Trust in the Lord and Do Good: Reflections for the 7th Sunday after Epiphany

 

RCL Epiphany 7C [i]

23 February 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         When I was a lot younger, there was a comedy team known as the Smothers Brothers – Dick and Tommy.  One of the recurring themes of their act was the rivalry between brothers and sisters.  At least once in every routine, Tommy, the older brother, would look at Dick, the younger brother, with a face filled with envy and disappointment and say, ‘Mom always liked you best!’

 

         As the father of three children, all now in their thirties, I’ve heard my two older children make similar comments about their younger brother.  They’ve always accused me of favouring my younger son, the ‘baby’ of the family.  I will admit that I may be as guilty as charged.  He was born the year I turned thirty-seven, so he has always been a reminder of the ending of one chapter in my life, my ‘younger’ years, and the beginning of another chapter, my ‘middle’ years.

 

         Because of Owen, I have some sympathy for Jacob.  Joseph is also the child of his older years.  Joseph is spoiled and behaves arrogantly towards his older half-brothers.  Jacob goes out of his way to favour Joseph, even to the point of giving him an expensive coat woven from many different colours of wool, a costly and time-consuming project.  So, while I don’t think my older children would go so far as to sell their little brother into slavery, I do think that they have more sympathy for Joseph’s brothers than I do.

 

         Today the story of Joseph and his brothers comes to its climax.  Because of the adversity Joseph has suffered, he has actually matured into a generous and compassionate man whose God-given gifts and hard-won character have brought him to a position of great power and influence in Egypt.  His brothers have aged and their duty towards their families and their guilt over their crime towards Joseph has weighed upon them for years.

 

         Now, if Joseph were a vengeful man, then he now has his brothers right where he wants them.  They’re hungry and desperate; they’re afraid that this powerful man will do to them what they did to Joseph.  But this is not what happens.

 

         What happens is forgiveness and reconciliation.  Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and tells them that God has redeemed them from the past.  Joseph has been redeemed from any desire for vengeance, his brothers from the consequences of their betrayal of their younger brother.  Joseph and his brothers are reconciled, that is to say, God shows them the path towards a new future, a future that is different from what might have been had Joseph not been sold into slavery.  Despite all that has happened, God ‘saves’ them by making them more whole and restoring broken relationships.

 

         Even though the brothers had intended evil against Joseph, God has turned this into good.  Joseph’s choice to use his God-given gifts for the good of others – even when he was in prison – transforms the tragic past into a more promising future – not just Joseph’s family but for the Egyptians as well.  The good that Joseph chooses to do in the midst of bad times becomes the catalyst for God’s purpose to be achieved for Israelites and Egyptians alike.

 

         Friends, these are not easy times for anyone.  We are very aware of the political and economic movements which cause us to fret about the future.  We know of family members, friends and neighbours who are unsure about their jobs and even their homes.  I know young people who have told me that they cannot imagine bringing children into this world because they cannot see how they can afford to raise them.  Many of us are the spiritual kin of Joseph’s brothers – struggling, burdened, fretting, worrying.

 

         Over the past weeks we have witnessed an energetic attack on the values and principles that have shaped our North American political environment.  It is fair to say that this attack has been motivated by narrow self-interest.  Many good people have pondered how this has all come about and what can be done to renew a commitment to the common good.  The current situation has, for example, turned a hockey rivalry into an assertion of national identity and pride.

 

         Some people may think that we have come to the end of an era and that we should just find a safe place to hunker down.  But this is not how the story of Joseph and his brothers end nor should it be the end of our story as disciples of Jesus.  The future that God has in mind for us comes into being when good people, faced with adversity, use their God-given gifts of time, of talent and of treasure to the best of their ability.

 

         If Joseph had simply given in to his imprisonment and turned inward, his family and all of Egypt would have starved.  If we give in to the fears and falsehoods that fill our daily news, then we will fall short of the work God has called us to undertake in helping God renew and restore our lives.

