RCL Proper 15B
12 July 2009
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
2 Samuel 6.1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1.3-14; Mark 6.14-29
+ Lord, your word is very near to us. You have placed it in our mouths and in our hearts. May you give us your power to speak it and to live it. Amen.
About a year ago or so I became a regular reader of the obituaries in the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail. I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps one reason may be the simple fact that I have become more aware of my own mortality as I move closer to sixty than to fifty. Another reason may be more professional. I have noted the increasing number of obituaries that indicate that there will be no service, usually at the request of the deceased. or that a so-called ‘celebration of life’ will take place in a non-religious location such as a family residence, a social club or a favourite haunt of the deceased.
One of the other aspects of an obituary is the way that the life narrative of the deceased is recounted. Some are simply the facts such as the date of birth or date of death, the names of the surviving family and friends and the like. Others are panegyrics, filled with excessive praise and extravagant claims regarding the deceased. I often feel that these reveal a certain amount of guilt on the part of the survivors as if a glowing obituary can replace years or a life-time of neglect.
My favourites, if one can describe an obituary as a ‘favourite’, are those that tell a genuinely human story: the successes and the failures, the joys and the sorrows, the dreams and the disappointments. When I finish reading one of these well-crafted accounts, I have some sense of the person, a literary portrait of a human being.
Obituaries such as these bring to mind a prayer composed by Huub Oosterhuis and adapted for use in The Book of Alternative Services.
"God of grace and glory, we thank for N, who was so near and dear to us, and who has now been taken from us.
We thank you for the friendship he/she gave and for the strength and peace he/she brought. We thank you for the love he/she offered and received while he/she was with us on earth.
We pray that nothing good in this man’s/woman’s life will be lost, but will be of benefit to the world; that all that was important to him/her will be respected by those who follow; and that everything in which he/she was great will continue to mean much to us now that he/she is dead.
We ask you that he/she may go on living in his/her children, his/her family and his/her friends; in their hearts and minds, in their courage and their consciences. We ask you that we who were close to him/her may now, because of his/her death, be even closer to each other, and that we may, in peace and friendship here on earth, always be deeply conscious of your promise to be faithful to us in death.
We pray for ourselves, who are severely tested by this death, that we do not try to minimize the loss, or seek refuge from it in words alone, and also that we do not brood over it so that it overwhelms us and isolates us from others. May God grant us courage and confidence in the new life of Christ. We ask this is the name of the risen Lord. Amen."
It is an honest prayer and a hopeful prayer.
In many ways the readings we have heard today can be read as obituaries, the stories we want to tell and to be remembered after the death of a loved one.
Over the coming summer weeks we shall hear stories of the successes and failures, the joys and sorrows, the dreams and disappointments of Israel’s beloved king, David son of Jesse. In today’s reading from 2 Samuel we hear of his success; soon we shall hear of his adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, a man whom David arranges to be abandoned in the midst of battle so as to ensure his death at the hands of the enemy. Despite this moral failure, David shall remain fixed in the Scriptures as beloved of God, the one from whom the promised Messiah shall descend.
From the story of David we move to a letter written by an anonymous disciple of Paul, perhaps incorporating some of Paul’s own writing into his own. The writer of Ephesians confronts a church that is still uncertain about the role of Gentile Christians, non-Jewish believers in Jesus as Lord.
For more than two thousand years Christians have treasured these words as we have confronted our own conflicts regarding who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. Can Gentiles be Christians without becoming Jews first? Can slaves become Christians? Can a freed slave become a bishop or a presbyter or a deacon? What role or roles can women legitimately exercise in the life of the Christian community?
These and many other questions have been asked and debated over two millennia. Time and time again Christian leaders and teachers have turned to the anonymous writer of the letter to the Ephesians to seek guidance. So do we in our own turmoil over the inclusion of gay and lesbian disciples of Christ as well as our relations with peoples of different faiths.
Then comes Mark’s gospel, his proclamation of ‘the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Mark 1.1). We learn today that prophetic witness is always threatening to entrenched powers who will cheerfully arrange for the disposal of the inconvenient witness to the truth.
Poor John! After years in the wilderness proclaiming the kingdom, he will be overshadowed by his younger cousin, Jesus. After years of being Herod’s conscience, he will lose his head because Herod makes a foolish promise while besotted by the allures of his step-daughter and is such a moral coward that he cannot deny what is a patently vindictive request.
Yet it is John whom we remember and commemorate in the Christian community. It is John whose feast is the fête nationale of Quėbec.
My sisters and brothers, there are those who are writing the obituary of the Anglican Church of Canada. Some of those who are writing of our death point out that we are like King David, off to a good start but fallen victim to power. Perhaps they are right in their assessment.
Other commentators believe that our efforts to include many who are excluded by the majority of Christian communities, the divorced, gays and lesbians, women who feel called to leadership, have caused us to lose our edge and that we have become a nice but irrelevant social club. Perhaps these commentators are right.
Still other analysts suggest that our decline is due to our emphasis on prophetic social witness regarding the needs and concerns of aboriginal people, the hungry, the homeless rather than an emphasis on winning souls for Christ. Perhaps they have a point.
But I hope that you will forgive me if I take the attitude of Mark Twain that the rumours of our death are greatly exaggerated. We may have fallen victim to our privileged role in society; but we are not privileged now and we know how to repent and return to the Lord. We may have lost our ‘edge’ by reaching out to those who have been marginalized; but we are now the marginalized and we are learning how to confront prejudice and injustice. We may have been too focused on prophetic witness; but we know that we have more in common with John the Baptist than with Herod and we will continue to speak for those who have no voice.
It may be that these are the last days of the Anglican Church of Canada as we have known it. So be it. But the story that will be written about us will be an honest one, a human and humane one. It will be a story that will long be remembered because it will be the story of our lives and our witness to the gospel in our time and place. It will be a story of how God has worked, is working and will continue to work to bring about God’s purposes for the whole of creation. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
For Such a Time as This
The Ordination of Jennifer Burgoyne to the Diaconate and David Taylor to the Presbyterate
21 June 2009
Christ Church Cathedral
Vancouver BC
The Rev’d Dr. Richard Geoffrey Leggett
Propers: Isaiah 61.1-9; Psalm 84; 2 Corinthians 4.1-10; John 10.1-16
+ My sisters and brothers, I speak to you in the name of God, Three in One and One in Three, the Weaver who weaves us into the pattern of the Word through the shuttle of the Spirit. Amen.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
These memorable words form the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. The novel, if you remember, takes place during that period of the French Revolution known as the ‘Reign of Terror’, as the guillotine claimed both aristocratic and revolutionary victims and England trembled with the thought of republicanism being exported across the Channel.
