A Never-ending story

The Celebration of the Feast of Agnes, Martyr

23 January 2011

Saint Agnes Anglican Church

North Vancouver BC

+ May my mouth speak the praise of our God and may all the faithful bless the holy name of God for ever and ever.  Amen.

         In the year 284 of the common era Diocletian, a Roman general of Croatian origin, became the emperor of an empire that was in the midst of a decline from which it would eventually succumb.  Despite all the evidence of its decline Diocletian was committed to restoring the Roman Empire to its former glory.

         To accomplish this Diocletian became a true autocrat and emphasized the status of the emperor as the earthly embodiment of divine power.  He actively worked to restore the old Roman civil religion and, to achieve its restoration, Diocletian was quite happy to use the full coercive power of the state.  One group that felt the lash of Diocletian’s desire to revive the glories of the past were the Manichees, a religious group that shared some affinities with certain Christian teachings.  They were bullied, abused, arrested, tortured and executed in the name of the restoration of the Roman state.

         By this time in Roman history, however, the followers of the way of Jesus of Nazareth were moving into the main-stream of Roman society and were already including members of wealthy Roman families as well as members of the imperial household, the powerful bureaucracy which ran the imperial government, within the numbers of Christians in the Empire.  For almost twenty years Diocletian held back his hand from active persecution of Christians, but in 303 Diocletian unleashed the power of the state upon the Christian community.  Although there were regions where Diocletian’s anti-Christian policy was not enforced, this time came to be known by some early Christian historians as the ‘Great Persecution’.

         How Agnes, a young girl of twelve or thirteen and a member of a prominent family, came to fall into the hands of the Roman authorities is the subject of various accounts and legends.  These stories, while entertaining in a strange way, are not why we remember her nor why it is important to continue to enshrine her name by dedicating parish churches in her name.

         What we need to remember is that on or about the 21^st of January in the year 304 of the common era Agnes died because she was a Christian and would not abandon her faith in the face of certain death.  That would be enough to merit keeping her name alive, indeed the name of any of the numerous martyrs, whether Christian or not, who have refused to yield to political or religious persecution.  For those of us gathered in this church dedicated to Agnes, however, there is a more pressing reason to remember her.  Agnes dared to believe in a new way of looking at the world even as her own culture and society were surely dying, a slow death to be sure, but dying nevertheless.

         Here in North Vancouver it is fitting to have a church dedicated to such a courageous young person.  The parishes of this deanery have dared to look at how Anglican ministry might be shaped in the months and years ahead as it has become clear that older models of ministry no longer serve our present reality and that the time has come to allow them to die with dignity.  Rather than grasping after the glories of past days as Diocletian tried to do, you have chosen the way of Agnes, daring to follow the way of Jesus even if it is not entirely clear where that way may lead you.

• You have embraced the new yet ancient ministry of deacons as a mark of your future.
• You have broadened your horizons to reach beyond parish boundaries to encompass all the regions of North Vancouver. 
• You have dared our diocesan structures to play ‘catch up’ with you as we realize that our canons and regulations may not be agile enough to support the initiatives that we need to undertake to proclaim the good news in what is increasingly an ignorant, indifferent and, at times, hostile post-religious society. 

         Just yesterday, Douglas Todd wrote in the Vancouver Sun about a recent study that indicates how far religious ignorance has permeated our society, touching even those who claim to be, in some fashion or another, religious.

         This is not the first time we have lived in such times.  At some point between the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 and the beginnings of active imperial opposition to the Christian movement in the 90’s, a Christian leader wrote from Rome to Christians living in the eastern regions of the Empire.  These Christians had “once participated in the social and cultural life of their communities, but since their conversion to Christ have become marginalized and abused.”  (The New Oxford Annotated Bible)  The dominant Roman view of foreign religions, which is what Christianity was considered to be, was that they “. . . caused immorality (especially adultery), insubordination within the household, and sedition against the state.”  (The HarperCollins Study Bible).  After all, Paul taught Christian women that they could divorce their unbelieving husbands, that in Christ there was no male nor female, no slave nor free, no Jew or Greek and that only Jesus was ‘Lord’, a title usually reserved for the emperor.

