Joy Shall Come Even to the Wilderness: Reflections on the Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Advent

RCL Advent 3C

15 December 2024

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         As part of my personal spiritual reading, I have been working my way through a collection of what are called ‘apocryphal gospels’.  These are works written by ancient writers, some of whom were Christians, some of whom we now call heretics and some of whom we know were marginally if at all Christians in the common understanding.  One of these writers, a Christian teacher named Marcion, prepared a unique version of the Gospel according to Luke, the only Gospel Marcion thought was worth keeping.

 

         Earlier this week I found myself hooked by one verse in Marcion’s version of Luke:  “A good man brings out good from the good stored in his heart, and an evil man brings out evil from the evil stored up in his heart.  For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” [1]  I decided to compare Marion’s text with those we use today.  I discovered that this verse was pretty much the same in whatever contemporary translation I checked.  And I heard in my heart, ‘May only God’s truth be spoken.  May only God’s truth be heard.’

 

         To be sure, Marcion’s views on God and the Scriptures are ones that I do not share, nor have they been endorsed by the overwhelming numbers of Christian teachers throughout the centuries.  But even a person considered an outsider can speak God’s truth.

 

         This Sunday is traditionally known as ‘Gaudete Sunday’ – ‘Rejoice Sunday’.  In the midst of the busyness of preparing for the coming Christmas celebrations and after weeks of readings that speak of the coming judgement of God, it is good to hear these words of Paul:

 

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. [2]

 

         As I read these familiar words of Paul in the light of my diving into one verse of Luke’s gospel, I found myself thinking, ‘What if joy is like good?  If our hearts, our inner selves, overflow with joy, then will we be a joyful people?’  Over these past months with electioneering on both sides of the border and in many other places in the world, there seemed to be a distinct lack of joy.  The joy that Kamala Harris tried to use to counter the fear conjured by Donald Trump did not seem to sway the eventual electorate.  We all are waiting to see if the joy awakened by the defeat of the Assad regime in Syria will be met with hope-filled possibilities for change and renewal in that country.

 

         What prevents our hearts from overflowing with joy?  I think that joy is only possible when our inner selves are fuelled by gratitude.  Without gratitude we can only look at the world through the lens of scarcity.  Scarcity dries the heart and makes us see only wildernesses that threaten us.  Scarcity awakens fear and fear leads us into paths that cause us to turn inwards and to hoard whatever resources we may have, whether physical, spiritual or emotional.

 

         Awakening gratitude requires us to re-visit our past and to discover how God has been at work in our lives and, even when we have been close to despair, has reached out to us to show us a path towards hope.  Awakening gratitude requires us to look at the present and to recognize the signs of God working in us, through us, around us and, dare I say, sometimes despite us.

 

         One of my favourite Christmas traditions is to watch one of the film versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  Many of us are familiar with the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser who has much but always thinks himself poor, a lonely man who doesn’t dare love because he is afraid that he’ll lose that love.  Over the course of an evening, Christmas Eve to be exact, Scrooge is taken on a journey of transformation through the past and the present and into the future.  As he revisits his past and his present, Scrooge begins to discover gratitude and that gratitude awakens joy.  It always grieves me that people forget the story when they portray Scrooge as perpetually miserly and lonely and unlovable.  They forget the joy and joy is the heart of the story.

 

         There is a Welsh hymn written in the 1890’s by Daniel James called ‘Calon Lân’ – ‘A Pure Heart’. [3] I learned it when preparing for the funeral of one of my parishioners at Saint Faith’s ten years ago.

 

Nid wy’n gofyn bywyd moethus Aur y byd na’i berlau mân: Gofyn wyf am galon hapus, Calon onest, calon lân.   Calon lân yn llawn daioni Tecach yw na’r lili dlos; Dim ond calon lân all ganu, Canu’r dydd a chanu’r nos.

