Let Us Offer a Sacrifice of Praise to God

RCL Proper 22C

29 August 2010

Saint Barnabas Anglican Church

New Westminster BC

Focus text:  Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16

+ My sisters and brothers, may only God’s truth be spoken and only God’s truth be heard.

            At some point between the year 60 and the year 95, an unknown Jewish Christian put pen to paper and composed what some scholars think was a sermon and others think was an essay.  This document was intended for a Christian community in Rome that seems to have been primarily Jewish in its identity although we cannot rule out the possibility that some of its members were Gentiles.

            Some scholars and other Christians have seen Hebrews as an attack upon Judaism, but this is a misreading of the text.  The writer believes that ‘(the) Bible tells one story, not two, and it is the story of God’s saving initiative toward humankind.’ (NIB, 13)  For him the story of Jesus of Nazareth is the latest and most authoritative expression of this one story, begun in creation, revealed in the Torah, proclaimed by the prophets and continued by the Spirit in the present age.

            His audience is a Christian community in crisis.  It is clear from Hebrews that this is a second-generation community in which some members have grown lax in attending the community’s gatherings and the commitment of some members is waning.  The return of the resurrected Jesus, thought by many to have come during the lifetime of the first apostolic community, has not occurred, raising questions and doubts in the minds of some.  They are also experiencing persecution on two fronts.

• As Jews who believe in Jesus of Nazareth, they are rejected by their Jewish brothers and sisters as heretics.
• As Christians who believe in Jesus as Kyrios, ‘Lord’, they are thought by the Roman imperial authorities to be subversives who are undermining the foundations of the Empire.

 From the way the author frames his argument it appears that some of the Jewish Christians are tempted to abandon the Christian way and return to Judaism with its recognized ritual life and its protection under Roman law.  To counteract this temptation the author portrays the New Covenant made by God with humanity in Jesus of Nazareth as superior to the Covenant made by God with the people of Israel in the desert of the Exodus.  To demonstrate this superiority the author argues that

• God’s voice is a living voice and is still speaking;
• Jesus, our high priest, shares our humanity even as he sits in honour at God’s side;
• The Spirit is constantly revealing and interpreting the Word of God to humanity and
• The ekklesia, the fellowship of sisters and brothers, has been called to exercise a privileged role in God’s purposes.

             In today’s reading from the final chapter of Hebrews the author encourages his community to live out that privileged role

• By loving the stranger rather than fearing the stranger;
• By recognizing that money and sex are not private matters but two of the ways power and selfishness are lived out in society;
• By acknowledging that the church is a pilgrim minority that is outside the social and political structures of their time.

 He closes his exhortation with words that describe the fundamental purpose of Christian worship:  “Through [Christ], then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.  Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Hebrews 13.15-16)

            Let us move forward some two thousand years.  As we gather here this morning, we cannot escape the fact that we are a community in crisis.  The last fifty years has witnessed a significant change in the place of the Anglican Church of Canada in the life of our country.  Where we were once the proverbial ‘insiders’, movers and shakers in Canadian society, we are now reduced in numbers as some turn away from organized religion, others turn to religious traditions that soothe doubts by the medicine of false certainty and still others see religion as a real threat to the well-being of society.  I would suggest to you that we are undergoing a subtle form of persecution, sometimes organized, sometimes casual.

            In times such as these it is tempting to retreat into the false security of familiar ritual or beliefs.  Some people abandon the religious community completely and substitute participation in various volunteer organizations and the doing of ‘good works’ for the rough and tumble life of Christian community.  But some Christians face this crisis with open eyes and ask the question, ‘Who are we called to be and what are we called to do in this time?’

            This is the purpose that lies behind the three questions I left with you last week.  Let me remind you of them.

1.  Is there some vocation that you sense God is calling you to undertake that seems to lead you on an unexpected journey?
2. Do you need to look at the world differently in order to undertake this vocation?
3. Are you going to have to play a little loose with the rules in order to undertake this vocation?

 I believe that God is calling us to leave behind an understanding of the church as powerful and prestigious.  I believe that God is calling us to realize that we are surrounded by strangers who need to be shown hospitality.  I believe that God is calling us to reconsider many of the rules and structures that we are accustomed to identify as markers of what it means to be ‘church’.

            We are not so different from the community to whom Hebrews is addressed.  As we live into a future we did not imagine, we do well to heed the words we heard this morning as if they were an agenda for being an Anglican Christian in the twenty-first century.

• Let us show mutual love for one another, a love that seeks to build one another up so that we can become fully mature, fully alive as God intends us to be.
• Let us show hospitality to the strangers, a hospitality that opens us up to the possibility of doing things differently and to see the world in new ways.
• Let us remember those who are in any need or trouble, a remembering that takes shape not only in the words of our prayers but in the actions and choices of our lives.
• Let us honour relationships rooted in genuine love and commitment, a honour that praises fidelity and mutual respect.
• Let us be good stewards of the goods entrusted to our care, a stewardship that works towards genuine equity for all people.
• Let us raise up leaders who will both encourage and challenge us to be witnesses to the life of Jesus, a life for all times and for all peoples.

 This is why we offer here our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.  This is why we eat this bread and drink this cup.

            May the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make [us] complete in everything good so that [we] may do [God’s] will, working among us that which is pleasing in [God’s] sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.  Amen. (Hebrews 13.20-21 alt.)

Sources quoted

           

Fred Craddock, “The Letter to the Hebrews,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. XII.