         What is striking is the author’s view of how the Christian communities should respond to this ostracism and abuse.  We might expect him to say something like, “Hunker down.  Lie low for a well.  Move out of the cities.”  But this is not his message.  The author emphasizes what the Christians share with their non-Christian neighbours and encourages Christians “. . . to critical, responsible service of God in the family and in other institutions of society” rather than an abandonment of the world.  (The HarperCollins Study Bible)  “Above all,” he writes, “maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.  Be hospitable to one another without complaining.  Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”  (1 Peter 4.8-10)

         My sisters and brothers of the Parish of Saint Agnes, you have chosen to walk the way of the martyrs, a word which simply means ‘witness’ in Greek.  It is to you and to all of us facing the challenges of sharing our faith in a post-religious culture that Jesus says, “[Do] not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”  (Matthew 10.19-20)  Like the communities to whom the author of 1 Peter wrote, we are not to abandon our world and hide away.  We to whom God has entrusted manifold gifts of grace are being challenged to find new ways to pour out that grace on a society and culture that is in need of it.  Our task is to find the language and structures that will help us to this.

         Whether they knew it or not, the people who decided to call this parish, the Parish of Saint Agnes, were daring to say to the whole world:  We are Agnes, here in North America, here in North Vancouver, here in this time and, we hope, for time to come.  Just as Agnes faced a dying society and culture in the confidence of a faith in a living God who dares to make all things new, so will we embody the same faith in the same living God

• who raises up what is cast down;
• who makes new things that had grown old and
• who is bringing to perfection all things through Jesus, our way, our truth, our life.

         We are all familiar with the invitation to share the bread and wine of the eucharist:  “The gifts of God for the people of God.”  Less familiar perhaps is the whole phrase that we believe Augustine of Hippo, the great fifth-century North African theologian, spoke to his people as he held up the consecrated bread and wine before them:  “The gifts of God for the people of God.  See who you are.  Become what you see.”  When we dedicate a parish to one saint or another, we do so for a reason.  It is as if we are saying to the whole community, “See who we are.  Help us become what we see.”

         As a young priest in the Diocese of Colorado I was taught a song that originated somewhere in Africa where people walk for hours to attend worship.  As they walk, they sing:  “We have another world in view, in view.  We have another world in view.  We have another world in view, in view.  We have another world in view.  Our Saviour has come to prepare us a place.  We have another world in view.  Our Saviour has come to prepare us a place.  We have another world in view.”  My friends, we are emerging from a long period where the church did not have another world in view.  We were so deeply rooted in the institutions of our society, so closely identified with the structures of power, that we might be excused for losing sight of who we were and who we were to become.  But we have another world in view.

         Even as painful as some of the losses of the past decades are, these losses may have begun clear our eyes to see and our arteries to fuel a renewed vision of what it means to follow Jesus of Nazareth.  Our places for worship are not sanctuaries from the needs and concerns of the world in which we live and work but mission stations where we are fed and nurtured by Word and Spirit, by fellowship and prayer, by study and sacrament, to participate in God’s mission.    Agnes understood this and took her place in the procession of saints, some martyrs, some imprisoned and maltreated, who lead us into our neighbourhoods not away from them.  Therefore, joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles and martyrs, and with those in every generation who have looked to God in hope, who have caught a glimpse of the new world in which God calls us to share, let us proclaim an ancient hymn of praise,

Splendour and honour and sovereign power *

         are yours by right, O Lord our God,

For you created everything that is, *

         and by your will they were created and have their being.

And yours by right, O Lamb that was slain, *

         for with your sacrifice you have redeemed for God,

From every family, language, people and nation, *

         a priestly community to serve our God on earth.

And so, to the One who sits upon the throne, *

         and to Christ the Lamb,

Be worship and praise, dominion and splendour,

         for ever and for evermore.  Amen.

Revelation 4.11; 5.9-10, 13 alt. by RGL+

It Gets Better!

Here is a great video from Children's Hospital Boston to share with our GLBT youth!

Are You Being Served?

RCL Proper 2A

16 January 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

         From time to time an older British comedy will make an appearance on one television channel or another.  The series takes place in a family-owned and operated department store and features the antics of the owner and his staff, an eclectic collection of hard-workers and shirkers.  You may be familiar with the title, “Are You Being Served?”  Given the reluctance of some of the staff to provide any service to the customers, the answer is frequently, “No, I am not being served!”  One reason I find the programme amusing is that I spent four summers, four Christmases and one full year working in a department store in Colorado when I was a university student.  The programme brings back vivid memories of how we sometimes looked very busy in order to avoid contact with the many and various characters who came to the store every day.

         But if I spend too much time in that part of my past, I begin to recall memories that have more significant meaning.  I remember one older woman, perhaps my grandmothers’ age, coming up to me with a package in her hands that was tied up in twine.  “Would you please cut this twine with your pen-knife,” she asked me.  “I’m sorry,” I answered, “I don’t have a pen-knife.”  “Oh,” she responded, “I thought all gentlemen carried pen-knives.”  Her comment, gently made without any real criticism, lingered with me.  For months afterwards I carried a pen-knife in the hope that she would return and give me a chance to redeem myself and show myself to be a true gentleman.  By the way, I do carry a pen-knife in my dispatch case!