But as is often the case with genuine literary brilliance, Dickens’ words cannot be kept within the confines of the eighteenth century nor the nineteenth-century industrial Britain to whom these words were first addressed. These words give voice to the hopes and fears of people living in different times, places and cultures.
Twenty-five hundred years ago God called the prophet whom we sometimes identify as ‘Third’ Isaiah to speak words of comfort, challenge and hope to a dispirited and divided community of faith.
His community had recently returned to the land of Judah after a lengthy exile in Babylon. An earlier generation had heard words of ‘exuberant hope’ spoken by our writer’s predecessor, so-called ‘Second’ Isaiah, as they awaited the envisioned return to Jerusalem (The Jewish Study Bible, 783). But the reality of restoration aroused feelings of frustration and disappointment (The Jewish Study Bible, 783).
Years of exile had led some Judeans to embrace non-Yahwist religious practices as well as other religious, social and economic divisions (The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed., 977 Hebrew Bible). The present was so unsatisfactory that the religious imagination of the people turned primarily to a hope in God’s future intervention which would result in the purification of the people of Judah and the establishment of Jerusalem as the religious capital of the world (The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed., 977 Hebrew Bible). Yet the prophet dares to speak words of hope to his present:
• To you who are oppressed now, I bring good news.
• To you who are brokenhearted now, I bring healing.
• To you who are in bondage now, I proclaim liberty.
• To you who are disheartened now, I proclaim that this is the year of the Lord’s favour.
• To you who mourn now, I tell you that comfort will be given to you.
• To you who despair of the future now, I tell you that you are the foundations upon which God is building the future now.
For a time such as theirs, God provided the leadership that was needed.
Two thousand years ago God called an unlikely candidate to speak words of comfort, challenge and hope to a dispirited and divided community of faith.
Even a casual reader of Paul’s two letters to the Christian community at Corinth will quickly discern that this was not a peaceful community. In the first place they were a relatively tiny religious sect in the midst of a city bustling with religious faiths from East and West. In the second place there were profound economic and social divisions among the members. Some were rich, others poor and Paul, in his first letter to them, chastised the rich for allowing the poorer members of the community to go hungry when they gathered for their communal meal in which the Lord’s final meal with his disciples was remembered. In the third place some members of the community laid claim to distinctive religious knowledge to which others had no access.
Into this turmoil Paul writes to remind them that human beings are fragile containers for the good news of God in Christ.
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed . . . . (2 Corinthians 4.7-10)
Unlike other writers who boast of how they have become great through their adversities, Paul describes his adversities as proof that any power he has, any persuasive gifts he has, are not the result of his overcoming of adversity but despite his afflictions, perplexities, persecutions and difficulties.
• Wealth will not bring you God’s grace nor can poverty prevent you from receiving it.
• Claims to distinctive knowledge will not bring you God’s grace nor can simple faith obscure it.
For a time such as theirs, God provided the leadership they needed.
Tonight God calls two members of our community to exercise the ministries of deacon and presbyter within a community of faith that is divided and, in the eyes of some observers, dispirited.
Our Sunday assemblies are no longer the destination of choice for the majority of people who live in Metro Vancouver. Religious discourse has, in many ways, been reduced to the repetition of catchy slogans, whether of ‘orthodoxy’ or ‘progress’, that often do not bear the weight of closer scrutiny. The media tends to portray all religious people as fundamentalists or as apologists who try to explain away the distinctive claims of the religious communities to which they belong in the hopes of broader public acceptance. We are compelled to resort to civil law to defend our commitments to justice, peace and the dignity of every human being.
For a time such as ours, God provides the leadership we need.
Jennifer, I speak to you first, because as a deacon the order to which you are called is older than the order into which I was ordained twenty-eight years ago. You have been called to be a proclaimer, an interpreter, an animator of the church’s ministry beyond its self-identified boundaries, so that we might respond to the needs, concerns and hopes of the world. Your leadership in diakonia is even more vital in such a time as this when it is tempting for the church to withdraw within itself and tend to its perceived wounds rather than courageously proclaiming good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.
David, I speak to you second, because our order of presbyters evolved in response to the success of the ministry of bishops and deacons in proclaiming the resurrection and embodying the incarnation. You have been called as a pastor, priest and teacher to work with all the baptized, lay and ordained, to ensure that there are life-giving communities of faith that nurture all the faithful with the riches of God’s grace so that whole world may ‘. . . see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by [Christ] through whom all things were made’. Your ministry of leadership in koinōnia is even more vital in such a time as this when it is tempting for the church to disintegrate into various special interest groups and self-selecting coteries of like-minded individuals.
Both of you, as deacon and as presbyter, will participate in the ministry of Christ the good shepherd. There are times for the flock to remain close together and time for the flock to move on to new and greener pastures. Christ, the shepherd of the flock, will need you both, one to maintain the unity and integrity of the flock, the other to help us move into new places. Like sheep dogs you may even have to nip a few heels and growl convincingly when necessary.
In all that you do remember that the church is the ekklēsia, ‘a public assembly of free citizens summoned from their daily pursuits to take counsel and to take action for the common good of all’. The ekklēsia is called to be a ‘thin place’ where God’s presence and purposes for the whole of creation can become evident to all, whether of our faith or another faith or none.
• Speak persuasively of God.
• Speak boldly for God.
• Nurture the ekklēsia with all the skill, wisdom and strength you possess.
Whether this is the best of times or the worst, whether this is an age of wisdom or of foolishness, whether this is an epoch of belief or incredulity, whether this is a season of light or of darkness, whether this is the spring of hope or the winter of despair, I cannot say. It is never for those who live in a given time to judge its quality or to name its character. We are called to live as best as we can and as faithfully as we can using all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, to trust that God’s power is greater than our fragile vessels and to care for the people of God, whether they know their true identity or not.
One thing, however, is certain. God does not leave us bereft of the leadership we need for the facing of our times. Tonight two members of that leadership will kneel before the archbishop. Tonight that leadership may be sitting in front of you, to your right and to your left, perhaps behind you. Knowing this I might even dare to say that this moment is the best of times.
For all of you, my sisters and brothers, shall be called oaks of righteousness. You shall build up the ancient ruins and raise up the former devastations. You shall be called priests and ministers of our God. Your descendants shall be known among the nations and all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. Amen.