Summer Snapshots and Their Captions

RCL Proper 21C

22 August 2010

Saint Barnabas Anglican Church

New Westminster BC

Propers:  Jeremiah 1.4-10; Psalm 71.1-6; Hebrews 12.18-29; Luke 13.10-17

     During this part of the liturgical year our lectionary gives us three independent strands in the readings for Sundays.  One strand is the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures with its accompanying Psalm, another our second reading and the third the Gospel.  Sometimes a preacher can find a thread that connects all three, but that is a matter of divine serendipity.

     Today I want to honour the three strands by offering you three summer snapshots with a caption for each. 

Snapshot 1:  What does Shanghai have to do with Judah?

     Picture in your mind’s eye a distinguished gentleman wearing the typical clothing of a well-educated and prosperous late 19^th- or early 20^th century Westerner.  Picture his full beard, dark brown or almost black as a younger man, now white with grey streaks.  Now you have a mental picture of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, an Anglican missionary in southern China from 1859 to 1884 and Bishop of Shanghai from 1877 to 1884.

     He was born in Lithuania in 1831 and destined by his family to become a rabbi.  However, a chance encounter with the New Testament in Hebrew led eventually to his decision to become a Christian, first a Baptist, then a Presbyterian and, finally, an Episcopalian.  After his ordination to the diaconate in 1859 the American Episcopal Church sent him off to China.  He learned the rudiments of Mandarin on the voyage and hit the ground running when the ship arrived in China.

     While there is more to this incredible man’s life than I can tell you here, what I want you to remember is his life after he developed Parkinson’s disease and was forced to resign his office as Bishop of Shanghai and retire to Tokyo.  He continued his translation of the Bible into Wenli, the classical style of Chinese calligraphy, even though he had the use of only one finger.

     Close to the end of his life he said, “I have sat in this chair for over twenty years.  It seemed very hard at first.  But God knew best.  He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”

     Now picture another man from an even more distant past.  He too probably sported a beard, but his clothing was that of a Jew living in the southern kingdom of Judah during the close of the seventh century before the common era.  He was the son of a priest and, no doubt, a young man familiar with the privileges of life in the priestly class of Judean society.  He was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps.

     His times, however, were troubled ones.  To the north the kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrians and was presently under the control of the Babylonians, the successors to the Assyrian empire.  To the east Babylon was growing in power and imposing its will on its smaller and weaker western neighbour.  When Jeremiah was in his late twenties, the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem and a portion of the ruling class was exiled to Babylon.  A later revolt by the Judeans resulted in the destruction of the Temple in 586 and the exile of the remaining members of the ruling class.

     Instead of the life of a priest Jeremiah hears God’s call to the vocation of a prophet, the other pole of the religious life of his people during this time.  Prophets disrupt the status quo and cause no end of turmoil to those who wish to maintain their power and their prestige.  What well-educated, well-bred and comfortable young man wishes to hear these words spoken with authority:  “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant”? [Jeremiah 1.10]  But this is the vocation to which Jeremiah is called.

     Two men, one an old crippled man struggling with one finger to complete his life’s work, the other a younger man called from a life of prestige and power to a life of opposition to and judgement of prestige and power.

     One caption:  Sometimes we do not get the job we wish but the job that God believes we are best suited to perform.

Snapshot 2:  What are you looking for?

     In 1993 I was priest-in-charge of Saint Anselm’s on the University Endowment Lands.  One afternoon I was working in the church when a gentleman with his wife and two teenagers came into the building.  “Do you mind if we have a look around?” he asked me.  “No,” I said, “be my guest.  I hope that you don’t mind if I keep puttering around for a bit.”  With his wife and children the man spent a good twenty minutes walking throughout the nave, the aisles and the sanctuary.  By that time I was in the office.  He stopped by the office and said to me, “I grew up here.  It’s just the way that I remember it.”  I wished him well and kept my thoughts to myself.

     The irony was that we had just re-modelled the sanctuary.  When he was a boy, the font was at the head of the north aisle of the church, invisible to most of the congregation.  Now it was located on the south side of the sanctuary platform.  When he was a boy, there was a over-sized pulpit on the north side of the sanctuary and a lectern on the south side.  Now there was only an appropriately sized lectern on the north side that served both readers and preachers.  When he was a boy, the altar was firmly against the east wall of the sanctuary.  Now it was free-standing, permitting movement on all sides.  Not the way it was but only the way he remembered.

     We sometimes forget that our vision is both a physical and a mental activity.  What our eyes transmit to our brains is interpreted by that brain and organized into a comprehensible picture.  Despite the physical differences between the St Anselm’s of his boyhood and the St Anselm’s of the present, this man constructed a picture of an unchanging world.

     The author of the letter to the Hebrews is writing to a community whose minds and hearts are having a hard time dealing with the physical facts of their present time.  His community is a Christian one with deep ties to the Jewish roots of the Christian movement.  It is possible that they maintain their links to Jewish ritual and continue to attach deep meaning to the Jerusalem Temple and its rituals.

     But they now live in a world in which the Temple has been destroyed.  Just as the destruction of the Temple was a catastrophe for the majority of Jews living at that time, so was it a catastrophe for many of the Christians who valued their Jewish roots.  For these Christians the question might well have been, “How can we be Christians without the Temple and its sacrifices?”

     To these worried people the writer of the letter to the Hebrews sends a message of hope and a way of re-visioning their religious world-view.  For this early Christian writer the earthly Jerusalem has been replaced by a heavenly one where Roman imperial power cannot interrupt the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving continually offered by the saints and where Roman imperial power cannot profane the sacred presence of God enshrined in the Holy of Holies:  “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” [Hebrews 12.22-24]

     Two men, one man trying to recover his own past, the other man trying to reshape the future of his community.

