Text: Acts 2 1-21 (the day of Pentecost)
Pentecost Sunday is often called the birthday of the church. It marks the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples just a few days after Jesus has finally left them. Empowered by the Spirit, Peter and the other disciples preach, heal, and convert many people to the Way of the Cross; and from their initial efforts in Jerusalem, the worldwide church is born.
This year, however, we celebrate the church's birthday in the shadow of what might look like its impending death. The 2011 Canadian census figures, released two weeks ago, tell part of the tale. In its survey of religion, the census shows that the fastest growing group in Canada is people with no religion. It now includes 25% of us, up from 12% in 1991. Meanwhile, all mainline churches, including the largest Protestant denomination in Canada, the United Church of Canada, continue to shrink.
Around two million Canadians still claim adherence to the United Church; but only about 200,000 people show up in United Church sanctuaries on any given Sunday. Three quarter of Canadians still claim allegiance to one religion or another, but only about 10% of us attend worship on a regular basis.
Given these facts, what is there for us to celebrate this Pentecost? The United Church struggles with budget shortfalls, cutbacks, and the ageing of the people who keep our congregations running.
40 people from Chinook Presbytery discussed this situation at a workshop in Moose Jaw on May 10 and 11. We began by celebrating the things we love about our local churches. Then each person got a chance to name a lament they had about the state of the church. One woman at my table began to cry as she talked about generations of young people who do not know the Lord. Many of us shared her sadness.
The mood shifted on Saturday morning. We heard a presentation from Meewasin Valley United Church in Saskatoon. Like most churches, Meewasin has declined in numbers and resources over the last decades. So in 2012, they sold their church to a Seventh Day Adventist congregation; and today they worship in a lounge at St. Andrew's College at the University of Saskatchewan with a new sense of energy.
The people from Meewasin shared ideas about progressive theology and social justice. But I focused on their decision to sell their building. I think many congregations could be inspired by their decision to sell their church building while continuing as a distinct pastoral charge.
I suggested to the gathering that the Saskatchewan Conference of the United Church consider a 10-year campaign in which every congregation sells its building. During that period, many of our churches would be forced to sell anyway, which is always a painful experience. Perhaps selling our properties as part of a province-wide campaign might take some of the sting out of this difficult step.
Together, we could then help each other to find new places in which to worship and serve, places such as community centres, seniors homes, drop-ins, living rooms, or ecumenical worship centres. We could share ways to remember and celebrate the sacred events that had occurred in our former sanctuaries. We could learn how to make any space feel like a sacred one in which to gather.
I repeat this idea here not to suggest that our boards move to immediately sell our properties, but to remind us that the problems we face are not unique. They are shared by virtually every other United Church congregation in Canada and by a large percentage of all faith communities in the country.
Nor do I raise the issue of the decline of the church to discourage us on Pentecost, a day when we celebrate the Holy Spirit. I raise it because of the recent census report, the Presbytery workshop in Moose Jaw, and the United Church's three-year Comprehensive Review process. I hope that you will receive the radical suggestions I make today as brainstorming and as a way to stimulate all of our thoughts ahead of our conversation on June 4 with a Comprehensive Review facilitator.
The decline of the church has positive as well as negative effects, I believe. For instance, in the history of the church of the last 2,000 years, the longest period is also the one that troubles me the most: the church of empire. From the early 300s until the 20th Century, the Christian Church was the established state religion of the Roman Empire and its successor European empires.
The link between empire and church allowed Christianity to spread around the world. But it also implicated the church in all the negative features of empire: war, conquest, and oppression of all kinds.
In the last 30 years, the United Church has made great strides in coming to grips with its role in the destruction of First Nations culture in Canada's residential school system, and I am pleased that we have done so. But this process just scratches the surface, I believe, of the crimes committed in the name of our church over more than 1500 years. Thank God that those days are largely over.
This is not to say that empire has disappeared from the earth. Instead, it reflects the fact that today's empires no longer rely on the church as a key prop. Many scholars argue that this change occurred with the end of World War I, almost 100 years ago -- long before most of us were even born.
The war was a disaster for European civilization; and many churches were stripped of their official status as part of the attempt to cleanse Europe of its shame. This occurred at the same time that many of Europe's monarchies were also swept away. When the reign of the czars in Russia and of the kaisers in Germany and Austria came to an end, so did the official status of church in country after country.
After World War I, Canadians didn't immediately see the shift away from church, perhaps because Canada was on the "winning" side of the war. The effects only become evident after 1960; and since then, the power of church has quickly waned.
To see some of the positive effects of growing secularization, we need only look at parts of the world where religion still influences public policy. In sub-Saharan Africa, conservative churches push governments to keep women as second class citizens and to punish homosexuality with death. In countries like Syria and Iraq, civil conflicts often follow the divisions between the Sunni and the Shia wings of Islam, in much the same way that Europe was torn apart by wars between Catholics and Protestants 400 years ago. In Burma, people from the majority Buddhist community often attack minority Muslims with horrible violence. The list could go on.
In Canada today where society is built upon free enquiry and scientific research, many of us resent attempts by conservative Christian or Muslim leaders to oppose science or to legislate morality on the basis of the Bible and the Koran.
Many of us look forward to the calming effect of secularization on volatile regions in Africa and the Middle East and to the continuing marginalization of those who want to legislate morality here in Canada based upon fundamentalism.
But given the irrelevance of church to most young Canadians, what are we to do as a pastoral charge or as a denomination? Even if we were to sell our buildings in order to lessen our financial burden, how can we continue to follow the path of Jesus with our ageing members and shrinking numbers?
Part of the answer, I think, might involve putting our denominational identity behind us. The United Church began when Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches joined forces 88 years ago. But for the last 50 years, we have not had success in uniting with other denominations since we became more liberal than the others. We were the first church in Canada to embrace equality for women and gay people, and the one that was most open to science and to non-church groups who tackle social problems like poverty or pollution.
I wonder if we might now be able to unite with Christians from any number of denominations -- Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic or Alliance -- in our mutual decline. If there is to be any Christian presence in small towns like ours 20 years from now, it can only come from combining our forces, I believe.
Worship might be a problem. I, for one, would feel uncomfortable to worship with conservative Christians who preached hellfire and damnation and second class status for women, gays and lesbians. So in a post-denominational church, we might need to have several worship streams: liberal, conservative, and so on.
But there remains much that I think we could do together: create ecumenical worship spaces, provide outreach to the poor, support community funerals, organize study and meditation groups, and so on.
One thing that might help facilitate working with people from different traditions, I think, would be to dissolve the United Church! In 2025, the United Church will celebrate its centennial. I would be happy if the Comprehensive Review group considered a recommendation to General Council in 2015 that we schedule a huge celebration of our centennial in 2025 -- and then dissolve in favour of something looser and less structured.
This radical decision would gain us a brief burst of media coverage, as well as scorn from both our secular and fundamentalist critics. But since the dissolution of the United Church seems inevitable over the next few decades anyway, the idea would be to get in front of the curve. At the least, I believe that talking about the end of the United Church and the beginning of something new could be useful.
Christianity is built upon death, endings and new beginnings. It was only when Jesus was killed that the dream of a new King of the Jews also died. Jesus' death cleared the way for his followers to better experience the God who is Love in Jesus' resurrection. 40 years later, the burning of Jerusalem and its Temple spurred the early church to move beyond its Palestinian roots into the rest of the Roman empire.
