Love Always Finds a Way: Reflections on Luke 2.1-14 (RCL Christmas Eve, 24 December 2018)

Love Always Finds a Way

Reflections on Luke 2.1-14

Christmas Eve

24 December 2018

Holy Trinity Cathedral

New Westminster

Luke 2.1-14

                  ^2.1In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.  ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  ³All went to their own towns to be registered.  ⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.  ⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.  ⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

                  ⁸In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  ⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  ¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  ¹²This will be a sign for you:  you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”  ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”

            Anyone who has had any responsibility for children has had the experience of taking the young ones to a movie that the adult might not have otherwise attended.  I remember that the interest of our oldest child, David, in dinosaurs coincided with the release of the movie Jurassic Parkin 1993. After the movie we even bought David a South African love bird named Sunny since, as scientists now suggest, birds may be the closest descendants of dinosaurs on the planet today.

            Early in the movie a team of scientists are invited by the entrepreneur who has developed the park to evaluate the park’s safety.  They are shown into the laboratory where the animals are bred.  One of them, a specialist in randomness and chaos theory, asks how the animals are prevented from breeding in the wild once they are released.  The chief breeder tells him that all the animals are born female, so there’s no danger of them breeding.  ‘Well,’ says the contrary-minded scientist, ‘life always finds a way.’  And, if you’re familiar with the movie and its sequels, life does always find a way along with a lot of screams, terror and excitement.

            Tonight we are here to celebrate the deeper truth that ‘lovealways finds a way’. I’m not taking about passion or friendship or parental love.  I’m not talking about the reaction we have to unwrapping Christmas gifts that appeal to our desires and to our need to fit in with the trend-makers and other celebrities. I’m talking about the self-giving love that brought the entire universe into being.  I’m talking about ‘the love that will not let us go’ even when we turn our back on that love, even when we confuse other forms of love with the love that created us, redeems us and sustains us.  That is the love that lies embodied in the child whose birth we celebrate this night.

            When one of the great teachers of the Christian faith, Augustine of Hippo, bishop of city in north Africa, was asked to explain the mystery of God as Christians understand that mystery, he described the God who created the universe as ‘the Lover of our creation’.  To be sure he was building upon something the writer of the First Letter of John wrote to a Christian community in conflict some three hundred years earlier.  

            ^3.7Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  ⁹God’s love was revealed among us in this way:  God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him . . . . ¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  ¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

            ¹³By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  ¹⁴And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world . . . . ¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

            God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. [1]

            The love that I am speaking about is more than an emotion; it is a reality that comes into being when two or more people make the choice to love as God loves.  This kind of love does not demand privilege or adulation or slavishness. It is a love that makes room for the beloved to grow, a love that rejoices in the successes of the beloved, a love that dares to speak the truth even at the risk of being misunderstood.

            The kind of love I am speaking about is a costly love.  Because it demands much of those who would offer it to others, it is a love that the world quickly obscures by encouraging a frenzy of gift-buying and a limited, a very limited, season of ‘good cheer’ when everyone is supposed to be nice to one another and, if so moved, nice to those who cannot share in ‘the spirit of the season’.

            The love of God embodied in the child whose birth we celebrate this night will be revealed in the months and years ahead when rulers will feel threatened by the kind of love found in this child.  Disciples will come and go as they realize that this love is not just a momentary feeling but a life-long commitment.  Those who celebrate the birth of the Christ-child as a cultural festival will feel let down next week when the tree needs to be taken down and shredded and next month when the credit card bills arrive.

            But here in this place the love of God we celebrate this night will continue to shape a people who understand the cost and embrace it in the knowledge that love always find a way to break into the world. Love finds a way when the hungry are fed.  Love finds a way when those who are lonely are embraced by a community.  Love finds a way when those who have been made to feel powerless are renewed by God’s strength, embraced by Christ’s compassion and empowered by the Spirit to be signs of God’s healing and reconciliation in the world.

            Love always finds a way because we have heard the song of the angels.  Like the shepherds we have been brought to the stable to see the Beloved wrapped in clothes and lying not in pomp but in simplicity.  Love always finds a way because we know that God’s love abides in us and we in God.  We know its cost and we embrace its challenge.  We know

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and the shepherds

have found their way home,

the work of Christmas has begun.[2]

---

[1]1 John 3.7-9, 11-14, 16.

[2]‘I Am the Light of the World’ by Jim Strathdee in Songs for a Gospel People(1991), #24.