     One caption to both:  Be careful how you look at the world because that is the way it is.

Snapshot 3:  So, by whose rules are we playing?

     My younger son, Owen, began to play rugby in the autumn of his grade 8 year and he continues to play to this day.  Rugby was virtually unknown in the United States when I was growing up, so these past eight years have been an education.  I admit that I am not only a rugby dad but a rugby fan.  One of the happiest moments of my life was when Telus added Setanta, the channel that carries rugby, to its services!

     In rugby we do not speak of the ‘rules’ but of the ‘laws’.  The word ‘laws’ brings with it the sense that interpretation is an important part of both playing and refereeing the game.  While the role of the referee is sacrosanct in rugby, unlike soccer or hockey, it is not unusual to watch two games played by the same two teams where the ‘laws’ seem to be interpreted differently.  This has given rise to a commonly-heard saying on the rugby pitch, “Play to the ref.”  There is no point in rugby in jumping up and down and screaming at the referee, actions that are more than likely to draw a yellow card and the player’s departure from the game for ten minutes while her or his team play fourteen against fifteen.  Part of the first twenty minutes or so of every game is learning how the referee is going to interpret the laws.

     What I love about the game is this wonderful combination of reliability and interpretation.  Two teams, one referee and perhaps two additional officials, all combining to bring about a unique moment in the history of the game.  History is not irrelevant, but it is this moment where the laws and the game intersect.  It is this group of thirty or more people who will define what happens according to the circumstances they meet.

     In the classical Jewish tradition there are six hundred and thirty-two laws commanded by God and found in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.  These laws are God’s words to the people and any authentic Jewish life is shaped by them.  And so today we have the picture of a woman crippled by an unknown ailment who comes into contact with Jesus as he is teaching in a synagogue.  His reaction is one that we have come to expect when Jesus encounters a person in need:  “When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” [Luke 13.12-13]

     What follows is predictable:  Jesus’ action leads to a debate about what the ‘law’ means about keeping the Sabbath.  On the one side, we have the rector’s warden who has a strict interpretation of the law.  On the other side, we have the visiting preacher who has a more liberal interpretation of the law.  Which ref shall we play to?

     Two men, one concerned with the integrity of the law, the other with the immediate application of the law.

     One caption:  Sometimes you honour the spirit of the game by playing loose with its regulations.

Snapshot 4:  What do you mean ‘homework’?

     Although I am a ‘retired’ professor, I am still a professor with a desire to send you from this gathering with some homework to do, just three simple questions for you to consider.  There are no wrong answers, only your answers.

• Is there some vocation that you sense God is calling you to undertake that seems to lead you on an unexpected journey?
• Do you need to look at the world differently in order to undertake this vocation?
• Are you going to have to play a little loose with the rules in order to undertake this vocation?

     Three questions with one purpose.  I hope to hear some of your answers to my questions.  But you’ll have to come next week to hear what I think that purpose is.  Amen.

     

Almost But Not Yet

RCL Proper 19C
8 August 2010

Saint Francis in the Wood Anglican Church
West Vancouver BC

Propers: Isaiah 1.1, 10-20; Psalm 50.1-8, 22-23; Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16; Luke 12.32-40


Collect of the Day

Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church. Open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love, joy, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. [The Book of Alternative Services]

Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your church. Open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may be ready to receive you wherever you appear, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen. [ Evangelical Lutheran Worship]

God of judgement and grace, you ask not for sacrifices, but lives of trusting faith that acknowledge your power and mercy. Give us faith as deep and strong as Abraham’s and Sarah’s, that we may follow you through all our days as did Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen. [ Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Focus Text: Isaiah 1.1, 10-20 1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! 11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.  12 When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13 bringing offerings is futile; incense in an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation --- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. 14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.  18 Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Sermon Text

When I was in secondary school, I fell in love with algebra. In algebra there is an unknown which can be discovered if one follows the right processes and pursues a course of mathematical logic. I experienced a sensation of pure satisfaction when I could finally say, “The unknown factor ‘x’ equals 23.” Of all the things that I learned, algebra provided me with a means of reaching ‘the right answer’.

Early in my undergraduate years I learned that I was required to take an additional course in mathematics. I cheerfully enrolled in Calculus 100. Armed with my algebraic skills, I launched into the study of calculus assuming that I would be learning even more about the exact science of mathematics. To my chagrin I learned that calculus was the science of the ‘almost but not yet’. Our professor illustrated the art of calculus by demonstrating the familiar parlour riddle: 

• Walk to one side of a room.
• Put your back to the wall.
• Walk halfway across the room.
• Then walk halfway across the remaining distance. Then walk halfway again.
• When do you reach the other wall?


Our senses, perhaps even our nose as it bumps against the wall, tell us that we reach the other wall fairly quickly. But a quick examination of the actual mathematics tells us that, if we keep halving the distance, then we will never really reach the other wall.


Calculus, unlike algebra, is not about getting ‘the right answer’. It’s about coming so close to the right answer that the difference does not matter. In some ways calculus is a more humble form of mathematics, a discipline willing to admit that it does not always reach its goal.  But it keeps trying nevertheless.


The Christian life, when lived in genuine faith, has more in common with calculus than with algebra. For some Christians an algebraic church, a church with ‘the right answers’, is more desirable than a church that claims to be ‘almost but not yet right’. But if the sin of the ‘almost but not yet right’ church is an uncomfortable ambiguity, then the sin of the algebraic church is arrogance.  And it is arrogance that stirred up the prophets of Israel.