         When I think back on my days in retail, I find myself wandering further back to my childhood and memories of my maternal grandmother, Mildred Broom.  Her working days were spent as an assistant in Mr Wheatley’s corner shop in Molesey, a suburb of London.  Every time I went into that shop, I was well and truly served, not just because my grandmother worked there, but because the shop was a centre of the community’s life.  Neighbours met in the shop and spent far more time than they needed as they shared stories, gossip, hopes and joys, concerns and sorrows, with each other, with my grandmother and with Mr Wheatley.  Once, when I was in grade three, the school bus driver delivered me to the wrong address and it was hours before we finally found the right ‘Green Lane’ in the vastness of Metropolitan London.  The next day I was in the corner shop telling everybody about my harrowing adventure.  Mr Wheatley gave me a packet of Macintosh toffees in honour of my bravery.  Mr Wheatley’s shop was more than a place to buy things; it was a place where many of the neighbourhood’s needs for companionship, for listening hearts and ears, for a recognition that we existed even in the midst of a large city, all these needs were met, sometimes with a nod or a kind word, sometimes with Macintosh toffees.

         ‘Service’ and ‘servant’ and ‘serving’ are words that are having a hard time in the twenty-first century.  In contemporary youth culture, for example, the phrase, "you got served," means to be put down, to put in one's place.  Imagine going to a party where you are asked to tell about what your children or grandchildren or yourself are doing these days.  “Well,” you say, “I am proud to say that we are all involved in the service industry.”  Here in Kerrisdale I expect you might find yourself quickly enveloped in a cone of silence or by a circle of sympathetic friends offering their condolences.  When the government announces the current employment statistics, an increase in the number of jobs in the so-called ‘service industry’ is not considered a particularly encouraging statistic.  Yet who among us has not walked away from an encounter with a sales person or a restaurant worker or someone else engaged in the ‘service industry’ feeling a bit better because he or she, in that brief encounter, has treated us as a human being rather than an object or has gone out of their way to provide us with an item or a service we really needed.

         “And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honoured in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength --- [the LORD] says, ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’”  (Isaiah 49.5-6)

         These words were spoken more than twenty-five hundred years ago to a people living in exile and holding on to the hope that they would be restored to the land that they had lost.  No doubt some of them hoped that the return would bring back the old days, but the words of the prophet challenge that hope with God’s call to the people to be more than just one more nation on the face of the earth, one more people holding on to a land and to a tradition --- “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  The work that God was calling them to undertake surpassed the geographical constraints of their original homeland.

         For all these centuries this is what God has done, is doing and will continue to do --- establishing communities of faith throughout the world, not as small enclaves of privilege or cultural continuation, but as lights to the world, illumining a way of life that calls us beyond ourselves and into partnership with God.  One of the concrete ways that we participate with God in breaking down the walls that people erect to keep others out, how we participate with God in building communities that are life-giving, is by learning the needs and concerns of those among whom we live and work so that we can identify how we, as a community of faith, can respond in ways the embody our faith even as we meet those needs.

         Some of you know that we are engaged in a mysterious process called the ‘Ministry Assessment Process’.  There are some people in the Diocese who believe this to be a thinly-veiled effort to close parishes and to sell their assets.  Certainly this attitude has been reflected in some of the ill-chosen words of the representatives of the Anglican Network in Canada in explaining why they have chosen to seek leave to appeal their judicial defeats to the Supreme Court of Canada.  But ‘MAP’, as this Process is frequently called, is about re-discovering the neighbourhoods in which we live and work so that we can be a light to the nations so that the good news of God in Jesus of Nazareth can be shared, if not in words, then definitely by deeds of service and compassion, hospitality and openness.

         MAP asks us, “Why do you have a pre-school in the parish?”  One simple answer would be to say, “We need the revenue.”  But this would not be an adequate answer to that question.  Stepping Stones certainly is a source of revenue, but that is not why we have a pre-school here.  We have a pre-school because we live in a society where many families require two incomes to support their needs and their desires.  In a society such as this a pre-school and the care it provides the ‘little ones’ is not only desirable but necessary.  MAP will challenge us to look at how we might strengthen this partnership as an expression of our service to this community.