Dying and Rising: Reflections on 1 John 5.1-6 (RCL Easter 6B, 6 May 2018)

I hope that you forgive me for what are more meditative thoughts, even pensive, about the God who calls us 'friends'.

Dying and Rising

Reflections on 1 John 5.1-6

RCL Easter 6B

6 May 2018

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here if you want to hear how my thoughts became a sermon at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 6th.

1 John 5.1-6

            ^5.1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.  ²By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  ³For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.  And his commandments are not burdensome, ⁴for whatever is born of God conquers the world.  And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.  ⁵Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

            ⁶This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.

When I was growing up, it was simply assumed that I would belong to an Anglican parish and that I would learn how to behave like a good Anglican boy.

I did not resist this expectation.

Most of my non-school friendships were with other young people in my parish or with members of my Scout troop --- sponsored by the parish.

I loved worship and sang in the choir until I went away to university.

Even at university I tended to come home on weekends --- to do laundry, to enjoy home-cooking and to worship in my ‘home’ parish.

But I only came to ‘believe’, to be in love with God in Christ and through the Spirit when I went to seminary.

Even though I had always thoughts about ordination, it was not until I had a mystical experience during our Bishop’s visit to Saint Michael’s in the autumn of 1977 that I felt the pull on my soul.

That pull grew stronger through the year and by the autumn of 1978 I was a first-year student at Nashotah House in Wisconsin.

But I was there because I belonged within the Anglican community and I knew how to behave in an Anglican community --- important experiences to be sure --- but I had not yet fallen in love with God.

But then, one night in the spring of 1978, I fell in love with God.

It was during the first Easter Vigil I even attended.

The deacon raised the Paschal Candle; its light filled the darkness of the seminary chapel.

Then he began to sing the Exsultet, the Easter proclamation:  

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels, and let your trumpets shout Salvation for the victory of our mighty King.

O blessed iniquity!  That such a sin should merit such a Saviour.

How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and we are reconciled to God.

These were just a few of the words that the deacon sang and, as he sang, I realized that God was singing them to me and to all who were standing in the Easter light.

And I was hooked.

I was hooked on a God who cannot help but create and love.  

I was hooked on a God who loves us so much that Love comes down to us in Jesus.

I was hooked on a God who does not remain silent but who speaks to us through the whisper and through the mighty wind of the Spirit.

And I am still hooked.

But being in love with God, being in a life-giving, life-affirming relationship with God, is not about a moment but a life-time of commitment to and learning about the Beloved.

I have learned and I am learning that loving God means dying and rising --- again and again and again.

I have learned and I am learning that love God means laying down my life for my friends.

Laying down my life means

pursuing justice rather than privilege;

exercising mercy rather than retribution;

living humbly rather greedily;

and it’s not easy.

But because it’s difficult, by God’s grace, I belong to a community that helps me behave as a disciple of Christ.

And who are the friends for whom I am to lay down my life?

Some of these friends are people who share my commitment to follow Jesus as Lord.

Others are people who do not share my commitment, who may even be in the thrall of privilege, retribution and greed.

Then there are those folk who are seeking the way, the truth and the life, but aren’t sure where this way, this truth and this life are to be found.

The good news is that I do not do this alone; I am surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses --- all those good folks of faith who walk with me as disciples of Christ.

Christian discipleship is not a form of theological algebra.

Just last week during our Coffee Hour Seminar we found ourselves acknowledging that we are committed to doing justice --- but what is justice?

Discipleship is more a form of theological calculus, the realization that it’s more an ‘almost but not yet’ than a simple answer.

We have moments where we know we have drawn so close to God that we feel we can reach out and touch God. Then we have moments when the distance between our hopes and our reality seem impossible to bridge.

But Love bids us welcome and draws us near --- and we touch the face of God --- in friend and stranger, in the beauty of creation and in the hope that draws us on.

What Kind of Love Is This

What Kind of Love Is This?

Reflections on 1 John 4.7-21

 

RCL Easter 5B

29 April 2018

 

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on the 29th.

1 John 4.7-21[1]

            ^4.7Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  ⁹God’s love was revealed among us in this way:  God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  ¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  ¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  ¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

            ¹³By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  ¹⁴And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world.  ¹⁵God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.  ¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

            God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.  ¹⁷Love has been perfected among us in this:  that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world.  ¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  ¹⁹We love because he first loved us.  ²⁰Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  ²¹The commandment we have from him is this:  those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

What Kind of Love Is This?

