Liturgical Suggestions for Pentecost 5

Here are some liturgical suggestions for sunday, 17 july 2011.

RCL Proper 16A

17 July 2011

Collect of the Day

O God of Jacob,

you speak in the light of day

and in the dark of night

when our sleeping is filled with dreams of heaven and earth.

May Jacob’s vision

remind us to be open and watchful,

ready to discover your presence in our midst,

Jesus your incarnate Word,

who with you and the Holy Spirit

lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Revised Common Lectionary Prayers (emended)

The Readings

Genesis 28.10-19a

Psalm 139.1-12, 23-24

Romans 8.12-25

Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

The Affirmation of Faith

You, O God, are supreme and holy.

You create our world and give us life.

Your purpose overarches everything we do.

You have always been with us.

You are God.

You, O God, are infinitely generous,

good beyond all measure.

You came to us before we came to you.

You have revealed and proved

your love for us in Jesus Christ,

who lives and died and rose again.

You are with us now.

You are God.

You, O God, are Holy Spirit.

You empower us to be your gospel in the world.

You reconcile and heal; you overcome death.

You are our God.  We worship you.

A New Zealand Prayer Book

Prayer over the Gifts

Holy One,

receive all the gifts we offer you this day

and make us faithful stewards

of the fragile bounty of this earth

so that we may be entrusted with the riches of heaven.

We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.

Revised Common Lectionary Prayers (emended)

Prayer after Communion

All your works praise you, O Lord.

And your faithful servants bless you.

Gracious God,

we thank you for feeding us

with the body and blood

of your Son Jesus Christ.

May we, who share his body,

live his risen life;

we, who drink his cup,

bring life to others;

we, whom the Spirit lights,

give light to the world.

Keep us firm in the hope

you have set before us,

so that we and all your children shall be free,

and the whole earth live to praise your name;

through Christ our Lord.

The Book of Alternative Services

The doxology, “Glory to God”, is not used.

Let's Hear It for Esau!

RCL Proper 15A

10 July 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

         On Saturday I travelled with Archdeacon John Struthers, the diocesan  Director of Deacons, to a meeting in Sardis.  He had programmed our destination into his GPS device, ‘Miss Creepie’, and off we went.  Just before we drove into the parking lot of our destination, ‘Miss Creepie’ announced, “You have arrived at your destination.”  John turned to me and said, “I have always wanted to ‘arrive’.  Haven’t you?”  I laughed at the double-meaning, but his comment stuck with me.

         Over the course of the last year I have learned something significant about myself.  While there are people who have a long-term objective towards which they work for most of their lives, I realized that I have had short- to medium-term objectives that have led me, step by step, to where I presently find myself.  My tendency towards short- and medium-term objectives means that I have not always been the greatest long-range planner among my peers.  Consequently I have responded to the various opportunities that have crossed my path without any conscious thought to where these opportunities might bring me as I approached retirement.

         Now I cannot complain about these opportunities.  I have taught every age from preschool to graduate school to senior citizens.  I have served in small parishes and large parishes, in a diocesan office and in a provincial theological college.  I have travelled to aboriginal communities in North America, the Solomon Islands and Myanmar.  I have been a member of national and international committees and commissions.  Any complaint on my part would the worst kind of ingratitude.

         But now that I am approaching what is likely to be the last seven to ten years of so-called ‘active’ ministry, I realize that I have never had a life’s destination to which all these opportunities where way-stations.  In many ways I have navigated the currents of the river of life with my eyes set only on the next bend or the next rapids rather than the journey’s end.

         While my life has been blessed, I have to admit that there have been some costs to this manner of living.  From time to time I have chased rabbits when I might have focused on keeping the main thing the main thing.  Like the grasshopper in Aesop’s fable, I have not been as successful as the ant in preparing for the coming years of retirement.  So, from time to time, I envy my peers who seem to have prepared for each step, each stage in the journey, and have ‘arrived’.  Unlike them, I do not feel as if I have ‘arrived’.