         MAP asks us, “Why do you have recitals in the church?”  One simple answer would be to say, “We need the revenue.”  But this would not be an adequate answer to the question.  As our provincial and federal governments decrease funding for the arts, private teachers are picking up more and more of the responsibility to offer our young people instruction in the arts, especially the art of music.  If there is one thing Saint Faith’s has enjoyed and continues to enjoy is a love of music, sung and instrumental.  By opening our building to recitals, we welcome families, many of whom have no connection with a religious community, into our space with its abundant reminders of the good news.  MAP will challenge us here as well.  How might we make stronger connections with the teachers, perhaps bringing their students into our worship, so that they are not an ‘outside user group’, but our neighbours.

         Time does not permit me to give an extended treatment of all the groups and the communities with whom Saint Faith’s comes into contact.  But if we are to be faithful to the call of God expressed in the words of the prophet Isaiah, then we will not shy away from asking how our hospitality to the Special Olympics programme for younger children might grow into a more visible partnership.  These and other questions will arise in the months ahead.  They are driven not by a desire to end our ministry here, but by our hopes that we will find new ways to be a light here in this part of the city.

         It would be naïve to assume that there will not be changes of one sort or another in the months and years ahead.  One of the tasks of the priest who will come to be our priest-in-charge after Paula’s departure will be to build on the work done thus far and help the leadership of the congregation articulate a vision for what comes next.  Just as Isaiah encouraged the people to look at themselves in new ways, so too will the priest-in-charge call upon the members of this parish to see the future of ministry here in new and, I hope, life-giving ways.

         "Are you being served?"  That is our question for our neighbours and wider community.  In some ways my hope is that we might be a bit like Mr Wheatley's corner store, a place where strangers become friends, where the lost are found, where those in need find their needs met --- perhaps even with Maintosh toffees.

         In the meantime let us listen carefully to the Scriptures as they are read Sunday after Sunday.  As we hear them read, let us be attentive to any phrases, any images, any words that seem to grip us or open new vistas.  Then let us share those with one another and perhaps even with those who do not join us in our worship.

         In the meantime let us break the bread and share the cup Sunday after Sunday.  As we break the bread and share the cup, let us remember that bread does not fulfill its purposes until it is broken and shared, that wine does not fulfill its purposes until it is poured and shared.  We who eat this bread and drink this cup do not fulfill our purpose, our identity as the body of Christ, until we open ourselves to our neighbours and to the needs of our communities.  While we were yet in our mothers’ wombs, God called each one of us by name to this ministry.  While we were yet in our mothers’ wombs, God called us to be lights in a world that is often grey.  Even when we think we are labouring in vain and our energy is waning, God has chosen us for this work in this place.  I dare to say that God needs us to be here, not as a cultural artifact, but as a centre for God’s mission and ministry.  For that, my sisters and brothers, is who we truly are.

Let us pray.

God of grace and glory, you call us with your voice of flame to be your people, faithful and courageous.  As your beloved Son embraced his mission in the waters of baptism, inspire us with the fire of your Spirit to join him in his transforming work.  We ask this in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  (Revised Common Lectionary Prayers)

The Primate's New Year's Day Address

Please click on the title of this post to read the Primate's New Year's Day address, given at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa.

May the Primate's hopes be realized in the year and years to come.

Quirky Nativity

Here's a quirky but fun take on the Nativity story --- especially for those of us who are relatively adept at the new social media but still have our moments of caution!  Just click on the title of this post and you'll be connected to Youtube.

Mission & Money --- A Not So Peaceable Kingdom

[This sermon was prepared for the parish of Saint Helen's Point Grey to make links between congregational financial support of the Diocese and the mission of God in the world.  The above painting is by Edward Hicks, the Quaker minister and artist (1780 - 1849) and retrieved from fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca on Saturday, 4 December 2010.]

RCL Advent 2A

5 December 2010

Saint Helen’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

            More than seven hundred years before the advent of Jesus of Nazareth a priest and prophet living in the southern kingdom of Judah received a series of revelations from the God of Israel.  These revelations came at a time of political and social disintegration as both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah were slowly and surely absorbed into the Assyrian Empire.  We know this priest and prophet as Isaiah, son of Amoz, a name which can mean ‘Yahweh has saved’ or ‘Yahweh may save’.  Perhaps his parents, keenly aware of the crisis into which their son was being born, chose a name to express their deepest hope that Yahweh, the God of Israel, would bring the two kingdoms safely out of the crisis just as surely as God had brought the people out of Egypt.

