Some Liturgical Suggestions for Lent III & IV

Here are some liturgical suggestions for Lent III and Lent IV with thanks to the Rev'd James Olson for pointing out that red rubrics are not always helpful!

The Gathering of the Community

Opening Responses

We cast our burdens upon you, O Lord.

And you will sustain us.

Create in us clean hearts, O God.

And renew a right spirit within us.

Cast us not away from your presence

and take not your Holy Spirit from us.

Give us the joy of your saving help again

and sustain us with your bountiful Spirit.

Blessed are you, O Lord, day by day,

the God of our salvation who bears our burdens.

Hymn of Penitence      

‘Before I Take the Body of My Lord’ (Common Praise #610)

Absolution

May the God of compassion, who in Jesus Christ has made us a royal priesthood, forgive you your sins, open your eyes to God’s truth, strengthen you to do God’s will and give you the joy of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

Collect of the Day

Lent III

Enduring Presence, goal and guide, you go before and await our coming.  Only our thirst compels us beyond complaint to conversation, beyond rejection to relationship.  Pour your love into our hearts, that, refreshed and renewed, we may invite others to the living water given to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Lent IV

Discerner of hearts, you look beneath our outward appearance and see your image in each of us.  Banish in us the blindness that prevents us from recognizing truth, so we may see the world through your eyes and with the compassion of Jesus Christ who redeems us.  Amen.

[Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Proclamation of the Word

The usual order of service up to the Creed.  Instead of the Creed the following ‘Affirmation of Faith’ will be said.

An Affirmation of Faith

Do you believe and trust in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist?  We believe and trust in God, the Source of all being and life.

Do you believe and trust in God the Son, who took our human nature, died for us and rose again?  We believe and trust in God, the Word of life incarnate.

Do you believe and trust in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world?  We believe and trust in God, the Spirit of wisdom and truth.

This is the faith of the Church.  This is our faith.  We believe and trust in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

The Holy Communion

The Prayer over the Gifts

Lent III

Faithful God of love whose Son showed us how to serve your people with justice and mercy, we offer you these gifts in faith and love, seeking your strength to meet the needs of ourselves and others.  We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.

[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Lent IV

Merciful God, we are reconciled to you through the mercy of Christ.  We offer you these gifts confident that you will empower us to be your ministers of reconciliation in the church and in the world.  We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.

[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Sending Forth of the Community

The Prayer after Communion

Lent III

Holy One, shape and transfigure us by your grace, that we may grow in wisdom and confidence, never faltering until we have done all that you desire to bring your realm of shalom to fulfillment.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Lent IV

God of compassion, you embrace all people at the festive banquet of your table.  May we rejoice in your love and celebrate the inheritance you have given to us.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

A Take on the Woman at the Well

This video was shared by a friend on Facebook.  I hope that you enjoy it.

Fill Your Bucket!

RCL Lent 3A

27 March 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Focus Text:  John 4.1-42

         Bishop Bill Frey, the Bishop of Colorado who ordained me to the diaconate and to the presbyterate, had been Bishop of Guatemala before coming to Colorado.  Leaving Guatemala was not his choice.  He and his family were picked up by the army at gunpoint, driven to their home and given one hour to pack what they could.  They were then taken to the airport where, with two other expatriate clergy from the United States, one Presbyterian, the other Roman Catholic, they were put on an airplane and flown back to the United States.

         Upon their return to the United States Bill and his family were lost.  They had imagined that they would remain in Guatemala until Bill retired, but that future was closed.  Bill was appointed as the Episcopal chaplain at the University of Arkansas, but that could not be his permanent position.  Just when the situation seemed bleak, Bill was elected Bishop of Colorado, a ministry that he exercised until his retirement.

         Now you might think that an experience such as this would have cast a dark shadow over Bill, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I remember his first sermon at Saint Michael’s, my home parish, where the gospel reading was from John’s account of the encounter of the skeptic Nathaniel with Jesus.  What I remember most was Bill’s comment that we often read the Scriptures too seriously, missing some of the humour that is present.