         One of the challenges that any teacher of ancient and modern languages faces is that of nuance.  For example, let’s take the situation of someone reporting that they are ill.  In English I can state that fact that Jack is ill if I have seen him or talked to him or received a note from a physician.  But what if I haven’t seen Jack or talked to him or received a note from a physician?  Well, if I’m told that Jack is sick by someone reliable, I might say that Jack is apparently ill or that I’ve been told that he’s ill.  But if I really doubt that Jack is ill because I think he’s taking time away to watch the hockey play-offs, I might roll my eyes, lift my eyebrows and say, ‘Well, Jack’s sick(wink, wink, nudge, nudge).’

         The German language is a bit more precise and actually changes the verb:  Jack ist krank(fact).  Jack sei krank (probability).  Jack wäre krank(doubt).

         We run into this challenge whenever we read or hear the New Testament in English translation.  What contemporary North American English tends to express through gesture and inflection, New Testament Greek expresses through precise words in a variety of forms.  Perhaps there is no more challenging concept to translate from New Testament Greek into contemporary English than ‘love’.  Whenever I hear someone use the word ‘love’, I am often tempted to probe what they actually mean.  What kind of love are they talking about?

Possession as Love

         Sometimes people say that they ‘love’ something when what they really mean is that they enjoy possessing what they are speaking about. They may ‘love’ their car or ‘love’ their house or even ‘love’ their personal appearance.  It’s love as a one-way street:  my car doesn’t love me nor my house nor my appearance.  It is the pleasure of possession that has captured me.

         But love as the pleasure of possessing something is not the love the writer of 1 John is describing.  What we possess, we can lose.  The fear of losing our possessions can lead us into a defensive shell; we can become ‘hoarders’ who have no idea what we own and only take pleasure in possessing. It is not a step on the way towards the love the writer of 1 John encourages us to express.

Obligation as Love

         Sometimes people say that they ‘love’ something or someone because they have an obligation to that object or person.  I remember when Owen was quite young. There was a children’s television programme that was something like the Flintstones only with dinosaurs.  The youngest in the family, an annoying, self-centred and more than mischievous  creature, was regularly heard to say, ‘I’m the baby; you gotta love me!’  Every once and a while Owen would smile at his parents and older siblings and then chime, ‘I’m the baby; you gotta love me!’

         The decision to have children brings the obligation to care for them, to nurture them, to do all that is possible to ensure their future.  It’s not always fun and the frustrations are many.  But our love for our children or our nieces and nephews or our grandchildren or children for whom we have some responsibility is coloured partly by our obligation, our duty of care.

         But love as obligation is not the kind of love the writer of 1 John is describing.  Love as obligation can lead to anger, to the feeling of being trapped, to the fear of being irresponsible.  I have known parents who cannot accept that their adult children are responsible for their own choices, as painful as such acceptance is.  Somewhere deep inside the parent hears the voice, ‘I’m the baby; you gotta love me!’ and guilt plants its roots firmly in the soul.  

         Obligation can be a step on the path towards the kind of love the writer of 1 John wants us to experience.  Because God loves us, perhaps we have some obligation in return. But God desires more.

Affection as Love

         Sometimes when we say that we ‘love’ someone, we are describing affection, the sense of having an affinity for another person. Friendship, a vital part of healthy life, is a relationship based upon such affinity.  For often mysterious reasons we are attracted to other people, even when their tastes are different from our own, even when their style of life differs considerably from our own.  We share confidences in the expectation that our friends will honour our trust.  We open windows into our inner selves in the expectation that only warmth and sunshine will enter.

         But our affections are sometimes betrayed.  Our confidences become ‘tweets’ and our inner selves are blasted by cold winds that usher in shadows.  Friendship, as important a form of love as it is, is not the kind of love the writer of 1 John is describing.  It is a step on the journey towards such a love; after all, in the Gospel according to John, Jesus calls his disciples ‘friends’.  But it is not yet our destination.

Devotion as Love

         Sometimes obligation and affection turn our love into something deeper, something more enduring, something that fear cannot undermine. It is this deeper, more enduring and more fear-resistant expression of love that the writer of 1 John urges his fellow believers, both those to whom he wrote so long ago and to us who hear these words unleashed upon us in our time and in our place.  This love is the love we call devotion.