            The kings of Judah, David’s successors, were weak and inconsequential when compared to the kings of the neighbouring nations; they were, as Isaiah describes them, ‘the stump of Jesse’.  Yet Isaiah believed that the kings of Judah reigning in Jerusalem were a divine institution and that any future messianic kingdom would be led by a descendant of David.  But this future messianic kingdom would not be perfect because ‘some people will still be poor, others ruthless or wicked.  The difference from the current age will lie, rather, in the king’s response to these problems:  He will always render accurate and fair judgments” (The Jewish Study Bible).  Isaiah shared the common view of Near Eastern peoples of this time that “the mark of a truly righteous king is his willingness to protect the poor and his nation’s other marginalized groups, especially widows and orphans” (The New Interpreter’s Study Bible).  As Isaiah speaks, “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth . . . . Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.” (Isaiah 11.3b-4a, 5)

            When we set this beautiful vision of an ideal kingdom of justice and equity in context, a world in which even the natural order reflects a new harmony between predator and prey, we realize that this is a message predicated on the ending of one world before the new world can begin.  It is an acknowledgement that we inhabit a world that is not just, where inequity flourishes and the natural world suffers the consequences of human greed and selfishness.

            Let us jump forward many centuries.  The final decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth were times of considerable religious fervour in North America.  Not only were the so-called ‘mainline’ traditions establishing themselves in the changed political environment following the American Revolution, but there was a strong ‘end of times’ spirituality that burned on the frontier of European settlements, both in Canada and in the United States.  The Shakers, a break-away sect from the Quakers, established communes in which celibacy was maintained and Mother Anne, the founder of the movement, was considered the incarnation of the feminine dimension of Jesus Christ.  A young man in western New York by the name of Joseph Smith would experience a revelation that led him to discover what he called ‘another testament of Jesus Christ’ and to start a movement we now know as the Mormons.

            During these decades a young Quaker minister and artist by the name of Edward Hicks began to paint.  Among his works is a scene he would paint some sixty-one times in his life and which he called ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’.  His inspiration came from today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah with its proclamation of an ideal world in which ‘(the) wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.’ (Isaiah 11.6)  Often his paintings of this theme included, in the background, a scene of William Penn, the founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, signing a landmark treaty with the native people of the Colony.

            Hicks was concerned by what he saw as a growing worldliness on the part of his contemporaries as well as by the growing number of divisive sects and splits within the various religious communities of the time.  His reverence for William Penn did not blind Hicks to the fact that the native people of the United States were not treated with the respect and justice that Penn had shown to them in the early days of Pennsylvania.  In some versions of ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’ it is possible to sense some of Hicks’ growing despair:  the colours are darker and the scene of Penn with the native people is omitted.  One senses that Hicks is holding on to Isaiah’s vision even as that vision seems to slip further and further into a very distant future.

            Isaiah and his interpreter, Edward Hicks, hold before us what I believe is God’s most urgent task in the world today:  the bringing into being of a genuine peaceable kingdom where justice and equity for all people, regardless of any of the natural or imagined distinctions we identify, and where the resources of our world are used responsibly and fairly so that every human being has fullness of life and the creation itself flourishes.

            But how does God achieve this mission?  While there are many ways in which God accomplishes the divine purposes in creation, I want to focus on one means that God uses --- you and I,  the community of the baptized believers who follow the way of Jesus of Nazareth.  Throughout the biblical witness God consistently employs human agents to achieve the divine purposes and, in these last days, my sisters and brothers, we, the church, are called to be agents of God.  One of Isaiah’s contemporaries, the prophet Micah, gives us the agenda for how we are to participate in this mission:  “[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6.8).

            We are challenged to embody ‘the peaceable kingdom’ for which we wait, to offer to those in whose midst we live and work a foretaste of what is to come: 

     i)         Ensure that no human being is treated as a means to someone else’s purpose but as one made in the image and likeness of the living God. 

   ii)         Offer to all people that covenant love and faithfulness that God offers to every human being, loving neighbour as one loves oneself. 

 iii)         Rather than grasp after divinity, become fully alive after the model of Jesus of Nazareth. 

It is this mission we are to serve with our stewardship of our time and our talents and

our treasure.

            While I could say more about how we use our time and talents to further God’s ‘peaceable kingdom’, your Rector asked me, as a member of the Diocesan Council and as a former member of General Synod, to share with you how the financial resources we give to the work of the Diocese and to the General Synod to participate in the mission of God that I have described.

            Agenda item #1:  Do justice.  In the more than twenty years of my involvement in diocesan and national structures I believe that doing justice has been a central focus in the programme work of our Diocese and our General Synod.  Whether we are talking about support for affordable housing initiatives or responding to the needs of the poorest members of our communities or working towards the healing of ancient hurts caused to aboriginal people, the funds that come from this parish to the Diocese and from the Diocese to the programme of the General Synod have directly contributed to concrete acts of justice such as The 127 Housing Society, The Street Priest Initiative of Saint James and the Healing and Reconciliation Fund to name but three.  Without these funds these and similar agencies and programmes are often unable to apply for matching grants or to undertake vital initiatives.  Some of our funding supports the work of ‘Kairos’, the ecumenical justice coalition, that works both publicly and behind the scenes as an advocate for those who have no voice, whether in this country or abroad, in the corridors of political and economic power.

