Walking Through Closed Doors: Reflections on John 20.1-18

RCL Easter A

9 April 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            In the early spring of 1960 a small Lutheran congregation in Martha’s Vineyard offered a $100 prize in a local poetry competition.  The prise was won by a student from Harvard who wrote a poem entitled ‘Seven Stanzas for Easter’.  He donated the prize money, with a little over $1000 in today’s dollars, to the congregation.  His name was John Updike.

 

            John Updike went on to become one of the significant American writers of the later decades of the twentieth century.  In the view of some critics he ranks among the greatest American writers, while in the mind of other critics he was a voice of a conservative, uptight middle America.  To this day he remains a widely read author as well as a much debated one.  But his poem reveals a deep faith in the reality, the physicality of the resurrection, a faith he seems to have kept throughout his life.

 

Make no mistake:  if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

 

It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His flesh:  ours.

 

The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose.

 

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier times:

let us walk through the door.

 

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day.

 

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

 

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle

and crushed by remonstrance. [1]

 

            Ever since that first Easter some two thousand years ago Christians and our critics have struggled to explain what happened to transform a small group of frightened and for most part working-class, uneducated Palestinian Jews into a movement that would eventually include two billion people in more than 45,000 distinctive expressions of the good news of God in Christ.  To some the resurrection is a spiritual experience, a mystical experience, an affirmation of our deepest hope that there is more to life than what we experience with our five senses.

 

            To others the resurrection is a metaphor, a story told to re-assure us that evil is always overcome by good, that life is stronger than death, love stronger than hate, justice stronger than oppression.  To some the resurrection is a story from a more naïve past when people lived in a world populated by gods, demi-gods and other mysterious beings.

 

            All these ways of understanding the resurrection offer us a means of comprehending what is, honestly compels me to say, is incomprehensible, whether two thousand years ago or today.  But these different ways, as well as all the other ways, do not describe what I believe to have happened on this morning outside Jerusalem.

 

            I believe that God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead in the fullness of his humanity, in the fullness of the person that Mary Magdalene, Peter, John and all the other witnesses to the resurrection knew and loved and mourned and touched.  There was, to be sure, something different about him, a quality of life that was, if you wish, other-worldly.  But it was Jesus, the Jesus who taught and healed and suffered and died.

 

            When we confess our faith in the resurrection, we are confessing our belief that matter matters, that God cares for the totality of what it means to be a human person – our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our souls, our memories, all that makes me me and you you.  To believe in the resurrection of Jesus is to believe that what we see and touch and celebrate in creation is the result of God’s loving intention.  The physical is not an accident but the result of God’s choice to make room for us in the kosmos.

 

            Gretchen Ziegenhals writes that “ . . . if we believe in the resurrection of the body, we will respect all bodies here among us – Black, brown and white bodies; rich and poor; male, female, trans and nonbinary; straight and gay; friend and stranger; young and old.” [2]

 

            While we wait for the resurrection – for our bodies and those of our loved ones to be ‘regathered’, as Updike describes – there is embodied work for us to do now, despite our pandemic limitations:  the work of justice and equity; the work of feeding and housing; the work of sharing bread, employment and fellowship; the work of making room for other voices and bodies; the work of ministering to the sick and the lonely in whatever ways we can. [3]

 

           When I was younger and regularly singing in my parish choir, I realized that there were hymns that I did not enjoy singing.  The tunes were lovely, but the words did not express what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus who was raised by God from the dead. Many of these hymns were the hymns of people who were oppressed and who struggled in their day-to-day lives.  They were filled with hope ‘in the sweet by and by, when we’ll meet at that beautiful shore’.  But I didn’t hear hope; I heard resignation and acceptance of the world as it is rather than working tirelessly and fearlessly for the world as God desires it to become.