21 June 2009
Christ Church Cathedral
Vancouver BC
The Rev’d Dr. Richard Geoffrey Leggett
Propers: Isaiah 61.1-9; Psalm 84; 2 Corinthians 4.1-10; John 10.1-16
+ My sisters and brothers, I speak to you in the name of God, Three in One and One in Three, the Weaver who weaves us into the pattern of the Word through the shuttle of the Spirit. Amen.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
These memorable words form the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. The novel, if you remember, takes place during that period of the French Revolution known as the ‘Reign of Terror’, as the guillotine claimed both aristocratic and revolutionary victims and England trembled with the thought of republicanism being exported across the Channel.
But as is often the case with genuine literary brilliance, Dickens’ words cannot be kept within the confines of the eighteenth century nor the nineteenth-century industrial Britain to whom these words were first addressed. These words give voice to the hopes and fears of people living in different times, places and cultures.
Twenty-five hundred years ago God called the prophet whom we sometimes identify as ‘Third’ Isaiah to speak words of comfort, challenge and hope to a dispirited and divided community of faith.
His community had recently returned to the land of Judah after a lengthy exile in Babylon. An earlier generation had heard words of ‘exuberant hope’ spoken by our writer’s predecessor, so-called ‘Second’ Isaiah, as they awaited the envisioned return to Jerusalem (The Jewish Study Bible, 783). But the reality of restoration aroused feelings of frustration and disappointment (The Jewish Study Bible, 783).
Years of exile had led some Judeans to embrace non-Yahwist religious practices as well as other religious, social and economic divisions (The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed., 977 Hebrew Bible). The present was so unsatisfactory that the religious imagination of the people turned primarily to a hope in God’s future intervention which would result in the purification of the people of Judah and the establishment of Jerusalem as the religious capital of the world (The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed., 977 Hebrew Bible). Yet the prophet dares to speak words of hope to his present:
• To you who are oppressed now, I bring good news.
• To you who are brokenhearted now, I bring healing.
• To you who are in bondage now, I proclaim liberty.
• To you who are disheartened now, I proclaim that this is the year of the Lord’s favour.
• To you who mourn now, I tell you that comfort will be given to you.
• To you who despair of the future now, I tell you that you are the foundations upon which God is building the future now.
For a time such as theirs, God provided the leadership that was needed.
Two thousand years ago God called an unlikely candidate to speak words of comfort, challenge and hope to a dispirited and divided community of faith.
Even a casual reader of Paul’s two letters to the Christian community at Corinth will quickly discern that this was not a peaceful community. In the first place they were a relatively tiny religious sect in the midst of a city bustling with religious faiths from East and West. In the second place there were profound economic and social divisions among the members. Some were rich, others poor and Paul, in his first letter to them, chastised the rich for allowing the poorer members of the community to go hungry when they gathered for their communal meal in which the Lord’s final meal with his disciples was remembered. In the third place some members of the community laid claim to distinctive religious knowledge to which others had no access.
Into this turmoil Paul writes to remind them that human beings are fragile containers for the good news of God in Christ.
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed . . . . (2 Corinthians 4.7-10)
Unlike other writers who boast of how they have become great through their adversities, Paul describes his adversities as proof that any power he has, any persuasive gifts he has, are not the result of his overcoming of adversity but despite his afflictions, perplexities, persecutions and difficulties.
• Wealth will not bring you God’s grace nor can poverty prevent you from receiving it.
• Claims to distinctive knowledge will not bring you God’s grace nor can simple faith obscure it.
For a time such as theirs, God provided the leadership they needed.
Tonight God calls two members of our community to exercise the ministries of deacon and presbyter within a community of faith that is divided and, in the eyes of some observers, dispirited.
Our Sunday assemblies are no longer the destination of choice for the majority of people who live in Metro Vancouver. Religious discourse has, in many ways, been reduced to the repetition of catchy slogans, whether of ‘orthodoxy’ or ‘progress’, that often do not bear the weight of closer scrutiny. The media tends to portray all religious people as fundamentalists or as apologists who try to explain away the distinctive claims of the religious communities to which they belong in the hopes of broader public acceptance. We are compelled to resort to civil law to defend our commitments to justice, peace and the dignity of every human being.
For a time such as ours, God provides the leadership we need.
Jennifer, I speak to you first, because as a deacon the order to which you are called is older than the order into which I was ordained twenty-eight years ago. You have been called to be a proclaimer, an interpreter, an animator of the church’s ministry beyond its self-identified boundaries, so that we might respond to the needs, concerns and hopes of the world. Your leadership in diakonia is even more vital in such a time as this when it is tempting for the church to withdraw within itself and tend to its perceived wounds rather than courageously proclaiming good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.
David, I speak to you second, because our order of presbyters evolved in response to the success of the ministry of bishops and deacons in proclaiming the resurrection and embodying the incarnation. You have been called as a pastor, priest and teacher to work with all the baptized, lay and ordained, to ensure that there are life-giving communities of faith that nurture all the faithful with the riches of God’s grace so that whole world may ‘. . . see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by [Christ] through whom all things were made’. Your ministry of leadership in koinōnia is even more vital in such a time as this when it is tempting for the church to disintegrate into various special interest groups and self-selecting coteries of like-minded individuals.
Both of you, as deacon and as presbyter, will participate in the ministry of Christ the good shepherd. There are times for the flock to remain close together and time for the flock to move on to new and greener pastures. Christ, the shepherd of the flock, will need you both, one to maintain the unity and integrity of the flock, the other to help us move into new places. Like sheep dogs you may even have to nip a few heels and growl convincingly when necessary.
In all that you do remember that the church is the ekklēsia, ‘a public assembly of free citizens summoned from their daily pursuits to take counsel and to take action for the common good of all’. The ekklēsia is called to be a ‘thin place’ where God’s presence and purposes for the whole of creation can become evident to all, whether of our faith or another faith or none.
• Speak persuasively of God.
• Speak boldly for God.
• Nurture the ekklēsia with all the skill, wisdom and strength you possess.
Whether this is the best of times or the worst, whether this is an age of wisdom or of foolishness, whether this is an epoch of belief or incredulity, whether this is a season of light or of darkness, whether this is the spring of hope or the winter of despair, I cannot say. It is never for those who live in a given time to judge its quality or to name its character. We are called to live as best as we can and as faithfully as we can using all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, to trust that God’s power is greater than our fragile vessels and to care for the people of God, whether they know their true identity or not.