Today, the church faces a rapidly changing world. Like the first Christians, we are being forced to make drastic changes in how we follow Jesus. This fact does not mean that the Holy Spirit no longer touches our hearts and minds as it did Peter and the disciples at Pentecost 2000 years ago. It means that the Spirit might prompt us to try things that are different from our past.
I also believe there is nothing that any of us have to do. One option is to let the future take care of the future. Many here today have poured great time and energy into the mission of Jesus. What such people most deserve, I think, is celebration and thanks for long and faithful service, and perhaps a release from future obligations.
Nor do I believe that the fear expressed in Moose Jaw about today's youth need oppress us. God is much bigger than the church. True, many of today's youth are not learning Bible stories or adopting a life of worship and service in the church. But I trust that despite that, they are in touch with the living God.
The Spirit of Love calls us to work for God in Christ and not for our church. If the Spirit moves us towards something that no longer looks like church, we can follow that impulse with confidence even though we might also feel sadness.
Of course, my ideas of selling our buildings, dissolving the United Church into something post-denominational, and working with Christians from other traditions might not be good ones. But whatever changes come in the next years, we can trust that we will continue to be empowered and inspired by God's Holy Spirit.
No matter where we end up as individuals, as towns, or as a church, we know that our work will be informed and empowered by God's Love. As in the days of the first Pentecost, we trust that the Spirit will always lead us home to God.
Church may change. The Holy Spirit might bypass it completely in the future. But God's Love will always guide us, support us, and save us.
Thanks be to God.
Amen
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
"That all may be one"
Text: John 17 20-26 ("that all may be one")
"That all may be one" -- with these words from the Gospel of John in its heart and on its crest, the United Church of Canada came into being 88 years ago on June 10th, 1925. Because of this fact and because next Sunday is Pentecost, which is a celebration of the founding of the universal church, my sermons today and next week are about the state of the church and efforts to achieve church unity.
I am inspired not only by today's Gospel reading and Pentecost, but also by the Chinook Presbytery meeting, which Carla and I attended in Moose Jaw yesterday and Friday. The meeting included a workshop on "How to be church in our changing context," which I found interesting and useful.
Originally, I had thought I would weave the details of the Moose Jaw discussions into this sermon. But last night, I was too tired to tackle this. So today's sermons is a reworking of one I gave when I was student minister three years ago in Alberta. More about Moose Jaw next time . . .
The Gospel passage from John contains the last words of Jesus to his disciples before his arrest and execution. In this parting message, Jesus urges his followers towards unity. But what kind of unity is meant by the phrase "that all may be one?"
Perhaps Jesus means a kind of mystical union. Listen to his words again: "as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us . . . so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." These convoluted phrases remind me of St. Paul when he writes about the inner Christ.
However, Jesus' phrase "that all may be one" has usually been interpreted the way that the United Church does: as a call for church unity. Jesus' prayer is for all the followers of the Way of the Cross to form One Body.
In the first 300 years after Jesus, such unity was not easy. The church was small and far-flung. It existed in house gatherings all around the Mediterranean. Travel and communication were difficult and slow. There were no printing presses, so Christian sacred writings such as the letters of Paul and the gospel narratives were shared as hand-made copies. In this situation, there was not just one brand of Christianity. There were scores or hundreds of different kinds of Christianities.
All of this changed in the 300's when the Roman Empire exchanged its old pagan cults and adopted Christianity as the official religion. By the year 400, all the many strange and diverse types of churches had been unified into one official brand -- Roman Catholicism. It had a common creed, an agreed-upon list of books for the Bible, and a common way of running each congregation. Any writings, creeds and practices that didn't fit with what the Emperor and his councils decided upon were ruthlessly suppressed by the state.
This top-down approach created Christian unity. But I am sure that this was not the unity for which Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest since it was enforced by violence; and the enforcer was the same Roman Empire that arrested Jesus on the night of his prayer and executed him as a political prisoner the next day.
Still, the church was unified. And when the Roman Empire disintegrated under barbarian attacks in the 400's, the Catholic Church was a key institution that kept Europe somewhat united during the Dark Ages.
Around the year 1000, the church split into a Greek Orthodox wing, centred in what is now Turkey, and a Catholic wing centred in Rome. After that split, uniformity was maintained for another 500 years in two different flavours: a Latin flavour in the Catholic West of Europe and a Greek flavour in the Orthodox East.
All of this changed as European powers began their conquest of the world in the 1500s. The Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther in Germany, John Calvin in France and Switzerland, King Henry VIII in England, and John Knox in Scotland shattered Christian unity. The rage to create new denominations, which continues to this day, began.
Its not that we oppose the Reformation, of course. By the year 1500, the Church in Western Europe had grown tired and corrupt. The reforms introduced in the new denominations of Lutheranism, Anabaptism, Presbyterianism, and Anglicanism, and also within the Roman Catholic church itself in the Counter-Reformation, had many positive results.
Christianity became the world's dominant religion after European colonization of the Americas, Africa and Asia. It also split into scores of different denominations.
The diversity of Christianity in the first decades after Jesus had come naturally. It flowed from smallness, poverty, and the difficulties in travel and communication. Although Christian teaching called us towards unity, the social situation did not make such unity possible.
By the time of Jesus, most of the world had finally been inhabited by humans. There were only a few islands in the Pacific Ocean like Hawaii that had not yet been reached by humans. But at that time, people in the Roman Empire did not know of the existence of the Americas; people in the Americas did not know of the existence of Africa; and people in sub-Saharan Africa did not know of the existence of Asia. Christians might wish for human unity under God, but the human race was still developing in isolated pockets on different continents.
European conquest after 1500 changed all this. European powers united all of humanity through war and conquest. Since then, we have lived in a world with one economy. This is the context in which we pray for church unity today.
By the end of the 19th Century, the pendulum among Protestants was swinging back towards unity. And the strongest expression of this movement was right here in Canada. When the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches joined to form the United Church of Canada in 1925 it was the first, the most hopeful and the most influential church union of its day.
Not that there aren't difficulties in church unity. Different churches have different traditions, different ideas on key issues, and different missions. United Church history of the past 88 years shows us many of the problems.
Despite the difficulties, modern attempts at church unity show greater promise than the original unity created by the Roman Empire, I think, because they are about unity from below and not from above.
19th Century "union churches" in Canada's West provide an example. In many small farming communities in what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta, settlers came from different denominations. But they didn't always have the resources or the desire to create more than one church. So a "union church" phenomenon grew up here.
These union churches in the West proved in practice that Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican or Baptist Christians could successfully worship and work together. This practical experience of small union churches in the West encouraged the more established Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist churches in Eastern Canada to move from talking about unity to actually achieving it.
Today our world needs greater unity to tackle economic, environmental, and security problems. But there are legitimate fears about trying to create unity from above based upon the history of attempts to control the whole world through military force as with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Perhaps it is those of us who modestly try to follow Jesus' path of faith, hope and love in churches big and small that offer a better model. As members of the Body of Christ we worship and work together despite many differences. God's Spirit grants us the Grace to know God's love for us. On this basis we are able to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Of course, the church in Canada faces big problems today. As last week's Canadian census results showed, all churches continue to shrink in size. The number of Canadians with no religious affiliation continues to grow. Young people are increasingly unlikely to seek spiritual fulfilment in a church. These realities formed the backdrop to our discussions in Moose Jaw on Friday and Saturday.
Nevertheless, I see spiritual possibilities in the church's struggles. As with the union churches in the West 100 years ago, perhaps we can find new life for worshipping and working together in small towns and so also help people in larger centres to also find a new path towards the unity for which Jesus prayed.