 

         Today’s Vestry meeting is more than simply our annual business meeting to complete necessary legal tasks as an incorporated society in the Province of British Columbia.  The decisions we will make today at Vestry will be more fruitful if they are the product of our hope and trust in God’s power working in us and through us.  Our decisions will not be risk-free; nothing in life is without some sort of risk.  Our decisions will not be clear-cut; rarely can we see all the twists and turns of the path ahead of us.  

 

But we can be confident that God is at work to do what God has done time and time again.  Time and time again God heals broken relationships, shows a path through obstacles and promises a life-giving and life-renewing future.  Just ask Joseph and his brothers.

 

 

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[i] Genesis 45.3-11, 15; Psalm 37.1-12, 41-42 (BAS); 1 Corinthians 15.35-38, 42-50; Luke 6.27-38.

 

You Are My Witnesses: A Reflection on Ministry in Our Times

 

Celebration of a New Ministry

BAS Ember Day Propers [1]

18 February 2025

 

Parish of Saint Thomas

Vancouver BC

 

         In the year before I left to begin theological college, I was summoned for jury duty in El Paso County, the jurisdiction where Colorado Springs, the town in which I grew up, is located.  I remember waiting in a large room with at least one hundred other people who had been selected to perform their important but not always welcomed civic duty.  It turned out, however, that twice as many people had received summons, but only half had responded.  Whatever the reason for their absence, a simple truth remained – ‘we few, we happy few’ to borrow a phrase from Henry V – would now bear the burden of serving on more than one jury.

 

         I won’t bore you with the details of the two juries on which I served.  I will say that one was a deeply troubling case that had a profound effect on all the members of the jury.  The other case was one of those judicial ‘gong shows’ that can cause folks to doubt how our legal system works.  Both cases ended badly for the prosecution:  the first with a hung jury, the second with an acquittal.  Both cases ended for the same reason:  the jury or, in one case, one juror, did not believe the witnesses produced by the prosecution.

 

         My daughter who is a Crown prosecutor in Toronto and I have discussed my experience many times.  Juries are not easy beasts to tame.  They come into the courtroom filled with existing biases – no matter what they may say when being interviewed by the prosecution and the defence.  One of the challenges of the barristers is overcoming those biases in favour of the Crown or the defendant.  In the first trial it was the invincible bias of one juror which resulted in the mistrial.

 

         Another challenge is the credibility of the witness or witnesses who come to testify, whether for the Crown or the defence.  Can we believe what they say?  Does what they say jive with our own common sense and experience?  In the second trial it was the lack of credibility the jury placed in the primary witness of the prosecution that resulted in an acquittal of the accused.

 

         In 597 BCE, the kingdom of Judah rebelled against the Babylonian Empire and was defeated.  Many of Judah’s leaders were taken into exile.  Ten years later a second revolt led to the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, the execution of many political and religious leaders and a further round of forced deportations of Judean leaders.  It would be more than forty years later, when the Persians defeated the Babylonians and adopted a new policy to client states, that Judeans began to return to Judah and Jerusalem.

 

         It was to these disheartened Judeans that the words of tonight’s reading from the prophet Isaiah were directed.  They lived in a context where the biases of their neighbours and powerful empires were against them.  They were struggling to re-build their culture, their language and their religious institutions in a region that no longer thought of Judah as a credible witness to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I dare say that the returning exiles themselves no longer had confidence in their identity and may have desired a kind of political and social anonymity, a turning inward so that the attention of the powerful and disdainful would not glance their way.

 

         But the prophet would not allow them to dwell in that state.  To them he speaks words that are more than words of comfort.  They are a call to action despite the real difficulties the people were facing:  “But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen . . . Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.  For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants and my blessing on your offspring . . . . Do not fear or be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it?  You are my witnesses!  Is there any god besides me?  There is no other rock; I know not one.” (Isaiah 44.1, 2b, 3, 8 NRSVue)  The prophet is not naïve – these are difficult times, and the people may no longer have confidence in their ability to witness to God – but their vocation has not changed.  They have returned from exile in order to take up the mantle of a servant people, a chosen people, witnesses to the fidelity of the living God.