         Devotion is love that commits itself to a particular way of being and that holds nothing back from the object of its devotion. Devotion, unlike possession, is a two-way street; we offer, we receive many times over from the object of our devotion.  For Christians the object of our devotion is the God made known to us in the life, death and resurrection of Christ:  “God’s love was revealed among us in this way:  God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” [2]

         We can love God and others because we feel obliged; we can love God and others because we feel affection.  But we only touch the love for God and for others we were created to know when we devote ourselves, our souls and bodies, our minds and strength to love as God has loved us.

         What I as your priest say to you today is nothing new; we have all heard it time and time again in the words of the Scriptures, in the prayers we offer and in the words we speak to God and to one another. But in times such as ours, when some people fear that the demise of Christian communities such as ours is just over the horizon, in such times we are beckoned to renew our devotion, the self-giving love that knows that it is the giving of ourselves to God and to others that we receive life in all its fullness.

         What kind of love is this?  The only love we truly need, the only love we truly seek, the only love worthy of the God in whom we believe.

---

[1]1 John 4.7-21 (New Revised Standard Version).

[2]1 John 4.9-12 (New Revised Standard Version).

Doing Is Believing: Reflections on 1 John 3.16-24

Doing Is Believing

Reflections on 1 John 3.16-24

RCL Easter 4B

22 April 2018

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 22nd.

1 John 3.16-24

^3.16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.  ¹⁷How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

            ¹⁸Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.  ¹⁹And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him ²⁰whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.  ²¹Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; ²²and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

            ²³And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.  ²⁴All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them.  And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

(1)  Recently a video of Pope Francis at an outdoor public audience was posted to my Facebook page.

(a)  A young boy approaches the microphone but is too frightened to ask his question.  A Vatican official leads the boy to the Pope who leans closely to the boy and the two have a quiet conversation.  Towards the end of the conversation the Pope embraces the boy tenderly for quite a long time before he returns to his seat.

(b)  The boy, whose name is Emmanuel, had just recently lost his father who was not a believer.  Emmanuel wanted to know if his father, who had had all four of his children baptized, would be in heaven.

(c)  The Pope’s answer was simple:  God judges us by our actions.  He assured the boy that his father had revealed a heart of love and that God would not refuse a heart that showed the same love as God has shown to the world.

(d) I have no doubt that there will be Christians throughout the world, Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic, who will find fault with the Pope’s response to this young boy.  But they must be Christians who have not read 1 John.

(2)  For simplicity’s sake, let’s call the writer of 1 John the ‘elder’.

(a) In today’s reading the elder responds to an age-old religious question:  How do we know if someone has genuine faith?

(b) The elder’s answer is simple:  When we reduce the Christian life to its barest minimum, true Christian life consists of (i) faith and (ii) love.

(c) Faith is more than intellectual assent to a doctrine or a particular set of doctrines; faith is the commitment of one’s body, mind, soul and strength to a particular way of life.

(d) But this definition of faith could be used to describe someone who believe in a racist agenda or a totalitarian agenda.  This is where the second dimension comes in.

(e) Love is the choice to act as God acts. We who claim to be disciples of Jesus of Nazareth know how God acts; we have seen it in the life and teaching of Jesus who is Emmanuel, ‘God with us’, ‘God in the flesh’.

(f) Earlier the elder writes “Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness.  Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.” (1 John 2.9-10)

(3)  So how do we know if someone is trying to live a fully Christian life? [1]

(a) We cannot love God and ignore those in need.  To be a Christian is to be a person for others.

(b) True love is love acted rather than love spoken.  It is more than simply telling others they are in our thoughts and prayers.  It is love that is always seeking an opportunity to act as God acts.  

(c) And how God does God act?  

(i) God blesses --- blessing as discerning and naming the presence of the Holy in daily life. 

(ii) God absolves --- absolving as liberating others from whatever binds them. 

(iii) God consecrates --- consecrating as making holy every moment of life.

(d) Active love is the sole basis of Christian assurance.  If we want to know if we are living a faithful Christian life, then we need ask if we are living as much as possible as (i) a person for others and (ii) a person who always seeking opportunities to act as God --- blessing, absolving, consecrating.

(4)  Our life of discipleship is not without dilemmas, doubts, failures and conflicts.

(a) But dilemmas, doubts, failures and conflicts can be faced in faith, can be embraced in love.

(b) To ‘abide’ in Christ means persevering in faith and love --- even when easier paths are open to us.

(c) To ‘know’ God is to know God’s presence --- standing with us, strengthening us, in the midst of our dilemmas, our doubts, our failures and our conflicts.