One thing, however, is certain. God does not leave us bereft of the leadership we need for the facing of our times. Tonight two members of that leadership will kneel before the archbishop. Tonight that leadership may be sitting in front of you, to your right and to your left, perhaps behind you. Knowing this I might even dare to say that this moment is the best of times.
For all of you, my sisters and brothers, shall be called oaks of righteousness. You shall build up the ancient ruins and raise up the former devastations. You shall be called priests and ministers of our God. Your descendants shall be known among the nations and all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. Amen.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Die to Self to Live for All
Easter Vigil 2009
11 April 2009
St Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
+ Lover of the universe, your goodness is stronger than evil; your love is stronger than hate; your light is stronger than darkness; your life in us is stronger than death; your victory is ours through Jesus your Beloved who loved us. Amen.
There are few occasions on which it is more difficult to preach than the Easter Vigil or tomorrow morning’s celebration of Easter. The first difficulty is, of course, the challenge of preaching on the resurrection itself. Are we talking about the resuscitation of a corpse, the immortality of the soul or the Jewish-Christian belief that, on the day of God’s choosing, we shall rise from the dead, clothed in flesh? Frederick Buechner, an American novelist and theologian, writes
4. All the major Christian creeds affirm belief in resurrection of the body. In other words they affirm the belief that what God in spite of everything prizes enough to bring back to life is not just some disembodied echo of a human being but a new and revised version of all the things which made him the particular human being he was and which he needs something like a body to express: his personality, the way he looked, the sound of his voice, his peculiar capacity for creating and loving, in some sense his face.
5. The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of man’s indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God’s unspeakable love. (Buechner 1992, 235-236)
But a more significant challenge is to resist the tendency of some Christians to devote their energies discussing the resurrection as a matter only of the past or the future. There are Christians who will tonight and tomorrow expend considerable energy in a vigorous defence of the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. While this is a faithful exercise, it is a past-oriented one. There are other Christians who will expend considerable energy tonight and tomorrow focusing on either a spiritual understanding of the resurrection, that is to say, the immortality of the soul or the power of life over death or they will speak about various end-of-time scenarios, some of these scenarios being more dramatic than others. These Christians are engaged in what I would call a future-oriented exercise.
But in tonight’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome, we hear a man engaged in a present-oriented exercise of Christian theology. While he does speak of past and future, I want you to hear again some of the present-oriented language he uses.
4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
I do not doubt that Paul has faith in the future resurrection of the body, but his present concern is to encourage the Christians in Rome to live today in the power of the resurrection. To borrow an old saying, Paul does not want the Christians in Rome to be so heavenly-minded that they are no damn earthly good.
Paul speaks of our dying with Christ. Let me unpack that phrase a little bit, so that you can hear what I mean when I say we are being called to a present-oriented understanding of resurrection.
I have long believed that we pay too little attention to the drama in the garden when Jesus utters those fateful words, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22.42) An early Christian theologian, Irenaeus, compared the life of Jesus with the life of Adam. Both were formed by God’s Spirit from virgin material; both were given a mission to undertake. Adam disobeyed and death came into the world; Jesus obeyed and death was defeated. The key moment is the decision to choose to participate in God’s mission rather than one’s own self-interest. We hear echoes of the importance of this choice in a passage from the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi.
5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death --- even death on a cross.
This is the death in which we share. There is perhaps no more difficult death than dying to the illusion that I am the centre of the kosmos and to our culture’s illusion of the all-powerful self that claims my allegiance. To be baptized, whether as a child or as an adult, is to die to the powerful Western myth of an individual autonomy that makes us a law unto ourselves.
To be baptized is to pray next to Jesus in the garden, ‘Holy One, not my will but yours be done.’ To be baptized is to become who we really are, the beloved of God who have been called by God to share in carrying out the plan of salvation, to raise up things which were cast down, to make new things which had grown old and to bring all things to their perfection as made known in Jesus of Nazareth. We are to participate in the here and now in a project spoken of by the same Irenaeus I mentioned earlier: ‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive.’
The glory of God is found in a human being who has learned to live the resurrection in the present as well as remember the past and hope for the future. The glory of God is found in a human being who has learned that eternal life is not only a future hope but is also a present reality. The glory of God is found in a human being who is not afraid to die to the counterfeits that masquerade as truth in the marketplace of a consumer culture.
The Guatemalan poet, Julia Esquivel, wrote a collection of poems entitled Threatened with Resurrection. These poems come from her experience of the oppression and violence that consumed her country and sent many Guatemalans to this country as refugees. Let me close with just one.
You seduced me, Lord,
and I was seduced.
You grasped my heart firmly
with the outstretched hand
of the old Indian
who has been dying for centuries
without a roof,
without medicines,
without a doctor,
asking for the bread of justice
at the door of a locked church.
You seduced me, Lord,
and I let myself be seduced.
You have conquered me,
you have been stronger than I.
This is why those who were my friends
are retreating in fear
and close their doors to me.
Because each time
I hear your Word
I must cry out:
Violence and ruin
to those who manufacture
orphans, misery, and death!
How many times
did I wish to close my ears
to your voice,
to harden my heart,
to seal my lips,
to forget forever
the pain of the persecuted,
the helplessness of the outcast,
and the agony of the tortured,
but your pain
was my own
and your love burned in my heart.
You accompany me,
you weep with my weeping,
and moan during my prayer,
and pour yourself out in my cry.
Because you are
stronger than I,
I have let myself be a captive,
and your love
burns in my heart. (Morley 1992, 58-59)
This poem speaks of a human being fully alive, a human being who lives the resurrection in the present. The powers of our world that still deny the dignity of every human person and that still find ways to perpetuate injustice are not threatened by ancient stories; but they are threatened by resurrection, a reality that is unleashed in the present. The illusions of our consumer culture that tell us that our self-worth depends upon possessing this commodity or looking like this celebrity are not threatened by future hopes; but they are threatened by resurrection, the revelation of what it means to be a human being truly alive.
Let us not forget the stories of the Lord’s resurrection, for they are the foundation of our present. Let us not forget our hopes for the future, for they are the fuel that powers our present. But let us not forget to live in the present, to call others to die to self in order to live for all. Amen.
Works cited
Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).
Janet Morley, ed., Bread of Tomorrow: Prayers for the Church Year (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992).
11 April 2009
St Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
+ Lover of the universe, your goodness is stronger than evil; your love is stronger than hate; your light is stronger than darkness; your life in us is stronger than death; your victory is ours through Jesus your Beloved who loved us. Amen.