I don’t ask for a luxurious life, The world’s gold or its fine pearls; I ask for a happy heart, An honest heart, a pure heart.   A pure heart full of goodness Is fairer than the pretty lily: None but a pure heart can sing, Sing in the day and sing in the night

 

         I know that there are many for whom joy is still somewhere in the distance.  But it is there.  The prophet Isaiah proclaimed these words to the people of Israel even as they faced an uncertain future:  “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and shouting.” [4]  To discover that joy one must only make a journey of re-discovery to find the springs of memory which will give the waters of gratitude.  Those springs are not always easy to find, but they are still there, and they have not dried up.

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[1] Luke 6.45 in ‘Marcion’s Gospel’ in The Apocryphal Gospels, trans. Simon Gathercole.

 

[2] Philippians 4.4-7 (NRSVue).

 

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calon_Lân accessed on 14 December 2024.

 

[4] Isaiah 35.1 (NRSVue).

 

Repairing the World: Reflections on the 2nd Sunday of Advent

 

 

RCL Advent 2C

8 December 2024

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         For several years I served as the Faculty Library Liaison at Vancouver School of Theology.  It was during a time when our Library was going through several transitions, so it was thought that having a regular connection with the Faculty of the School would be a good thing for the Library Staff.

 

         Almost every day I would stop by the Library to check in with the Staff.  One of their shared activities was to complete the crossword puzzle in an American magazine.  This was no ordinary crossword.  Solving one clue only provided you with a few letters to solve a literary quotation.  So the four of us would work together or individually on the puzzle for days.  I’m happy to say that most of the time we solved the puzzle before the next one appeared.

 

         In addition to the crossword, someone would bring in a jigsaw puzzle.  Spread out on a table were all the pieces with the box top perched nearby to guide us.  We’d find all the pieces that made up the outer edges.  We’d try to figure out what pieces went where.  Sometimes someone would be able to connect three or four pieces together to form a little ‘island’ just waiting to be connected to another part of the puzzle.

 

         Working on the crossword and the jigsaw puzzle was special in a number of ways.  First, it was something we all did together.  Second, no one was a ‘star’.  With each crossword or puzzle one of us would turn out to be the person who could decipher the clues or discern how the pieces fit together better than the rest.  Third, it was an activity that gave us peace as we were navigating some difficult times in the Library and the School.

 

         All of today’s readings were written to communities that were in the midst of one turmoil or another.  Baruch was writing to a community being persecuted for following the Law of Moses.  Paul was writing to a community under scrutiny by both civil and religious authorities.  Luke was writing to a community who needed to know that the message of John the Baptist was a message of renewal and hopeful expectation.  All the scriptures today were written for us, Christians living in a society where our role is changing, where our congregations have different understandings of the good news of God in Christ, where society questions whether religious faith is a blessing or not.

 

         In challenging times people can choose differing ways of coping.  Some people act as if nothing has changed and simply go on doing what they’ve been doing for years.  Other people turn inward and hope that there will be some unexpected change in the climate around them.  Some communities acknowledge the challenges they face and discern how best to navigate them.  They remember who they are and what they are called to do and how they can do this in changing circumstances.

 

         In the Jewish tradition there is a concept called tikkun olam.  Tikkun olam  means ‘repairing the world’.  A person participates in tikkun olam by prayer, by study, by worship and by their commitment to justice, steadfast love and humility.  I believe that Christians who share a faith heritage with Jews are also called to tikkun olam.

 

         What I love about this belief that we are called to be co-workers with God in repairing the world is what I experienced with the Library Staff so many years ago.  We have a world before us that we know needs repairing.  We see clues that might lead us to fixing one thing or another; we see pieces that might fit together to link at least a few people or communities if not all.  But it is a task that we need to do together.  No single person, no single community, can do this work alone.  We need allies and co-workers who share our commitment to restore the world to the beauty God intended.

 

         It is a task that requires the cooperation and coordination of all of the gifts of time, of talent and of treasure that God has bestowed upon human beings.  There are some clues better seen by one person or community than by another.  There are some links that one person or community can better create than another.

