Seven Buses: Reflections on John 10.22-30 (RCL Easter 4C, 17 April 2016)

Seven Buses

The Rev’d Christine Wilson 

Saint Faith's Anglican Church
17 April 2016

Click here to hear the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist.
  
Today Jesus speaks to us in the voice of the Good Shepherd,      promising to nurture and fiercely protect his flock. 

"My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

It is the voice of Jesus his flock hears and knows and follows.  It is the voice of God who knows us and calls each and every one of us by name.

The gospel accounts are abundant with images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, caring for his lambs. In Luke, Jesus tells the parable of the shepherd having a hundred sheep and losing one, leaves the ninety nine to go after the one that is lost until he finds it.

I don’t know if any of you have actually met sheep, up close and personal… I am a city girl and it was not until a few years ago when I lived in Victoria a friend of mine said we have to go to Beacon Hill Park for the spring stampede to see the adorable new baby pigs, goats and lambs.

Well let me tell you it was not what I expected.. all those little animals  -- very cute yes --   but they were nothing like the images of Jesus coddling baby lambs that are depicted in the stained glass windows of the church or in the stories told at Sunday school.
They were loud, defiant, messy and …  smelly

I could then understand why in Jesus’ time being a shepherd was not exactly an exalted profession. 

If I was a shepherd and one of the sheep wandered away, I might say, you unruly, stubborn beast, if you can’t be bothered to stay with the flock, I am not chasing after you.

So why then does Jesus compare himself to a shepherd… one of the lowest forms of employment in his time and compare us, his followers, to sheep ?

Well, perhaps because life is similar to what it must be like to be sheep  -- it is loud, messy, unruly, sometimes painful, sometimes smelly  -- and many of us wander away from the flock and get lost.

And yet we are beloved by God who knows us and calls each of us by name not in spite of who we are but because of it.  Indeed God’s love for us is immeasurably larger than anything we are capable of imagining. 

Gregory Boyle, is a Jesuit priest who founded ‘Homeboy Industries”, a gang intervention program in Los Angeles.  In his book “Tattoos on the Heart”, he distills his experiences working in ghettos of the gang capital of the world into a series of parables inspired by faith.

In one of the chapters in his book Father Gregory tells the story of fifteen year old Rigo.  He writes,

“About to make his first communion at his confirmation, I ask him whether he has chosen a confirmation name.

"Don’t know, Rigo says.  My dad – not sure he ever knew the names of his kids…  he’s a heroin addict, always called me hey you.  Used to beat my ass. 

"As Rigo is speaking something kind of snaps in him – an image brings him to attention.   I think I was in fourth grade, he says, I came home in the middle of the day, cause I got into some pedo at school and he was there.   Why they send you home he asks.  And cuz my Dad always beat me, I said, If I tell you, promise you won’t hit me.  He just said, I’m your father, course I’m not gonna hit you.   …  So I told him.

"Rigo is caught short in the telling.  He begins to cry, and in moments he’s wailing and rocking back and forth.  I put my arm around him,      He is inconsolable.  When he is able to speak and bravely so, he says,  he didn’t hit me.  He beat me with a pipe.  With a pipe.”

When I first read this story, my heart breaking wide open for this lost lamb of Jesus, a sheep without a shepherd I was not sure I could continue.    

But I read to the end of Father Gregory’s astonishing encounter with Rigo.

“When Rigo composes himself”, Gregory writes, “I ask … and your mom?   Rigo points some distance from where we are to a tiny woman standing by the entrance.  That’s her over there.  He pauses for a beat.  She always calls me her sweet Rigo.  There is no one like her.   I’ve been locked up in jail for more than a year and half.  She comes to see me every Sunday.  You know how many buses she takes every Sunday --  just to see my sorry ass?   Quite unexpectedly Rigo sobs with the same ferocity as before.  Again it takes him some time to reclaim his breath and his ability to speak.  Then he does and gasping through his tears he says “Seven buses. She takes seven buses.  Imagine.”