            Agenda Item #2:  Love kindness.  In the Hebrew Bible, the word translated into English as ‘kindness’ is chesed.  Chesed means more than ‘kindness’; it means ‘steadfast love and covenantal fidelity’; it means sticking with someone even when you would prefer to pretend you have no knowledge of who they are and no desire to be in any sort of relationship with them.  It means being as faithful to one another as God is faithful to us.  This is what the Diocese or the General Synod does through the financial support it receives from congregations and other sources:  Our diocesan and national leadership helps us remain faithful to one another, both in Canada and in the world. 

            In the Anglican tradition the diocese, not the congregation, is the smallest unit of the church; congregations are expressions of a diocesan strategy to meet the needs of a great diversity of people spread over a particular expanse of geography.  Contrary to the common parlance, I am not here as a ‘guest’ or as a ‘visitor’; I am here as one of your priests and I am as accountable to you as I am to the people of Saint Faith’s where I am the honorary assistant.  We are connected even when we may not know each well or at all.

            Many of the diocesan and national committees whose work relies on the funding received from congregations and dioceses are engaged in activities that help us remain faithful to one another.  For more than twenty years I have been engaged in diocesan and national projects associated with the worship life of the Anglican Church of Canada, work funded, in part, by St Helen’s and focused on helping us share in common prayer that unites us.  When the Bishop travels to Taiwan or to a meeting of the Provincial House of Bishops or to a meeting of the National House of Bishops, he does so in order, in some way, to link us to that broader community of Anglicans whom we consider our family --- not visitors or guests.  Much of what is called ‘administrative’ is really an expression of pastoral ministry that, at its heart, ensures that we are responsible to one another and supportive of one another.  A substantial portion of the budget of the General Synod supports ministry in the northern two-thirds of our country, the so-called ‘Council of the North’, where many congregations are vital, life-giving centres of spiritual growth, but not always financially sustainable without assistance from the southern dioceses.

            Agenda Item #3:  Walk humbly with God.  Key to walking humbly with God is knowing who we are and for what purpose we were created.  In our present climate of controversy regarding how shall we live in right relationship with God, some of the financial resources of our communities have been used to fund educational programmes intended, not to lead to a particular conclusion, but to help Christians talk with one another prayerfully and respectfully.  Some of our resources are used to fund theological education including non-traditional programmes for the training of laity and clergy.  Other resources are devoted to inter-church and inter-faith dialogues and relationships where new partnerships are being forged and mutual respect between peoples of differing faiths and traditions is growing.

            Perhaps one of the more significant developments in the life of our Diocese is the Ministry Assessment Process.  Through this Process congregations and deaneries are discovering new ways to be the presence of Christ in changing contexts.  As a former Mentor in this Process I know that the financial support from congregations such as St Helen’s has helped a smaller parish, thought to be dying, to discover new springs of life and new partnerships so that its ministry can continue in an area of the city that truly needs us to be present.

            My friends, line-item budgets do not always help us understand how our gifts are working towards that ‘peaceable kingdom’ proclaimed by Isaiah and painted so many times by Edward Hicks.  Line items do not always reveal how our gifts are helping us do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God --- but that work is happening and this congregation as well as those from Powell River to White Rock and from the University Endowment Lands to Hope participate in God’s mission to establish a peaceable kingdom where justice, covenant loyalty and humility reign over oppression, betrayal and arrogance.  Even as we wait for that kingdom to come, let us not fail to use our gifts so that the whole world will see that things which were cast down are being raised up, that things which have grown old are being made new and that all things are being brought to their perfection by the God whose power working in us does infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

Let us pray.

Labouring God, with axe and winnowing fork you clear a holy space where hurt and destruction have no place, and a little child holds sway.  Clear our lives of hatred and despair, sow seeds of joy and peace, that shoots of hope may spring forth and we may live in harmony with one another.  [We ask this in Christ’s name.]  Amen.  [Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

It's the end of the world as we know it --- and I feel fine!

RCL Advent 1A

28 November 2010

St Thomas’ Anglican Church

Chilliwack BC

Let us pray.