For the past few Sundays we have heard the words of the prophets of ancient Israel who wrote, for the most part, during the 8th century before our present era. This was a critical time in the life of the people whom God had brought out of Egypt. The land had come to be divided into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The prophet Hosea whose words we heard for the last two Sundays proclaimed God’s word to the people of the Northern Kingdom for a period of thirty years. He began his prophetic ministry at the end of “a century of political stability and economic prosperity in the Northern Kingdom”. (The New Oxford Annotated Bible)   To the east, however, a new imperial power was rising, Assyria. The emergence of Assyria brought a prolonged national crisis which would end with the destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE.

In the Northern Kingdom the social inequities between rich and poor that had been present before the rise of Assyria became worse as Assyria grew in its imperial ambitions and its political pressure upon the Northern Kingdom. (The New Interpreter's Bible) Armed conflict with Assyria and with the Southern Kingdom of Judah depleted the economic resources of the North. (The New Interpreter's Bible)   “The richer classes intensified their exploitation of the peasants in order to pay these debts. Many resorted to fraud and cheating.” (The New Interpreter's Bible)  For Hosea all this was a sign that the people had abandoned their loyalty to the God who had brought them out of Egypt and that the eventual destruction of the Northern Kingdom was inevitable.


Today we hear the voice of the prophet Isaiah, perhaps a member of a priestly family in Jerusalem, most certainly a member of Judah’s social elite. Like his northern colleague, Isaiah had a lengthy career, stretching for at least three, if not four, decades. Like his northern colleague, Isaiah saw “the growth of large estates owned by aristocrats and the consequent impoverishment of the peasantry.” (The Jewish Study Bible)The rich were accumulating great wealth and growing in haughtiness while the poor descended into greater poverty and desperation. (The Jewish Study Bible)


Isaiah believed that the Northern Kingdom had chosen badly and had reaped the consequences of its failure to be faithful to the covenant God made with all the people. As he looked around at the state of affairs in the south, Isaiah was equally convinced that Kingdom of Judah was following the same course and would also reap the consequences of its faithlessness. We can almost hear his voice saying, “Choosing the right political answer may win you time, but it will cost you your soul and, eventually, your life.” Political and economic algebra was coming face to face with theological and prophetic calculus.


At such a time as this, shall we choose a path that seems more certain or a path that may seem more risky? Isaiah warns the people that claiming security in familiar forms of religious practice may not, in fact, be what God expects: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.” (Isaiah 1.11) With these words God is not condemning the ritual itself, but the failure of the community to understand that the ritual was an expression of what they were called to do in their daily lives: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1.16-17)


What God expects is that we choose the difficult path of faithfulness to our baptismal covenant rather than certainty. God calls us to join in the mission that God began in creation. This mission involves bringing all creation into fullness of life and into right relationship. It is a difficult course because it always requires the recognition that all our efforts are ‘almost but not yet’. It requires the humility of calculus rather than the arrogance of algebra. But this more humble way has been our way from the beginning of the Christian movement.


When the earliest Christian communities sought a word to describe themselves, they quickly latched on to a word with long usage among their non-Christian Greek neighbours. The word they chose was ekklēsia, a word drawn from politics rather than religion. The word itself means ‘a public assembly of free citizens summoned from their daily pursuits in order to take counsel and to act on behalf of the common good’. Quite a burden from one word with four syllables to bear, isn’t it?


Over the centuries since the earliest days of the Christian movement it has been easy for the ekklēsia to forget the meaning of our assembly. We are here not as members of a club, not as members of a fraternal society, not even as members of a social agency. Christians gather Sunday after Sunday as ‘a public assembly of free citizens summoned from their daily pursuits in order to take counsel and to act on behalf of the common good’.


What we have been summoned to do is to participate in leitourgia. Leitourgia is another word our ancestors in the faith borrowed from the non-Christian Greco-Roman culture. We are perhaps accustomed to using the word ‘liturgy’ to mean ‘a ritual act’ or even ‘the work of the people’, but the word is richer than either of those meanings. Leitourgia is ‘a public work voluntarily undertaken for the common good’. Our sacred assemblies are summoned by God to participate in God’s public work voluntarily undertaken for the good of the whole kosmos, the entire creation.


When the ekklēsia gathers to participate in leitourgia, what God expects is what God has always expected. We are gathered to take counsel and to act on behalf of the common good. When we are gathered here, we are not entering some airtight bubble which isolates us from the world. On the contrary, when the Christian people gather to pray and to worship, we do so not for ourselves alone, but for every living creature, human and non-human, for every human being, Christian and non-Christian. We take counsel so that we might discern what is the common good and to commit ourselves to work for that common good --- even if it means giving our very lives, whether physically or socially.


Several years ago I heard a bishop of our church express his concern that we had been talking too much about justice and not enough about theology. I remembered that Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said that, whenever he hears people say that politics and justice are not the church’s business, he wonders what Bible they are reading. Throughout the prophets, especially those of the 8th century among whom Isaiah is numbered, justice is the central issue. For the prophets injustice is a sure sign of infidelity to God. When religious people divide their lives into sacred and secular, public and private, they have begun to walk a path that will lead them away from faithfulness to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, the God who quickens through the Holy Spirit this varied and fractious people who call themselves ‘Christians’.


Justice, in the Hebrew scriptures, means treating every human being as an ends in herself or himself rather than as a means to achieve my purposes. Justice, in the Hebrew scriptures, means treating every human being as one in whom the ruach ha kodesh, the living Spirit of God, dwells. Justice, in the Hebrew scriptures, means that every human being is a member of a community which has obligations and responsibilities to ensure every person’s dignity.