 

           I have no certain knowledge of when creation will become what God desires it to become.  In the meantime I trust that God holds all the faithful departed in anticipation of that day when God’s purposes are achieved.  In the meantime I pray that “we, who share [Christ’s] body, [may live] his risen life; we, who drink his cup, bring life to others; we, whom the Spirit lights, give light to the world . . . so that we and all [God’s] children shall be free”. [4]  Why?  Because God raised Jesus from the dead, everything that made Jesus Jesus, and, in so doing, has shown us that matter matters to God and that we, everything that makes us us, matters to God, now and in the age to come.

---

[1] John Updike, ‘Seven Stanzas for Easter’ (1960).

 

[2] Gretchen E. Ziegenhals, ‘Walking through closed doors this Easter – the resurrection of the body’ https://faithandleadership.com/gretchen-e-ziegenhals-walking-through-closed-doors-easter-the-resurrection-the-body.

 

 

[3] Gretchen E. Ziegenhals, ‘Walking through closed doors this Easter – the resurrection of the body’ https://faithandleadership.com/gretchen-e-ziegenhals-walking-through-closed-doors-easter-the-resurrection-the-body.

 

[4] The Book of Alternative Services (1985), 214-215.

 

Good Friday -- Good Grief

On this Good Friday, I invite you to grieve and to lament.  We often, in my opinion, rush too quickly to Easter and, in so doing, fill the empty tomb with the baggage of our griefs and sorrows.

The Sermon begins at 24:45 in the recording.

Can These Bones Live? Reflections on Ezekiel 37.1-14

Can These Bones Live?

Reflections on Ezekiel 37.1-14

 

RCL Lent 5A

26 March 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

A touch of the Holy

         A recent conversation with a colleague led me to re-read a sermon that I had given some seven years ago when I was Rector of Saint Faith’s in Vancouver.  Now, I do try to resist the temptation to re-visit previous sermons, but I found that some of what I said seven years ago is in harmony with what I want to share with you today.

 

         I cannot remember when and where it happened, but I do remember that happened.  I was participating in a celebration of the eucharist that involved a significant number of people.  As the deacon was preparing the table, I recall thinking to myself, ‘We’re going to run out of wine if that’s all that’s being placed on the altar.’

 

         Sure enough, about two-thirds of the way through the communion of the people, I noticed worried looks on the faces of the chalice administrators.  Each time they gave someone the wine, the administrators would look into the chalice and then at the master of ceremonies.  Without any hesitation the master of ceremonies, a lay person whose liturgical knowledge is great, walked over the altar, took the cruet with what remained of the consecrated wine and disappeared into the sacristy.  He reappeared with a full flagon of wine and began to refill the chalices of the administrators.

 

         After the service I had a private moment with the presider and the master of ceremonies.  I described what I had observed and expressed my ignorance as to how the master of ceremonies found such a large quantity of consecrated wine.  The master of ceremonies smiled and said to the presider with a side glance to me, ‘I did what you taught me to do.  I took what was left of the consecrated wine and poured it into a flagon of unconsecrated wine.’  

 

         What the master of ceremonies had done was an ancient practice where consecration takes place by contact or commingling.  It is an understanding that a touch of the holy can transform the ordinary.  We come to this time in the year exhausted, I think. The wonder and joy of Christmas has floated away.  Any plans we may have had for the new year are being seriously tested.  Lent came too quickly for most of us and we may not have been as faithful to our Lenten disciplines as we had hoped.  Insult has been added to injury by the change from standard to daylight time, an insult to my bodily rhythms that I am still feeling.  We know that there will be a number of changes in our life as a congregation over the coming months and that we are still some time away from the physical beginning of our re-development project.  We desperately need a touch of the holy to transform the ordinariness that has begun to claim our souls.

 

Can these bones live?

         The question that God asks Ezekiel is an apt one for us at this point in our life as a congregation:  “[The Lord] said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones lives?’  I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ – an inelegant way of Ezekiel saying, ‘I haven’t a clue!’  And then follows the vision of a people who have been dealt multiple blows – military defeat, death and destruction, foreign occupation, obliteration of the Temple, exile of the leading members of society to Babylon – being raised from these graves by God’s gracious and life-giving Spirit.  A touch of the holy brings life to the dry bones of Israel’s hopes and aspirations.