There are few occasions on which it is more difficult to preach than the Easter Vigil or tomorrow morning’s celebration of Easter. The first difficulty is, of course, the challenge of preaching on the resurrection itself. Are we talking about the resuscitation of a corpse, the immortality of the soul or the Jewish-Christian belief that, on the day of God’s choosing, we shall rise from the dead, clothed in flesh? Frederick Buechner, an American novelist and theologian, writes
4. All the major Christian creeds affirm belief in resurrection of the body. In other words they affirm the belief that what God in spite of everything prizes enough to bring back to life is not just some disembodied echo of a human being but a new and revised version of all the things which made him the particular human being he was and which he needs something like a body to express: his personality, the way he looked, the sound of his voice, his peculiar capacity for creating and loving, in some sense his face.
5. The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of man’s indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God’s unspeakable love. (Buechner 1992, 235-236)
But a more significant challenge is to resist the tendency of some Christians to devote their energies discussing the resurrection as a matter only of the past or the future. There are Christians who will tonight and tomorrow expend considerable energy in a vigorous defence of the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. While this is a faithful exercise, it is a past-oriented one. There are other Christians who will expend considerable energy tonight and tomorrow focusing on either a spiritual understanding of the resurrection, that is to say, the immortality of the soul or the power of life over death or they will speak about various end-of-time scenarios, some of these scenarios being more dramatic than others. These Christians are engaged in what I would call a future-oriented exercise.
But in tonight’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome, we hear a man engaged in a present-oriented exercise of Christian theology. While he does speak of past and future, I want you to hear again some of the present-oriented language he uses.
4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
I do not doubt that Paul has faith in the future resurrection of the body, but his present concern is to encourage the Christians in Rome to live today in the power of the resurrection. To borrow an old saying, Paul does not want the Christians in Rome to be so heavenly-minded that they are no damn earthly good.
Paul speaks of our dying with Christ. Let me unpack that phrase a little bit, so that you can hear what I mean when I say we are being called to a present-oriented understanding of resurrection.
I have long believed that we pay too little attention to the drama in the garden when Jesus utters those fateful words, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22.42) An early Christian theologian, Irenaeus, compared the life of Jesus with the life of Adam. Both were formed by God’s Spirit from virgin material; both were given a mission to undertake. Adam disobeyed and death came into the world; Jesus obeyed and death was defeated. The key moment is the decision to choose to participate in God’s mission rather than one’s own self-interest. We hear echoes of the importance of this choice in a passage from the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi.
5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death --- even death on a cross.
This is the death in which we share. There is perhaps no more difficult death than dying to the illusion that I am the centre of the kosmos and to our culture’s illusion of the all-powerful self that claims my allegiance. To be baptized, whether as a child or as an adult, is to die to the powerful Western myth of an individual autonomy that makes us a law unto ourselves.
To be baptized is to pray next to Jesus in the garden, ‘Holy One, not my will but yours be done.’ To be baptized is to become who we really are, the beloved of God who have been called by God to share in carrying out the plan of salvation, to raise up things which were cast down, to make new things which had grown old and to bring all things to their perfection as made known in Jesus of Nazareth. We are to participate in the here and now in a project spoken of by the same Irenaeus I mentioned earlier: ‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive.’
The glory of God is found in a human being who has learned to live the resurrection in the present as well as remember the past and hope for the future. The glory of God is found in a human being who has learned that eternal life is not only a future hope but is also a present reality. The glory of God is found in a human being who is not afraid to die to the counterfeits that masquerade as truth in the marketplace of a consumer culture.
The Guatemalan poet, Julia Esquivel, wrote a collection of poems entitled Threatened with Resurrection. These poems come from her experience of the oppression and violence that consumed her country and sent many Guatemalans to this country as refugees. Let me close with just one.
You seduced me, Lord,
and I was seduced.
You grasped my heart firmly
with the outstretched hand
of the old Indian
who has been dying for centuries
without a roof,
without medicines,
without a doctor,
asking for the bread of justice
at the door of a locked church.
You seduced me, Lord,
and I let myself be seduced.
You have conquered me,
you have been stronger than I.
This is why those who were my friends
are retreating in fear
and close their doors to me.
Because each time
I hear your Word
I must cry out:
Violence and ruin
to those who manufacture
orphans, misery, and death!
How many times
did I wish to close my ears
to your voice,
to harden my heart,
to seal my lips,
to forget forever
the pain of the persecuted,
the helplessness of the outcast,
and the agony of the tortured,
but your pain
was my own
and your love burned in my heart.
You accompany me,
you weep with my weeping,
and moan during my prayer,
and pour yourself out in my cry.
Because you are
stronger than I,
I have let myself be a captive,
and your love
burns in my heart. (Morley 1992, 58-59)
This poem speaks of a human being fully alive, a human being who lives the resurrection in the present. The powers of our world that still deny the dignity of every human person and that still find ways to perpetuate injustice are not threatened by ancient stories; but they are threatened by resurrection, a reality that is unleashed in the present. The illusions of our consumer culture that tell us that our self-worth depends upon possessing this commodity or looking like this celebrity are not threatened by future hopes; but they are threatened by resurrection, the revelation of what it means to be a human being truly alive.
Let us not forget the stories of the Lord’s resurrection, for they are the foundation of our present. Let us not forget our hopes for the future, for they are the fuel that powers our present. But let us not forget to live in the present, to call others to die to self in order to live for all. Amen.
Works cited
Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).
Janet Morley, ed., Bread of Tomorrow: Prayers for the Church Year (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992).
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Some Reading Suggestions
For those readers of blogs who wish to explore some print material, let me suggest three new titles that have come to my attention.
(1) Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women's Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West published by Oxford University Press in 2008 (ISBN 987-0-19-518970-4). This is a careful exploration of the evidence for women clergy in the medieval western church that can be found in the documents of the period. This is not an evening's read, but a worthy task for those who are interested in reclaiming all our histories.
(2) Jeremie Begbie, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music published by Baker Academic in 2007 (ISBN 987-0-8010-2695-9). Begbie, an English Evangelical, is a widely-respected commentator on theology and the arts. This book has been well-reviewed.
(3) Richard D. McCall, Do This: Liturgy as Performance published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2008 (ISBN 978-0-268-03499-3). McCall is Professor of Liturgy at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge MA. This is not a book about how to perform liturgy but a serious exploration of the following question: "What is the place of the rites of the church in a world that is itself a performance, a continuing enactment that come to be in the act?" One reviewer says that this is the most important work in liturgical studies that he has read in five years.