         Jacob has a plan and his brother, Esau, poses a bit of an obstacle.  Now Jacob is fortunate to have a mother who has always ‘loved him best’.  So the two of them keep their eyes open to every opportunity that will advance their cause:  to replace Esau, the older, with Jacob, the younger, as heir to Isaac.  Esau, like me and others, I suspect, has short- and medium-term objectives, the most immediate one being his deep hunger.  So when his brother, Jacob, offers  him food in exchange for Esau’s birthright, Esau cannot see beyond the bend of the river and takes the food.  The long-range planner triumphs over the short-term planner and the rest, as they say, is history.

         It is Jacob’s sons who will become the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel, not Esau’s.  We will come to speak of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Esau.  Esau will become the hairy brute who is swindled by his smooth-skinned brother, perhaps giving rise to a frequent prejudiced among the descendants of Western Europeans who tend to prefer smooth-skinned men as public icons to more hairy fellows.  Poor old Esau, doomed to be known forever as the man who gave up his birthright for nothing.

         As members of this parish we have been bequeathed a precious birthright:  a vision of an Anglican presence in this part of the city of Vancouver that ministers to the needs of our neighbourhood and beyond.  It is not insignificant to say that it is a vision of an Anglican presence.  While we do not and never should disparage any other religious tradition, Anglicans have a particular heritage of valuing historic continuity without losing sight of the demands of the present.  We understand our heritage not so much as a precious commodity to be sealed away and protected from the elements but as a source of wisdom that empowers us to witness to our faith in the here and now.

         This vision has a concrete presence in our lands and buildings.  These lands and buildings were given into our stewardship in order to serve the vision of ministry in this neighbourhood and beyond.  Forty years ago the parish decided to sell the property just across the lane in part to fund the re-modelling of the present church to serve our ministry better.  Five months ago the Vestry made a similar decision to authorize the Trustees to sell the Rectory --- not to fund a deficit or to maintain the status quo --- but to provide the resources to continue the ministry begun almost sixty-five years ago.

         Selling the Rectory is not the only opportunity we must use to develop a long-term plan for ministry in this part of the city.  At some point in the coming months our Ministry Assessment Process team will be asking all of us to share in identifying what our preferred future as a congregation is.  This fall we shall be calling upon all our members to grow in their stewardship of the time, talents and treasure God has entrusted to us.  Each of these opportunities will be stages in our congregational journey and most journeys worth taking always involve stops and events along the way.

         I do want to close, however, with a good word for Esau and other short- to medium-term planners.  If you read Genesis 36, you will see that Esau does pretty well for himself and becomes the progenitor of a great family that rivals Jacob.  Esau may not have arrived at the destination that he thought would be his when he was Isaac’s heir, but he does not do badly.  He ‘arrives’, I think, because he forgives Jacob and begins to work on building a future despite the disappointment of his early short-sightedness.

         We cannot always see around the bend and know where the river will take us.  We can only do the best we can, with the resources we have, to arrive at the bend we can see, secure enough to be ready to undertake the next stage in our personal and communal journey of faith.  So let all of us unite, short-, medium- and long-range planners alike!  Let us so value our heritage that we are unafraid to use it to reach our journey’s end --- fullness of life with God.  Amen.

Ich dien.

A sermon preached during the celebrations of the 144th anniversary of Confederation and the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Canada.

         In Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, there is scene where Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chancellor and primary advisor on foreign affairs, is forced to yield the insignia of chancellor to a stern Duke of Norfolk.  Wolsey has fallen into disfavour because he has failed to obtain an annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, thus forcing the king to take extraordinary means to divorce Catherine in order to marry Anne Boleyn.

         Wolsey’s failure enraged Henry who stripped Wolsey of his state offices and finally had Wolsey arraigned for treason.  On his way to London to answer the charges, Wolsey fell ill and died at Leicester at the end of November 1530.  Among his final words are these:  “If I had served my God as diligently as I did my king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.”