Perhaps it is in Spirit-led churches that a unity that is truly diverse, democratic, and post-denominational can best be imagined. I will explore these ideas further on Pentecost next Sunday . . .
On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed that the love with which God the Father loved him may be in us and that he be in us as well.
With God's grace, may we continue to know and experience this deep reality of union with Christ and with God's Love and so be inspired to seek a human unity that respects diversity and seeks peace with justice.
Thanks be to God.
Amen
"That all may be one" -- with these words from the Gospel of John in its heart and on its crest, the United Church of Canada came into being 88 years ago on June 10th, 1925. Because of this fact and because next Sunday is Pentecost, which is a celebration of the founding of the universal church, my sermons today and next week are about the state of the church and efforts to achieve church unity.
I am inspired not only by today's Gospel reading and Pentecost, but also by the Chinook Presbytery meeting, which Carla and I attended in Moose Jaw yesterday and Friday. The meeting included a workshop on "How to be church in our changing context," which I found interesting and useful.
Originally, I had thought I would weave the details of the Moose Jaw discussions into this sermon. But last night, I was too tired to tackle this. So today's sermons is a reworking of one I gave when I was student minister three years ago in Alberta. More about Moose Jaw next time . . .
The Gospel passage from John contains the last words of Jesus to his disciples before his arrest and execution. In this parting message, Jesus urges his followers towards unity. But what kind of unity is meant by the phrase "that all may be one?"
Perhaps Jesus means a kind of mystical union. Listen to his words again: "as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us . . . so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." These convoluted phrases remind me of St. Paul when he writes about the inner Christ.
However, Jesus' phrase "that all may be one" has usually been interpreted the way that the United Church does: as a call for church unity. Jesus' prayer is for all the followers of the Way of the Cross to form One Body.
In the first 300 years after Jesus, such unity was not easy. The church was small and far-flung. It existed in house gatherings all around the Mediterranean. Travel and communication were difficult and slow. There were no printing presses, so Christian sacred writings such as the letters of Paul and the gospel narratives were shared as hand-made copies. In this situation, there was not just one brand of Christianity. There were scores or hundreds of different kinds of Christianities.
All of this changed in the 300's when the Roman Empire exchanged its old pagan cults and adopted Christianity as the official religion. By the year 400, all the many strange and diverse types of churches had been unified into one official brand -- Roman Catholicism. It had a common creed, an agreed-upon list of books for the Bible, and a common way of running each congregation. Any writings, creeds and practices that didn't fit with what the Emperor and his councils decided upon were ruthlessly suppressed by the state.
This top-down approach created Christian unity. But I am sure that this was not the unity for which Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest since it was enforced by violence; and the enforcer was the same Roman Empire that arrested Jesus on the night of his prayer and executed him as a political prisoner the next day.
Still, the church was unified. And when the Roman Empire disintegrated under barbarian attacks in the 400's, the Catholic Church was a key institution that kept Europe somewhat united during the Dark Ages.
Around the year 1000, the church split into a Greek Orthodox wing, centred in what is now Turkey, and a Catholic wing centred in Rome. After that split, uniformity was maintained for another 500 years in two different flavours: a Latin flavour in the Catholic West of Europe and a Greek flavour in the Orthodox East.
All of this changed as European powers began their conquest of the world in the 1500s. The Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther in Germany, John Calvin in France and Switzerland, King Henry VIII in England, and John Knox in Scotland shattered Christian unity. The rage to create new denominations, which continues to this day, began.
Its not that we oppose the Reformation, of course. By the year 1500, the Church in Western Europe had grown tired and corrupt. The reforms introduced in the new denominations of Lutheranism, Anabaptism, Presbyterianism, and Anglicanism, and also within the Roman Catholic church itself in the Counter-Reformation, had many positive results.
Christianity became the world's dominant religion after European colonization of the Americas, Africa and Asia. It also split into scores of different denominations.
The diversity of Christianity in the first decades after Jesus had come naturally. It flowed from smallness, poverty, and the difficulties in travel and communication. Although Christian teaching called us towards unity, the social situation did not make such unity possible.
By the time of Jesus, most of the world had finally been inhabited by humans. There were only a few islands in the Pacific Ocean like Hawaii that had not yet been reached by humans. But at that time, people in the Roman Empire did not know of the existence of the Americas; people in the Americas did not know of the existence of Africa; and people in sub-Saharan Africa did not know of the existence of Asia. Christians might wish for human unity under God, but the human race was still developing in isolated pockets on different continents.
European conquest after 1500 changed all this. European powers united all of humanity through war and conquest. Since then, we have lived in a world with one economy. This is the context in which we pray for church unity today.
By the end of the 19th Century, the pendulum among Protestants was swinging back towards unity. And the strongest expression of this movement was right here in Canada. When the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches joined to form the United Church of Canada in 1925 it was the first, the most hopeful and the most influential church union of its day.
Not that there aren't difficulties in church unity. Different churches have different traditions, different ideas on key issues, and different missions. United Church history of the past 88 years shows us many of the problems.
Despite the difficulties, modern attempts at church unity show greater promise than the original unity created by the Roman Empire, I think, because they are about unity from below and not from above.
19th Century "union churches" in Canada's West provide an example. In many small farming communities in what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta, settlers came from different denominations. But they didn't always have the resources or the desire to create more than one church. So a "union church" phenomenon grew up here.
These union churches in the West proved in practice that Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican or Baptist Christians could successfully worship and work together. This practical experience of small union churches in the West encouraged the more established Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist churches in Eastern Canada to move from talking about unity to actually achieving it.
Today our world needs greater unity to tackle economic, environmental, and security problems. But there are legitimate fears about trying to create unity from above based upon the history of attempts to control the whole world through military force as with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Perhaps it is those of us who modestly try to follow Jesus' path of faith, hope and love in churches big and small that offer a better model. As members of the Body of Christ we worship and work together despite many differences. God's Spirit grants us the Grace to know God's love for us. On this basis we are able to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Of course, the church in Canada faces big problems today. As last week's Canadian census results showed, all churches continue to shrink in size. The number of Canadians with no religious affiliation continues to grow. Young people are increasingly unlikely to seek spiritual fulfilment in a church. These realities formed the backdrop to our discussions in Moose Jaw on Friday and Saturday.
Nevertheless, I see spiritual possibilities in the church's struggles. As with the union churches in the West 100 years ago, perhaps we can find new life for worshipping and working together in small towns and so also help people in larger centres to also find a new path towards the unity for which Jesus prayed.
Perhaps it is in Spirit-led churches that a unity that is truly diverse, democratic, and post-denominational can best be imagined. I will explore these ideas further on Pentecost next Sunday . . .
On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed that the love with which God the Father loved him may be in us and that he be in us as well.
With God's grace, may we continue to know and experience this deep reality of union with Christ and with God's Love and so be inspired to seek a human unity that respects diversity and seeks peace with justice.
Thanks be to God.
Amen
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Rituals for the seasons of our lives
Text: John 14 23-29 (the Holy Spirit will teach)
How do we mark key passages in our lives -- events such as birth, death, and the transition from youth to adulthood? I ask this question today because of the baptism this morning of Hudson Trethewey in Coronach, as well as the funeral service for Beatrice Skundberg in Big Beaver last Friday, the funeral for Kae Thompson in Coronach this Tuesday, and the graduation ceremony of the Grade 12 class last night in Coronach.