I spoke of the difference between algebra, the mathematics of ‘the right answer’, and calculus, the mathematics of ‘the almost but not yet’. We Anglicans are committed to ‘the almost but not yet’ of God’s reign of justice. We see God’s reign on the horizon and we move half-way towards it. Then we move half-way again. Then half-way again. We can see the destination and we know we are coming closer. But we cannot ultimately close the gap ourselves; there will always been space between where we are and where God is calling us to go.


Time will tell whether we halved the distance between where we are and where God would have us be. But God knows that we came in the response to God’s summons to “seek justice, (to) rescue the oppressed, (to) defend the orphan, (to) plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1.16-17)


My sisters and brothers, you and I have been summoned here because God knows that we are committed to the common good of this community, Christian and non-Christian alike. We know the challenges that are faced by the people who live here, young and old, rich and poor, powerful and weak. We know what God expects of those who have been marked with the sign of the cross. Let us not be afraid to act. May our assemblies for worship never become a formality unconnected from the community in which we live. May our prayers never become merely texts to be recited rather than pledges of what we will do when this assembly is over. May we always remember that just as Christ offers himself to us in the bread and the wine, so are we called to offer ourselves to others.


The prophet Isaiah condemned the people of Israel and Judah because they thought that they had ‘the right answer’. They believed that their rituals insulated them from the demands of the covenant. What God wanted of them and wants of us is that we commit ourselves to the path of ‘the almost but not yet’, being humble enough to acknowledge that we do not yet have ‘the answer’ but being courageous enough to halve the distance again and again and again if it will bring us closer to God’s promised reign of justice and peace. Amen.

In the Ordinary We Discover the Extraordinary

A Homily for the Funeral of Mary Perry

5 August 2010

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Focus texts:  Isaiah 61.1-3 and 2 Timothy 4.6-8a

            I spent the summer of 1979 as a student chaplain at Bethesda Hospital in Denver, a small psychiatric hospital established by two small Dutch denominations, the Reformed Church of America and the Christian Reformed Church.  Although the hospital had originally been established to serve tuberculosis patients in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the advent of modern antibiotics and other therapies meant that the hospital needed to find a new reason for its existence.  These two churches chose an ancient Christian vocation:  the care of the mentally ill, a vocation often practiced by Christian monasteries and convents throughout the centuries.

            As I remember it, the hospital had four units, one of those units a secure unit where adolescents received court-mandated psychiatric assessments as well as treatment.  On our first day the student chaplains were asked to list, in order of our preferred area of service, the four units of the hospital.  I was assigned to the adolescent unit.  When I asked why I had been assigned, the supervising chaplain gave two reasons:  (1) I was a trained and certified secondary teacher, something the unit needed, and (2) I was the only student chaplain who included the adolescent unit on his list.

            I spent the first half of the summer helping these young people with their school assignments --- after all, education must go on, even in a psychiatric hospital! --- and acting as a chaperone (read ‘prison guard’) when there were outings.  Since some of the medical staff were sceptical of the usefulness of a chaplain on the unit, my spiritual role was limited to occasional ‘values clarification’ sessions where the non-medical staff and I facilitated conversations about personal values and decision-making, often using role-playing as a technique for learning more mature behaviours.

            By early July I was fed up and told my supervisor that I was going to resign.  He asked me to go home and think about it.  When I came in the next day, there was a note in my mail box from my supervisor.  All it said was, “Read Matthew 25.31-46 and see me at 2.00 p.m. today.”

            In this portion of Matthew’s gospel Jesus describes the day of judgement and how people are sifted into two groups, the ‘sheep’ on the right and the ‘goats’ on the left, and are judged by the ‘king’. 

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’  And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” [Matthew 25.34-40]

I realized that my frustration was caused by my own expectations of what ministry should be rather than a response to the real needs of the young people I was serving.  In so many ways they were hungry and thirsty, strangers and naked, sick and in prison.  When I saw my supervisor at 2.00 p.m., I simply said, “I’m staying.”  He responded, “I thought that you would.”

            We live in a world captivated by a myth of celebrity where the extraordinary behaviour of the few is considered to be more real than the ordinary behaviour of the many.  Many of our contemporaries have lost sight of a simple truth, expressed in Matthew’s gospel and in our readings from Isaiah and 2 Timothy:  It is in the ordinary not extra-ordinary faith-filled lives of people such as Mary that the good news of God in Christ is most widely and most influentially expressed and embodied.

            A couple of days ago I was watching ‘The Magnificent Seven’, that classic western in which seven gun fighters are hired by an impoverished Mexican village to defend it from a band of rapacious banditos.  In one scene several young boys denounce their farmer fathers as ‘cowards’, but they are quickly taken to task by one of the gun fighters.  He speaks to them of the courage it takes to work day after day to provide a home and food for a family, to bear the burdens of the young so that they might grow up, to see successes turn to failures and dreams into distant fantasies and yet never give up trying to do what is best for the family.  “That kind of courage,” the gun fighter says, “is a courage that I do not have, but I envy those who do.”

            Mary’s life has been a long and ordinary life in which extra-ordinary things have happened.  Two children have been raised and have reached adulthood with the gifts to tend their families and relationships.  Several generations of students and others have receive wise counsel as they have sought the education and wisdom necessary to forge meaningful lives of their own.  Saint Faith’s and other congregations have been the recipients of the quiet but constant gift of Mary’s time, talents and treasure.  In these and many other ways the hungry and thirsty, the strangers and the naked, the sick and those in prison have been cared for by Mary, this baptized child of God.