(5)  Let the last word today be one from a writer some call the ‘conservative’ Paul [2], a writer influenced by Paul of Tarsus, but writing some years after Paul’s death as the early Christian community struggled to be faithful in Greco-Roman society:

^3.12As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  ¹³Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  ¹⁴Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  ¹⁵And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.  ¹⁶Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.  ¹⁷And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. [3]

(6)  The person who does this lives in faith and love, abiding in Christ and knowing God.  

---

[1]What follows has been shaped by comments published in Craddock, Preaching Through the Christian Year:  Year B(1993), 252-253.

[2]Borg and Crossan, The First Paul(2009).

[3]Colossians 3.12-17

Image as Gift, Likeness as Vocation: Reflections on 1 John 3.1-7 (RCL Easter 3B 15 April 2018)

Dear Friends,

Forgive the brevity of my notes below.  Two days of rest and recreation meant time to ponder but not to write.  It's best to listen to the Sermon to hear how the pondering turned out.

RGL +

Image as Gift, Likeness as Vocation

Reflections on 1 John 3.1-7

RCL Easter 3B

15 April 2018

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached 

at the 10.00 eucharist on Sunday the 15th.

(1) Within the last year our youngest son, Owen Thomas, posted a photograph of himself, smoking a cigar, on his Facebook page.  What struck me about his profile was the resemblance to my father and my grandfather.  Owen was the image of his paternal grandsires.  There was also something about how he held his head that also betrayed his likeness to his grandfather and great-grandfather, a revelation of the character of the young man that reached back over the generations.  Image is a product of genetics, our DNA.  Likeness is a product of nurture, of family culture.

(2) It is this precise relationship between image and likeness that the author of 1 John is writing about.  We are made in the image of God; this is our fundamental genetic gift from the Creator of the kosmos.  This image of God that is planted in the soul and being of every man, woman and child is the power to create life-giving relationships, both physical and spiritual.  But our life-long task, our vocation, is to become like God.  God creates life with room for each creature to become more fully who God intends it to be.  ‘Beloved, we are God’s children (made in God’s image) now; what we shall be (living in God’s likeness), is yet to be revealed.’

(3) So, how do we become more like God in creating life-giving?  God’s first effort was to create a covenant people and to give them the ‘Teaching’, the Torah.  The plan was that they would become a sign to all peoples.  God’s next effort was the one that brought us into being.  The ‘Teaching’, the Torah, originally written on tablets of stone, was now written in the life and teaching of a unique human being, Jesus of Nazareth, who came among us, made disciples and, in his death and resurrection, inspired and empowered a movement that continues to this very day.  In Jesus of Nazareth, as truly human as each one of us, we see how we become like God, become co-creators with God, co-workers with God, in creating life-giving, death-denying relationships.

(4) To be a disciple of Jesus means a commitment to becoming more God-like in every aspect of our lives.  Becoming more God-like begins by belonging to the community of Jesus’ disciples.  Within that community we learn how to behave as one of his disciples.  Belonging and behaving lead us to believing — not believing as an intellectual exercise but believing as an affair of the heart, an act of love, believing as donning the habit of God.

(5) For the disciple of Jesus who has come to belong to a community within the Anglican tradition, behaving, the practices and traditions that lead us towards believing, are pretty straightforward.  Let's go back to Owen for a moment.  His face is the product of his Porter-Leggett genetics, the tilt of his jaw the product of Porter-Leggett nurture.  Likewise in the Christian community, our 'image' is the product of God's gift, our 'likeness' the product of Christian community as expressed in teaching, fellowship, worship and prayer.

(6) This is who we are.  This is who we are to become.

The Way, the Truth, the Life: Handing on the Tradition (RCL Easter 2B, 8 April 2018)

The Way, the Truth, the Life

Handing on the Tradition

RCL Easter 2B

8 April 2018

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 8th of April.

1 John 1.1-2.2

            1.1 We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life — 2 this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us — 3 we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.  4 We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

            5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.  6 If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; 7 but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

            2.1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.  But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

(1)  Seventy years after the first Easter the Christian communities around the Mediterranean Sea were beset by internal and external conflicts.

(a) The Roman imperial authorities had just begun what would be a series of persecutions aimed at suppressing a religious movement that claimed that a Jewish rabbi from Nazareth was Lord not the reigning Caesar in Rome.