There are many reasons why I am glad that Megan and Robert brought Hudson to be baptized today. One of them is the fact that more and more people no longer turn to church for rites of passage. Today, many people rely on secular rituals, or forgo rites of passage altogether.
I read a column on this trend in the January issue of the United Church Observer magazine by Toronto journalist Larry Krotz. Here is how it begins:
"Last spring in Edmonton, I attended a graduation for my grandson. It was exactly as you’d expect -- excited anticipation as families and friends scrambled with cameras and bouquets of flowers for the graduates who sported mortarboard hats and who filled the first rows of the theatre. In the background, school staff with corsages pinned to their best outfits, prepared to take students and their guests through the highlights of their time in school before handing out the coveted diplomas.
Sitting back for this spectacle, I realized that I now like rites of passage, which wasn’t always the case. I belong to the generation that skipped our college graduations and wrote our own wedding vows -- that is, if we got married at all. When I was young, the more time-honoured the convention, the more I wanted to flout it. But now that I am older, I have changed my tune . . . "
He continues, "for many Canadians, there’s no rite of passage quite like a graduation. It takes the individual on to the next stage of a prescribed journey. It signals to a family that everything is normal; their child is keeping pace.
Here I should point out that the graduation we attended in Edmonton was graduation from kindergarten. It was the first rite-of-passage ceremony my grandson Timothy had experienced since neither he nor his brother had been baptized as infants.
The church used to have the corner on life ceremonies. The very terms 'rite' and 'ritual' are in fact church definitions. For Protestants, baptism and confirmation stood for many generations as the main markers in early life. However, as everyone knows, people are not turning to churches for the traditional rituals as much as was once the case.
United Church numbers, for example, tell us that baptisms dropped from 66,000 in 1960 to 10,000 by 2009. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean our need for rites and rituals has disappeared . . . [But] what the church once gave us -- and still gives to many -- is often now found elsewhere in secular society."
Larry goes on, but I think you get the point.
Grad last night in Coronach is an example of the trend. Nothing has impressed me more about Borderlands since I moved here almost two years ago than high school graduation. I am blown away by how big an event it is.
As a rite of passage, Grade 12 graduation strikes me as combination wedding, debutante ball, and perhaps even funeral. I worry for the grads since the stress must get quite high. I also worry that the grads might get the mistaken idea that Grade 12 is the high point of life.
On the other hand, I am pleased at the spotlight grad puts on our young people and at the exhilaration and joy they express there.
Personally, I am OK that many rituals now occur outside the church. The important thing for me is that the rituals actually work; that they help us move forward; that they satisfy the spiritual hunger we have in moments of change; and that they connect us to God's Spirit.
And as much as I like church worship and rituals like baptism and communion, I know that the Holy Spirit is not contained by the church. The Holy Spirit -- which Jesus promises to his disciples in today's Gospel reading -- moves where it will.
Sports provides an example. Last Sunday, I saw a report on the PBS TV show "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly." It was about a new book called "Baseball as a Road to God." The author, John Sexton, argues that baseball is quite spiritual. The ballpark can be seen as a sacred place of community. The game itself can become a sacred meditation on time, blessings, curses, and miracles.
Sexton argues that God is something we experience more than we understand. Religion can become bogged down in dogma and ideas. But what we often want more than religious understanding are experiences of community, of shared moments of beauty, and of the search for something greater than ourselves.
To translate Sexton's book into a Saskatchewan context we need only shift the focus to football and the Roughriders. But this is not to say that sports always satisfies our spiritual needs.
Like a grad ceremony that contains more stress than joy, a ball game can become a failed attempt to experience God's Holy Spirit. But then the same could be said about a Sunday worship service, a wedding, or a funeral. Ministers and those who gather on Sunday or for a funeral are only human, after all. We may come looking for God, or consolation, or a moment of authentic community, but we may not find them.
I hope that many of us feel a connection to God in our worship services, but I can't be sure. Being up here in the pulpit may distort my view. Nevertheless, I believe we can sense when the presence of God's Spirit is felt.
For instance, I enjoyed last night's grad in Coronach more than the one in 2012. Perhaps it was the tears shed by Belinda Spagrud at the end of her keynote address. The 17 grads had been in the same class with each other for 13 years, and for three consecutive years Belinda had been their teacher. The bond felt by children who study and play together for that length of time must be very strong, and I felt some of that bond last night.
I hope that at key moments of our times in worship we also feel the bond with each other and with God.
The changing role of church and the rise of secular rituals provide some of the background for the conversations we will hold in church this spring. At the Presbytery workshop in Moose Jaw this Friday and Saturday and in our meeting with a facilitator trained by the United Church's Comprehensive Review group on June 4, we will express our feelings and ideas as to how our congregations are responding to this moment. I am excited to discover what we will say at these meetings and what guidance we might find.
A rite of passage in which church continues to play a prominent role is when we face the death of a loved one. Gatherings at funerals continue to be large, and church-led worship is often central. That being said, I am also concerned that more and more people are foregoing funerals. I believe they can be a crucial part of the mourning process for both families and the wider community.
On the other hand, funerals are stressful and difficult. And we have all probably attended funerals that contained elements we disliked or that didn't seem to quite "work." Still, we can only try our best. We rely on God's Spirit to do the rest.
The same is true with all aspects of life. Each breath is a chance for us to remember our connection to God's earth. Each loving moment with a family member is a chance to encounter a divine spark within ourselves and them. We don't always find God in each moment, of course. But then another moment appears, and another, and another . . .
In a few minutes, we will celebrate again the holy sacrament of communion. Perhaps this time when we take the loaf and cup, we may not be reminded that Jesus lives in us. But we may.
We celebrate communion for the same reasons that we bring our children to be baptized, or that we celebrate their graduations, or that we gather to mourn and celebrate the life of a loved one who has died. We do it because we seek to touch God's Spirit every chance we get.
And often -- just as Jesus promised -- God's Holy Spirit comes to us: in a celebration of the birth of a new baby; in a sports stadium; in a loving encounter with a spouse; in a moment of wrenching grief; or at the Lord's Table. God's Spirit can felt during any moment in this wide, wild earth and in this pain- and joy-filled life.
And so we say again, thanks be to God.
Amen.
How do we mark key passages in our lives -- events such as birth, death, and the transition from youth to adulthood? I ask this question today because of the baptism this morning of Hudson Trethewey in Coronach, as well as the funeral service for Beatrice Skundberg in Big Beaver last Friday, the funeral for Kae Thompson in Coronach this Tuesday, and the graduation ceremony of the Grade 12 class last night in Coronach.
There are many reasons why I am glad that Megan and Robert brought Hudson to be baptized today. One of them is the fact that more and more people no longer turn to church for rites of passage. Today, many people rely on secular rituals, or forgo rites of passage altogether.
I read a column on this trend in the January issue of the United Church Observer magazine by Toronto journalist Larry Krotz. Here is how it begins:
"Last spring in Edmonton, I attended a graduation for my grandson. It was exactly as you’d expect -- excited anticipation as families and friends scrambled with cameras and bouquets of flowers for the graduates who sported mortarboard hats and who filled the first rows of the theatre. In the background, school staff with corsages pinned to their best outfits, prepared to take students and their guests through the highlights of their time in school before handing out the coveted diplomas.
Sitting back for this spectacle, I realized that I now like rites of passage, which wasn’t always the case. I belong to the generation that skipped our college graduations and wrote our own wedding vows -- that is, if we got married at all. When I was young, the more time-honoured the convention, the more I wanted to flout it. But now that I am older, I have changed my tune . . . "
He continues, "for many Canadians, there’s no rite of passage quite like a graduation. It takes the individual on to the next stage of a prescribed journey. It signals to a family that everything is normal; their child is keeping pace.