            It is right to mourn.  It is right to acknowledge the tear in the fabric of our lives, whether family, friends or congregation.  Mary is no longer with us in the ways that we wish she were.  But if it is right to grieve, certainly it is more truly right to give thanks and praise for a life faithfully lived, a clay vessel which bore the good news of God and shared that good news with many.  It is truly right and a good and joyous thing to acknowledge a good fight well-fought, a race finished with grace and a faith kept to the end.  May we, ordinary folk that we are, join Mary in living such a life so that the extra-ordinary love of God may be made known to others.  Amen.

See Who You Are. Become What You See.

RCL Proper 18C

1 August 2010

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Focus texts:  Colossians 3.1-11 and Luke 12.13-21

+ Holy One, though our lives been hidden in Christ, may our witness be manifest to the whole world.  Amen.

            In the eucharistic liturgy of the Anglican Church of Canada the consecrated bread and wine are presented to the whole assembly with the words, “The gifts of God for the people of God.”  When the assembly responds with its “Thanks be to God,” the consecrated bread and wine are distributed to those who wish to receive communion.    In the American Episcopal Church, the church in which I grew up, a similar invitation to communion is made, “The gifts of God for the people of God.  Take and eat them in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed on him in your hearts with thanksgiving.”

            Although these words are relative new to us in the Anglican tradition, they have an ancient pedigree.  Saint Augustine of Hippo, that great saint and reluctant bishop, is said to have invited the people of his cathedral to communion with these words:  “The gifts of God for the people of God.  See who you are.  Become what you see.”  Such simple words, but they point to two of the central dimensions of the Christian spiritual life:  We have been made in the image of God and are called into the likeness of God.  Who we are is God’s gift.  Who we become is the result of our own free will and God’s graciousness made known to us through the work of the Holy Spirit.

            Every human being, gay and straight, male and female, younger and older, religious and non-religious, Christian and non-Christian, are made in the image of God.  Each one of us is created with the power of life and death and gifted with free will so that we can choose which path we shall follow, the path of life or the path of death.  But simply being made in the image of God does not guarantee that we will choose life rather than death or that we will choose self-giving rather than selfishness and greed.  Our world and our country are filled with numerous examples of individuals and communities choosing self-interest, but I will not enumerate those here today.

            What God desires for us is that we become who we truly are, but this is a process not a single event.  To be made in the image of God is an incalculable gift, but what remains before each one of us is the journey towards spiritual maturity.  Such a journey is not accomplished in a day, perhaps not even in a lifetime, but it is the journey that God bids us make.

            In today’s reading from the letter to the Colossians the writer tries to hold before this community these two dimensions of Christian spiritual life:  who we are and who we are to become.  When he writes that our life has been hidden in Christ, he is speaking about who we are as baptized members of Christ’s body.  We are secure in that identity.  No earthly or heavenly power can tear us away from the embrace of Christ.  This truth finds expression in our baptismal liturgy.  As the priest makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of the newly-baptized, he or she says, “I sign you with the cross, and mark you as Christ’s own for ever.”  It is this mystery of identity that the writer of Colossians speaks of when he writes, “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col 3.3)

            But the writer also knows the temptation to rest with one’s identity rather than take the necessary steps to fulfill the potential that our identity in Christ contains.  He quickly follows his proclamation of our baptismal identity with a challenge to avoid those behaviours which can twist and distort the image of God in a human being.  His words are not those of some puritanical moralist but the words of an honest observer of human behaviour and our self-destructive ways.  “If you want to become who you are truly meant to become,” he writes, “then avoid behaving in these ways.”

            Being, our God-given identity as God’s children, is only the starting point for our journey towards our destination.  That destination is becoming whom God has intended us to become, each one of us with wonderful and distinctive characters that have the potential to make heaven present in each earthly moment.  The writer of the letter to the Colossians knows full well that this life, this earthly life, is the arena in which Christian spiritual maturity is formed and tested.  It is a corporate activity that brings all of us together because the maturity we seek is not achievable by one’s self alone.

            This journey is not an easy one.  For that very reason our tradition has given us a checklist, landmarks if you like, that help us discern our progress on the road to genuine Christian spiritual maturity.

• Do we believe in the God who has created everything that is, who came among us in Jesus of Nazareth to bring about reconciliation and who continues to work through the Spirit for the restoration of the whole of creation?
• Do we continue to listen for the Word of God in the Scriptures and elsewhere, to come together to share in this holy meal and to hold up the world in prayer?
• Do we resist the evils that seek to destroy God's creation and are we agents of reconciliation rather than servants of division?
• Do we share with others the life that we have come to know in Christ and the hope that this life gives for the future?
• Do we shun self-interest and seek the common good of our communities?
• Do we work for justice and peace, not only abroad but here at home, and resist every attempt to de-humanize any persons?

·                    You may recognize this checklist as a paraphrase of the baptismal covenant.  It is tempting to keep it within the pages of The Book of Alternative Services and to take it out only for special occasions such as baptisms, confirmations and certain days in the liturgical year.  But this is a temptation that must be resisted.  The baptismal covenant is a guide to Christian spiritual maturity and each one of us here, I believe, has promised more than once to make use of it.  Soon our community will witness the baptisms of an adult and children, so it would be a good idea to review the terms of this agreement we make, not only with those who are to be baptized but with the God who embraces them and calls them to fullness of life.

