthrown by his son Zeus.  Time will eat us up and eventually overthrow us in death.

 

            ‘Eternal’ is an entirely different word.  It’s not a description of the duration of time but of the quality of time.  Here’s an example I think we’ve all had.  Have you ever spent an hour or more with a good friend or a loved one and, when you look at your watch, been surprised at how long you’ve been together?  Have you ever said, ‘My goodness, where has the time gone?’  That’s an experience of ‘eternal’ time, moments when we are freed from the tyranny of the clock and can enjoy the freedom of love and friendship and meaningful activity.

 

            When John the evangelist or the writer of 1 John speak of ‘eternal’ life, they are speaking about the quality of life that a relationship with God through Christ and in the communion of the Holy Spirit offers every human being.  We sometimes talk and act as if ‘eternal’ life was something only to be experienced after our deaths, but to talk and to act so is to miss the point that is being made in these New Testament scriptures.  ‘Eternal’ life is a quality of life that can be had in the here and now, even as we await its fullness in the promised reign of God.  I think that the best description of this kind of life is found in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, when he writes:

 

What then are we to say about these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?  He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else?  Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn?  It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.  Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? 

 

No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [1]

 

‘Eternal’ life is life lived in the confidence that, even at the worst moments, even in the midst of doubt, even at the door of disappointment and loss, we have not been abandoned.  God walks with us into darkness as well as into light.  God’s wisdom inspires our insights in moments of uncertainty as well as moments of clarity.  The hope we have in a world where all God’s children shall be free cannot be extinguished by the powers that try to control us with fear.

 

            Today the currents of chronos bring us into confluence of many waters.  Today is Mother’s Day, a special day for many of us, yet this year, for some of us, it will the first year when we will not be able to celebrate with our mothers in the flesh.  Today is the Sunday after the Ascension, a Sunday that reminds that God through Christ has entrusted us with continuing the mission of Christ in this world.  Given the challenges that being a disciple of Christ, especially an Anglican disciple of Christ, must encounter these days, there are moments when I feel a bit abandoned.  The disciples had just spent forty days with Jesus, no doubt bursting with enthusiasm to have him with them:  “So when they had come together, (the disciples) asked Jesus, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’  He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.’” [2]  And off he goes, living them – and us – holding the bag.  Today conflicts rage in many parts of our world with the deaths of thousands by violence, disease or hunger.  We cannot avoid hearing the stories, seeing the pictures and witnessing the destruction.

 

            The currents of chronos can overwhelm us if we do not hold firm to the hope that God’s promise of ‘eternal’ life offers to us in the present as well as the future.  Some years ago as I was ministering to a family who had lost a young son to a toxic drug overdose, I struggled with the question of ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’  But I think that the Holy Spirit gave me a moment of insight when I realized that this was the wrong question.  The right question is ‘what do good people do when bad things happen?’

 

            Those who have ‘eternal’ life know how to answer that question.  We love as God loves even as we mourn.  We serve others as God serves us even when the world thinks us irrelevant or foolish or troublesome.  We pray and advocate for those in any need or trouble as God seeks to soften the hearts of those whose hearts have been hardened by hatred or the love of power.  For to have ‘eternal’ life is to know that nothing – nothing – can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

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[1] Romans 8.31-35, 37-39 (NRSVue).

 

[2] Acts 1.6-7 (NRSVue).

 

I Have Called You Friends

RCL Easter 6B

5 May 2024

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         On my father’s side I am a descendent of some of the earliest European settlers to what are now the states of New York and Massachusetts.  My ancestors came from a variety of Christian backgrounds including the Religious Society of Friends or, as they are more commonly known, the Quakers.

 

         The early Quakers were committed to the equality of women and men as well as being pacifists.  Their pacificism was not popular during the American Revolution and even caused divisions between Quakers themselves as to whether they ought to pay taxes they knew would go to the war effort.  

 

         The story is told that during the battle of Saratoga, a battle fought in part on my family’s farm on the banks of the Hudson River, members of my family gathered with other Quaker neighbours to pray.  Their meeting place was surrounded by British soldiers.  When the soldiers realized that people were Quakers, the soldiers are said to have stacked their muskets and joined the Quakers for prayer.  Whether this act of kindness contributed to the defeat of the British and the victory of the Americans will for ever remain a mystery!