Just some suggestions.
(1) Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women's Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West published by Oxford University Press in 2008 (ISBN 987-0-19-518970-4). This is a careful exploration of the evidence for women clergy in the medieval western church that can be found in the documents of the period. This is not an evening's read, but a worthy task for those who are interested in reclaiming all our histories.
(2) Jeremie Begbie, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music published by Baker Academic in 2007 (ISBN 987-0-8010-2695-9). Begbie, an English Evangelical, is a widely-respected commentator on theology and the arts. This book has been well-reviewed.
(3) Richard D. McCall, Do This: Liturgy as Performance published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2008 (ISBN 978-0-268-03499-3). McCall is Professor of Liturgy at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge MA. This is not a book about how to perform liturgy but a serious exploration of the following question: "What is the place of the rites of the church in a world that is itself a performance, a continuing enactment that come to be in the act?" One reviewer says that this is the most important work in liturgical studies that he has read in five years.
Just some suggestions.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Stephen Bevans on Trinity and Mission
What I have discovered, and try to get across to my students, are two things here. First, God is more a verb than a noun, a movement, an embrace, a dance rather than a mover, a lover, a dancer. The ancient term perichoresis, especially in its more dynamic understanding proposed by the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure, denotes movement in the depths of God as such, a constant "moving around," "interpenetrating" one another. And, as contemporary theologians have pointed out, the term perichoresis lends itself easily to a play on words with the Greek word for "dance." With this movement or dance God moves into the world. I like to imagine the divine community moving through the world in a great conga line, gathering up people into the dance, led by the "Lord of the Dance." Second, intimately connected with the first, is that faith in this God is to be caught up in that movement, that embracing, that dance --- in God's mission. God is a missionary God, Christians are missionary people, the church is "missionary by its very nature." It is maybe "pushing the envelope," but I try to connect the traditional doctrine of theosis or divinization (a doctrine rather neglected in the West but developed strongly in the East) with this missionary nature of God and Christianity. When we believe in God, we do what God does; and when we do what God does --- pour out our lives in love for God and for God's creation --- we, as it were, become Divine ourselves, because we are caught up in God's very life. What this points to in turn is that it is in mission, in service, in self-giving, that we ultimately find our salvation, our human wholeness. This is why we witness to and preach the God of Jesus Christ and Jesus himself, and why we invite women and men to join us in faith and in the church. [quoted from Stephan Bevans, "DB 4100: The God of Jesus Christ --- A Case Study for a Missional Systematic Theology," Theological Education 43, no. 2 (2008): 113-114.]
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
A Word for Ash Wednesday from Susan Marie Smith
"The current North American cultural context includes anxious liturgists who stick with authorized rites from the book in order to be certain of orthodoxy on the one hand, and unchurched amateurs who generate rites in psychologists' offices and living rooms in order to be able to heal and reconcile [on the other hand]. It is critical that those of us whose lives are given over to the mediation of God's grace and salvation to the world enter into the messy middle of inculturating rites that are fully Christian, orthodox and orthoprax, and fully indigenized to the particular peoples whose hurts Christ would heal were he walking the earth. This task calls us to be daring and critical, careful and adventuresome, experimental and theological. Let us take up the challenge." [quoted from Susan Marie Smith, "The Scandal of Particularity Writ Small: Principles for Indigenizing Liturgy in Local Context." Anglican Theological Review 88 (Summer 2006): 375-396
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Je me souviens
[The following sermon was preached in the Chapel of the Epiphany at Vancouver School of Theology on 16 October 2008 and was modified from a sermon preached at St Faith's Anglican Church on 13 October 2008. The readings are the first set for Thanksgiving: Deuteronomy 8.7-18; Psalm 65; 2 Corinthians 9.6-15 and Luke 17.11-18.]
When our children, David, Anna and Owen, were younger, we frequently played re-cordings of Broadway musicals. The three of them, with their youthful abilities to pick the lyrics of songs quickly, devoured these recordings. On some of our road trips, they would entertain us by giving impromptu performances of Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat or The Phantom of the Opera or Jesus Christ Superstar or Cats.
In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats there is a poignant scene where Grizabella, the nce glamorous now shabby cat who left the tribe to explore the world and has suffered that world’s cruelties, returns. She is shunned by the older cats and provokes discomfort among the younger ones. But Grizabella has returned seeking what she can only find among her tribe, the opportunity to be the cat to whom Old Deuteronomy, the chief of the tribe, be-stows the gift of re-birth.
I think that there are few Broadway songs that evoke the despair and longing for meaning as clearly and as powerfully as Grizabella’s solo, ‘Memory’. Perhaps some of you have seen the musical or the film version or even heard it on the radio.
Daylight.
See the dew on the sunflower
And a rose that is fading.
Roses wither away.
Like the sunflower
I yearn to turn my face to the dawn.
I am waiting for the day.
Midnight.
Not a sound from the pavement.
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone.
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet.
And the wind begins to moan.
Memory.
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days.
I was beautiful then.
I remember the time I knew what happiness was.
Let the memory live again.
Every streetlamp
Seems to beat a fatalistic warning.
Someone mutters,
And the streetlamp gutters,
And soon it will be morning.
Daylight.
I must wait for the sunrise.
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in.
When the dawn comes,
Tonight will be a memory too.
And a new day will begin.
Burnt out ends of smoky days,
The stale cold smell of morning.
The streetlamp dies, another night is over,
Another day is dawning.
Touch me.
It’s so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun.
If you touch me,
You’ll understand what happiness is.
Look,
A new day has begun.
Younger cats come gingerly towards her, touching her, stroking her, embracing her. The older cats gather around her and Old Deuteronomy approaches her and leads her into the light that signifies her new life.
Among the human faculties memory plays more than just a significant role. To lose one’s memory, to become an amnesiac, is to lose one’s identity. But the faculty of memory is both an involuntary and a voluntary function. By this I mean that we arrange our memo-ries, we, in some mysterious way, choose how we remember the events, emotions and per-ceptions of our lives. This mysterious ordering of our memories contributes either positively or negatively to our present and to our future.
Here in our own country we have a constant reminder of the importance of memory in establishing one’s identity. The motto of the province of Québec is ‘Je me souviens’ --- ‘I remember’. But one digs deeper, the motto might read ‘I come back to myself’ or ‘I return to who I am’.