My friends, we gather here Sunday after Sunday for many reasons.  I know that for myself one of my reasons is that this community of faith is who I am.  This Anglican way of ours continues to give meaning and depth to my Christian life.  Yet I know that there is still more meaning and more depth to be found and no one, whether clergy or lay, can simple sit on the deck or patio confident that we have already arrived at our journey’s end.  We have not reached that point where we might say, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” (Luke 12.19)

So let us as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility and patience.  Let us bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, let us forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven us, so also we must forgive.  Above all, let us clothe ourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, to which indeed we were called in the one body.  And let us be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in our hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.  And whatever we do, in word or deed, let us do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  Amen. (Col 3.12-17 adapted)

            

Should I stay or should I go?

On Tuesday, the 23rd of June 1987, a blue Subaru station wagon containing three humans and two felines arrived at the Peace Arch border crossing into Canada. Although the driver's previous trips to Vancouver in early October and mid-December of 1986 had been graced with blue skies and sunshine, this time his arrival with wife and infant son was greeted by what was to be two weeks of clouds and rain.

So began what was intended to be a three-year sojourn in Canada for Paula, David and I. Twenty-three years later we have found our home here on the Pacific coast. Paula has been able to respond to the call to ordained ministry and will soon celebrate twelve years as Rector of St Faith's and fifteen years of presbyteral ministry. David and Anna will graduate in May of 2011 from the University of British Columbia. Owen will begin his criminal justice studies at Langara College in September of this year. All three of our children identify themselves as Canadians, British Columbians and Vancouverites.

So what about me? My three-year plan has faded into the past and now, twenty years after those three years, I ahve attained those goals which seemed so distant on that rainy day as I patiently waited for the customs agent to review the pages and pages of documentation necessary for our entry into Canada.

Vancouver School of Theology has been a generous and life-giving community for me. In 1990 the Board of Governors let me borrow an extra sabbatical term to finish my thesis. When that goal was not realized, there was no blame nor threats of academic consequences. When I did finish in 1993, tenure was granted and eventually promotion to Associate Professor. When I floated the question of promotion to Full Professor in 2000, just to see what would be required, I discovered to my surprise that my committee recommended promotion and the Board granted that promotion.

My position at the School has opened doors for me that have allowed me to practice my craft regionally, nationally and internationally. It was my place on the Faculty that allowed Archbishop Peers to appoint me to my first national committee responsibility in 1989, an arena for ministry that I continue to enjoy. My Diocese has elected me as a member of General Synod four times (1995, 1998, 2004 and 2007). With the support of our national church and others I have attended international Anglican liturgical gatherings in Toronto, Berkeley, Oxford and Auckland.

But I never imagined that my whole exercise of public ministry would be associated with the School. Bishop Jim Cruickshank once introduced me as 'a parish priest who teaches in a theological college', the highest compliment anyone has ever paid me. Long ago I thought that my epitaph should be Hic jacet Richard Geoffrey Leggett presbyter ecclesiae catholicae sive usum anglicanum ('Here lies Richard Geoffrey Leggett, a presbyter of the Catholic Church according to the Anglican use.')

Lately I've been experiencing professional Wanderlust. So earlier this year I approached Wendy Fletcher, the School's Principal and Academic Dean, about 'retiring' from full-time teaching. Over the past couple of months we've been discussing how best to do this: best for the School I respect and hope to continue to serve in new and different ways and best for me, someone who still has at least ten good years of full-time ministry ahead of me, in one form or another.

And so on Sunday, the 1st of August 2010, I will enter a time of discernment, not as Associate Dean and Professor of Liturgical Studies but as Emeritus Professor of Liturgical Studies. I will begin work on my long-delayed writing project on Canadian Anglican liturgical revision since 1959. I will preach and administer the sacraments of the New Covenant. Ci Bach, our Shetland sheepdog, will receive more of the attention she is certain she deserves. My wife and children will keep me honest as will the large circle of friends and colleagues I have come to love and respect.

More importantly I will wait upon God. Even in these challenging times I am confident that God has not given up on us, especially those who live lives of faithful witness and ministry in our congregations, great and small. I am confident that God has not given up on me, since there is still so much room for me to grow into that maturity in Christ which is our telos, our destiny as God's children. I will trust in the wisdom of my Welsh ancestors who proclaimed Heb Dduw ddim. Duw a digon. ('Without God nothing. God and enough.')

Taking Care of the Neighbourhood

RCL Proper 15C
11 July 2010

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC

During my curacy at Christ Episcopal Church in Denver, Colorado, a call came from the Diocesan Pastoral Centre with a special appeal for supplies to meet the needs of the homeless and poor . This particular appeal came after the Pastoral Centre had developed facilities for the homeless to have a place to shower and to obtain new clothes. However, there was one category of clothing that the Pastoral Centre lacked: men’s underwear. So out went the appeal for parishes and individuals to give packages of new men’s underwear, in various sizes, so that these men would be able to walk out onto the streets with more comfort and dignity then when they had entered the Centre.

Christ Church is located in south Denver at the confluence of the more affluent neighbourhoods of Denver proper as well as some of the more affluent suburbs. It had, when I was a curate, an enviable reputation for its support of the Pastoral Centre. The people of the parish met the challenge with their accustomed generosity and, I might add, their good-spirited sense of humour. A new occasion was added to the liturgical calendar of the parish: Skivvy Sunday. On that Sunday basket after basket of men’s underwear were brought to the altar at the same time as the offering plates and the baskets remained there throughout communion.

I have told this story in other settings. In one such setting, in the late eighties, a priest angrily accused me of contributing to what can only be called a desecration of the liturgy of the church and the sanctity of its buildings. He asked me what was next on my list, condoms perhaps? I admit that I had lost my temper by that moment and I responded that I might well bless condoms if I were serving in a community where AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases were devastating the community.