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer

         Thomas Cranmer, another bishop who served Henry VIII and Henry’s son, Edward VI, faithfully, would, as Archbishop of Canterbury, preside over the legal process that pronounced Henry divorced from Catherine, paving the way for Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.  But when Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, came to throne after Edward’s death, she had Cranmer arrested and tried for heresy.  Twenty-six years after Wolsey’s death, Cranmer was burnt at the stake in Oxford.

         Throughout the centuries Christians have struggled with this question:  What does it mean to be a good citizen?  For those of us in the Anglican tradition, being a good citizen was often synonymous with being a member in good standing of the Church of England.  For centuries Anglicans, whether in England or in Canada, enjoyed a privileged position with perquisites denied the adherents of other Christian traditions and other religious faiths.

         During the early nineteenth century the English parliament debated whether to extend the right to vote to Roman Catholics and members of the so-called ‘dissenting churches’.  The story is told that, during the debates in the House of Lords, a lay lord asked one of the bishops, “My Lord, is there salvation outside the Church of England?”  “Yes, there is,” the bishop replied, “but no gentleman would avail himself of it!”  It was during this same period that non-Anglicans finally began to win the right to be attorneys at law, to graduate with a degree from Cambridge and Oxford and to be officers in the British army.

         Here in Canada Jews were granted political rights in 1832, earlier than elsewhere in the British Empire.  But the connection with ‘mother church’ remained strong and it was not until the 1950’s that ‘The Church of England in the Dominion of Canada’ became ‘The Anglican Church of Canada’.  Bishop Hill, the first bishop of what was then called ‘Columbia’, assumed that his letters patent from Queen Victoria entitled him to be the bishop of the British colonies on Vancouver Island and the mainland.  But Edward Cridge, chaplain to the Hudson Bay Company in Victoria, was reluctant to accept this claim and, when he and Bishop Hill came to ecclesiastical blows in the 1860’s with a trial that went into the civil courts, Cridge pointed out that the Church of England was not established in these colonies and that the Crown had no right to appoint bishops.

         Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.  I welcome the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Canada and I have no desire to change the constitutional monarchy that is the form of government we have here in Canada.  I am happy to carry a British passport as well as my Canadian and United States passports.  I am very happy that the Duke of Cambridge, as a serving officer in the Royal Air Force, is stationed on Anglesey, the homeland of my Welsh ancestors.  The idea I want you to get is that we have a long history as Anglicans as being close to the civil government --- don’t forget the residential schools --- but those days are gone.

         Being a good citizen, a good Christian citizen, is far more complex than the old relationship.  The character of the Christian citizen will be one that Carl Schürz, the German-American journalist who served as a general of the federal forces during the Civil War, articulated in a toast during that war:  “My country right or wrong.  When right, to be kept right.  When wrong, to be put right.”  The Christian citizen is always called to hold the state accountable to the principles of our faith.

         These principles are not unknown.  They are expressed in two of the readings we have heard this day.  First we heard the unknown writer of the letter to the Colossians who says, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. . . . Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.  And be thankful.”  (Colossians 3.12, 14-15)  Then we heard the same principle articulated in the gospel according to John, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  (John 15.12-13)

         The fundamental principle of Christian citizenship is that the church exists primarily for its non-members and is bound to ensure that the state does not exist for its own self-interest but for the interests of the voiceless, the powerless, the homeless and those whom the majority might consider expendable.  When the state proposes policies which benefit the powerful at the expense of the powerless, then it is the obligation of the church, even at the risk of losing its existing privileges, to challenge the state and call it to clothe itself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

         Despite all the possible deficiencies of a hereditary monarchy, there is one attribute that I admire amidst the present generation of the royal family:  Their awareness of privilege has opened the eyes of some to the reality of the underprivileged, the struggling and those to whom society often turns a blind eye.  It is interesting to note that aboriginal people in Canada claim the Crown as a non-political ally in their battles with the changing governments since Confederation.  The rights of aboriginal peoples were not guaranteed by Parliament but by the Crown, an authority which extends beyond the mandate of any government, whether Liberal, Progressive Conservative or Conservative.