Here I should point out that the graduation we attended in Edmonton was graduation from kindergarten. It was the first rite-of-passage ceremony my grandson Timothy had experienced since neither he nor his brother had been baptized as infants.
The church used to have the corner on life ceremonies. The very terms 'rite' and 'ritual' are in fact church definitions. For Protestants, baptism and confirmation stood for many generations as the main markers in early life. However, as everyone knows, people are not turning to churches for the traditional rituals as much as was once the case.
United Church numbers, for example, tell us that baptisms dropped from 66,000 in 1960 to 10,000 by 2009. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean our need for rites and rituals has disappeared . . . [But] what the church once gave us -- and still gives to many -- is often now found elsewhere in secular society."
Larry goes on, but I think you get the point.
Grad last night in Coronach is an example of the trend. Nothing has impressed me more about Borderlands since I moved here almost two years ago than high school graduation. I am blown away by how big an event it is.
As a rite of passage, Grade 12 graduation strikes me as combination wedding, debutante ball, and perhaps even funeral. I worry for the grads since the stress must get quite high. I also worry that the grads might get the mistaken idea that Grade 12 is the high point of life.
On the other hand, I am pleased at the spotlight grad puts on our young people and at the exhilaration and joy they express there.
Personally, I am OK that many rituals now occur outside the church. The important thing for me is that the rituals actually work; that they help us move forward; that they satisfy the spiritual hunger we have in moments of change; and that they connect us to God's Spirit.
And as much as I like church worship and rituals like baptism and communion, I know that the Holy Spirit is not contained by the church. The Holy Spirit -- which Jesus promises to his disciples in today's Gospel reading -- moves where it will.
Sports provides an example. Last Sunday, I saw a report on the PBS TV show "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly." It was about a new book called "Baseball as a Road to God." The author, John Sexton, argues that baseball is quite spiritual. The ballpark can be seen as a sacred place of community. The game itself can become a sacred meditation on time, blessings, curses, and miracles.
Sexton argues that God is something we experience more than we understand. Religion can become bogged down in dogma and ideas. But what we often want more than religious understanding are experiences of community, of shared moments of beauty, and of the search for something greater than ourselves.
To translate Sexton's book into a Saskatchewan context we need only shift the focus to football and the Roughriders. But this is not to say that sports always satisfies our spiritual needs.
Like a grad ceremony that contains more stress than joy, a ball game can become a failed attempt to experience God's Holy Spirit. But then the same could be said about a Sunday worship service, a wedding, or a funeral. Ministers and those who gather on Sunday or for a funeral are only human, after all. We may come looking for God, or consolation, or a moment of authentic community, but we may not find them.
I hope that many of us feel a connection to God in our worship services, but I can't be sure. Being up here in the pulpit may distort my view. Nevertheless, I believe we can sense when the presence of God's Spirit is felt.
For instance, I enjoyed last night's grad in Coronach more than the one in 2012. Perhaps it was the tears shed by Belinda Spagrud at the end of her keynote address. The 17 grads had been in the same class with each other for 13 years, and for three consecutive years Belinda had been their teacher. The bond felt by children who study and play together for that length of time must be very strong, and I felt some of that bond last night.
I hope that at key moments of our times in worship we also feel the bond with each other and with God.
The changing role of church and the rise of secular rituals provide some of the background for the conversations we will hold in church this spring. At the Presbytery workshop in Moose Jaw this Friday and Saturday and in our meeting with a facilitator trained by the United Church's Comprehensive Review group on June 4, we will express our feelings and ideas as to how our congregations are responding to this moment. I am excited to discover what we will say at these meetings and what guidance we might find.
A rite of passage in which church continues to play a prominent role is when we face the death of a loved one. Gatherings at funerals continue to be large, and church-led worship is often central. That being said, I am also concerned that more and more people are foregoing funerals. I believe they can be a crucial part of the mourning process for both families and the wider community.
On the other hand, funerals are stressful and difficult. And we have all probably attended funerals that contained elements we disliked or that didn't seem to quite "work." Still, we can only try our best. We rely on God's Spirit to do the rest.
The same is true with all aspects of life. Each breath is a chance for us to remember our connection to God's earth. Each loving moment with a family member is a chance to encounter a divine spark within ourselves and them. We don't always find God in each moment, of course. But then another moment appears, and another, and another . . .
In a few minutes, we will celebrate again the holy sacrament of communion. Perhaps this time when we take the loaf and cup, we may not be reminded that Jesus lives in us. But we may.
We celebrate communion for the same reasons that we bring our children to be baptized, or that we celebrate their graduations, or that we gather to mourn and celebrate the life of a loved one who has died. We do it because we seek to touch God's Spirit every chance we get.
And often -- just as Jesus promised -- God's Holy Spirit comes to us: in a celebration of the birth of a new baby; in a sports stadium; in a loving encounter with a spouse; in a moment of wrenching grief; or at the Lord's Table. God's Spirit can felt during any moment in this wide, wild earth and in this pain- and joy-filled life.
And so we say again, thanks be to God.
Amen.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
The newness of love
Texts: Acts 11 1-18 (Peter's vision); John 13 31-35 (a new commandment)
"They will know we are Christians by our love." Do you remember that song from the 60s? It goes like this. "We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And we pray that all unity will one be restored. And they'll know we are Christians, by our love, by our love, and they'll know we are Christians by our love."
This song was inspired by today's Gospel reading. In it, Jesus tells us that his disciples are known not by what we believe; nor by how we worship; but by how we love. We show that we are children of God by how we take care of one another; how we listen to one another; and how we help one another.
Jesus says: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples."
Isn't that wonderful?
But have you ever wondered why Jesus feels the need to command us to love? As a Jewish rabbi, he stands on 1,000 years of sacred law, the most famous section of which is the 10 Commandments. Shouldn't the 10 commandments be enough?
Well, truth be told, the 10 Commandments are not about love. They command us to worship the God of Israel above other gods, to not create idols, to keep the sabbath holy, to honour one's parents, to not murder, to not steal, to be honest, and to not desire another's property. But there is nothing in them about loving one another.
To the extent that the books of the Hebrew Bible -- what Christians call the Old Testament -- focus on love at all, it is usually on our obligation to love God and not our obligations to love one another.
Of course, this is not always the case. Leviticus contains the famous commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves, which Jesus emphasizes in his teachings.
But I believe that Jesus has good reason to call his commandment that we love one another new. With Jesus, the focus is no longer on the tribe or nation. His focus is on all human beings.
By the time of Jesus, Israel's context has changed. The Jews have been a conquered people for 600 years, and their current ruler, Rome, will soon destroy Jerusalem. In the past, the Jewish nation had been their most sacred value. But with no hope for national independence, Jesus points to a more universal value -- love for each other and for all humans regardless of tribe or nation.
Religion, like everything else, changes over time. The moment when Jesus gives his disciples his new commandment marks one of those changes.
Our first reading from Acts, focuses on a similar change. Peter tells the first followers of Jesus of a vision in which God shows him that non-Jews can be part of the church. This vision also shows Peter that baptized Gentiles do not have to follow Jewish laws about kosher eating and other cultural commandments.
Both our readings point towards something new. They orient the church outward from its first members, all of whom were Jewish, to people everywhere. I am sure that this change was painful for many early Christians. But they rose to that challenge, and they changed the world.