Gregory writes “How then are we to imagine the expansive heart of God who takes seven buses, just to arrive at us.”

After I finished reading Rigo’s story, I found myself thinking what are we to do in response to God’s love for us that is immeasurably larger than anything we are capable of imagining.
Last week in our gospel reading, Jesus said to Simon Peter, do you love me? And when Peter answered  “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep.”  

Just as Jesus called Peter to be head of the church to care for his flock so we as Christians are called to do the same.

God is calling us to be the Good Shepherd… to care for people who are suffering, who are in pain, people who are poor in monetary terms, and poor in spirit, people who are crying out just to be known.

All of us are called to be good shepherds for each other…  to love and support each other as we continue on the journey of our lives -   our loud, messy, unruly, difficult, sometimes painful, sometimes smelly lives.

You have come to church on this good shepherd Sunday and brought offerings of food and clothing for our brothers and sisters in our neighbourhoods who are in need… and you may think that that is all you have done, but make no mistake today you are living out the gospel to love your neighbour as yourself, to be Christ the good shepherd in a world that desperately needs it. You are saying to your brothers and sisters …I care about you, I may not yet know your name but you are important, you are loved.

People often want to know what it means for me to be a Deacon of the church.  Why would I say yes to God’s call to do such difficult and often heartbreaking work.

People might ask why Linda and Ryan would choose to be confirmed today.

Why each of you here would say yes to God’s call to be Christians.

I believe the answer to all these questions is the same.

Because Jesus speaks to us in the voice of the Good Shepherd, promising to nurture and fiercely protect us – not that we will not face problems, pain or suffering -- but that when we do Jesus will be with us through all of life’s experiences, both painful and joyful, and that nothing can separate us from his love and care.

Because when we lose our way, Jesus will search endlessly for us, to bring us back into the protection of his flock.

Because God knows us and calls each of us by name.


Because in this loud, messy, unruly difficult life we are beloved by God with a heart so expansive, God will take seven buses just to arrive at us.  Amen.

Deacons and the Liturgy

It was my privilege today to conduct a workshop on 'Deacons:  Don't Preside Without One' for participants in the 2014 Conference of the Association of Anglican Deacons in Canada.  I have provided links below to the PowerPoint presentation and an audio recording of the workshop.

Deacons and the Liturgy (PowerPoint)

Deacons and the Liturgy (audio recording)

15 March 2014: Deacons' Retreat for the Dioceses of Olympia and New Westminster

Dear Friends,

This Sunday I shall be enjoying a Sunday off from preaching.  Instead, I am at Camp Huston (Gold Bar, WA) for the Deacons' Retreat for the Dioceses of Olympia and New Westminster.  I was privileged to give three talks.  Click on the title to hear the talks as they were given today.

Mission as Leitourgia

Church as Ekklesia

Ministry as Episkope, Koinonia and Diakonia

Click on the titles below to receive a PDF of my notes and the PowerPoint presentation used during the actual talks.

PDF of 'Mission, Church and Ministry'

PowerPoint of 'Mission, Church and Ministry'

On Monday I'll be posting our order of service for Sunday the 23rd and, I hope, a link to an audio recording of Sunday's sermon by the Rev'd Chris Dierkes.

Next Saturday look for my reflections on Psalm 95.

Blessings to you all,

Richard+

We Are Not Alone

RCL Proper 15C

14 July 2013

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Focus text:  Luke 10.25-37

Click here for an audio recording of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist at Saint Faith's.

            One of the cultural differences I had to get used to after we emigrated to Canada in 1987 was the different academic terms Canadians and Americans use.  For example, American kids go to first grade, while Canadian kids go to grade one.  American students enter their freshman year of university, while Canadians enter first year.  Canadian theological students are in their first year and then, after some time, enter their final year.  An American theological student in a traditional seminary enters her or his three-year programme as a junior, then becomes a middler and finally a senior.