 

         It is a task that brings peace even if only to one small portion of the world in which we live, even if only for a brief span of time.  Maimonides, one of the great teachers of Judaism, wrote that if one person was able to repair the world for one hour, it was as if they had repaired the whole world entirely and caused God’s glory to rest upon us. [1]  God is not calling us to complete the work of repair and of restoration; God is calling us to participate in it as best as we can with the resources we have.

 

         On this second Sunday of Advent I invite to join me in pondering how we, both as individuals and as a community, can share in God’s work of restoring the world to the beauty God intends.  While we cannot escape thinking about the whole world, we need to focus on how we participate locally – here in Guildford, here in Surrey, here in the Lower Mainland.

 

         One thing that I learned so many years ago with the Library Staff is how the work of one person can create a cascade effect that results in the completion of a crossword or a puzzle. Because one person has deciphered one crossword clue, it becomes the means to complete a whole section.  Because one person has managed to put together a few ‘islands’ of jigsaw pieces, suddenly the whole puzzle can be completed in a few minutes.  And peace, even if only for a moment, comes down upon us.  From that moment of peace comes a renewed hope in the future, in the completion of God’s work of repairing ‘this fragile earth, our island home’, this precious expression of God’s love for us and for all creation.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/Tikkun_olam accessed on 7 December 2024.

 

Do You Live in Hope? Reflections on Advent 1

 

RCL Advent 1C

1 December 2024

 

The Anglican Parish of the Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

       Before he became the professor of Hebrew Bible at my seminary, Fr Joseph Hunt had been a Benedictine monk of Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon.  In those days, the 1950’s and 1960’s, monks almost always wore their habits even when travelling out in the world.  

 

Trains were the most common trans-continental means of travel, and Brother Ignatius, as Fr Hunt was as in those days, once found himself on a late-night train in a car with only one other passenger – an Orthodox Jewish rabbi.  The two men, destined to be together for many hours through the night, began to talk about the subject they most had in common – their love and knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures.

 

       But after an hour or so, they reached an impasse – the topic had turned towards the coming of the Messiah, a topic that quickly brought their differences into their conversation.  Fr Hunt told us that the rabbi and he sat across from one another in silence for a long time.  Now, when a Benedictine monk tells you it was a long silence, you can be sure that it was very long indeed, possible even hours long.  

 

But at some point the rabbi looked at Fr Hunt and asked him, ‘Do you live in hope?’  ‘Yes,’ Fr Hunt replied, ‘I live in hope.’  For the rest of their journey Fr Hunt and the rabbi talked about their shared hope in the coming the Promised One, ‘the branch of David’ as Christians have interpreted Jeremiah’s words to mean over the centuries.

 

‘Do you live in hope?’  Fr Hunt told my classmates and me this story more than forty-five years ago.  And for all those years, it is the question that I keep returning to again and again.  When Paula and I lost our first child to a miscarriage in the summer of 1985, this was the question.  When our son David was born with a cleft lip and palate and we, as a family, faced years of reconstructive surgeries, orthodonture, counselling, speech therapy and school-yard bullies, this was the question.  And, all through these challenges and many others, I think that our answer has been and continues to be, ‘Yes, we live in hope.’

 

Today in our psalm we shared in the prayer of an unknown poet who may have written these words in the years following the return of the people of Israel from their exile in Babylon.  Their community was under the control of a foreign power, their neighbours were unfriendly and the people were struggling to restore their identity and their relationship with God.  

 

We recited the words as translated in A Liturgical Psalter, a resource of the Anglican Church of Canada, but I’d like to share with  the beginning of the Psalm as translated in the Common English Bible:  “I offer my life to you, Lord.  My God, I trust you.  Please don’t let me be put to shame!  Don’t let my enemies rejoice over me!  For that matter, don’t let anyone who hopes in you be put to shame” (Psalm 25.1-3a).  What allows the poet to make this commitment to God? 

 

I believe that what empowers the poet is found in the last line:  “ . . . don’t let anyone who hopes in you be put to shame’.  Only someone who lives in hope can offer their life to God.  Only someone who lives in hope can trust in God.  Only someone who lives in hope can look for God’s paths in a world that can be tricky, confusing and cruel.