God of justice and peace, from the heavens you rain down mercy and kindness, that all on earth may stand in awe and wonder before your marvellous deeds.  Raise our heads in expectation, that we may yearn for the coming day of the Lord and stand without blame before your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  [‘Thematic Prayer’ from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

            More than seven hundred years before the advent of Jesus of Nazareth a priest and prophet living in the southern kingdom of Judah received a series of revelations from the God of Israel.  These revelations came at a time of political and social disintegration as both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah were slowly and surely absorbed into the Assyrian Empire.  We know this priest and prophet as Isaiah, son of Amoz, a name which can mean ‘Yahweh has saved’ or ‘Yahweh may save’.  Perhaps his parents, keenly aware of the crisis into which their son was being born, chose a name to express their deepest hope that Yahweh, the God of Israel, would bring the two kingdoms safely out of the crisis just as surely as God had brought the people out of Egypt.

            Throughout the centuries the words of the prophet of Isaiah have been as important to Christians as they have been to Jews.  When the earliest Christian writers began their efforts to explain the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, they found in Isaiah a rich source for their theology.  But today’s reading, with its message of hope and of universal peace, points to one of the challenges of the use of Isaiah by Christians.

            When Isaiah’s beautiful poetic vision of the peoples of the world streaming to Jerusalem to acknowledge the supremacy of the God of Israel and to worship at the Temple is set in its context, we realize that this is a message predicated on the end of one world before a new one can begin.  Our reading ended with the words, “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!”  But these words are actually the first words of a lengthy section in which the prophet, speaking in the name of God, indicts the people for their failure to be faithful to the covenant God made with them on Sinai.  The consequences of this failure is the moral and social chaos they are presently experiencing.  Soon this chaos will lead to the end of their political independence.  It’s the end of the world as they know it.

            Let’s jump forward two thousand seven hundred years.  As I run around the city these days, I cannot escape the music of ‘the season’.  Every mall has begun to fill the air with Christmas carols and the light music that we associate with the coming of the Christmas feast.  All of this is to help us get into the spirit of the season which for the retail business is the spirit of buy, buy, buy.  I heard a radio commentator talk about ‘black Friday’, the day after the American Thanksgiving holiday when businesses hope that they will be ‘in the black’ rather than ‘in the red’.

            Despite the best efforts of the malls I find that the music I am hearing is not the recorded sounds of snowy Christmases, warm houses with cherubic children waiting for Santa Claus and the generosity of poor little drummer boys.  The music that I am hearing comes from the creative minds of the American popular music band, R.E.M.:  “It’s the end of the world as we know it.  It’s the end of the world as we know it.  It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”  At times I have the almost irresistible urge to take up residence near a Salvation Army bell ringer and start singing this song loudly.  I can imagine a polite but firm security guard asking me to be quiet and to refrain from troubling the mall’s customers with such words!

            The song itself does have other lyrics that are somewhat ‘doomsday’ in their tone.  We hear about earthquakes, a traditional image in the New Testament of the coming of the Son of Man.  We hear about birds, a reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s horror film in flocks of birds begin to attach humans in a small town.  We hear about snakes in a reference to the Egyptian myth about Apophis, a snake that made daily attempts to devour the sun only to be denied by the gods.  We hear a reference to an airplane that seems to point to the use of nuclear weapons.  Certainly we can relate to all these images as reminders that our world is not always as secure as we would like to believe it to be.

            But the message of Advent is that ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine’.  It is difficult to read the New Testament without quickly becoming aware that the early Christian community rejoiced to see the end of the world of oppression in which the rich exploited the poor and the strong abused the weak.  Hear again Paul’s words to the Christian community at Rome:  “[You] know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.  For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”  (Romans 13.11b-12a)  Is it any wonder that our society prefers to hear about warm and cozy holidays rather than the stark truth the world as we know it cannot be sustained.

            Christians know of two ways of telling time.  One way is chronos or chronological time.  It is measurable, inexorable and inescapable.  Whether it is the calendar year, the academic year or the fiscal year, chronos churns along, bearing us in its wake.  Even our hymnody recognizes this force:  “Time like an ever-flowing stream bears all of us away.”  Chronos can be oppressive especially as we realize that our ‘time’ grows ever shorter.  From the moment of our birth the chronos that is our lifetime decreases even as our awareness of the value of chronos increases.  In so many ways chronos is death-dealing especially when we find ourselves thinking about ‘what might have been’ rather than what is and what will be.