         Such is the case with today’s story of the woman at the well in Samaria.  it is a rare occasion when a smile does not come to my face when I hear this wonderful exchange between Jesus and the woman:

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying this to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.  Where do you get that living water?”  (John 4.10-11)

It is as if she says, “I am no fool, even though you may think I am because I am a Samaritan and a woman.  I’m the one with the bucket and you’re the one who is thirsty!”

         If I were ever sent into exile and told that I could only take one gospel with me, it would be the gospel according to John.  His stories are told in a more compelling fashion than those of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  John appreciates women and gives them serious things to say.  A blind man who has been healed can challenge the wisdom and authority of the Jewish council and a disbelieving Thomas is confronted with the reality of the risen Christ.

         I continue to learn from John’s gospel because it can be read on several levels.  His stories can be read as a chronicle of the ministry of Jesus, but they can also be read as a commentary on those texts in the Hebrew Bible which were thought to promise the coming of the Messiah.  John’s gospel is also a rich source of wisdom about the mystery of God’s kingdom as a present reality as well as a future hope.  But most of all I read John’s gospel because I find myself in this account of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, are the woman at the well, drawing water that does not quench our thirst.  Day after day we come to the well of our daily lives hoping that this time we will draw the water that will quench our deepest thirsts.

·      We all thirst for mystery.  By mystery I mean we all search to know God’s hidden plan for us and for all of creation that is slowly being revealed over the eons in many and various ways.  Even those who consider themselves non-religious seek to understand this mystery.

·      We all thirst for purpose.  By purpose I mean we all search to know what role we play in the unfolding mystery of God’s plan.  Perhaps there is no greater human tragedy than the woman or man who believes that her or his life has had no meaning, no purpose.

·      We all thirst for communion.  By communion I mean we all search to participate in life-giving and life-sustaining relationships, whether between individuals or within a community.  “No one stands alone, standing side by side,” we sing and no one, even those who claim that do not need others, wants to stand alone.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, are the woman at the well, living with one husband after another.  Day after day we abandon one ‘protector’ after another hoping that the next one will give us the security we long to find.

·      We put our trust in our material goods and realize that they break or wear out or do not satisfy our longing.

·      We put our trust in so-called ‘celebrities’ and realize that they are as imperfect as we all, often on a greater and more public scale.

·      We put our trust fads and fashions and realize that they pass quickly without leaving us more secure.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, are the woman at the well, going about our daily routines.  Day after day we do the same things gradually losing hope that anything will change.  But today is not such a day.  Today Jesus comes to our well and offers us the living water that will quench our thirst and give us the foundation we seek.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God reveals the mystery at the centre of all existence:  Eternal life does not spring from knowing the right things but by living a Jesus-shaped life.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God reveals the purpose of every human life:  Our true purpose is not the acquisition of goods and power but to do justice, to be faithful and to walk humbly with God just as Jesus.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God draws us into communion with God’s very self:  Wherever God’s people open their arms to the stranger and the need just as Jesus opened his arms, the life-giving and life-sustaining relationships we seek spring up.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God provides us the sure foundation we seek:  No matter the challenges and disappointments we face, no matter how alone we may feel, Love is Lord of heaven and earth.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female are the woman at the well who does not remain silent about the thirst-quenching water she has received and the new ‘protector’ she has found.  If the truth be told, we Anglicans have often remained silent about the well of life around which we gather.  We may be critical of those religious groups that go from door to door, but we cannot pride ourselves on our silence.  All of us, ordained and lay, have had thirsty people come to us and we have not handed them a bucket to dip into the well of faith.  We are so fearful of ‘intruding’ that we allow people to die of thirst.

         So let us become a bucket brigade of living water.  Let us not be reluctant to tell others of the well from which we have drawn the water that soothes the weary soul.  Let us say to them, “Come, friend.  You have no bucket, but I will share mine with you.  Come and drink from this life-giving water.  There is enough for all who thirst.”  Amen.