            These names are actually quite accurate descriptions of my experience as a theological student.  During my first year I really was a ‘junior’; it was a whole new world for me and every day was a discovery.  When I reached my final year, my ‘senior’ year, I had established myself within the college and truly felt on the cusp of my new life as an ordained minister.  But my ‘middler’ year was something entirely different.

            For me the ‘middler’ year was just that:  the excitement of the first year had worn off and the excitement of my final year was still in the future.  It was during my ‘middler’ year that I experienced what some people might call a ‘burn out’, others a depression.  No one seemed to notice that something was wrong.  Since I was a good student, I managed to plod along without arousing the concern of the faculty.  Most of my friends within the student body were married, so we only saw one another in class or in worship, so their alarm bells were not triggered.  Only two people recognized that something was going on.

            Both were women, one a Canadian preparing for ordination to the priesthood, the other an American who was preparing for ordination to the diaconate and the exercise of an educational ministry.  Now you need to know that I entered seminary opposed to the ordination of women and that I held very traditional views about sexuality.  So here I was in the midst of a depression and the only two people who stepped to the side of the road were two woman, one a misguided seeker after the priesthood, the other a lesbian.

            Since that time I have never been able to hear the parable of the good Samaritan without thinking about the two ‘Samaritans’ who stopped to tend my wounds.  My views on both the ordination of women and the place of gay and lesbian disciples of Christ have changed considerably and I have no doubt that Barbara and Anne played a significant part in changing my views.  They did not reach out to me as a ‘project’, someone to be ‘converted’.  They reached out to me because they saw a need and chose to respond as Christians who share in the same ministry that Jesus of Nazareth embodied during his earthly ministry.

            Today’s parable is a familiar one and, because of that familiarity, it is easy for us to let its words flow over us as we move on in our lives.  But we cannot afford to let its familiarity lead us into complacency.  So let me offer a few reflections on what this story means to us, here and now.

            First, let’s pay attention to the series of questions and answers.  The lawyer begins with the right question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  In both his question and his answer the lawyer indicates that he and Jesus are on the same page.  Eternal life, both the lawyer and Jesus know, is not found in a series of religious beliefs but in action:  Love of God and love of neighbour.  Despite the debates that rage around us about belief and non-belief, what God is really interested in is whether we love.  Love, in the biblical sense, is not about how one feels but about what one does.

            ‘But who is my neighbour?’, asks the lawyer.  This is not a question arising from a desire to dodge responsibility but to know how far-ranging the obligation to neighbour extends.  To this question Jesus gives an answer which, quite frankly, is frightening to me:  My neighbour is anyone who is in need.  Children who are denied education, people who are starving, families who are homeless, middle-aged men who find themselves out of work and unemployable, women who are treated as property, the list of who are my neighbours grows infinitely large and the risk is that I am rendered powerless in the face of the enormity of human need.

            But just before the despair sets in and leaves me in passivity, the good news enters and shows me the path forward.  The first glimmer of hope is in the character of Luke’s gospel.  In Luke’s understanding of the good news, ‘one is not a disciple alone [but becomes] one of the people of God who live as citizens of God’s kingdom’. [1]  We are not alone in the work of loving our neighbour; the burden does not fall on the shoulders of one but upon the shoulders of many.  What is important is that each one of us takes up the share that falls to us.

            Steve Godfrey asks, “Where do [our] gifts, vocation and avocation create opportunities to bless the lives of others with the steadfast loving-kindness of the gospel of the kingdom of God?  Where does [our congregation’s] time, talent and treasure offer . . . opportunities to do the same?  Where these answers lead is where we can validate God’s steadfast love to us by extending it to others.” [2]

            And these answers often lead us to simple and concrete acts of steadfast love.  Alan Brehm writes, “[it] seems to me that it is when we are engaged in the most mundane activities that we make the most difference in another person’s life.  When you get right down to it, that’s the only place we can really make much of a difference in the life of another human being. . . . Christian life is ‘nothing special’ --- it’s a mater of simply living out the grace and mercy and compassion of God.” [3]

            My friends, what must we do to inherit eternal life?  We must love God and we must love our neighbours.  And the love we offer to God and to our neighbours will often be unspectacular.  We will love by showing people compassion when they are in crisis.  We will love by reaching out to the clients of our pastoral resource centre with food, empathy and practical assistance in obtaining the services they require.  We will love by boulevard sales that provide funding for various agencies serving in our communities.