         We are right to celebrate the one hundred and forty-four years of Confederation.  We have much to be grateful for.  We have much still to achieve in order to create a truly just society in which every person, whether citizen or not, can grow into the full stature of Christ, our measure of human maturity.  When we give our offering today, let us remember that the funds we collect are not for the continuation of a social institution but for the continuation of a voice that calls upon the state to tear down any barriers to the dignity of every human being.  When we share in the bread and wine of the eucharist, let us remember that we eat this bread and drink this cup as a sign of our solidarity with those who have no food nor drink.  When we go forth from this assembly into the waning days of a long weekend, let us remember that we go forth to love and serve the Lord, not in the abstract, but in the people among whom we live and work.

         Let the Christian citizens who gather here today take as their motto the motto of the Prince of Wales:  “Ich dien.”  “I serve.”  May it be so today and all the tomorrows that follow.  Amen.

Rites for the Blessing of Same Sex Unions

A recent comment asked for information regarding the rites for the blessing of same sex covenants in the Diocese of New Westminster.  Go to www.samesexblessing.info and you will find the resources you are looking for.

Richard

Where is the lamb?

These thoughts are offered as an initial reflection on the story of the binding of Isaac and its place in Christian spirituality.  It was prepared for the people of Saint Faith's Anglican Parish as we continue our exploration of our future.


Focus Text:  Genesis 22.1-14

            For Paula and me the late eighties and nineties were punctuated by repeated visits to BC Children’s’ Hospital as David underwent the numerous medical and dental procedures required to repair his cleft lip and palate.  One of the ways we dealt with this was to enroll David in Berwick Preschool on the UBC campus where he, as a so-called ‘typical’ child, shared life with so-called ‘non-typical’ children with special needs.  We were not the only cleft lip and palate family at Berwick.  One of the families we befriended was a single mother who had adopted a child from Latin America with a cleft lip and palate.

            When David was three, perhaps four, this little girl went into BC Children’s’ for a procedure that David was scheduled to undergo later that year.  The surgery was successful, but the little girl died in the recovery room.  Her death triggered an internal investigation and a change in procedures at the Hospital, but you can imagine our fears when we took David to the hospital for his surgery.  His was also successful and the revised recovery room procedures meant that he was more closely monitored.  But every subsequent surgery renewed the anxiety that we had experienced after David’s friend’s death.

            In my thirty years of ordained ministry I have had other experiences of the death of children.  Paula’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, but only after we had heard the heartbeat and seen an ultrasound image of the child.  Shortly after our arrival in Vancouver, a teenager I had prepared for confirmation committed suicide back in Denver.  All such deaths evoke a range of emotions including rage, despair and doubt.  No adult, whether parent, relative or friend, can imagine the pain that a child’s death causes and anyone who has experienced such a death never comes away without lifelong scars.

            Yet here we are on a Sunday when we read a portion of Genesis in which Abraham is commanded by God to kill Isaac, his only child born of Sarah.  No one with any human sensibilities can imagine why God would issue such a command.  It flies in the face of every parental instinct found in the overwhelming majority of adults whether parents or not.  There are biblical commentators who describe this as one of the ‘texts of terror’, biblical texts that are not only incomprehensible to us but morally repugnant.  As we here in Vancouver welcome the first signs of summer, the story of Abraham and Isaac must seem a little bizarre.  No doubt there are Anglicans throughout Canada who are wondering why we even read this text.

            One reason why we read this text is precisely because it is a very difficult text to understand.  Anyone who wants to come to grips with religious faith cannot avoid wrestling with scriptural texts that challenge us, perhaps even offend us.  If we avoid these hard texts, these profoundly disturbing texts, we risk rendering God bland and religious faith banal.  Even C. S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia reminds the children that Aslan, the Christ-figure in the stories, is not a tame lion and depicts Aslan entering into battle and killing enemies left and right.