Pardon My Verb!

RCL Lent 2A

20 March 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

1)  Not my story, not my language

         Last Sunday I spoke of how I am often intrigued by difficult phrases in the Scriptures.  This Sunday presents us with another of these phrases that remind us that we were not the original audience to whom the words we have heard today were directed nor do we speak the language in which these words were first composed.

         The story of Abraham were collected into their present form at some point during the time when the tribes of Israel were united under the monarchy established by the prophet Samuel when he anointed Saul as the first king.  The territory under the control of the tribes was soon to reach its greatest expanse with the people enjoying relative prosperity and feeling proud of their identity.  As the ancient stories about their patriarchs and matriarchs were gathered together, the people were presented with a history of divine guidance and grace which had given rise to their present well-being.  Although they were no doubt proud of their own achievements, the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs reminded them that all that they had was God’s gift in response to the obedience of their ancestors.

         But in today’s reading there is a phrase that has led to consequences not foreseen by those who first collected the stories of Abraham and Sarah.  God says to Abraham, “. . . in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12.3c)  What you and I, hearing these words from a distance of almost three thousand years and in English rather than biblical Hebrew, do not know is that Hebrew verb used here can be understood in two ways, one that can lead to conflict and arrogance, another that can lead to faithfulness and hope.

2)  A way to death and a way to life

         Throughout Jewish, Christian and Muslim history, this phrase, “. . . in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” has primarily been interpreted to mean that “God’s blessing and salvation are given to the whole world through Abraham” (The New Interpreter’s Study Bible 2003)  But how do later generations make a claim on God’s promise to Abraham to make of him a great nation, to give him a rich land and to grant him numerous descendants?  In the Jewish tradition a claim is made upon these promises by virtue of one’s descent from Abraham’s son, Isaac.  In the Christian tradition a claim is made upon these promises by following Abraham’s faithful obedience to the call of God.  In the early Muslim tradition a claim is made upon these promises by virtue of one’s belief that Mohammed, the prophet of God, is a descendant of Ishmael, the first-born son of Abraham.

         Perhaps you can already see how dangerous this understanding of the verb can be.  Centuries of Christian persecution of the Jewish people have been fuelled, in part, by the belief that it is not physical descent from Abraham that matters but spiritual imitation of Abraham’s obedience to God’s call, an obedience that Christians see reflected in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.  It is this line of reasoning that lies behind Paul’s words in our reading from his letter to the church in Rome.  Gentiles share in God’s promises not by blood but by faith, their faith in the faithfulness of Jesus.

         The continuing conflict between the Jewish state and the Muslim states that surround it is a geo-political expression of a conflict between the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael.  Stories collected by the Hebrew people to explain the success of the early monarchy under Saul and his successors run head-long into stories collected by Muslims to explain the claim of the followers to Mohammed to be the true descendants of Abraham, not through Isaac but through Ishmael.

         How many people have been persecuted and how many people have died because of an ambiguous verb?

         But ambiguous verbs can also be helpful.  Another way of understanding the phrase, ‘. . . in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,’ is to understand the verb to mean, “. . . people will take Abram’s blessings and well-being as the desired standard when asking a blessing for themselves:  ‘May we be as blessed as Abraham.’” (New Interpreter’s Study Bible 2003)  This understanding looks at the story of Abraham more like a parable than as history.  It is this way of looking at the text that offers you and me a way forward.

3)  May we be blessed as Abraham.

         As the story of Abraham is told in Genesis, the world has become a place filled with peoples of different languages and different views on religion.  Into this time and space God selects a previously unknown Mesopotamian by the name of Abram.  We know nothing of his previous life other than he is married to a woman who has produced no offspring.