 

What was true twenty-five hundred years ago remains true today.  Bearing witness to the living God is not an easy vocation.  The North American society in which we live is now, quite frankly, biased against us.  In many cases, those biases are the result of our own failures to ‘walk the talk’ of the good news of God in Jesus Christ.  As someone who has had many encounters with the media over forty years of ordained ministry, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to dissuade reporters from using ‘Christian’ as if it were an adequate description of the spectrum of Christian believers.  When I tell them that Tommy Douglas, the patron saint of Canadian health care, was a Baptist minister who was motivated by his religious faith, a dull glaze of disbelief comes over the eyes of my conversation partner.

 

         We are living in the midst of what Lillian Daniels, a contemporary theologian of mission, calls the ‘Nones’ [2]:

 

·      those who no longer participate in religious life;

·      those who will in no way be involved in religious life;

·      those who never have connected with religious life, and

·      those who have not yet connected.

 

How we speak to the ‘never have’ and the ‘not yet’ folks is crucial.

 

         Over the last decade or so, as municipalities have struggled to increase revenue, we’ve faced the prospect of losing our discretionary exemption from property taxes.  It was only when a coalition of religious groups, first in Richmond, then in Langley, presented the city councillors with the actual cost of the social services and public amenities provided by religious groups that minds were changed.  It was the credibility of our witness through our actions that persuaded civic authorities of the value of religious communities.

 

         Do not misunderstand me.  I am not interested in an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ view of religious faith nor in portraying ourselves as victims.  Splitting the world between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is a heresy popular in many religious traditions.  Portraying ourselves as victims of an unfriendly media and consumer culture is what fuels some of the more troubling political movements in North America and beyond.

 

         What I am saying is this:  Saint Thomas and every other congregation of the Diocese of New Westminster – speaking as an Anglican only – have a renewed responsibility to bear effective witness to the good news of God in Christ to this neighbourhood.  While thinking globally has its value, it is in acting locally that the good news becomes real among young and old, Christian and non-Christian, rich and poor, hopeful and doubting.  It is tempting – God knows how often I and others I know have succumbed to this temptation – to devote ourselves to categorizing what we do not have or cannot be or envy in others.  

 

         What God needs of us in the present moment is a renewed commitment to bear credible witness to a sceptical world.  That witness will take the shape of:

 

·      Service that responds to and advocates for the real needs of real people in real neighbourhoods;

·      Worship that gives ‘new skins’ for the ‘old wine’ of apostolic witness to the God who has created this good earth, the Christ who empowers us for reconciliation and the Spirit that inspires curiosity and openness;

·      Evangelism that seeks out the ‘never haves’ and the ‘not yets’ with an invitation to be part of a community of help, hope and home;

·      Education that encourages questions into the mystery of God rather than repetition of dubious certainties, and

·      Pastoral Care that empowers good people to act when bad things happen in their lives and the lives of others. 

 

This is the credible witness a sceptical jury needs to experience in word and deed.

 

         Steve, I have good news and bad news.  The bad news is that the ministry I’ve described is a tall order for any person to undertake.  There will be expectations of you as the ordained leader of this community and you will not be able to fulfill them all.  But the good news is that you are not alone in what we proclaim as our vocation.  You and this Parish community have the gifts needed to serve this neighbourhood.  You and this Parish have partners, whether Anglican or not, whether people of religious faith or not, who are as committed as you and this Parish are to working to shape a world where we and all God’s children can be free.  May your witness, both personally and communally, be so compelling that it will be for ever remembered as a blessing.  Amen.

 

         

 

 

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[1] Isaiah 44.1-8; Psalm 87; 1 Peter 2.4-10; John 17.6-19.