In Deuteronomy memory is an essential element of the life of faith. Fred Craddock writes, “Those who have plenty of food, ‘fine houses,’ herds and flocks, and even gold and silver . . . may become arrogant . . . and even say in their heart, ‘My power and the might of my own hand gave gotten me this wealth’. . . . Such persons have short memories. The way to avoid that corrupting attitude and its attendant behaviour is to remember”
But what shall we remember? For the writer of Deuteronomy we remember first and foremost the commandments of God to do justice, love steadfast faithfulness to God and to other and to walk humbly with God. Second, we remember what God has done and contin-ues to do for the people with whom God has established the covenant. This remembering, however, is not some intellectual exercise but the active ‘. . . recital of the might acts of God’ that continue to define and shape our behaviour as God’s beloved. Our active remember-ing takes place in our acts of formal worship where we proclaim the Scriptures, the chronicle of God’s activity in the life of the people of Israel and the people of the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, but our remembering is also a matter of our everyday living, our conscious re-membering of God’s activity in our personal lives, in the lives of our families and in the life of our community.
Often newer editions of the various translations of the Bible will include headings for various sections of a given biblical book. Two more recent editions, The Jewish Study Bible and the third edition of The New Oxford Annotated Bible, both published by Oxford Univer-sity Press, have the following heading for the portion of Deuteronomy we heard first this morning: ‘The perils of prosperity’.
Prosperity brings peril as well as comfort. Plentiful supplies of food, clothing and ma-terial goods may lead us to confess that God is no longer necessary for my life. As the writer of Deuteronomy says in the last verse of today’s reading as translated in The New Je-rusalem Bible, “Beware of thinking to yourself, ‘My own strength and the might of my own hand have given me the power to act like this.’ Remember Yahweh your God; he was the one who gave you the strength to act effectively like this, thus keeping then, as today, the covenant which he swore to your ancestors.”
The commandment to do justice can fade into the background when we find our-selves among those who are not the victims of injustice in any of its forms. The command-ment to love steadfast faithfulness to God and to others rings hollow when we engage in the North American vice known as ‘rugged individualism’. The commandment to walk hum-bly with God finds no purchase in us when we credit only our own hard work for our achieve-ments and ignore that our efforts depended upon a potential which was not of our own making but upon God’s gracious generosity.
Perhaps the greatest poverty we are likely to experience is that poverty of the spirit which springs from forgetting that all that we are and all that we have has its source in the open-handedness of God. We are called to be diligent and creative stewards of the re-sources given to us by the One who is the source of all life rather than confuse our steward-ship of God’s resources with our ownership. Perhaps many of the woes experienced in con-temporary North American society stem from this corporate amnesia and confusion.
As we gather for this eucharist, we cannot ignore the events occurring here and abroad. Greed and avarice have brought wealth to a few as well as fear, uncertainty and economic hardship to many more. The dynamics of a federal election campaign where sound-bites prevail over analysis and thoughtfulness have prevented us from a calm and dis-passionate discussion of the policies and actions that might mitigate the financial crisis as well as address the significant challenges facing our country economically, environmentally and socially. Conflict in the Middle East makes it difficult but not impossible for Christians, Jews and Muslims to sit down together in order to rid ourselves of ancient caricatures and forge new friendships based upon our common profession of faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who appeared to Moses on Sinai, who was present to us in Jesus of Naz-areth and who spoke to Mohammed in the desert of Arabia.
But we are gathered for eucharist, to render thanks to the Holy One for the innumer-able gifts entrusted to our stewardship. We are gathered to proclaim in Word and Sacra-ment the deeds that God has done, is doing and will do for us and for all creation. We are gathered to become agents through whom God has acted, is acting and will act. We are gathered to remember --- to remember in order to challenge the corporate amnesia that our still prosperous and comfortable society can lull us into adopting. We are gathered to dispel the corporate delusion that it is only by our own strength and by our own deeds that we en-joy the benefits of creation.
I mentioned earlier the heading for today’s reading from Deuteronomy, ‘the perils of prosperity’. Let me offer you another. In the French Traduction Œcuménique de la Bible to-day’s gospel reading is entitled ‘the healing of the ten lepers and the salvation of the Samari-tan’. What was the difference between gift of physical healing and the gift of personal wholeness? Remembering the source. Constructing a future by acknowledging the action of God in one’s immediate past.
Whether we sat down at table on Sunday or Monday to share in our Thanksgiving feast, let us remember what we say and do in this present feast of the coming reign of God. Whether we look at our present with dread or with hope, let us remember that the God who gave us life is still active in us and through us. Let us remember with thankfulness the commandments to do justice, to love steadfast faithfulness to God and to others and to walk humbly with God as means towards that prosperity of spirit that God wills for every human being. Let us remember, even as markets tumble, elections swirl and wars rage, that God is not forgetful of us.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
We praise and thank you, O God our Father, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him you have enlightened us by revealing the light that never fades, for dark death has been destroyed and radiant life is everywhere restored. What was promised is fulfilled: we have been joined to God, through renewed life in the Spirit of the risen Lord. Glory and praise to you, our Father, through Jesus your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Spirit, in the kingdom of light eternal, for ever and ever. Amen.
When our children, David, Anna and Owen, were younger, we frequently played re-cordings of Broadway musicals. The three of them, with their youthful abilities to pick the lyrics of songs quickly, devoured these recordings. On some of our road trips, they would entertain us by giving impromptu performances of Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat or The Phantom of the Opera or Jesus Christ Superstar or Cats.
In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats there is a poignant scene where Grizabella, the nce glamorous now shabby cat who left the tribe to explore the world and has suffered that world’s cruelties, returns. She is shunned by the older cats and provokes discomfort among the younger ones. But Grizabella has returned seeking what she can only find among her tribe, the opportunity to be the cat to whom Old Deuteronomy, the chief of the tribe, be-stows the gift of re-birth.
I think that there are few Broadway songs that evoke the despair and longing for meaning as clearly and as powerfully as Grizabella’s solo, ‘Memory’. Perhaps some of you have seen the musical or the film version or even heard it on the radio.
Daylight.
See the dew on the sunflower
And a rose that is fading.
Roses wither away.
Like the sunflower
I yearn to turn my face to the dawn.
I am waiting for the day.
Midnight.
Not a sound from the pavement.
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone.
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet.
And the wind begins to moan.
Memory.
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days.
I was beautiful then.
I remember the time I knew what happiness was.
Let the memory live again.