         This Abram is told to leave the country of his birth, to turn his back on his kith and kin and to take a childless wife to a land that God will deliver to him.  It is an invitation that you and I, if we are honest, would most likely decline.  After twenty-four years of living west of Granville, our family is now looking at finding a home in a part of the metropolitan area that really is only a point on a map to us.  We have no idea about neighbourhoods, transportation and public services; all our familiar places are here, bound by Cambie, Burrard Inlet, the North Arm of the Fraser and Georgia Strait.  When the children and I drove to Langley for the celebration of Paula’s new ministry at Saint Andrew’s, Anna wasn’t sure that she had even ever been to Langley!  Now, if that is how we are feeling in a world of cars, telephones and the internet, try to imagine being told to leave the only place you’ve ever known, abandon the fundamental security network of your extended family and travel to a yet-to-be-named country with a wife who has not borne any children, a fact that makes the future look very bleak, very bleak indeed.

         But this is what Abraham does. Everything that follows is a consequence of this act of obedience.  Even when there are moments when Abraham may think things are difficult, he holds firmly to the knowledge that he has done what God has asked.  Knowing this, Abraham trusts that God will not forget the promises made contingent on that obedience.

         If we wish to be blessed as Abraham was blessed, then we must be prepared to undertake a journey to an unknown land that may mean leaving some of our security blankets behind and carrying with us some things that may not have borne the fruit we had hoped.  What God promised Abraham was identity, visibility and continuity.  But the promises are only fulfilled when we are willing to undertake a journey to an undiscovered country.

         What we call the ‘Ministry Assessment Process’ is, in reality, just such a journey towards identity, visibility and continuity.

         It is a journey towards identity because we are seeking to learn what it means to be an Anglican community of faith in the twenty-first century.  I am firmly convinced that there are treasures in the Anglican way of following Christ that are desperately needed in today’s world:  practices of prayer, sacramental worship, intellectually-engaged study of the Scriptures, commitment to neighbourhood, community and world, to name but a few.  Yet I also know how we have been ‘Anglican’ in the past may no longer open the treasures of the Anglican way to others today.  So we journey towards a new identity.

         It is a journey towards visibility because we continue to believe that congregations are not the problem but the solution to Christian witness.  But the challenges of maintaining so many buildings may limit our ability to be visible in the communities that need to ‘see’ us.  Our energy is often taken up in figuring out how to fix aging buildings, heat inefficient buildings and deal with exterior decay rather than our energies being directed into programs and initiatives that bring the love of Christ into all the places that long for the touch of God’s wisdom, strength and love.

         It is a journey toward continuity because we are committed to staying, in one way or another, in the neighbourhoods and regions of our world.  When we talk about the stewardship of the assets our predecessors in the faith have left in our hands, we are seeking to use those assets to continue the ministry begun generations ago, whether here at Saint Faith’s or Saint Augustine’s or any of the parishes of our Diocese.  But the continuity we seek is one that is energetically outward-focused, a continuity that asks how our assets enable us to proclaim the good news of God in Jesus Christ to an increasingly unreligious world.

         I believe that these promises will be fulfilled but not without the courage to heed the summons that God issues to every generation, whether we be Jews, Christians or Muslims:  “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”  (Genesis 12.1)  It is a summons that I know we are prepared to heed because we have already taken the initial steps.  We know that being blessed as Abraham was blessed is not a privilege of birth nor a consequence of orthodoxy.  To be blessed as Abraham was blessed means having the courage to leave the familiar behind and seek the land that is yet to be found over the horizon.  Only such a blessing is worth the journey.  Only such a blessing brings life and hope to the traveler.  Amen.

An Ordo for Lent II 2011

This Lent I have incorporated some new elements into the worship of our community at Saint Faith's.  Today I am posting the elements specific to this coming Sunday's celebration.

Ordo for Lent II

The Gathering of the Community

Opening Responses

We cast our burdens upon you, O Lord.

And you will sustain us.

 Create in us clean hearts, O God.

And renew a right spirit within us.

 Cast us not away from your presence

and take not your Holy Spirit from us.