 

[2] Lillian Daniels, Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To.

 

Trees Planted by Living Water: Reflections for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany

 

RCL Epiphany 6C

16 February 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         Although I grew up as a city boy, I spent a fair piece of my youth camping, hiking, hunting and fishing in central Colorado where the Great Plains meet the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.  In that environment you learn to pay attention to the trees.  

 

         The Front Range of the Rockies is covered with various kinds of fir and pine trees, but, when you reach the tree line, you know that you’re now about three thousand metres above sea level – less oxygen, more exposure to ultra-violet rays and little shelter.  There are also aspen trees mixed in with the firs and pines. They provide material to build shelters, but, in a wind storm, they tend to shed their limbs.  On the prairies aspen trees are a sure sign of water, whether on the surface or below.  Keeping an eye out for such trees on the prairies can also provide landmarks when hiking across open spaces.

 

         For the ancient Israelites living in an area of the eastern Mediterranean, trees were also an important feature of their physical world.  The mountain trees provided much needed strong and flexible building materials – remember the ‘cedars of Lebanon’ that were needed to build the Temple?  Other trees were cultivated for their fruit – figs and olives to name just two.  And, just as is the cased along the Front Range of the Rockies, trees are landmarks, sometimes marking boundaries between communities or indicating oases or other sources of water.

 

         So, when I first read the following words from the prophet Jeremiah, I knew that he and I had something deeply in common.  We both know how trees shape our physical and spiritual landscape. 

 

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.  It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17.7-8 NRSVue)

 

         Some trees, like some people, spread out their roots in a wide but shallow circle.  They may look lovely, but they have no ability to withstand significant changes in their environment.  Too much or too little rain will cause their grip on the soil to become unstable.  A strong wind will blow them down, causing widespread damage to the area around them.  I live across the street from a park filled with trees whose roots are not deep.  I pay close attention to the weather reports and I avoid walking in that park when there are wind warnings.  Many times I’ve heard the sounds of trees breaking or being torn from the ground.

 

         But there are some trees, like some people, whose roots go deep into the soil, seeking the water and the nutrients they need to flourish.  As Jeremiah says, they ‘shall not fear when heat comes, and (their) leaves stay green; in the year of drought (they are) not anxious, and (they do not) cease to bear fruit”.  I have just such a tree that grows tall in the corner where our backyard and the backyards of three neighbours meet.  True, when the wind storms come, it sheds some branches, but it remains secure.  Despite our changing weather, there are no signs that this tree is ready to fall.  Our tree is the home of squirrels, racoons and numerous species of birds.

 

         My friends, all Christian communities are like trees.  At some point in their history, these congregations were planted by some stream of living water or another.  That living water might have been a growing post-war neighbourhood or a small town.  That living water might have been a time of economic prosperity and social optimism.  That living water might have been a group of people who had a dream and were committed to provide the resources of time, talent and treasure necessary for the well-being of the congregation.

 

         I dare to say that we, living in the third decade of the twenty-first century, may feel that we are living in the heat and the dryness of a social and cultural drought.  Neighbourhoods are changing.  Economic conditions are uncertain and we can see pessimism and melancholy affect many friends, family members and neighbours.  While some congregations are growing in numbers and in the diversity of their membership, others are struggling to find volunteers to undertake the vital ministries begun by preceding generations.  As an Archdeacon, I’ve had to participate in bringing the ministry of several congregations to an end.

 

         When I saw that today’s Psalm was Psalm 1, my mind went back twenty-five years to working with Thomas Barnett, who once taught Hebrew Bible at one of Vancouver School of Theology’s founding colleges, the Anglican Theological College at UBC.  He wanted to provide a lively, fresh translation of the Psalms and I spent a number of years as a consultant on the project.  Tom took the ancient words of the Hebrew poets and turned them into fresh contemporary English, a reminder of the deep roots that continue to produce fruit in our times.  When I edited a daily prayer book for the Anglican Church of Canada, I made use of Tom’s translation of the Psalms.  Let me share his ‘colloquial’ translation of today’s Psalm 1.