Change, of course, did not stop with the early church. It has been constant during all the 2,000 years since.
Yesterday, I learned more about the history of change in the churches in our area. I had presided at a brief graveside service for Ron Schmidt, formerly of Coronach, who had died in Swift Current in February. The burial was at St. John's cemetery west of Coronach. It occurred amid the warm wind, the running water, the beauty of the countryside . . . and the mud -- which Merv Colibaba, Ron's cousin, worked hard to clear.
As we drove back to Ron's sister, Elvina Winter's house for lunch, another of Ron's cousins, Garth from Lethbridge, told me the history of the Lutheran churches in Coronach. The German Lutheran church had been built out in the country by the cemetery during the early years of homesteading. At that time, as many people lived in the countryside as lived in town.
Later, as farms grew in size and people moved from the country to the town, the church building was moved to Coronach.
But the changes didn't end there. Over time, the distinctions between Germans and Norwegians, which must have loomed large when people first settled the land 100 years ago, lessened. Everyone learned English. They went to school together. They became neighbours and friends. So at a certain point, the German and Norwegian Lutheran congregations decided to merge and form today's Faith Lutheran charge in Coronach.
As in any such merger, it came with its share of difficulties and pain. But out of it, the ministry of Lutherans in Coronach has continued to this day.
Change confronts us in Borderlands charge as well. Last Wednesday evening, our Central Board responded positively to a request from the United Church's General Council to participate in the conversations of the church's Comprehensive Review process.
This three-year process is led by a group of seven church leaders from across Canada. They will write make recommendations to the next General Council in 2015 as to how the church can continue our mission with fewer people and resources. The Comprehensive Review is looking for new life for the church in a changed context just as the first Christians looked for new life after Jesus' death and resurrection.
Later in the spring, all of us will be invited to spend about 90 minutes in a conversation facilitated by someone trained for this task. We will be asked to share feelings, thoughts and experiences that arise out of the worship and mission of our congregations.
Not only will this help the Review team, it will also help us as a charge discern what we want to do next in Borderlands. I am excited about the prospect, and I hope that many of us will be able to part of that event. Stay tuned for more details!
Something similar will take place at the workshop planned for next meeting of Chinook Presbytery in Moose Jaw on May 10 and 11. Once again, I hope many of us will be able to come to that workshop to discuss how to be church in a new context.
Change can often feel painful. But it is constant. Both as individuals and as churches, we are constantly challenged to find God's new life in a new situation. The United Church of Canada and Borderlands are facing such a challenge today, and I am confident God's Spirit is with us as we face those challenges.
Culture changes, churches change with them, but God's Love remains. Jesus gives us the commandment to love one another because love is our source, our calling and our sure destiny.
And so as Christians we try to love one another. We try to love our neighbours as ourselves. And we even try to love our so-called enemies.
We all know the difference that love makes. We depend on each other; we yearn for caring contact. And our greatest joy comes from giving love to our families, friends, and neighbours.
In towns like ours, we know that our neighbours are God's children regardless of whether they go to church. We know it when they listen to us; when they help us; and when they love us. We know they are God's children by their love.
At one time, the tribe or nation was the most sacred value of our society. Jesus helps us see something new. He reminds us that God is not a God of one tribe, nation or church. God is Love, and Love is for everyone.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
"They will know we are Christians by our love." Do you remember that song from the 60s? It goes like this. "We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And we pray that all unity will one be restored. And they'll know we are Christians, by our love, by our love, and they'll know we are Christians by our love."
This song was inspired by today's Gospel reading. In it, Jesus tells us that his disciples are known not by what we believe; nor by how we worship; but by how we love. We show that we are children of God by how we take care of one another; how we listen to one another; and how we help one another.
Jesus says: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples."
Isn't that wonderful?
But have you ever wondered why Jesus feels the need to command us to love? As a Jewish rabbi, he stands on 1,000 years of sacred law, the most famous section of which is the 10 Commandments. Shouldn't the 10 commandments be enough?
Well, truth be told, the 10 Commandments are not about love. They command us to worship the God of Israel above other gods, to not create idols, to keep the sabbath holy, to honour one's parents, to not murder, to not steal, to be honest, and to not desire another's property. But there is nothing in them about loving one another.
To the extent that the books of the Hebrew Bible -- what Christians call the Old Testament -- focus on love at all, it is usually on our obligation to love God and not our obligations to love one another.
Of course, this is not always the case. Leviticus contains the famous commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves, which Jesus emphasizes in his teachings.
But I believe that Jesus has good reason to call his commandment that we love one another new. With Jesus, the focus is no longer on the tribe or nation. His focus is on all human beings.
By the time of Jesus, Israel's context has changed. The Jews have been a conquered people for 600 years, and their current ruler, Rome, will soon destroy Jerusalem. In the past, the Jewish nation had been their most sacred value. But with no hope for national independence, Jesus points to a more universal value -- love for each other and for all humans regardless of tribe or nation.
Religion, like everything else, changes over time. The moment when Jesus gives his disciples his new commandment marks one of those changes.
Our first reading from Acts, focuses on a similar change. Peter tells the first followers of Jesus of a vision in which God shows him that non-Jews can be part of the church. This vision also shows Peter that baptized Gentiles do not have to follow Jewish laws about kosher eating and other cultural commandments.
Both our readings point towards something new. They orient the church outward from its first members, all of whom were Jewish, to people everywhere. I am sure that this change was painful for many early Christians. But they rose to that challenge, and they changed the world.
Change, of course, did not stop with the early church. It has been constant during all the 2,000 years since.
Yesterday, I learned more about the history of change in the churches in our area. I had presided at a brief graveside service for Ron Schmidt, formerly of Coronach, who had died in Swift Current in February. The burial was at St. John's cemetery west of Coronach. It occurred amid the warm wind, the running water, the beauty of the countryside . . . and the mud -- which Merv Colibaba, Ron's cousin, worked hard to clear.
As we drove back to Ron's sister, Elvina Winter's house for lunch, another of Ron's cousins, Garth from Lethbridge, told me the history of the Lutheran churches in Coronach. The German Lutheran church had been built out in the country by the cemetery during the early years of homesteading. At that time, as many people lived in the countryside as lived in town.
Later, as farms grew in size and people moved from the country to the town, the church building was moved to Coronach.
But the changes didn't end there. Over time, the distinctions between Germans and Norwegians, which must have loomed large when people first settled the land 100 years ago, lessened. Everyone learned English. They went to school together. They became neighbours and friends. So at a certain point, the German and Norwegian Lutheran congregations decided to merge and form today's Faith Lutheran charge in Coronach.
As in any such merger, it came with its share of difficulties and pain. But out of it, the ministry of Lutherans in Coronach has continued to this day.
Change confronts us in Borderlands charge as well. Last Wednesday evening, our Central Board responded positively to a request from the United Church's General Council to participate in the conversations of the church's Comprehensive Review process.
This three-year process is led by a group of seven church leaders from across Canada. They will write make recommendations to the next General Council in 2015 as to how the church can continue our mission with fewer people and resources. The Comprehensive Review is looking for new life for the church in a changed context just as the first Christians looked for new life after Jesus' death and resurrection.
Later in the spring, all of us will be invited to spend about 90 minutes in a conversation facilitated by someone trained for this task. We will be asked to share feelings, thoughts and experiences that arise out of the worship and mission of our congregations.