 Give us the joy of your saving help again

and sustain us with your bountiful Spirit.

 Blessed are you, O Lord, day by day,

the God of our salvation who bears our burdens.

Hymn of Penitence      

‘Before I Take the Body of My Lord’ (Common Praise #610)

Absolution

May the God of compassion, who in Jesus Christ has made us a royal priesthood, forgive you your sins, open your eyes to God’s truth, strengthen you to do God’s will and give you the joy of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

Collect of the Day

Lent II

God of amazing compassion, lover of our wayward race, you bring to birth a pilgrim people, and call us to be a blessing for ourselves and all the world.  We pray for grace to take your generous gift and step with courage on this holy path, confident in the radiant life that is your plan for us, made known and given in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Proclamation of the Word

The usual order of service up to the Creed.  Instead of the Creed the following ‘Affirmation of Faith’ will be said.

An Affirmation of Faith

Do you believe and trust in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist?  We believe and trust in God, the Source of all being and life.

Do you believe and trust in God the Son, who took our human nature, died for us and rose again?  We believe and trust in God, the Word of life incarnate.

Do you believe and trust in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world?  We believe and trust in God, the Spirit of wisdom and truth.

This is the faith of the Church.  This is our faith.  We believe and trust in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

The Holy Communion

The Prayer over the Gifts

Lent II

God of the covenant, you call us to be fruitful servants within creation and to offer our lives as the foundation of your realm.  We lay before you these gifts that you may use them to fulfill the desires of our hearts and to transform us by your grace.  We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.

[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Sending Forth of the Community

The Prayer after Communion

Lent II

Grant, O God, that we who have received this eucharist may be your channel for new and abundant life not only hope for, but worked for, through faithful word and deed, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Innocence Lost But Responsibility Gained

RCL Lent 1A

13 March 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Focus Texts:  Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Matthew 4.1-11

1)  “For the First Time”

         Frederick Buechner, the American novelist and theologian, tells the following story in his biography, The Sacred Journey.

         In any case, of all the giants who held up my world, [Naya, my maternal grandmother,] was perhaps chief, and when I knew she was coming to Georgetown for a visit that day, I wanted to greet her properly.  So what I did at the age of six was prepare her a feast.  All I could find in the icebox that seemed suitable were some cold string beans that had seen better days with the butter on them long since gone to wax, and they were what I brought out to her in that fateful garden.  I do not remember what she said then exactly, but it was an aside spoken to my parents or whatever grown-ups happened to be around to the effect that she did not usually eat much at three o’clock in the afternoon or whatever it was, let alone the cold string beans of another age, but that she would see what she could do for propriety’s sake.  Whatever it was, she said it drily, wittily, the way she said everything, never dreaming for a moment that I would either hear or understand, but I did hear, and what I came to understand for the first time in my life, I suspect --- why else should I remember it? --- was that the people you love have two sides to them.  One is the side they love you back with, and the other is the side that, even when they do not mean to, they can sting you with like a wasp.  It was the first ominous scratching in the walls, the first telltale crack in the foundation of the one home which perhaps any child has when you come right down to it, and that is the people he loves.  [The Sacred Journey as quoted in Buechner, Listening to Your Life, ed. George Connor, 11-12]

Perhaps only a few of us can remember such a moment in our lives clearly, but all of us have experienced that moment when innocence passes away and we become aware of the world as a place in which the good, the evil and the ambiguous, all exist in the same time and the same space.

2)  The Loss of Innocence

         There are many texts from the Scriptures that cause questions to arise in my mind.  Today’s reading is one of them.  Why, I ask myself, does God not want Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil?  Would God not want them to know what is evil so that they may choose what is good?  Does God want them to live in child-like innocence, playing in the sand box of the garden of Eden, gardening to their hearts’ desire and enjoying each other’s company?

         It may well be that the answer to my question is “Yes”.  The text suggests that God would have preferred Adam and Eve to continue in that innocence into which they were created and to remain, like Frederick Buechner before his fateful encounter with his grandmother, unaware of the two sides of those we love. 