            Another reason why we read this text is its role in the religious imagination of Jews and Christians.  For Jews the ‘binding of Isaac’ represents God’s final test of Abraham whom the Jewish tradition sees as the first Jew.  This story comes to be incorporated in the daily liturgy of the Jewish tradition.  For many generations of Christians the story of Abraham and Isaac has been understood as a prefiguring of the death of Jesus who, as the only son of God, is sacrificed to achieve God’s desire to reconcile the world.  As the Easter Vigil took shape in the early history of the church, the story of Abraham and Isaac came to be one of the readings.  It is only in recent years that the option to omit this reading has been provided.

            But I would give you a third reason why this difficult text is read in our liturgy today and every three years on or about this date.

            Throughout Jewish and Christian history Abraham has been understood as our ancestor in faith.  Our shared faith is that God of Abraham intends to create a people whose primary vocation is to witness to this God and to work with God to fulfill the divine purposes for the whole creation.  To be called by God into this relationship has its benefits, but it also comes with a cost.

            In the chapter that precedes today’s reading Abraham has already sent his first-born son, Ishmael, out into the desert, accompanied only by the boy’s mother, Hagar.  Sarah’s jealousy cannot tolerate their presence in Abraham’s entourage and so out they go, but not before God promises Abraham that the child will survive and become, like Abraham, the father of many nations.  Bereft of his older son, Abraham now receives a command that must have cut him to his soul:  Take Isaac and offer him in sacrifice.  One son gone, now the other destined for the dust.

            We know how the story ends.  Even though it was a terrible thing to ask, we feel a slight breath of relief when God intervenes and the boy is saved.  Perhaps Abraham couldn’t believe God would let this happen and hesitated on the down stroke, but some commentators have suggested that God only intervened as the knife was descending, proof of Abraham’s commitment.  I have often wondered how Isaac felt after he and his father returned home.  I can imagine him flinching anytime the old man came near him with a knife.

            We read this story because we are a people called to participate in God’s mission.  We cannot permit our naïveté to blind us to the reality that participating in God’s mission has a cost.

            The first cost is a simple one:  We are no longer free to act as if there is no God and as if this God were not active in transforming the world.  While there are many human beings who enjoy acting as if they own the planet and its resource, our faith tells us that we are stewards not free-holders and that we are accountable not only to future generations but to the Creator of all things.

            The second cost is a bit more complex:  We are no longer free to act as though we have no responsibility for other human beings and as though we are not accountable to our brothers and sisters, whether of our faith or not.  While it is very tempting to focus solely on tending our own affairs, our faith tells us, like Marley’s ghost tells Scrooge, that all of humanity is our business and, in the words of the great Anglican poet, John Donne, no one is an island entire to oneself.

            But there is yet a more significant cost:  We are called upon to embrace being people on a journey rather than to yield to our desire for permanence.  As precious as our buildings and structures may be to us, God may call us, like Abraham, to bind them and place them on an altar of sacrifice so that God’s purposes might be achieved.

            You know that we have decided to sell the rectory in order to provide additional resources for our ministry in our neighbourhood and beyond.  For some of us this was a difficult decision.  As a consequence of this decision, we may soon find ourselves moving the playground to the only location that meets the requirements of the preschool licensing authority and the City of Vancouver:  the southwest corner of our property --- right in our own front yard.  For some of us this may represent yet one more sacrifice, to others a positive sign to our neighbours that this is a community that welcomes children.  Who knows what may come of these developments in our life together?

            What I do know is what Abraham knew:  the God who has called us has a compelling voice that continues to beckon us.  In recent years I have enjoyed a prayer found in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, the worship book of our Lutheran sisters and brothers: 

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Give us faith to out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 317)

When Abraham set out with Isaac, he could not know the ending, yet he went.  When the founders of this parish established this community, they could not foresee the paths we would tread.  When you and I set out on our baptismal pilgrimage, we could know the perils we would face.  But all of us, from Abraham to those of us sitting in the pews today, have felt the touch of God’s hand leading us and the warmth of God’s love supporting us.

            May that touch and that warmth strengthen us in the ministry God has entrusted to us in this place.  May we face the challenges of the faithful life with confidence the cost of our discipleship will not be in vain.  Amen.