 

         At the end of today’s reading, the Lord leaves Ezekiel in no doubt as to the divine purposes:  “ . . . Thus says the Lord God:  I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37.12b-14)

 

         And God does restore the people to the land that they had received after their wilderness journey from Egypt to Canaan.  They grow and prosper.  The Temple is re-built.  But the winds of history blow strongly against them in the centuries to come.  The cycle of death and resurrection is repeated – the conquest of Alexander the Great and the victory of the Maccabees, the Roman occupation and the brief period of independence under Ben Kochba; the centuries of dispersion and persecution and genocide and the creation of the state of Israel.  Even Lazarus, raised by Jesus, must re-enter the tomb at some point in the future.  But for the moment he lives.  A touch of the holy makes dry bones and even foul-smelling cadavers live.

 

Raised from our graves

         I cannot help but think that the past decades and, in particular, the last few years have dug a few graves for many Christian communities in Canada and beyond.

 

         There is the grave of irrelevance.  As dismaying as it is, we cannot deny that many people, some of whom are our friends and families, seek religious communities such as ours as irrelevant to their daily lives.  Each time I speak to someone in the media or in public office who unintentionally reveals their complete lack of awareness of who we are and what we do in the community, I feel another shovel of dirt thrown on top of me.

 

         There is the grave of fatigue.  It is no secret that we share a similar challenge as many other groups devoted to community service – the challenge of finding new hands to carry on the ministries we know to be life-giving and life-sustaining, not only to ourselves but to our neighbourhoods.  When I have to determine what we can do and what we cannot do, I feel another shovel of dirt thrown on top of me.

 

         There is the grave of fear.  We have all given so much of ourselves to this enterprise we call ‘being disciples of Jesus’ that we can be fearful that we have given ourselves in vain.  Each time I meet someone who has given up on the faith or who has chosen a fundamentalist path of one sort or another, choices often motivated by some fear or another, I feel another shovel of dirt thrown on top of me.

 

         I am sure that there are other graves, but these will do for this time.

 

         I say these things to you out of a commitment to honesty.  Resurrection comes only after the pains of one form of death or another.  If we are truly to embrace the life that God promises us, then we must face unflinchingly the realities of the deaths God is bringing us out of.

 

         Out of the grave of irrelevance, God raises a people committed to the mission of creating life-giving and life-sustaining communities in the concrete realities of their neighbourhoods.  Out of the grave of fatigue, God raises new stewards of the resources of time, talent and treasure entrusted to us.  Out of the grave of fear, God raises us to a confident life in which we trust that God’s last word to us is never ‘death’ but ‘life’.

 

Out of the wilderness

         Time and time again, the witness of the scriptures is to the experience of having wandered in a wilderness of one form or another, longing to return home and being brought home.  We can be too eager to move quickly from the feeling of wandering and longing into coming home.  But to be able to embrace fully the life God offers us as disciples of Jesus, we must also embrace the time of wandering and questioning.

 

         As we face the coming months of this year and the changes that are coming, let us ask ourselves these questions:  What have we learned from our struggle to be relevant to the needs and concerns of our friends, families and neighbours?  What have we learned from our fatigue about inviting others to join us in ministry and embracing the new perspectives they bring to that work?  What have we learned from our fears that the values and character of this particular community, this Parish of Holy Trinity Cathedral, might not be fully shared by those who come after us?

 

         My friends, I know that our Redeemer lives.  I know that our God is breathing life into our dry bones.  I know that Christ is unwrapping, even now, any of the bonds that prevent us from experiencing the fullness of life, here and now.  Can these bones live?  Yes, Lord, they can – and they are.

 

Becoming Who We Are

Becoming Who We Are

Reflections on John 1.1-14

 

Christmas Day

25 December 2022

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

         If I were ever told that I was to be exiled and I could only take one of the four Gospels with me, I would choose John without any hesitation.  His account of the mission and ministry of Christ never fails to draw me in.  Even texts that I have heard many times always show themselves to have more to them that I remembered.  John also has a better sense of humour than the other three canonical Gospels!