         But children never remain children, even those dwelling in Eden.  It is as if God is blind to the inevitable consequence of creating beings who share God’s freedom to act but who do not possess that steadfastness of character that keeps them on path of justice, covenant loyalty and humility.  And so the woman sees a delightful tree, hears that it bestows wisdom and eats.  And so the man takes the gift offered by the woman and eats.  And relationships are altered, whether the relationship between God and human beings or the relationship between one human being to another.  It is worth remembering, in a world where the subordination of women to men continues in many cultures and places, that Genesis tells us that the subordination of women to men is a consequence of human disobedience not an expression of the divine purpose in creation.

         By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the first couple leaves their innocence behind and faces a new world in which they and all their descendants come to know the reality of moral good and moral evil.  “The forbidden tree offers an experience that is both pleasant and painful; it awakens those who partake of it to the higher knowledge and to the pain that both come with moral choice.” [The Jewish Study Bible]

3)  Whom shall we serve?

         In several ways Matthew’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness brings us back to the garden and the choice before Adam and Eve.  While some readers and listeners seem to get lost in the details, the story itself comes down to a simple question:  Will Jesus choose God or Satan?

         For us hearing the story after two thousand years’ of its re-telling, the answer to this question is a foregone conclusion.  But if Jesus is not free, really free to choose one path or the other, then there is no salvation, no hope for us to celebrate on Easter and reach for through our Lenten pilgrimage.  What we witness in this story is that it is possible to choose God rather than Satan --- even if you are not the Son of God, the incarnate Word of the Holy One of Israel.

         God’s word spoken to us in Genesis and Matthew is not a counsel of despair but a counsel of encouragement and hope.  Although there are texts in the Scriptures which can lead to a certain fatalism, a belief that we have no control over the circumstances of our lives and choices, there are more texts which assert with clarion tones the truth that our choices matter.  Perhaps the most famous of these comes from the prophet Micah:

[The Lord] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  [Micah 6.6-8]

Words such as these and the words of prophets, apostles and evangelists call us to lay aside any thoughts of powerlessness or inevitability and to take our place in what some Jewish theologians call tikkun olam, ‘the repairing of the world’.

         We who have been baptized are not only called to witness to the repairing of the world achieved through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth but to be agents of that repairing and renewing mission of God made known in Christ.

         My sisters and brothers, we live in a society that often waits upon the so-called ‘great’ or ‘influential’ or ‘powerful’ to act to bring about change.  We are inundated with news reports that overwhelm us with stories about oppression, poverty, hunger and injustice throughout the world.  We look at the numerous challenges to the well-being of people currently living in our metropolitan area, our province and our country.  It is tempting in such a climate to pull the covers over our heads or to ‘mind our own business’, forgetting what Marley’s ghost says to Scrooge, ‘Business!  Business!  Mankind was my business!’

         If the story of the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil has any meaning, if there is any purpose of re-telling the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, then it is this: The genie is out of the bottle.  Human beings may yearn for the illusory safety of lost innocence, but we have now joined God as moral agents.  Just as surely as God’s purposes affect the creation, so too do ours.

         The pilgrimage of Lent and the life-long pilgrimage of Christian faith is not about ‘care and anxious fear and worry’ but ‘to be led where God’s glory flashes’.  [The Hymnal 1982, #145]. We are no longer in the garden, playing like children, but we have come into that maturity which makes us agents of God’s renewing and reconciling purposes.  One version of the ancient Easter hymn, the Exsultet, speaks of that ‘blessed iniquity’ that merited ‘such a Saviour’.  In other words, we arrive at Easter not bemoaning our human disobedience but rejoicing that, in Christ, we have become a new humanity, sharing in the divine life.