 

Good for those who don’t take corrupt advice!  Who don’t go along with warped minds!  Who pay no attention to the mocking crowd!  They get their kicks from God’s teaching and think about it constantly.  They are like trees on the riverbank, giving plenty of fruit at harvest time, leaves always fresh.  They are successful in everything.  But it doesn’t go that way for creeps!  They are simply blown away.  The corrupt get their comeuppance in court; warped minds can’t keep company with just and faithful people.  God understands faithful people’s lifestyle.  As for the corrupt, their lifestyle is doomed.  (Songs for the Holy One 2004)

 

         Friends, we have our difficulties and our shortcomings, but we are a faithful people, seeking to do God’s work here.  We may not have a flashy life-style, but we have a way of being together that is life-giving and life-renewing.  We may feel disheartened from time to time, but we keep producing the fruit of faithful love and leaves that transform the light of God’s grace into works of kindness and generosity.

 

         Despite all the difficulties of the present times, I am convinced that most of our congregations have deep roots that wrap themselves around the rocks of faith and that seek the deep springs of water that nourish us in the hard times.  Our roots find sustenance in the Scriptures and our practice of proclaiming several readings on Sundays and other occasions provide the variety of spiritual nutrients we need to nurture our witness to the God of Jeremiah, of Paul and of Jesus.  Our roots reach out to connect with other communities that share our vision of God’s future and in those connections we discover not only neighbours but allies, co-workers with us in the restorative mission of God.  Our roots take hold of our traditions of worship, prayer and study, so that we drink deeply from the wisdom of our forebears in order to face new challenges with new ideas.

 

         Like most of the trees I’ve known since my birth, trees that sprung up from the soil before I was born and that will likely continue to thrive after my passing, this congregation of Epiphany and the many others like it in our Diocese knows that we’re in this for the long-haul, not years but decades of witness to the power of God that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.  Next week our Vestry will consider steps to ensure that long-term future, but those steps won’t be accomplished in a year or two.  But we have deep roots that connect us with a whole forest of deep-rooted, sturdy trees that hold firm to the soil and produce the fruit of help, hope and home to the neighbourhoods in which they grow.

Here I Am: Reflections for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany

Here I Am

Reflections for the 5^th Sunday after Epiphany

 

RCL Epiphany 5C

9 February 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         From the time that I was in Grade 9, I knew what I wanted to be and to do as an adult.  If my mother were here, she would tell you that I knew what I wanted to be and to do from an even younger age.  While most of my peers have explored various careers, I’ve always had my eye and my heart set on what I’m doing today – being a pastor, priest and teacher.

 

         As a kid growing up, I can’t claim to have had any dramatic vision.  It’s just been an accepted part of who I am and what I am trying to do.  But there was one occasion when I can say that I experienced a moment of clarity that I believe was what might be called a vision.  It was in the autumn of 1977.  I had just begun a teaching job at a Roman Catholic boys’ school in Denver.  I had driven down to Colorado Springs, about an hour’s drive from Denver, to spend the weekend with my parents.  During the sermon I heard a voice saying, ‘Don’t get too comfortable in the teaching job.  It’s time to start the process for ordination.’  And that was it.  No flashing lights.  No dramatic vision of angels and archangels.  Just a voice saying, ‘Time to move on.  You’ve known where you’re destined to go for a long time.  Stop hanging around.’  On that following Monday I began the process that would eventually lead me here, to this Parish, through many other stops along the road.

 

         There have been other occasions in my life when I believe I have experienced God breaking into my life in an extraordinary way.  All of these experiences have some common elements:  (i) They’ve come when I’ve been minding my own business and doing my everyday job.  (ii) They’ve not changed my life as much as they have made my direction clearer.  (iii) They’ve always made me aware that God loves me and is working beside me, within me and through me despite my many faults and inadequacies.