Would That All God's People Were Prophets

RCL Pentecost Year A

12 June 2011

Saint Faith's Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

        If there is any biblical figure whom I do not envy, it is Moses.  he escapes from Egypt with the law nipping at his heels and finds refuge along with a wife and family with Jethro.  But God cannot leave Moses alone and a vision takes him back to Egypt and to a confrontation with Pharaoh that will eventually lead to the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt.

        

         After Moses leads the Hebrew people out of bondage in Egypt, helped in great part by significant interventions by God, he suffers the trials of a people who are never satisfied.  Defeat Pharaoh’s army and all they can do is complain about the lack of food and water.  Provide them with water, manna and quail and all they can do is moan about Egyptian cuisine and its superiority to their present menu.  Establish a covenant with them and all they do is erect statues of false gods so that they can be like every other people in the region.

         Even when God helps Moses and the people by sending the Spirit of leadership upon seventy other men so that the burden of leadership can be shared, all the people can do is to complain that God’s generosity has overflowed the designated location and has touched two men who, for whatever reason, weren’t with the other sixty-eight at the designated time and place!

         Then Moses speaks words that surely reach into our own times:  “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and the Lord would put his spirit on them!”  (Numbers 11.29b)  But what exactly is a prophet?  And what does God’s Spirit have to do with becoming a prophet?

         Nowadays when we describe someone as a prophet, we usually mean someone who can predict the future, someone who can foretell events before they happen.  During the last few years the airwaves have been filled with television programmes that claim to examine the prophecies of Nostradamus or the Mayans or the Bible.  Less than a month ago a Christian preacher predicted that the Rapture would occur on the 21^st of May and the end of the world on the 21^st of October.

         The problem with this kind of prophet is that it is so easy to prove her or him false.  Predictions that do not come true are significant career killers for anyone who needs the credibility generated by being right.  This is particularly true in our day and age when we crave experts who can give us precise answers that will result in definite outcomes.

         In Judaism and Christianity we have different criteria for prophets.  For us the prophets do not foretell the future; they ‘forth tell’ God’s word to God’s people in particular times and particular places.  In other words a biblical prophet does not predict the future as much as he or she speaks God’s word in the hope that this word will lead the people back to fidelity to God and to working with God to achieve God’s purposes.

         When God’s Spirit comes upon the seventy elders, they do not suddenly begin to predict the future.  What they begin to do is to exercise leadership in a way that aids the people to become the people God wishes them to be.  When God’s Spirit comes upon the disciples gathered in the upper room on Pentecost, they do not suddenly begin to predict the future.  What they begin to do is to proclaim Christ, crucified and risen, to peoples from every corner of the Roman empire and beyond.

         In our baptismal liturgy we actually have a working definition of what a prophet does.  Our working definition is found in the prayer that follows the anointing of the newly-baptized.  I want you to open your pew copies of The Book of Alternative Services to page 160 and join me in this prayer.

Heavenly Father,

we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit

you have bestowed upon these your servants

the forgiveness of sin,

and have raised them to the new life of grace.

Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit.

Give them an inquiring and discerning heart,

the courage to will and to persevere,

a spirit to know and to love you,

and the gift of joy and wonder

in all your works.  Amen.

This is what a prophet is in the eyes of the Christian tradition.  A prophet is a man, woman or child who lives in the new life of grace.  To live in a new life of grace is to live a life of thanksgiving, the recognition that everything we have, everything we are, everything we hope to become is a gift from a generous God.

         Prophets also have an inquiring and discerning heart.  They are not satisfied with looking only at the surface of life and events.  They want to understand what serves God’s purposes for us and what hinders God’s purposes.  By God’s Spirit working in them they are able to discern what builds up God’s people and what tears them down.

         Prophets are courageous.  Courage does not mean the absence of fear; it means the willingness to act well despite one’s fear and to persevere in acting well even when this may not be popular or safe.  I sometimes think that this is the greatest gift that the Spirit gave to the disciples on that first Pentecost:  the courage to lead them out of their locked room to speak about their experience of following Jesus of Nazareth.