 

         Today’s familiar and, some might say, spectacular text is just such an example of a familiar text that keeps revealing new insights.  For the past couple of days I’ve been pondering just one phrase in one verse:  “But to all who received, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1.12 NRSVue)  I keep coming back to ‘he gave power’.

 

         Other translations of the Bible into contemporary English give different readings.  The Revised English Bible reads “he gave the right”.  The Common English Bible reads “he authorized to become God’s children”.  All these are efforts to translate one simple Greek word that betrays a simple translation:  exousian.

 

         The word is most often translated as ‘authority’ but it has a deeper meaning for us as we celebrate the birth of Christ.  It’s a word to free us, to empower us, to give us hope.

 

         Exousian means a power, a right that comes out of our very being, our ousia to use the Greek word.  It’s a word that describes something that flows out of a person, a living spring that can be hindered in its ability to flow freely out of us.  It’s a spring that never runs dry despite the best and manifold efforts humans make to obstruct its power to transform and transfigure us.

 

         When I was a boy, I loved to build dams on the many mountain streams where I grew up.  I would any material I could find – tree limbs and branches, rocks and mud – to build my structures.  But I never succeeded in preventing the water from flowing.  Water always finds a way.  My dam would be breached sooner or later, just as modern structures will fail if there isn’t some outlet to reduce the pressure.

 

         My friends, within every human being, Christ is waiting to flow forth.  We’re very good at building dams to try to hold Christ back, to restrain him in some safe, tame reservoir so that he cannot turn our lives upside down in the current of love and compassion that flows from him.  But Christ cannot be dammed; the spring cannot be restrained.

 

         We who have received him, who have welcomed him, have been given power to become Christ-like.  We who have believed in his name, have been authorized, have been given the right to claim our birthright.  We can become who we really are rather than be satisfied with the many counterfeits that some charlatans and social influencers are peddling and foisting upon us.  We can become children of God because that is who we are.  That is the stream of life, the reservoir of love, within each and every human being – even those whom we might find disagreeable, dishonest, even despicable.

 

         The Child whose birth we celebrate this morning is found in each and every one of us. The invitation to follow him is not an invitation to go to some far-off place that is alien to us.  It is an invitation to explore somewhere closer to hand – our hearts, our minds, our souls, our strengths.

 

         To be honest, it is not a short or simple journey.  It is a life-journey that certainly has its ups and downs, its moments of joy and despair, its successes and failures.  But is a journey to become real – fully alive children of the God in whose image we are made and into whose likeness Christ shows the way.

 

         We can leave the Child in the manger or we can recognise the Child that is within each one of us.  Just as Mary and Joseph will nurture this Child in the years ahead, preparing him for the ministry God entrusted to him, so we can nurture the Child within us.  Let me leave you with some words from Marty Haugen’s ‘Carol of the Manger”.

 

Once again we tell the story –

how your love for us was shown,

when the image of your glory

wore an image like our own.

Come, enlighten with your wisdom,

come and fill us with your grace.

May the fire of your compassion

kindle every land and race.

 

May God give us grace to reveal the Christ within us so that all God’s children may be free and the earth may be filled with the glory of God.

 

Normal for Now But Not For Ever

 Normal for Now But Not For Ever

Thoughts on Isaiah 62.6-12

 

1^st Mass of Christmas

24 December 2022

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

         Earliest this year as the government was lifting many of the COVID-related restrictions, a small group of us were having coffee in the Parish Lounge following the Wednesday eucharist.  COVID was the main topic of conversation and someone said, ‘Well, we’ll have to get used to the new normal.’  Before anyone else responded, one wise person said, ‘Not the new normal but normal for now.’  It’s a perceptive distinction.

 

         The new normal implies that we can plot a new trajectory with some confidence. Normal for now suggests that the future is not as clear as we might wish it to be.  Perhaps our new stance needs to be one of vigilance and agility in the face of an ever-changing present rather than planning on a more static state.