            But, my friends, we shall also be loved by others, some who share our faith and some who do not.  We shall receive compassion when in sorrow, discover hands reaching out to us just as we think we are lost and we shall find unexpected gifts that meet as yet unknown needs.

            For we are not alone.  We are surrounded on every side by neighbours, known and unknown.  And with them we shall inherit eternal life, abundant life, not only in God’s future but in this present time.

---

[1] The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3^rd ed., 94 New Testament.

[2] Steve Godfrey at http://churchintheworld.com/2013/07/who-is-my-neighbor accessed on 8 July 2013.

[3] Alan Brehm at http://thewakingdreamer.blogspot.ca/2010/07/nothing-special-col.html accessed on 9 July 2013.

Prepare the Way of the Lord

On Sunday, 23 June 2013, our Deacon, Christine Wilson, preached on the first anniversary of her ordination to the diaconate.  We anticipated the celebration of the Birth of John the Baptist, the occasion of Christine's ordination.

Click here to hear an audio recording of her sermon at the 10.00 a.m. eucharist.

The Epiphany 2013 Term of the School for Diakonia of the Diocese of New Westminster

Re: Epiphany Term 2013 of the School for Diakonia

One of the challenges of the Christian life is navigating the waters between what the Scriptures say and what the Scriptures mean.  This is a skill that is not only for the ordained, but for all people who take the Scriptures seriously and want to understand them more deeply.

The Epiphany Term 2013 of the School for Diakonia will be offering DBS101 “From Text to Sermon:  An Introduction to Biblical Exegesis”.  The course is designed for applicants and candidates for the diaconate, but it is open to any one, lay or ordained, who wants to dive into these waters with other courageous swimmers.

The Seminar will meet on three Saturdays from 10.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. at Saint Faith’s Anglican Church, 7284 Cypress Street, Vancouver BC (57^th and Cypress), accessible by the #16 bus route or by any Granville Street route.  We will meet on the 26^th of January, the 23^rd of February and the 23^rd of March.  Bring your lunch, your Bible(s) and a copy of Hayes and Holladay, Biblical Exegesis:  An Beginner’s Handbook 3^rd edition (available both in print and electronically).

The Seminar fee is $150 payable by cheque to ‘The Unit for Deacons’.  The Seminar fee does not include the cost of the required text.  Limited co-pay bursary funds are available upon request.

For more information and to register contact Dr Leggett at liturgypacific@me.com or by telephone at 604.266.8011.

Click here for a PDF containing this information for distribution or posting.

Stewardship as Diakonia

RCL Proper 29B

21 October 2012

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Propers:  Isaiah 53.4-12; Psalm 91.9-16; Hebrews 5.1-10; Mark 10.35-45

For an audio file of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist this morning, please click here.

            Imagine, for a moment, that you are at a formal cocktail party among the movers and shakers of Metro Vancouver society.  You are in the midst of a conversation where folks are sharing what various members of their families are doing.  Someone’s daughter is in law school.  Someone else’s grandson has just taken a management role in a large, well-known construction firm.  Another person mentions a niece who has just earned her accreditation as a chartered accountant.

            Then, at your left, you hear a familiar voice asking you, “Another hors d’œuvres, ma’am?”  You turn and look into the familiar eyes of your youngest son who has worked in the so-called ‘service’ industry for the past five years, even since his graduation from high school.

            Do you pretend that you do not know each other?  Or do you say, “Friends, this is my youngest son.  I’ve always been proud of his decision to work in the hospitality sector of the service industry.  He loves to make people feel welcome so that they can fully enjoy whatever function they’re attending and that he’s serving.”

            In today’s economy people who work in the service industry are not always highly regarded.  Yet all of us have had experiences in restaurants, hotels, stores and other venues where the quality of service has either made the occasion a joyous, fulfilling one or a never-ending disaster that has left us stressed out and not a little put out.