         Prophets know and love God.  They pray and study the Scriptures.  They actually seek to have a living relationship with God and are not afraid to be honest with God, both in their prayers and in their struggles to understand what God is trying to do in our lives and the lives of all human beings.

         Prophets live lives of joy and wonder.  They are prepared to find God at work in unexpected places and, in contrast to the complaints made against Eldad and Medad, rejoice when God’s Spirit is seen at work outside the envelope of our expectations.

         My friends, each one of us who has been baptized has been given the prophetic Spirit spoken of in Numbers, manifested in Acts and promised by Jesus in John.  We do not need to look around us in the hopes that a prophet will emerge who will help us move into God’s future.  The prophets are already here.  Look to your left and to your right.  Look in front of you and behind you.  We are the prophets.  We are the ones to whom God has given inquiring and discerning hearts  We are the ones whom God calls to be courageous to will and to persevere.  We are the ones who know and love God.  We are the ones to whom God has given joy and wonder in all that God has done.

         The only question is this:  Will we remain silent?  Are we reluctant to forth-tell what we have learned and gained through our life in this Christian communities and all those communities that have shaped our lives and led us to maturity.

         There are many religious groups that are not silent.  Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses regularly send out people, two by two, to share their religious beliefs with others.  While I do not share those beliefs and am critical of some aspects of those religious traditions, I admire their willingness to share their beliefs with others.  Anglicans, on the other hand, are often reticent to share their faith with others when the opportunity presents itself to do so.  Our reasons for doing so are complex and I do not have time today to explore them, but I believe that our reticence needs to end.  We have good news to share and we live in a society that needs this good news.  If we do not share it, if we do not exercise our baptismal prophetic ministry, then we fall short of God’s expectations.

         “Would that all God’s people were prophets,” Moses exclaims.  Well, my friends, all of us here are prophets.  God’s Spirit has come upon us all and marked us as God’s very own.

         May this Pentecost mark the moment when we left the security of the upper room and began to share what we have come to know and to feel in this community of Saint Faith’s.  May this mark the moment when people began to hear us share the good news of God in Christ.  Amen.

         

The Stranger Is Our Friend

RCL Easter VII Year A

5 June 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Parish

Vancouver BC

         When I was a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame, J. Massingberd Ford was a professor of New Testament studies.  Among her scholarly works was a commentary on the gospel according to Luke.  What I remember most is her view that Luke’s gospel is filled with xenophilia, ‘the love of strangers’.  The same can be said of the gospel according to John which we have been reading through this Easter season.  John’s gospel contains many stories in which the stranger, the unexpected one, acts in faith, while the ‘usual suspects’ seem unable to grasp the message of the good news of God in Jesus of Nazareth.

• A Samaritan woman, unsuitable on the grounds of gender and ethnic background, recognizes that the Messiah, the promised one, is at her well.
• An invalid, desperately seeking healing at a holy site, recognizes that the Messiah, the promised one, has healed him on the sabbath in disobedience to the religious code.
• A man born blind, unclean in the eyes of the religious establishment, recognizes that the Messiah, the promised one, has healed him.
• Two sisters, bereft of support with the death of their brother, recognize that the Messiah, the promised one, gives them back their brother.

Time does not permit me to give a full catalogue of the occasions in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament when God’s grace is revealed by the stranger and the outcast in contrast to the blindness and inaction of those who should know better.  But the message is clear:  The agents of God’s purposes are not always the ones we expect.  The faithful disciple pays more attention to what the stranger does than who the stranger is.

         This same attitude is present in today’s reading from Isaiah.  This portion of Isaiah, sometimes called ‘Second’ Isaiah, was composed during the time of the exile, when many Israelites were being held captive in Babylon after the final destruction of Jerusalem in 587 bce.  But Babylon itself is about to be conquered by the Persians, a rising political and military power from what is now known as Iran.  The Persians are led by Cyrus whom the prophet calls mashiach, ‘the anointed one’.