 

         In all three of today’s readings, we see a similar pattern of God’s intervention in the lives of human beings.

·      “Isaiah has the vision of God, is struck by his own unworthiness, but nevertheless is sent to preach.”

·      “Paul sees the risen Lord, realizes he is unfit to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church, but by God’s grace he works harder than any of the others.”

·      “Simon Peter gets a glimpse of the power and knowledge of Christ, falls before him in the profound grip of his own sinfulness, but even son, is called by Christ to become a fisher of [men].” [1]

Each one of these people experience God entering into the ordinariness of their lives, re-directing them onto a path where they are co-workers with God and assuring them that God’s grace will empower them to do what God desires them to do.

 

         What God does for individuals, God also does for communities such as ours.  In many ways we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing for a long time.  We’ve worked at being a place of help, hope and home for this neighbourhood of Guildford.  We realize that these are not easy times to be Christians, and we’ve had some genuine disappointments along the path we’ve been following.

 

         But it is precisely in these moments, moments of ‘ordinariness’, that God reaches out to re-direct us, to renew us, to re-empower us to do the work that we’ve always known we’ve been given to do and to become the community that God intends us to be.  We may be quick to point out to God all our inadequacies, all our shortcomings and all our insecurities.  But God is always providing us with what we need to undertake our role in God’s unfolding plan of re-creating, redeeming and perfecting this world of ours.

 

         In two weeks’ time we shall gather for our annual Vestry.  It’s sometimes easy to think of Vestry as a ‘business’ meeting – hearing reports, approving a budget, electing new leaders.  Let me say that I think that Vestry is a bit more than that.  Vestry is a time when we gather for the business of the kingdom of God, a time when we hope that like Isaiah, Paul and Simon Peter, God will open our eyes and our hearts, make clear the way before us and give us the grace – despite our shortcomings – to work with God to make know the good news of God in Christ for us, for Guildford and for the whole world.

 

         My friends, in a world in which carpenters are raised from the dead, anything is possible. [2]  In a world in which Galilean fishermen can bring about a revolution that changes world history, anything is possible.  More than that, in a world in which God is always at work strengthening, nurturing and challenging the disciples of Jesus, anything is possible.  It will not always be easy, nor will it be accomplished overnight, but God’s purpose will be achieved in us, through us and for us.  But it begins when we respond to God’s invitation, ‘Here I am.  Send me.’

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[1] Craddock, Preaching Through the Christian Year:  Year C  (1994), 97.

 

[2] Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter.

 

Waiting for God: Reflections on the Feast of the Presentation

 Waiting for God

Reflections on the Feast of the Presentation

 

BAS Presentation of the Lord [1]

2 February 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         Several weeks ago I shared with you my love of musicals and, in particular, Fiddler on the Roof, a musical based on stories by the Jewish writer Sholom Aleichem and set in the dying days of tsarist Russia.  At the end of the musical, the Jewish residents of Anatevka, an impoverished village, are forced by Christian nationalists to leave their homes of many generations, an example of ‘ethnic cleansing’ that has happened many times in European history as well as in the history of the whole world.

 

         One of the younger members of the community approaches their rabbi and says, ‘Rabbi, we’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives.  Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?’  And the rabbi gently, compassionately and wisely says, ‘I suppose that we’ll have to wait for the Messiah somewhere else.’

 

         All of today’s Scriptures on this Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple ask the same question.  We’ve been waiting for God to fulfill the promises of justice and peace found throughout the Scriptures.  This has been true for generation after generation, but with our access to mass media and almost instantaneous information the realities of our world’s needs press upon us from all sides.  Wouldn’t this be a good time for the Messiah to come?