         This Lent I invite you to look around you.  Find one part of the garden of life God has given you to tend that is in need of repair or renewal and give yourself to that work.  Find that cause, whether local or national or international, that arouses your passion and give yourself to that work.  Let us all agree to give up saying “if only I were . . .” or “if only I had . . .”.  Let us take on a new habit of saying, “What is my role in bringing about God’s purposes for x, y or z?”  Let us all agree to set aside the notion that what we do, whoever we are, does not matter.  It is too late to believe this.  Such an attitude, my friends, is the counsel of those powers of darkness that work against God’s purposes, but we are not children of darkness but children of the light.  In that light let us walk the path set before us.  Amen.

        

From Glory to Glory

RCL Transfiguration A

6 March 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Focus text:  Matthew 17.1-9

1)  “Yes, Father Richard”

         My family returned to the United States in the early fall of 1963 after a three-year tour of duty overseas in Germany.  We quickly settled back into the life of what had been our home town before our overseas tour of duty, Colorado Springs.

         Before leaving for Germany we had worshipped at the Church of the Holy Spirit on what was then the eastern edge of our small city.  But rather than return to our former parish, we started attending the parish of Saint Michael the Archangel, a new parish in the northern outskirts of the city, closer to our home in the northwest corner of town.  Saint Michael’s was, in many ways, an Air Force parish, drawing many of its members from the faculty and staff of the Air Force Academy, a fifteen-minute drive to the north of the parish.

         Soon after we arrived, our whole family was adopted by Jon and Elma Nottingham.  Jon was a retired Army colonel and Elma his wife of many years.  It wasn’t very long before my sister and I came to see Jon and Elma as our surrogate grandparents, our own being far away in New York and England.

         Fifteen years after our return from Germany I entered seminary, sponsored by Saint Michael’s and supported by many people, especially Grandpa Jon and Grandma Elma.  If I didn’t check in with them on my trips home, there was trouble for sure.

         Shortly after my ordination in 1981 I was having lunch with Jon and Elma in their home.  Every time Grandma Elma addressed me, she addressed me as ‘Father’ Richard, the custom in the Diocese of Colorado.  After an hour or so, I said to her, “Grandma Elma, you’ve known me since I was ten years old.  You can call me ‘Richard’.”  “I know that,” she replied, “but would you like something more to eat, Father Richard.”

         I recognized the tone in her voice.  She needed no permission from me to call me by my first name alone.  She had made a decision and, for the most part, it was a decision she followed almost to the day of her death. 

         For Grandma Elma my ordination had not changed me.  The boy whose quirks and foibles she knew well was still present before her in the young man to whose education and formation she had contributed in many ways.  She had affirmed my knowledge, skills and character as the foundation for the new role that I had assumed as an ordained deacon and, later, priest.

         What had changed was our relationship.  The ten-year-old boy was now a young man who had been ordained to exercise a specific role of liturgical leadership, teaching and pastoral care in the midst of the Christian community she loved.  She could not help but see me in a new light, a light cast by the action of the church in my ordination.  I was and I was not the boy she first knew.  Ordination had transfigured me.

2)  Transfiguration rather than transformation

         In all three of the so-called ‘synoptic’ gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the story of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain is told.  This particular story takes place as Jesus is journeying towards Jerusalem for the events that will lead to his passion, death and resurrection.  It is for this reason that the three-year lectionary sets this story on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the Sunday before we begin our annual pilgrimage towards the cross and empty tomb.  We become Peter, James and John who have this experience of the transfigured Jesus.

         You see what happens on the mountain is a transfiguration not a transformation.  In a transformation some thing or some one becomes some thing or some one else; there is a change that remains after the event.

         In a transfiguration some thing or some one is revealed to be what it really is or who they really are; it is a glimpse into the reality that lies at the heart of what this thing is or who this person is.  On the mountain the three disciples see Jesus in his glory, a glory he shares with our God, the Holy One of Israel.  Before they ascend the mountain, he is the Beloved of God, the one upon whom God’s favour rests.  On the mountain top the disciples are given a glimpse of the glory of God’s love embodied in Jesus.  Even as they descend and Jesus tells them to keep this story to themselves, he is still the Beloved of God, the one upon whom God’s favour rests.