 

         Two thousand five hundred years ago the people of Israel were permitted to return to their homeland after decades of exile.  They had lost their independence and their cities and religious centres had been destroyed.  at first, the promise of a return to Judah had been greeted with joy and excitement by the exiles.  But now that the people had actually returned and were trying to re-build their homes, their lives and the Temple in Jerusalem, things weren’t as grand as they had hoped they would be.

 

         The economy had tanked and people were struggling to survive.  After years of living in a foreign land, some of the returnees had abandoned the traditions of their ancestors and were following the religious practices of their former captors.  Charlatans who promised quick foxes for what ever aliment or difficulty a person might were bewitching the people and playing upon their fears.  

 

         Then there were the traditional religious authorities who were charged with keeping Judah a peaceful neighbour to their overlords to the east.  High on their agenda was the re-building of the Temple and re-establishing the patterns of life as they were before the exile. It was a massive project designed to restore society back to a new normal, something like the old days, just a little different.

 

         To this dispirited people a prophet in the tradition of Isaiah offered not so much a message of hope as a message of divine purpose.  God’s purpose is not a new normal, the restoration of the ways things have been.  God’s purpose is significantly more global.  God’s purpose is the creation of a new people, a holy people, the redeemed of the Lord.  God’s purpose is not a mere re-creation of the past nor a sanctification of the status quo.  God is working on more than ‘normal for now’; God is raising up things which have been cast down, making new things which had grown old and bringing to perfection all things. 

 

         The Child whose birth we celebrate this night has been born to show us how we live in the ‘normal for now’ in order to work with God to bring about the ‘normal for ever’.  The challenges we face are not God’s ‘normal’ but conditions of a world as it has become rather than a world as it is meant to be.

·      Civil strife and violence are ‘normal for now’ but not God’s ‘normal for ever’.

·      Social inequality and poverty are ‘normal for now’ but not God’s ‘normal for ever’.

 

I recently read an article by a writer who described herself as a cultural Christian.  She expressed her appreciation for some of the elements of the Christmas even as she distanced herself from the faith that holds this story at its core.  I agree with her that it’s not easy to believe in a God of justice, of steadfast love, of a humility that reveals itself in a child born in a manger.  But I think that she and I are looking at the world differently.  What she sees as ‘normal’, I see as ‘normal for now’.  

 

My faith leads me to believe that tonight we’re celebrating the revelation of the ‘normal to come’, the promise of the ‘normal for ever’, a world filled with the glory of God – human beings fully alive and free, the creation as it is meant to be.

 

Unwanted Journeys. Unexpected Discoveries.

Unwanted Journeys.  Unexpected Discoveries.

Reflections on Luke 2.1-20

 

‘On the Road to Bethlehem’

Christmas Eve

24 December 2022

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

         In late 2007, Bishop Jim Cowan, then Bishop of British Columbia, invited me to be part of the Anglican Church of Canada’s delegation attending the installation of the new Primate of the Church of the Province of Myanmar.  The installation was scheduled for February 2008 and there were intensive preparations for our journey in the months leading up to our departure.  Since I have always loved travel and have taught about the relationship between culture and Christian worship, I was excited about going.

         But as the day of our departure drew closer, I become more and more anxious.  I had recently learned that I had both coronary and respiratory conditions that were life-altering. Myanmar was then, as now, under the control of a military junta that actively monitored the activities of both Christian and Muslim minorities.  For example, citizens of Myanmar were not permitted to entertain foreigners in their homes.  Militant Buddhists regularly disrupted Christian and Muslim worship.

         My anxiety become so acute that I ended up in the UBC urgent care unit two days before our scheduled departure.  After a fair number of tests and lots of questions, my wise ER physician asked me, ‘Do you want me to write a medical excuse for you not to go to Myanmar or do you want to face your fears and go?’  I chose to face my fears and go on what had become an unwanted journey.

         But out of this unwanted journey came so many unexpected discoveries of the presence of our living, loving Creator.  I have not forgotten the fears, but the memories of the gifts far aweigh them.