 

Hope is fuelled by imagination.  Imagination is the ability to look at the world as it is yet to see the world as it can be.  Let me say this again:  Imagination is the ability to the world as it is as the world as it can be.  Remember when you and I were children.  A stick found on the ground could become a magic wand we could use to weave spells.  A large rock could become our very own car or truck taking us on adventures in the wide world.  When we put on costumes, we became what we were wearing.

 

One of the sorrows of growing older is that we tend to lose our imagination.  We begin to look at the world as it is and that’s the end of it.  Because we may have experienced disappointments when we’ve dared to see the world as it can be, we cut to the chase in order to avoid the pain.  How many of us have been told or have told someone else, ‘Get real!  Get your head out of the clouds!’?  And when we lose our imaginations, hope becomes more and more difficult.

 

Some years ago I read an essay on healing by a Roman Catholic theologian named Jennifer Glen (Alternative Futures for Worship:  Anointing of the Sick1987).  One of the consequences of a serious illness, she wrote, is that we lose hope.  The future we imagined before we became ill becomes a casualty of our illness.  Healing requires us to be able to imagine a new future, different to be sure from our pre-illness vision, but a future nevertheless.  When our imagination allows us to re-envision the future, then we have hope and hope brings healing.

 

Recovering our imagination and rebuilding hope requires a change in perspective.  I remember one of my teachers who spoke about keeping a ‘journal of thanksgiving’.  Every day he would write down what he as thankful for, what unexpected blessing had come his way.  Some days, to be sure, were sparse, but others were full of reasons to be grateful.  Those gifts of grace renewed his imagination and empowered his hope.

 

As we begin this Advent season in a year which has seen the retirement of a loved pastor and the re-consideration of property development and all the other changes and chances of our lives, whether personal or communally, I have a question for all us:  Can we imagine a new future for ourselves as persons and a new future for ourselves as a community of faith?  Are we keeping alert for the signs that God is at work in us, through us, around us and, perhaps most importantly for us?  If our imagination is renewed, if we’re keeping alert to the signs of God at work, then I believe living in hope is not only possible, it is unavoidable.

 

I will end with words from the apostle Paul.  He certainly knew what it was like to have his world turned upside down and then have to imagine a new future.  Yet he was able to write to the Christians in Rome, even as he was on the road that would lead to his martyrdom, these words:   “May the God of hope fill [us] with all joy and peace in faith so that [we] overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15.13 CEB)

What Is Truth? Reflections on John 18.33-38

 

RCL Proper 34B

24 November 2024

 

Anglican Parish of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”  Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I?  Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me.  What have you done?”  Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.  If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the [Jewish authorities].  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”  Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?”  Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king.  For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.   Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (John 18.33-38a)

 

            My late VST colleague, Sallie McFague, was and remains an admired theologian and a beloved teacher.  One of the assignments she gave to her first-year students in theology was the writing of a ‘credo’, the Latin word for ‘I believe’.  She thought that it was important that every Christian should answer the question, ‘What do I believe?’, so anyone who wanted to be a leader in the community should be asked this question as part of their formation.  So, on this final Sunday of the Christian year when we celebrate the reign of Christ, I thought that you should know what I believe.

 

            Some of you may know that I have been involved in creating and editing liturgical texts and services for the Anglican Church of Canada since 1989 – thirty-five years!  One of the principles that guide liturgical creators and editors is this:  Do not end a reading on a question!  When you end a reading on a question, the congregation may be led on a ‘magical mystery tour’ and become distracted from participating more fully in the rest of the service.  But there is another principle:  Any rule without an exception is a bad rule!  So, when I read the Gospel reading for today, I purposely added a verse that the lectionary officially omits.  Why?  Because Pilate’s question is, I think, the most important question in the world today:  What is truth?

 

            I don’t think that it is too difficult to understand why I think that this question is the most important question in the world today.  When millions of people throughout the world vote to elect leaders who are shown to be liars, then truth becomes even more important.  When millions of people read stories on social media that are proven to be false, then truth becomes even more important.  When millions of people confuse religious nationalism with the kingdom of God, then truth becomes even more important.