            But today, at the heart of our reading from the gospel according to Mark, Jesus has the effrontery to call us to be servants, to join God’s ‘service’ industry devoted to the needs and concerns of others.  In the Greek of the New Testament the word diakonia and its various forms are the terms translated as ‘service’ or ‘to serve’ or ‘to be served’ or ‘servant’.  In recent years, the New Testament scholar, John Collins, has challenged theologians and preachers to re-discover what these daikon- words actually meant at the time of Jesus.  His discoveries have led us to a deeper and more challenging understanding of what it means to share in the diakonia of Jesus.

            Diakonia, Collins tells us, meant more than charity and kindness.  Genuine diakonia meant enabling another person to become more fully alive by freeing them to do what they were called to do.  Diakonia did not mean delivering meals as much as it meant working to change social, cultural and political structures that inhibit and obstruct God’s purposes from being realized in the lives of human beings.  In other words, to share in Jesus’ diakonia is to become an agent of God’s purposes.

            Let’s take the last verse of today’s gospel, for example.  Verse 45, in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, reads as follows:  “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give us life a ransom for many.”  John Collins suggests that the verse actually reads more like this:  “For God’s chosen one did not come to be waited upon like a guest at a banquet but rather to be the agent of God’s purposes by giving himself entirely in order to liberate many people.”

            My friends, you and I, through our baptism, are God’s chosen ones.  God has called us into this community of faith to be agents of the divine purposes.  Agents such as you and I are called to give ourselves, our hearts, our minds, our souls and our strength in order to liberate many people.  When I talk about stewardship as service, this is what I mean.

            So what does this mean for us in the here and now of a small parish in the midst of a neighbourhood that might know our building, our public image, but not know our presence, the living heart that is you and I?  It means that our role in God’s mission is discerning what, in our neighbourhood, is preventing our neighbours from becoming fully alive as beloved made in the image and likeness of God.  As I look around us, I can see two immediate obstacles.

            The first obstacle is loneliness.  Recently the Vancouver Foundation published a study entitled, “The Consequences of Loneliness”.  Fully 25% of those persons surveyed indicated that “they are alone often than they would like to be”.  Yesterday I heard someone comment at a workshop I was attending that there are many people who have a ‘friend’ in Japan on Facebook but do not know their next door neighbour. 

            At the beginning of creation, God looks at his creature, adam, the first human being, and says, “It is not good for the adam to be alone.”  God knows this.  We know this.  For this reason we, as a congregation, seek to make our building a gathering place for our community.  We may not always look at the groups who use our building as people whom we are serving by bringing them together, by breaking down some of the walls of separation, but that is what we are doing.  We maintain our building and devote the time of paid staff and volunteers so that people can come together and know that they are not alone.  Even if none of them ever venture through our doors for worship, we have, I believe, offered them diakonia as agents of God.

            A more visible sign of our diakonia is found in the many and various ways we reach out to people beyond our immediate community and membership.  Whether it is the preparing of Christmas boxes for the Mission to Seafarers or the Halloween sale that benefits children at risk, our diakonia is on display.  Whether it is the Safeway gift cards that we give out to those who are hungry or the time Christine spends helping refugees and newcomers to Canada gain access to programmes that enhance their human dignity, our diakonia is on display.  Whether it is Walter’s long-standing commitment to the Arbutus-Shaughnessy-Kerrisdale Friendship Society’s programmes for seniors and others who need care or Pam’s work with Special Olympics and Stepping Stone, our diakonia is on display.  The list could go on and on.

            The glory of God is a human being fully alive, said the second-century theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons, and diakonia is, I think, working towards this glory.  As agents of God’s purposes you and I have made, make and will make decisions about how we use the resources God has entrusted to us.  This is our exercise of service, our participation in the diakonia of Jesus, as a dimension of stewardship.  But stay tuned; there are still other dimensions to come.

Let us pray.

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  [Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 304]