         Have you ever gone on an unwanted journey?  Have you gone on such a journey and, despite your fears and misgiving, had an unexpected discovery of God waiting for you?  I have.  So did Joseph and Mary.

         Over the many centuries Joseph and Mary’s journey to Bethlehem has been romanticized.  We can be led to forget that this was no voluntary visit to Joseph’s family’s home town for pleasure.  It was a journey forced upon the people of Palestine by their imperial and colonial rulers, so that tax records could be updated and tax revenues increased.  Thousands of people were forced from their homes to travel hither and yon at their own cost and at some peril.  Hardly a scenic tour of old haunts!

         But even unwanted journeys can play a role in God’s saving purposes.  The Child was born.  Poor and humble folk caught a glimpse of the world as God desires it to become.  Exotic visitors from foreign lands came to see the Saviour, the Light of God.  And, in this place, at the end of this unwanted journey, hope is born and the world seems ever so much more beautiful and holy.

         Right now there are many people who are on unwanted journeys.  Some of these journeys are, like Joseph and Mary’s, imposed by political leaders and situations with the possibility of grievous harm and life-altering consequences.  Other such journeys are less dramatic but still have life-changing possibilities.  Perhaps you know someone on such a journey; perhaps you yourself on such a journey.

         When travelling on an unwanted journey, be watchful.  Be attentive to the signs.  God is not loathe to send angels, messengers of grace and good news, to point us in the direction of unexpected discoveries and signs of hope and renewal.  Sometimes those angels wear faces very much like our own.

         Unwanted journeys need not be fruitless.  They may lead us to places where our living, loving God reveals a glimpse of the world as it can be, the world as God is working to bring into being.

         After all, the angels led us here tonight, didn’t they? 

Thanksgiving: An Advent Stewardship Reflection

THANKSGIVING

 

         I cannot remember when I first learned the meaning of the Greek word eucharistia, but I do remember the impact learning the nuance of the word had on my understanding of what it means to give thanks.  Eucharistia means to give thanks for a gift given freely whether or not the giver has an obligation to give a gift or the recipient has done anything that merits receiving a gift.  I think that the best English translation is ’windfall’, something that comes to us without any effort on our part.

 

         Some Christian teachers have stressed that the core value of Christian discipleship is a life lived in constant eucharistia, constant awareness of the giftedness of every moment of our lives.  For me the last four and a half years, even at the lowest moments in the pandemic, have been filled with gratitude for the privilege of being the Vicar of Holy Trinity Cathedral.  I have told friends and colleagues that even the most difficult days at HTC have been, for me, good days.

 

         The stewardship of our time, our talent and our treasure is built on our sense of gratitude for what God has given to us – family, friends, meaningful work, a sense of purpose in our lives.  I believe that we have so much to be grateful for here at HTC, even as we face the challenges of preparing for the next chapter in our life as a community of help, hope and home in downtown New Westminster.

 

         Let us be grateful for the time God has given us to enjoy the beauty of creation and the wonder of love.  Let us be grateful for the talents God has given us to be co-workers with God in the renewal of creation and the stewardship of its resources.  Let us be grateful for the treasure God has given us to use wisely to empower the ministries that allow us to embody the life of Christ within us.

 

         Soon the lights of Christmas will shine upon us and we will be embraced by God’s incalculable love for creation made known to us in the Christ Child.  May your hearts be filled not only with joy, with peace and with hope but with a deeply-rooted gratitude for all that God has done, is doing and will do for us and for all.  May that thanksgiving fuel the decisions you make in the coming year about how you use your time, your talent and your treasure.

 

         In Holy Trinity Cathedral’s network of service, worship, evangelism, education and pastoral care, there are many reasons to be thankful.  God calls us all to find ways for our gratitude to be put to use in God’s mission.  O be joyful in the Lord and enter into God’s courts with thanksgiving.

 

Richard +

 

Vicar of Holy Trinity Cathedral

vicar@holytrinitycathedral.ca