 

            What is truth?  This is the truth:  That when you meet Jesus of Nazareth, you meet God.  Perhaps we meet Jesus in the members of the community of faith to which we belong.  Perhaps we meet Jesus in the words of the Gospels and in the other writings of the New Testament.  Perhaps we meet Jesus in some stranger who speaks to us or acts for us in a way that makes us realize that we have just met God. However we may have met Jesus, that meeting has brought us here and has placed us on a path towards a life of meaning.  And when we have met Jesus, we have a new standard by which we measure our words and actions as well as the words and actions of every other human being in the world.

 

            What is truth?  This is the truth:  Goodness is stronger than evil.  I know that there are many of us here today who have experienced the reality of evil.  That experience can lead us to doubt whether goodness is actually more powerful than evil.  There are many leaders and opinion-makers who want us to become ensnared in that doubt and to feel that we are powerless to resist evil, but it is in those moments that we must hold tightly to the truth:  goodness is stronger than evil.  This is what I learned when I met Jesus.

 

            What is truth?  This is the truth:  Love is stronger than hate.  Hate is the product of fear.  There are far too many voices in the world today, even here in Canada, who play upon our fears and try to lead us to hate.  The Jesus we meet in the Scriptures teaches us this:  “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. . . . Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4.18-20) So anyone who tries to make me afraid, anyone who tries to make me hate, is not of the truth.  This is what I learned when I met Jesus.

 

            What is truth?  This is the truth:  Light is stronger than darkness.  When I say ‘darkness’, I do not mean the darkness of the night.  I mean the darkness that is caused by purposeful ignorance, by intentionally refusing to listen to and for the truth.  Light is the heart and mind and soul of a human being set free to learn from the wonderful diversity of God’s creation.  Light is a human being set free from the snares of evil and the bonds of hate.  Jesus says to us, “You are the light of the world. . . . (Let) your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5.14, 16) This is what I learned when I met Jesus.

 

            What is truth?  This is the truth:  Life is stronger than death.  For two thousand years the allies of evil, hate and darkness have tried to bury the truth made known to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Sometimes those allies have tried to bury the truth through persecution and violence.  Sometimes they have tried to bury the truth by co-opting us into participating in the structures that oppress and deny the dignity of human beings.  But even in a clear-cut forest, new life will spring up from the stumps of the fallen trees.  An ancient Christian theologian once wrote that ‘the glory of God is a human being fully alive’ and anyone who has seen Jesus has seen such a fully alive human being.  This is what I learned when I met Jesus.

 

            What is truth?  This is the truth:  Jesus is Lord.  I acknowledge the pain and anguish and despair that millions of my sisters and brothers endure every day caused by the evil, hate, darkness and death that run riot throughout our world.  But I have also seen the victory of goodness, love, light and life – sometimes when walls that divide peoples tumble down, but most often in the choices that everyday people make in their neighbourhoods and homes to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.  This is what I learned when I met Jesus.  This is the truth that has set me free.

Lending God Our Treasure: Reflections on 1 Samuel 1.4-20

RCL Proper 33B

17 November 2024

 

Anglican Parish of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         If you were to ask my wife or our children how they know I am feeling stressed and stretched, they would tell you that I disappear into an intense period of reading novels.  I am in just such a time when I am aware of the responsibilities that my role as Priest in charge of this Parish and my roles as the Chair of two Diocesan committees are pushing the limits of my capacity.  Now, there’s nothing for anyone to worry about and I don’t want anyone to think that I am too busy to respond to the needs and concerns of folks here at Epiphany.  I’m just saying that I am aware that I’m approaching but not yet in danger of going too far over my limit.  But I am, when I’m not working, truly engrossed in re-reading a series of novels that I read many years ago.