            There is, however, another way of telling time that fills the pages of the Holy Scriptures.  Theologians call it kairos, the ‘right time’ or the ‘fullness of time’ or ‘God’s time’.  Kairos cannot be measured, comes upon us unexpectedly and, if we choose to close our eyes, can pass us by.  Kairos is a quality rather than a quantity of time.  It is a moment or moments when the world as God intends it breaks in upon us and stuns us with its beauty as well as fills us with longing for its return.  Kairos is being wrapped in the completeness of love with a beloved spouse or child or friend.  Kairos is time spent with a child lost in wonder.  Kairos is reconciliation between ancient enemies when walls fall and hate is transformed into hope.  Kairos is justice coming to those who have been denied justice.

            Kairos is the end of chronos, a release from bondage to the moment into freedom for God.  Kairos is the birthright of every human being and is at the heart of the good news of God in Jesus Christ.  Kairos is the end of the world as we know it and we feel fine.

            Of all the seasons of the Christian year Advent is perhaps the clearest celebration of kairos.  Into time and space the Word through whom all things came into existence comes to dwell among us.  All the old rules and all the old expectations are cast aside as the Word comes to re-order our disordered world. 

            Advent celebrates the end of coercion and the beginning of persuasion.  We live in a world that believes that coercion is an acceptable way of conducting our affairs.  We often use the gifts that God has given us as ways of forcing others to do what we want them to do.  It is not uncommon for people to threaten to withhold their financial support as means to force someone or some organization to act in a way that furthers their personal agendas.  It is not uncommon for people to use their educational qualifications to make others feel less capable, perhaps even stupid.  Nor is it uncommon for one group or another to invoke ‘tradition’ as a reason for refusing to engage in an honest conversation about the needs and concerns of our contemporary situation and how we may need to change.

            Then along comes Jesus and upsets this world’s applecart.  Rather than coerce others to follow his path, Jesus simply says, “Look out.  Everything is about to change.  There’s nothing you can do to stop it.  Why don’t you decide to discover God’s agenda and your role in it?  It’s the end of the world as you know it, but you can be fine!”  And for those of us who live in kairos rather than chronos we see signs of the new world even as the old passes away.

            We live in a world a few accumulates goods and resources in ways that deny those goods and resources to the many.  Even powerful political figures spread the impression that we can continue to use the resources of the earth and to increase our stores of goods without eventually paying the piper.

            Then Jesus comes along and says, “Actually, you may be happier by yielding to others, by being a bit more responsible with the goods and resources you have.  You may find that less is more.  I know this is the end of the world as you know it, but you can be fine!” And for those of us who live in kairos rather than chronos we see signs of the new world even as the old passes away.

            We celebrate the gift that we call Canada even while we fail to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our society.  On our license plates we proudly proclaim that we live in the ‘best place on earth’, yet we have one of the highest child poverty rates in Canada.  Contemporary Canadians have benefited from the appropriation of the lands and resources of First Nations, yet First Nations communities still lack clean water, still need secure housing and still await their seat at the table of Canadian bounty.

            But Jesus comes, shamelessly welcoming those whom we keep at arm’s length, eating with tax-collectors and sinners, moving among those whom good people call ‘unclean’ and calling the children to him over the protests of the adults.  And it’s the end of the world as we know it and we feel fine. And for those of us who live in kairos rather than chronos we see signs of the new world even as the old passes away.

            The end of the old world of coercion, consumption and exclusion is good news.  But there is nothing so dangerous as an old world dying.  For two thousand years the old world has fought back.  Those who choose persuasion rather than coercion are ridiculed as naïve, imprisoned as subversive and killed as threats to the security of the state.  Those who champion stewardship rather than unlimited consumption are condescendingly reminded that politics is the art of the possible not the ideal, that the cost is too high or that entrenched interests will not cooperate. The old world calls upon the fears that lodge in the hearts of all of us and that call is a powerful brake.

            But to those who have eyes to see, the kairos of the new world is all around us.  Day by day, as surely as the waters cover the sea, the new world is replacing the old.  To those who have ears to hear, the songs of the new world are rapidly but gently re-tuning the music of the spheres.  To those who have hearts to love, the hope of the new world is clearing our arteries of the fear that clogs the fresh blood of the Spirit from reaching every cell of our body.

            For the end of the world as we have known it is good news.  We who now begin to hang greens in our churches, who light the candles of the Advent wreath and hear the messages of the prophets can greet the ending of this old world with hope rather than the fear that grips many of our contemporaries as they contemplate the consequences of the end of the age.  You and I see the signs of this new world breaking in all around us.  We see that things which were cast down are being raised up, that things which have grown old are being made new and that all things are being brought to their perfection.  It is the end of the world as we know it and we feel very fine.  Amen.

            Friends, Advent bids us remember that the old has died and the new has come.  It’s the end of the world as we know it and we feel fine.  Amen.