Not only will this help the Review team, it will also help us as a charge discern what we want to do next in Borderlands. I am excited about the prospect, and I hope that many of us will be able to part of that event. Stay tuned for more details!
Something similar will take place at the workshop planned for next meeting of Chinook Presbytery in Moose Jaw on May 10 and 11. Once again, I hope many of us will be able to come to that workshop to discuss how to be church in a new context.
Change can often feel painful. But it is constant. Both as individuals and as churches, we are constantly challenged to find God's new life in a new situation. The United Church of Canada and Borderlands are facing such a challenge today, and I am confident God's Spirit is with us as we face those challenges.
Culture changes, churches change with them, but God's Love remains. Jesus gives us the commandment to love one another because love is our source, our calling and our sure destiny.
And so as Christians we try to love one another. We try to love our neighbours as ourselves. And we even try to love our so-called enemies.
We all know the difference that love makes. We depend on each other; we yearn for caring contact. And our greatest joy comes from giving love to our families, friends, and neighbours.
In towns like ours, we know that our neighbours are God's children regardless of whether they go to church. We know it when they listen to us; when they help us; and when they love us. We know they are God's children by their love.
At one time, the tribe or nation was the most sacred value of our society. Jesus helps us see something new. He reminds us that God is not a God of one tribe, nation or church. God is Love, and Love is for everyone.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
"Fear no evil" in a locked-down world
Text: Psalm 23 (The Lord is my shepherd)
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." So writes the author of the 23rd Psalm. Today, I examine this famous statement in the light of Monday's terrorist bombing in Boston.
It is easy to make a list of things we fear: disease, natural disasters, war. But nothing seems to get the media's attention and governmental response quicker than politically-motivated terrorism. Acts of terror are designed to cause death and injury and spread fear; and the ability of terrorism to spread fear was dramatically illustrated again this past week.
Two young Russian-American brothers set off bombs at the Boston Marathon this past Monday. The blasts killed three people and injured more than 170 others. The brothers had lived in the United States for 10 years and the youngest had recently become a U.S. citizen. They had been born in or around Chechnya, which is a wretched part of Russia in which a failed independence struggle over the last 20 years has led to the deaths of 100,000 people, an Islamist terrorist insurgency, and human rights abuses by the Russian army.
So it seems probable that national and religious conflict in the former Soviet Union provides part of the backdrop for this deadly act of terror.
Some like Prime Minister Stephen Harper urge us not to look for the causes of terror attacks like the one on Monday. On Wednesday he said, "When you see this type of violent act [as in Boston], you do not sit around trying to rationalize it, make excuses for it, or figure out its root causes. You condemn it categorically, and to the extent you can deal with the perpetrators, you deal with them as harshly as possible."
His remarks were aimed at the new leader of Canada's federal Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau. On Monday, just a few hours after the bombings, Trudeau responded to a reporter's question about the bombing by saying, "we have to look at the root causes. Now, we don’t [yet] know if it was terrorism or a single crazy [person] or a domestic issue or a foreign issue. But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions come from?"
My instincts pull me in both of these directions. While I was amazed by the size and scope of the police action that led to the apprehension of the two suspects -- one who is dead and one who is recovering from serious injuries -- I am relieved that the suspects are no longer at large.
On the other hand, I want to understand why young people -- like the two brothers in Boston, or the four high school friends in London Ontario who moved to North Africa a few years ago and joined Al-Qaeda -- are drawn to violence. To try and approach this question, I look both at Scripture and at some difficult realities.
The 23rd Psalm does not ignore the things in life of which we are afraid. It talks about the valley of the shadow of death and mentions our enemies.
In the face of both enemies and death, the psalm paints an appealing and reassuring picture of life lived in the presence of God. But given all that we have to fear, is this a realistic picture? Do "goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives" even in the face of disease, war, and terrorism?
And if we have nothing to fear, then how do we explain the huge response to the bombing in Boston on Monday? I was especially shocked when I heard on Friday morning that the whole city had been ordered into a so-called lock-down in order to aid the search for the remaining 19-year old suspect and to prevent him from hurting anyone else.
In the end, the lock-down seems to have slowed the capture of the teenager. It was only when the governor of Massachusetts told residents at 6 pm on Friday evening that they could unlock their doors and leave their homes that a homeowner in suburban Boston went outside and noticed a trail of blood that led to a boat in his backyard. He lifted up a tarp, saw the bleeding figure of the suspect inside, and phoned the police. Two hours later, the boy surrendered to the FBI.
The events of Monday were horrible, and I quite understand the sadness, fear and huge police response they generated. But what about the other things of which we are afraid?
The other incident of mass violence in the United States last week was the accidental explosion at a fertilizer plant in the small town of West Texas. At least 14 people were killed, part of the 5,000 Americans killed in industrial accidents each year. But why do regulations allow huge tanks of anhydrous ammonia to be stationed in residential neighbourhoods? Is this not crazy?
We are much more likely to be killed by an industrial accident -- often exacerbated by lax regulations and enforcement -- than we are by acts of political terror.
Lax regulations are also behind the financial meltdown of 2008 that destroyed the savings and livelihoods of hundreds of millions around the world. Most observers believe that it was reckless and fraudulent practices by ultra-rich bankers that caused the meltdown. And yet five years later, not one bank executive has been arrested let alone charged, tried or convicted of a crime. Not one legislator who allowed the era of rampant greed on Wall Street to flourish has been held to account for what is surely a series of terrible crimes.
Then there is war with all its collateral damage. We are told that 100,000 people have died in the tiny region of Chechnya in Russia's attempts to prevent it from becoming a separate country. We are told that close to 1 million Iraqis have died since the U.S. invasion 10 years ago. All of these victims are just as much children of God and the mourned loved ones of parents, siblings, friends and neighbours as are the four people murdered by the terrorists in Boston this past week.
Do we really think we can live in a world filled with such reckless disregard of safety in the pursuit of profit, such inequality, and such carnage in war, and not also discover that some fanatical young people lash out with their own violence?
Asking this question does not condone political or religious acts of terrorism. Such acts can never be justified. It does, however, put them into a context that Prime Minister Harper, for one, does not seem to want to examine.
President Barack Obama put it this way on Friday evening after the second suspect was arrested, "Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and country resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks? And did they receive any help? The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers.
The wounded, some of whom now have to learn how to stand, walk and live again, deserve answers. And so . . . we will determine what happened. We will investigate any associations that these terrorists may have had. And we will continue to do whatever we have to do to keep our people safe.
One thing we do know is that whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts, cannot prevail . . . they will not break the bonds that hold us together as Americans."
Obama concluded by saying that, "the American spirit includes staying true to the unity and diversity that makes us strong . . . we take care not to rush into judgement, not about the motivations of these [two brothers], and certainly not about entire groups of people. One of the things that makes America one of the greatest nations on earth . . . is that we welcome people from all around the world, people of every faith, every ethnicity . . . So as we continue to learn more about why and how this tragedy happened, let’s make sure that we sustain that spirit." I appreciate the President's comments . . .
Terror, war and fear -- these are some of the big and difficult topics raised by the attacks in Boston this past week, and also by the 23rd Psalm. To close this sermon, I talk about the most fearsome threat that has ever faced humanity -- nuclear war.
Psalm 23 includes the phrase "the valley of the shadow of death;" and sometimes that image reminds me of our own neighbourhood. The United States houses its land-based nuclear weapons in silos just over the border from us, near Minot North Dakota, Great Falls Montana, and Cheyenne Wyoming. In this sense, Borderlands seems literally to be part of the valley of the shadow of death. At any moment, the hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles housed across the line could be launched and obliterate most people on the planet.