 

         It’s a series about the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of what we can call the Roman Empire led by an Emperor rather than by the Roman Senate.  In the Mediterranean world of which Rome was a part, there were three qualities that defined how important a person was in the vast scheme of things:  authority, power and dignity.  Authority was bestowed upon a person by some official role that they played in the political life of the community.  Authority could be temporary or life-long, but authority was exercised within the boundaries of law, tradition and custom.  Most of the time, authority was exercised by persuasion.

 

         Power, on the other hand, allowed a person to coerce others to do what the one with power wanted.  A person with authority did have power, but they often found themselves limited in what they could do.  But if you had enough money or a lot of soldiers or both, a powerful person could almost always trump the person with authority.

 

         But beyond authority and power, the most important quality that defined a person was dignity.  Dignity might or might not be connected with power.  Dignity was always connected in some way with authority, whether past of present.  Dignity came from personal integrity – how a person’s words, actions and principles combined to be a worthy example for other people to respect and to imitate.  

 

Being a billionaire certainly gives one power; being elected to high office bestows constitutional authority; but wealth and political office do not necessarily ensure respect, a quality essential to dignity.  One cannot respect one whose character is unworthy of imitation.  Dignity is a treasure to be guarded and used carefully to achieve worthy purposes.

 

         Hannah is a woman with authority.  She is the older wife of a prosperous man.  But her childlessness renders her powerless to exercise that authority within her family.  That powerlessness leaves her open to the ridicule of Peninnah, the younger wife.  Hannah’s childlessness wounds her dignity in a society where childlessness was also attributed to the wife not to the husband.  It does not matter how much attention Elkanah showers upon Hannah; she cannot walk among her peers and expect that her status as the first wife will give her any influence.

 

         With the birth of Samuel Hannah gains more than power over her younger rival; she grows in dignity.  No longer childless, Hannah is the mother of a son, a son whose birth in some ways is miraculous in that it is the result of prayer.  This is no ordinary child; this is a child who is a gift of God.

 

         We might have expected Hannah to have guarded this treasure, this guarantor of her dignity, by keeping him close by her for the rest of her life.  Yet this is not what she does.  Even when she asks God for a child, she promises to dedicate the child to God’s service.  ‘Bestow upon the treasure of a child,’ Hannah prays, ‘and I will lend this child back to you for you to do as you will.’  For Hannah it is a two-fold expression of dignity:  she is no longer a childless woman, and she is a woman who demonstrates profound commitment to the God of Israel.  Her treasure becomes the treasure of the people of Israel who receive a prophet and judge who will lead them into a new chapter of their history.

 

         It is by giving away her treasure that Hannah gains even more dignity, becomes more worthy of respect.  We learn that, after Samuel dedication to the sanctuary at Shiloh, Hannah then bears three more sons and two daughters, treasure upon treasure.  When the time came for Luke the Evangelist to tell the story of Elizabeth and Mary, he will look back on Hannah as the model for these two women.  They will also lend their treasured sons to God, one son paving the way for his cousin.  Both mothers will be become respected examples of faithfulness to God’s purposes.

 

         How we use our time matters to God.  How we use our talents matters to God.  How we use our treasure matters to God.  In our time we tend to define treasure in terms of our financial resources and so we should.  But time and talent are also treasures.  They are treasures we lend to God with the intent that they will enrich the dignity of God’s promises to us and to all creation.  Through our time, our talents and our treasure we join with God in the work of renewal and reconciliation.  We strengthen the ability of this Parish to be a place of help, hope and home in a neighbourhood that needs us and our witness to a living, loving and compassionate God.  We pave the way for our future.

 

         Friends, power is not a treasure we seek.  As the Apostle Paul writes, “For it is the God who said, ‘Light will shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.  But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” (2 Corinthians 4.6-7 NRSVue)  Our authority lies in God’s call for us to  be agents of reconciliation and hope and to be worthy of Christ who has called us his friends.  Our dignity lies in how we use our time, our talents and our treasures to embody that reconciliation, hope and friendship God in Christ offers every human being.

Talents: Lost and Found -- Thoughts on Remembrance Sunday

 

All Souls Propers

10 November 2024

 

Anglican Parish of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

         On my first day as a curate at Christ Episcopal Church in Denver, CO, I was handed a stack of files with weddings that I was now responsible for as a priest in the parish.  In the course of preparing for one of these weddings, I became acquainted with family friends of the bride and the groom.