         What has changed is the relationship between the disciples and Jesus.  They have already seen miracles and heard his teaching.  They have already travelled with him far and wide.  But now they see him as he truly is and such a vision cannot help but change how they relate to him.  All that follows is forever coloured by that experience on the mountain and I have little doubt that the three privileged disciples were unable to keep it a secret.

3)  Baptism and Eucharist as Transfiguration

         In the Prayer Book tradition of baptism the opening address of the priest to the gathered assembly includes the following words:  “I beseech you to call upon God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that he will grant to this Child that which by nature he cannot have”.  While I am hesitant to dispute this venerable tradition, let me offer an interpretation of these words.

         All of us are created in the image and likeness of God, but we live in a world where it is impossible for any of us to escape the consequences of human sin.  The most powerful consequence is the ability of human sin to bury the image and likeness of God in each one of us under layers of self-delusions, illusions of power and self-will. The world into which we are born will not lead us to discover our true selves, but the Holy Spirit, working in and through the Christian community, can give us the tools to strip away the layers that encrust our true selves.  It is a life-long task with moments of success punctuated by periods of failure.

         But it is a life-long task of transfiguration not transformation.  It is not about becoming some one we are not, but rather about becoming who we really are.  Doing justice, loving abiding loyalty and walking humbly with God are not beyond our grasp if we wash away the dirt from our eyes and hands.  Every time we renew our baptismal covenant we ask God to continue that work of transfiguration in us.

         Another means of stripping away those layers is participation in the eucharistic life of the Christian community.  In a world in which many go hungry, whether physically, spiritually and emotionally, simple bread and simple wine are transfigured, showing them to be the very life of God, the very life-giving food of eternal life.  If simple bread and simple wine can be revealed to be symbols of eternal life, imagine what abundant human hospitality and generosity can do in the world.  This belief in the transfiguring power of the sacraments as means by which God empowers us to be our true selves is re-affirmed every time we say together, “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.  Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever.  Amen.”

4)  The Journey up the Mountain of Transfiguration

         This week we shall begin the journey up the mountain of transfiguration, the journey we call “the pilgrim way of Lent . . . moved by (God’s) love and toward (God’s) presence bent:  far off yet here --- the goal of all desire.” (Common Praise #174)  No doubt many if not all of us will undertake various ways to re-shape our lives after the pattern of Christ.  For some of us this re-shaping will take the form of fasting in one way or another.  For others Lent will be a time to re-prioritize, shedding those attitudes or practices that are not life-giving and adopting some we hope will be life-giving.  With perseverance we will arrive at the Easter feast having cleared away one or two layers, freeing us to become more truly ourselves as God knows us.

         As a parish we are also travelling the path of the diocesan Ministry Assessment Process.  There are many ways to view this process, but I want to share with you how I understand it.  This process is an opportunity for our corporate transfiguration.  We are seeking to become more truly ourselves as the Christian Community of Saint Faith in the western portion of South Granville.  This is already a generous community of faith, but there are yet to be discovered ways we can grow in stewardship.  This is already a welcoming community of faith, but there are yet to be discovered ways we can reach out to our neighbours.  This is already a self-giving community of faith, but there are yet to be discovered ways we can share the love of Christ we have experienced here.  This is already a community of faith committed to diocesan life, but there are yet to be discovered ways we can be partners in ministry with other Anglicans.

         Transfiguration is never easy.  It always creates new relationships with new obligations but also new possibilities.  So, with our sisters and brothers from an earlier generation, let this be our song as we walk this pilgrim path:

From glory to glory, we praise thee, O Lord;

thy name with the Father and Spirit be ever adored.

From strength unto strength we go forward on Zion’s highway,

to appear before God in the city of infinite day.  (Common Praise #339)

Amen.