Every streetlamp
Seems to beat a fatalistic warning.
Someone mutters,
And the streetlamp gutters,
And soon it will be morning.
Daylight.
I must wait for the sunrise.
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in.
When the dawn comes,
Tonight will be a memory too.
And a new day will begin.
Burnt out ends of smoky days,
The stale cold smell of morning.
The streetlamp dies, another night is over,
Another day is dawning.
Touch me.
It’s so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun.
If you touch me,
You’ll understand what happiness is.
Look,
A new day has begun.
Younger cats come gingerly towards her, touching her, stroking her, embracing her. The older cats gather around her and Old Deuteronomy approaches her and leads her into the light that signifies her new life.
Among the human faculties memory plays more than just a significant role. To lose one’s memory, to become an amnesiac, is to lose one’s identity. But the faculty of memory is both an involuntary and a voluntary function. By this I mean that we arrange our memo-ries, we, in some mysterious way, choose how we remember the events, emotions and per-ceptions of our lives. This mysterious ordering of our memories contributes either positively or negatively to our present and to our future.
Here in our own country we have a constant reminder of the importance of memory in establishing one’s identity. The motto of the province of Québec is ‘Je me souviens’ --- ‘I remember’. But one digs deeper, the motto might read ‘I come back to myself’ or ‘I return to who I am’.
In Deuteronomy memory is an essential element of the life of faith. Fred Craddock writes, “Those who have plenty of food, ‘fine houses,’ herds and flocks, and even gold and silver . . . may become arrogant . . . and even say in their heart, ‘My power and the might of my own hand gave gotten me this wealth’. . . . Such persons have short memories. The way to avoid that corrupting attitude and its attendant behaviour is to remember”
But what shall we remember? For the writer of Deuteronomy we remember first and foremost the commandments of God to do justice, love steadfast faithfulness to God and to other and to walk humbly with God. Second, we remember what God has done and contin-ues to do for the people with whom God has established the covenant. This remembering, however, is not some intellectual exercise but the active ‘. . . recital of the might acts of God’ that continue to define and shape our behaviour as God’s beloved. Our active remember-ing takes place in our acts of formal worship where we proclaim the Scriptures, the chronicle of God’s activity in the life of the people of Israel and the people of the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, but our remembering is also a matter of our everyday living, our conscious re-membering of God’s activity in our personal lives, in the lives of our families and in the life of our community.
Often newer editions of the various translations of the Bible will include headings for various sections of a given biblical book. Two more recent editions, The Jewish Study Bible and the third edition of The New Oxford Annotated Bible, both published by Oxford Univer-sity Press, have the following heading for the portion of Deuteronomy we heard first this morning: ‘The perils of prosperity’.
Prosperity brings peril as well as comfort. Plentiful supplies of food, clothing and ma-terial goods may lead us to confess that God is no longer necessary for my life. As the writer of Deuteronomy says in the last verse of today’s reading as translated in The New Je-rusalem Bible, “Beware of thinking to yourself, ‘My own strength and the might of my own hand have given me the power to act like this.’ Remember Yahweh your God; he was the one who gave you the strength to act effectively like this, thus keeping then, as today, the covenant which he swore to your ancestors.”
The commandment to do justice can fade into the background when we find our-selves among those who are not the victims of injustice in any of its forms. The command-ment to love steadfast faithfulness to God and to others rings hollow when we engage in the North American vice known as ‘rugged individualism’. The commandment to walk hum-bly with God finds no purchase in us when we credit only our own hard work for our achieve-ments and ignore that our efforts depended upon a potential which was not of our own making but upon God’s gracious generosity.
Perhaps the greatest poverty we are likely to experience is that poverty of the spirit which springs from forgetting that all that we are and all that we have has its source in the open-handedness of God. We are called to be diligent and creative stewards of the re-sources given to us by the One who is the source of all life rather than confuse our steward-ship of God’s resources with our ownership. Perhaps many of the woes experienced in con-temporary North American society stem from this corporate amnesia and confusion.
As we gather for this eucharist, we cannot ignore the events occurring here and abroad. Greed and avarice have brought wealth to a few as well as fear, uncertainty and economic hardship to many more. The dynamics of a federal election campaign where sound-bites prevail over analysis and thoughtfulness have prevented us from a calm and dis-passionate discussion of the policies and actions that might mitigate the financial crisis as well as address the significant challenges facing our country economically, environmentally and socially. Conflict in the Middle East makes it difficult but not impossible for Christians, Jews and Muslims to sit down together in order to rid ourselves of ancient caricatures and forge new friendships based upon our common profession of faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who appeared to Moses on Sinai, who was present to us in Jesus of Naz-areth and who spoke to Mohammed in the desert of Arabia.
But we are gathered for eucharist, to render thanks to the Holy One for the innumer-able gifts entrusted to our stewardship. We are gathered to proclaim in Word and Sacra-ment the deeds that God has done, is doing and will do for us and for all creation. We are gathered to become agents through whom God has acted, is acting and will act. We are gathered to remember --- to remember in order to challenge the corporate amnesia that our still prosperous and comfortable society can lull us into adopting. We are gathered to dispel the corporate delusion that it is only by our own strength and by our own deeds that we en-joy the benefits of creation.
I mentioned earlier the heading for today’s reading from Deuteronomy, ‘the perils of prosperity’. Let me offer you another. In the French Traduction Œcuménique de la Bible to-day’s gospel reading is entitled ‘the healing of the ten lepers and the salvation of the Samari-tan’. What was the difference between gift of physical healing and the gift of personal wholeness? Remembering the source. Constructing a future by acknowledging the action of God in one’s immediate past.
Whether we sat down at table on Sunday or Monday to share in our Thanksgiving feast, let us remember what we say and do in this present feast of the coming reign of God. Whether we look at our present with dread or with hope, let us remember that the God who gave us life is still active in us and through us. Let us remember with thankfulness the commandments to do justice, to love steadfast faithfulness to God and to others and to walk humbly with God as means towards that prosperity of spirit that God wills for every human being. Let us remember, even as markets tumble, elections swirl and wars rage, that God is not forgetful of us.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
We praise and thank you, O God our Father, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him you have enlightened us by revealing the light that never fades, for dark death has been destroyed and radiant life is everywhere restored. What was promised is fulfilled: we have been joined to God, through renewed life in the Spirit of the risen Lord. Glory and praise to you, our Father, through Jesus your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Spirit, in the kingdom of light eternal, for ever and ever. Amen.
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