 

         After some time had passed after the wedding, I received a call from this family.  Their youngest child had just been diagnosed with cancer at the age of sixteen and was being treated at a nearby hospital.  They asked if I would visit Danny and so off I went.

 

         Danny and I became friends over the months of his illness.  He shared with me his works of art.  He was a gifted cartoonist and had a gift for story-telling.

 

         When Danny died, I was deeply affected.  For weeks, perhaps months after his death, I found myself mourning the loss of his talents as well as his death.  Even now, forty years later, I try to imagine what Danny might have accomplished had his life not been cut short by cancer.  If he had lived, Danny would now be in his late fifties.  Would he have become a well-known author of graphic novels?  Might he have become a newspaper cartoonist?  My ‘what if’ questions can multiply five-fold, ten-fold, even as I speak to you this morning.

 

         Remembrance Sunday brings upon us a host of emotions.  We give thanks for our loved ones who have served and survived, even as we grieve our loved ones who served and did not survive.  We pray for peace in the hopes that we might see an end to wars and armed conflicts throughout the world, even as we realize that our hopes for peace seem unlikely to be fulfilled.

 

         But we also can imagine what might have been had so many lives, whether of soldiers or civilians, had not been lost.  I think of a series on CBC Radio some year ago that featured the music of what we might call ‘lost voices’, musicians who were killed on active duty or of diseases or injuries brought on by armed conflict or who died in concentration camps.  What music might they have composed to enrich our lives?  How many students might they have inspired?  But their talents, like Danny’s, were unfulfilled, brought short by the cruel realities of human life.

 

         But the memory of what might have been need not be only an experience of sorrow.  Remembering what might have been can also be empowering for us who gather on this and similar occasions to remember the past.  Our pondering of the loss of the talents of those whose lives were cut short by war or disease can lead us to re-commit ourselves to using our talents more intentionally in the here and now.

 

         Last week I spoke about how the saints lived and live in kairos, a sense of every moment of the present as a moment in which God is present and active in our lives.  This Sunday I invite all of us to think about the talents God has given us and how we might use those talents to further God’s mission and our ministry in this place and time.

 

         In the New Testament there is a special word for such talents – charismata.  A charism is a gift of a talent or an ability which enriches the whole community.  None of us has all the gifts needed to do God’s work, but all of us, working together, bringing our talents, our charismata, to the table, “ . . . can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine”.

 

         Just as talents are lost through death, so can the be lost when they are not used.  And there is no one here today, whether sitting in the pews on-site or sitting at home or elsewhere on Zoom, who does not have God-given talents that God intends to be used.

 

         Paul writes in his letter to the Christians in Rome about the importance of using all the gifts that God has given to the disciples of Jesus.

 

We have many parts in one body, but the parts don’t all have the same function. In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other.  We have different gifts that are consistent with God’s grace that has been given to us.  If your gift is prophecy, you should prophesy in proportion to your faith.  If your gift is service, devote yourself to serving.  If your gift is teaching, devote yourself to teaching.  If your gift is encouragement, devote yourself to encouraging.  The one giving should do so with no strings attached.  The leader should lead with passion.  The one showing mercy should be cheerful.  (Romans 12.4-8 CEB)

 

If Paul had wanted to write more, then he could have gone even further:

 

·      If you’re good at welcoming newcomers, then welcome them.

·      If your good at working behind the scenes, then work behind the scenes.

·      Whatever you’re good at doing, then offer it freely to God’s use whenever and wherever you can.

 

         Danny’s artistic talents did not survive his death, but his talent for friendship changed my life.  He made me a better priest.  So all was not lost.  May it be said of us in the months and years ahead that our talents, our charismata, have not been lost.  May people see and know that we have been, are and will be co-workers with God to prepare the way of Christ in the here and now.  For nothing good is ever lost in God’s loving purpose; it just waits to be revealed and unleashed.