 

         When the people of Judah returned to Jerusalem after seventy years of exile and began to rebuild the city and the Temple, they were keenly aware that they were still threatened by enemies both within and without.  The promises of a glorious return to Zion were not being fulfilled.  To them the prophet Malachi spoken another word of promise, but one that did not offer immediate relief.  The messenger of the covenant would come, but “ . . . who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Malachi 3.2 NRSVue).  In other words, the day is coming, but we may be waiting for some time.

 

         When the evangelist Luke tells the story of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple by his parents, Mary and Joseph, he includes two people who, though mentioned only briefly, have always figured in my spiritual journey.  Simeon has been given a promise and now it has been fulfilled.  He will see the Messiah, but let’s not forget that Simeon will not leave to see the resurrection.  Simeon’s moment of glory is only partial and awaits its full revelation.  He even dares to remind Mary and Joseph that the road ahead of them would not be without pain.  Anna, so important in my life that we named our daughter after her, has not had an easy life – widowed, perhaps impoverished or marginalized – has spent decades in prayer and fasting.  Today she will behold the promised Messiah, and she will share this good news with others.  But the promised day of redemption still remains in the distance.

 

         When the early Jewish Christian community experienced the destruction of Temple by the Romans in the year 70 ce, they were as devastated as the wider Jewish community throughout the world.  The Temple, both for Jews and for early Christians, was the earthly sanctuary where God’s glory dwelt.  How could they continue to worship God without this earthly place towards which to direct their prayers?  But the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews directs their thoughts towards the world beyond, a place towards we are all journeying, and promises them that God has not forgotten them.

 

         As Bishop Budde said at the end of her sermon two weeks ago, there are many people who are living in fear right now.  That fear and uncertainty can be found across the spectrum of social class, economic status, religious faith, ethnic identity, partisan belief.  Many of us are joining that young Jewish man in asking, ‘We’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives.  Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?’

 

         First, let me say this:  The Messiah has come.  In Jesus of Nazareth God has begun the work of redeeming this world and shaping the world to come.  But, as many biblical writers have written, God’s time is not our time.  A thousand years in God’s sight is as an evening past.  For whatever reason, and I admit that I do not know why, the fulfillment of God’s promises is still at some point in the future.

 

         What I do know is that we live in ‘the already but not yet’ of God’s weaving of the fabric of the creation.  This is the ‘meantime’, what seems to be a lengthy and painful time of transition during which the world is, I hope, becoming what God intends all of creation to be.  But this is also what I call ‘mean time’ with an intentional break between the two words.  We cannot deny that there are mean-spirited people at work in the world who are serving their own interests not the common good of the whole.  We cannot ignore the continued violence – physical, spiritual, economic, cultural – that is being perpetrated upon our sisters and brothers and even ourselves.  We cannot yield to the voices that urge us to accept the ‘way things are’ and ‘keep our heads low’.

 

         Here’s what I am trying to do and what I hope you will join me in doing as we navigate these ‘mean times’ and wait for the promises to be fulfilled.  These are the ways the people of Judah waited, the ways Simeon and Anna waited, the ways the Jewish Christian community of the Letter to the Hebrews waited.

  

·      Spend time every day in prayer for the Church, for those in authority, for the world, for the local community, for those in need and for the departed (BAS 1985, 190).  Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly and thoughtfully in the morning, at midday and in the evening.

 

·      Spend time each day reading the Scriptures.  There are many guides that can help us read the Scriptures in ways that inform us, nurture us and heal us.  If you need help, ask me.

 

·      Spend time in worship.  Ponder the words of the hymns, the prayers and the Scriptures.  Ponder the mystery of receiving the body and blood of Christ so that you and I become that body and blood in the world.  Ponder how the lives you and I live when not at worship embody our love of God and of our neighbour.

 

And while we wait in prayer, in the study of Scripture and in worship, I trust that we will grow and become strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God shall rest upon us (Luke 2.40 NRSVue).

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[1] Malachi 3.1-4; Psalm 84; Hebrews 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-40