(b) Even though a Jewish revolt that took place around the year 70 cehad been put down, the Temple in Jerusalem destroyed and the Jewish leadership dispersed throughout Palestine, the Persian Empire and various cities within the Roman empire, the Jewish leadership in exile did their utmost to expel the followers of Jesus from Jewish synagogues.

(c) But a more serious threat to the ‘Jesus movement’ was to be found within the various Christian communities themselves.

(i) Some of these communities were still locked in conflict over whether one had to follow the Jewish law in order to become a follower of Jesus.

(ii) Other communities were fighting over governance issues, that is to say, who were the legitimate successors to the apostles and how were Christian communities to be governed.

(iii) The increase of the number of non-Jewish believers brought into the Christian communities the beliefs, practices and habits of the wider Greco-Roman culture.

(2)  In what we now call Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, there were a number of communities whose origins lay in the leadership of John, the ‘beloved disciple’, whose experience of the risen Jesus shaped what we call ‘Johannine Christianity’.

(a) This way of following Jesus of Nazareth was shaped by the Gospel according to John.

(i) Eternal life is both a present reality and a future hope.

(ii) Creation is the stage where the forces of darkness seek to overcome the light of God made known in Jesus of Nazareth.

(iii) Matter, the physical stuff of creation, matters to God, so much so, that God dwells among us in the person of Jesus who is the living Word, who eats and drinks, laughs and cries, lives and suffers as a human being.

(b) For many Greco-Roman believers, schooled in various philosophical approaches to the world, the physical world was an obstacle to true spirituality.

(c) To counter these views the writer of the First Letter to John sends a theological ‘memorandum’ to the Johannine communities on behalf of the leadership.

(d) His exhortation is quite simple: Hold fast to the tradition that you received.

(3)  For us, living two thousand years later, the question of Christian tradition is still widely debated and, to be truthful, the source of division between the many Christian paths that exist in the world.

(a) Tradition is the process of handing from generation to another, from one group of people to another, the beliefs, practices and habits that have the potential to enable a person to grow into the full dignity of the image of God found within each one of us.

(b) Tradition is not static; it evolves in response to the realities of each human culture that receives it --- ‘the living faith of the dead not the dead faith of the living’.

(c) Christian tradition has at its heart four central beliefs.

(4)  Belief 1:  All that exists is the work of God, the Holy One, the Source of all life and being. 

(a) Creation is not an accident but an intentional act of God who chooses to make room for other beings.  

(b) Creation remains a mystery to be unfolded and explored.  

(c) Each generation, every culture within each generation, uncovers pieces of this vast puzzle of God’s purpose.

(5)  Belief 2:  In Jesus of Nazareth we have a unique and incarnate example of what it means to be fully human, some who is born in the image of God and who lives in God’s likeness.

(a) In Jesus we see how we can live in imitation of God, the choices and attitudes that enable us to be agents of God, co-workers with God, in times and places of our own lives.

(b) In Jesus we become ambassadors for God who live and work for reconciliation, to heal ancient wrongs and restore lost hopes.

(6)  Belief 3:  God continues to work out the divine purposes for us and for all creation through the work of the Holy Spirit.

(a) The Spirit leads people to know the way, the truth, the life revealed in Jesus --- not as the sole possession of his followers but the birthright of every human being.

(b) The Spirit nudges Christian and non-Christian alike to do justice, to love mercy and kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

(c) The Spirit inspires artists and scientists, musicians and writers, ordinary men and women, to do extraordinary things.

(7)  Belief 4:  Self-giving love, what the New Testament calls agape, is the necessary attitude in order to discover the way, the truth and the life.

(a) Agapeseeks the good of the beloved rather than the self-interest of the lover.  It is costly; it requires patience; it risks loss.

(b) Agapeis the choice that God made in creating the universe, choosing the companionship of love over divine solitude even at the risk of experiencing the heartbreak of unrequited love.

(c) In Jesus God chose solidarity with humanity in order to re-direct us towards life and away from self-destruction.

(d) In the Spirit God does not conceal the mystery of creation from us but  leads us, step by step, into knowledge and, one hopes, genuine wisdom.

(8)  This is the tradition that has been passed on to us through generations of believers, through the Scriptures proclaimed and interpreted in various languages, through water, bread and wine blessed and given in order to create witnesses to this God who creates, who restores, who animates all that is, seen and unseen.

(9)  This is what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands --- the word of life --- the tradition we have received, the tradition we are called to pass on.

(10)  Thanks be to God for such a tradition!