 

         For Quakers the Gospel according to John has always been one of their more important theological authorities.  Today’s reading from John 15 forms the foundation of the Quaker approach to Christian discipleship and is the source of the official name of the movement, the Religious Society of Friends (emphasis added).  To be a disciple of Jesus means many things, but to Quakers it means friendship.

 

         According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, a philosopher well-known to many early Christians, there were at least three kinds of friendship. [1]  One kind of friendship we might call ‘useful’ friendship.  Such friendships are socially beneficial.  In the world of the early Christians much of social life was shaped by such friendships.  You might remember the saying, ‘It’s not what you know but who you know.’  This was the world in which John’s gospel was read.  But this is not the friendship that John means.

 

         A second kind of friendship is ‘pleasurable’ friendship, friendships that are based upon shared interests or activities.  For many years I followed my younger son’s rugby team on its various adventures.  During the course of those years I made the acquaintance of many other parents, some of whom I might call ‘friends’.  But, since my son’s ‘retirement’ from the game due to recurring shoulder injuries, I have little or no contact with these adults.  I’m sure that, if I were to meet them again, we would have a pleasant time, but the base of our friendship no longer exists.

 

         It’s the third kind of friendship that today’s gospel invites us to share.  This is friendship for the sake of friendship.  It requires physical presence and availability that ought not to be stretched too thin.  Such friendships can teach us how to love ourselves and others as God loves us.  It is friendship based on agapē, that love that “ . . . is primarily concerned in the good of the other person, rather than one’s own.  It does not attempt to possess or dominate the other.  Nor is it limited by the scarcities that are imposed by time and space:  one can have a few good friends and fewer lovers; but one can have agapē for all.” [2]

 

            There are many ways we describe the Christian community, but as someone who has spent his entire life within that community, a community of friends is what means most to me.  I do have friendships of ‘the third kind’ with people who are not members of a religious community, but most of my friendships are with people within the Jewish and Christian communities.  Socially these friendships are not ‘useful’.  They are friendships that share particular activities such as worship and theological and spiritual exploration.  But I think that, for the most part, they are friendships in which we value each other simply because we are who we are.  I remember a fridge magnet we had that read ‘Friends don’t judge you by your housekeeping skills.’

 

            As I begin this new ministry among you as the interim priest in charge, I hope that we will become friends.  I hope that we will discover ways over the coming months

 

·      to grow into the words of Christ;

·      to grow into joy;

·      to grow into friendship, and

·      to grow into an understanding of what it means to be chosen by Christ. [3]

 

            There is no doubt that this Parish and so many others faces significant challenges.  There is no doubt that there are times when we feel disappointed or discouraged or doubtful.  Replacing furnaces and caring for aging buildings can test the best of us.  But friends walk with each other – even when we can’t fix what’s wrong, we can at least sit with one another.  Challenges are not so daunting when they are shared.

 

            But our friendship has yet another dimension.  As disciples of Jesus, as friends of Jesus, we are called beyond ourselves to offer friendship to the community among whom we live and serve.  We are to be the friends of this neighbourhood by doing what is within our power and ability

 

·      to promote health relationships in families and communities;

·      to embrace strangers, and

·      to promote meaningful encounters between people of different cultures and even different faiths. [4]

 

            Jesus said, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.  You did not choose me, but I chose you.  And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.  I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” [5]

 

            When friends gather, something greater than the sum of the parts happens.  When friends gather, battles stop and, if only for a moment, peace reigns and the possibility of a new future can be glimpsed.  My friends, we are Christ’s friends now, but what we shall become remains to be seen.  But God, working in us, does do infinitely more than we can ask or even imagine.

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[1] Feasting on the Word:  Year B, Volume 2 (2008), 500.

 

[2] Feasting on the Word (2008) 498.

 

[3] Feasting on the Word (2008), 501.

 

[4] Feasting on the Word (2008), 500.

 

[5] John 15.15-17 (NRSVue).