People of faith are frequently faced with the tension between our concern for holiness and our participation in cultures and societies where religious pluralism and non-belief are acceptable options. We are tempted to set up barriers between what we believe and celebrate in the rituals and doctrines of our faith and how we engage our cultures and societies where our beliefs may have little or no privileged place.

In today’s reading from the prophet Amos we must resist the temptation to see Amaziah as a bad man. The confrontation between Amos and Amaziah is between representatives of the two dimensions of the faith of Israel, the priestly and the prophetic, both of which are essential. “The priest has the authority of established worship tied to political institutions (while) the prophet has the authority of his vocation and the words given to him by (God).” (Craddock 1994, 330) Amaziah’s tragedy is his inability to hear Amos’ words as a call to act on the beliefs enshrined in the rituals. Ritual does not create holiness; ritual is a means by which we, human beings shaped by our cultures and our times, seek to participate in the holiness of God to which ritual points and in which ritual participates. God calls the prophet Amos to call the leadership of Israel to act upon the ethical implications of the sacrifices and prayers offered to God, ritual actions which celebrate God’s justice, mercy and graciousness.

In today’s reading from the gospel of Luke we must resist the temptation to see the lawyer as a bad man or to condemn the priest and the Levite as representatives of a corrupt Judaism in contrast to an enlightened Christianity. Our lawyer knows what is necessary for eternal life and he recites a Jewish formula that is older than Jesus. All Jesus says is “Do this and live.” At the end of the parable all Jesus says again to the lawyer is “Go and do likewise.” Genuine holiness, the holiness of God which we are invited to share, cannot be confined to rituals and ritual spaces; it must find expression in what we do as people of faith.

Jesus goes even further in today’s parable. By contrasting the actions of the Samaritan with those of the priest and the Levite, Jesus plays on the view of his contemporaries that Samarians were heterodox and ethnically impure. He further heightens the contrast by only referring to the victim of the robbers as ‘a certain man’ without any further identification of his religious or ethnic identity. In a culture where obligations were often defined by one’s social, familial, religious and ethnic relationships, Jesus offers a counter-cultural message: The obligation to act as a neighbour is not defined by nor limited to commonly-held social assumptions. (The New Interpreter’s Bible 2003) “For Luke and Luke’s church, (the story now serves as an example) to the effect that kingdom people are to act in love, love that has no drawn boundaries, and love that expects no recompense.” (Craddock 1994, 336)

This past week some eighty Anglican, Lutheran and United clergy and laity gathered at Vancouver School of Theology for the 2010 National Worship Conference. The theme of the Conference was “Taking Care of the Neighbourhood: Worship as Public Work for the Common Good”. We heard from Douglas Todd, one of the Vancouver Sun’s regular columnists, from Mark Macdonald, the National Indigenous Anglican Bishop and from Karen Ward, the Abbess of the Church of the Apostles in Seattle. While there are many ideas that can be drawn from their various presentations, I believe that their presentations pointed to the lawyer’s answer to Jesus’ question: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” (Luke 10.27) No genuine love of God, no genuine holiness, can be experienced if it is not intimately linked to the love of neighbour, regardless of who that neighbour is.

But love of neighbour is not abstract. Communities are made up of real people with real needs and concerns and identities. To love one’s neighbour as oneself requires us to make a decision to go beyond the natural limits of our families, our social affiliations and our religious assemblies.

Saint Faith’s is not a religious assembly unfamiliar with responding to the needs of our neighbours. Whether we look at our fund-raising for particular groups throughout the Lower Mainland or our unprecedented response to the diocesan appeal for the residential school settlement fund or the many groups that use our building for meetings and activities, this is a place that loves God by loving the neighbour. Yet our neighbourhood continues to change and there may be other groups, other communities, whom we might be able to serve.

Right now you and I are worshipping in what used to be the choir space of Saint Faith’s. This experiment of worshipping in a smaller space gathered around the altar is in part fuelled by the realization that we, in order to serve our community, may need to change the shape of our worship space. Rather than the long rows that characterize many churches, we may move towards seating that permits us to see one another and hear one another’s voices more clearly. Rather than pews, we may move towards fewer pews and more chairs so that we can have more flexible seating arrangements.

All of this is not the whim of the Rector or of the Professor of Liturgical Studies who happens to be your Honorary Assistant. It comes from discussions within the Church Committee about our future and how we ‘take care of the neighbourhood’. It is a good thing to pray for our neighbours, but it may be a more excellent thing to remodel our church home to make them more welcome.

When Amos confronted Amaziah, the prophet challenged the priest to take care of the neighbourhood. When Jesus responded to the lawyer’s question, one Jew challenged another Jew to take care of the neighbourhood. In both cases the prophet and the rabbi from Nazareth called upon their religious companions to act on the faith that was already within them and to expand their definition of who the neighbour was to include every child of God.

Today you and I, members of a community of faith with its own history and character, are also being challenged to act on the faith that is in us and to expand our horizons to include the many new neighbours around us. This is a process that begins with concrete steps that may lead us into unfamiliar yet exciting quarters of our neighbourhood. It is a process which our worship prepares us to undertake and which the Spirit leads. May we uphold each other as we travel this Jericho road.

Let us pray.

O Lord God, your mercy delights us, and the world longs for your loving care. Hear the cries of everyone in need, and turn our hearts to love our neighbours with the love of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship)

Works cited

Craddock et al, Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year C