         Now, my friends, this is a radical statement on the part of the prophet.  Do you recognize the word he uses to describe Cyrus?  For perhaps the first time in the Hebrew Bible someone who is not a descendant of David is called mashiach, the ‘messiah’, one in whom God will work to restore the people of Israel.  Imagine yourself to be an Israelite living in exile in Babylon, longing for the coming of the one who will save you and who will restore Israel to its rightful place on the world stage.  Imagine hearing the words of the prophet who tells you that this messiah, this agent of God, will not be a descendant of the kings who are still with you, still claiming to be heirs of the throne of David.  Isaiah dares to say to this exiled people that the messiah is a Persian, a non-Israelite, who will “. . . liberate Israel . . . and . . . spread the fame of the one true God of Israel throughout the world.  (The Jewish Study Bible)

         In the verses that follow and that we did not read this morning, the people question God’s choice.  Then God speaks, saying to them, “Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands? . . . I have aroused Cyrus in righteousness, and I will make all his paths straight; he shall build my city and set my exiles free . . . .”  (Isaiah 45.11b, 13)  It is as if God says to the Israelites, “The one whom you call stranger and non-believer is the one whom I call beloved and chosen.”

         My friends, if there is one constant throughout the Scriptures of the Jewish and Christian people, it is this:  God has worked, is working and will continue to work to achieve God’s will for the whole of creation, using whomever God chooses as an agent of the divine purposes.  Among all the religious traditions on the earth, Jews and Christians are taught to view the stranger not as an enemy but as one who may well be an agent of God’s purposes.  We are bid to observe what the stranger does more than we are bid to question who the stranger is.

         Yet we struggle to accept this teaching.  Although the gospel according to Mark, general acknowledged as the earliest gospel, records Jesus as saying that those who are not against us are for us, Matthew and Luke, writing a bit later, cannot accept this teaching and record Jesus as saying those who are not for us are against us.

         When apartheid fell in South Africa, the Anglican Church, a long-time opponent of the racial laws, found allies in ‘strangers’, often non-believers who shared the church’s convictions.  When the Berlin Wall collapsed, the Lutheran Church in East Germany found allies in ‘strangers’, especially young people who perhaps had never crossed the threshold of the church.  When aboriginal people in Canada began their quest for justice, they found in the Anglican Church of Canada, a one-time agent of the government’s assimilation policies, an advocate who was willing to work to regain trust lost in earlier generations.

         At this time in the life of the Anglican Church of Canada we are surrounded by strangers.  They come in many shapes and sizes, but they are strangers.  Some are young people whose lives have not been shaped by the worship and spirituality of the Christian faith.  Some are skeptics who question the inflexible certainty that characterizes some Christian leaders and communities.  Some are believers from other faith traditions who have little or no knowledge of the Christian faith.  Still others are Christians who have come to believe that the status quo, an institution shaped by the last five hundred years of history, cannot be sustained and that change is not only inevitable and necessary but welcome.

         How shall we respond to these ‘strangers’?  There are voices that would say that we must resist the stranger and maintain our ‘way of life’.  There are other voices who would say that we should not only welcome the stranger but become the stranger, abandoning many if not all of the ancient practices and beliefs that have shaped how we have walked with Christ on the pilgrimage of faith.  I do not believe that either extreme is one that is faithful to the mission God has called us to share.

         There is a third way, the way of hospitality.  Let us open our doors and welcome these strangers into our midst. Let us hear their stories and share ours with them.  More than that, let us go out of these doors and seek those stories beyond our walls.  Let us hear their questions and share our questions with them.  More than that, let us go out of these doors and seek those questions beyond our walls. I know that this is not always an easy path to walk, because the path of hospitality inevitably leads to the transformation of both guest and host, but I am convinced that it is the way of wisdom.  I am also convinced that it is a path that this congregation is willing to embrace.

         So, in the months ahead as we continue to discern our future as a congregation of the Diocese of New Westminster serving God in the midst of what may seem to be an alien country, let us welcome the stranger.  He or she may come through our door in physical form as a seeker after God.  He or she may come through our door in intellectual form as questions raised and insights gained through our participation in the Ministry Assessment Process.  But the stranger will come and will be as welcome as Christ himself.  Amen.