When President Obama first took office four years ago, he spent a lot of effort trying to advance talks to rid the world of nuclear weapons, and with good reason. Each night Obama goes to sleep knowing that he could be awoken with news of a crisis and be asked to make a split-second decision to deploy these weapons and kill millions or even billions of people. Talk about terror and fear!
If only the nuclear genie could be put back into the bottle . If only we didn't have to live every moment of our lives with the threat of the ultimate violence lying in the hills to the south of us. But this is the world in which we live. And it is a world in which Psalm 23 can speak clearly to us.
The Psalm is not naive, I believe. It does not mean that regulators of industry will always do their utmost to keep us safe. It does not mean that fanatical youth won't sometimes attack the ills of the world or their own alienation with horrible acts of terror. It does not mean that nuclear weapons will never be used again.
What the Psalm does is remind us that God's Spirit is with us always -- through life, at the end of life, and after life is over. The Psalm reminds us to fear no evil precisely at the moments when we seem to have the most to fear: as our loved ones are dying, as horrible industrial or natural disasters are occurring, or as war is breaking out despite our best efforts to prevent it.
In fragile lives and in a society plagued by conflict and violence, fear seems unavoidable. The antidote to that fear is not wishful thinking that bad things will never happen to us. The antidote to fear is our faith that we are in God's hands come what may; that we are blessed by God come what may.
I pray with all my heart and soul that the ICBMs across the line are never used. But if those silos ever do open and the missiles are fired, I imagine that I will recite the 23rd Psalm. Its poetry will remind me that even in a world of violence and at my life's end, we need fear no evil, for God is with us both now and always.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." So writes the author of the 23rd Psalm. Today, I examine this famous statement in the light of Monday's terrorist bombing in Boston.
It is easy to make a list of things we fear: disease, natural disasters, war. But nothing seems to get the media's attention and governmental response quicker than politically-motivated terrorism. Acts of terror are designed to cause death and injury and spread fear; and the ability of terrorism to spread fear was dramatically illustrated again this past week.
Two young Russian-American brothers set off bombs at the Boston Marathon this past Monday. The blasts killed three people and injured more than 170 others. The brothers had lived in the United States for 10 years and the youngest had recently become a U.S. citizen. They had been born in or around Chechnya, which is a wretched part of Russia in which a failed independence struggle over the last 20 years has led to the deaths of 100,000 people, an Islamist terrorist insurgency, and human rights abuses by the Russian army.
So it seems probable that national and religious conflict in the former Soviet Union provides part of the backdrop for this deadly act of terror.
Some like Prime Minister Stephen Harper urge us not to look for the causes of terror attacks like the one on Monday. On Wednesday he said, "When you see this type of violent act [as in Boston], you do not sit around trying to rationalize it, make excuses for it, or figure out its root causes. You condemn it categorically, and to the extent you can deal with the perpetrators, you deal with them as harshly as possible."
His remarks were aimed at the new leader of Canada's federal Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau. On Monday, just a few hours after the bombings, Trudeau responded to a reporter's question about the bombing by saying, "we have to look at the root causes. Now, we don’t [yet] know if it was terrorism or a single crazy [person] or a domestic issue or a foreign issue. But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions come from?"
My instincts pull me in both of these directions. While I was amazed by the size and scope of the police action that led to the apprehension of the two suspects -- one who is dead and one who is recovering from serious injuries -- I am relieved that the suspects are no longer at large.
On the other hand, I want to understand why young people -- like the two brothers in Boston, or the four high school friends in London Ontario who moved to North Africa a few years ago and joined Al-Qaeda -- are drawn to violence. To try and approach this question, I look both at Scripture and at some difficult realities.
The 23rd Psalm does not ignore the things in life of which we are afraid. It talks about the valley of the shadow of death and mentions our enemies.
In the face of both enemies and death, the psalm paints an appealing and reassuring picture of life lived in the presence of God. But given all that we have to fear, is this a realistic picture? Do "goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives" even in the face of disease, war, and terrorism?
And if we have nothing to fear, then how do we explain the huge response to the bombing in Boston on Monday? I was especially shocked when I heard on Friday morning that the whole city had been ordered into a so-called lock-down in order to aid the search for the remaining 19-year old suspect and to prevent him from hurting anyone else.
In the end, the lock-down seems to have slowed the capture of the teenager. It was only when the governor of Massachusetts told residents at 6 pm on Friday evening that they could unlock their doors and leave their homes that a homeowner in suburban Boston went outside and noticed a trail of blood that led to a boat in his backyard. He lifted up a tarp, saw the bleeding figure of the suspect inside, and phoned the police. Two hours later, the boy surrendered to the FBI.
The events of Monday were horrible, and I quite understand the sadness, fear and huge police response they generated. But what about the other things of which we are afraid?
The other incident of mass violence in the United States last week was the accidental explosion at a fertilizer plant in the small town of West Texas. At least 14 people were killed, part of the 5,000 Americans killed in industrial accidents each year. But why do regulations allow huge tanks of anhydrous ammonia to be stationed in residential neighbourhoods? Is this not crazy?
We are much more likely to be killed by an industrial accident -- often exacerbated by lax regulations and enforcement -- than we are by acts of political terror.
Lax regulations are also behind the financial meltdown of 2008 that destroyed the savings and livelihoods of hundreds of millions around the world. Most observers believe that it was reckless and fraudulent practices by ultra-rich bankers that caused the meltdown. And yet five years later, not one bank executive has been arrested let alone charged, tried or convicted of a crime. Not one legislator who allowed the era of rampant greed on Wall Street to flourish has been held to account for what is surely a series of terrible crimes.
Then there is war with all its collateral damage. We are told that 100,000 people have died in the tiny region of Chechnya in Russia's attempts to prevent it from becoming a separate country. We are told that close to 1 million Iraqis have died since the U.S. invasion 10 years ago. All of these victims are just as much children of God and the mourned loved ones of parents, siblings, friends and neighbours as are the four people murdered by the terrorists in Boston this past week.
Do we really think we can live in a world filled with such reckless disregard of safety in the pursuit of profit, such inequality, and such carnage in war, and not also discover that some fanatical young people lash out with their own violence?
Asking this question does not condone political or religious acts of terrorism. Such acts can never be justified. It does, however, put them into a context that Prime Minister Harper, for one, does not seem to want to examine.
President Barack Obama put it this way on Friday evening after the second suspect was arrested, "Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and country resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks? And did they receive any help? The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers.
The wounded, some of whom now have to learn how to stand, walk and live again, deserve answers. And so . . . we will determine what happened. We will investigate any associations that these terrorists may have had. And we will continue to do whatever we have to do to keep our people safe.
One thing we do know is that whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts, cannot prevail . . . they will not break the bonds that hold us together as Americans."
Obama concluded by saying that, "the American spirit includes staying true to the unity and diversity that makes us strong . . . we take care not to rush into judgement, not about the motivations of these [two brothers], and certainly not about entire groups of people. One of the things that makes America one of the greatest nations on earth . . . is that we welcome people from all around the world, people of every faith, every ethnicity . . . So as we continue to learn more about why and how this tragedy happened, let’s make sure that we sustain that spirit." I appreciate the President's comments . . .
Terror, war and fear -- these are some of the big and difficult topics raised by the attacks in Boston this past week, and also by the 23rd Psalm. To close this sermon, I talk about the most fearsome threat that has ever faced humanity -- nuclear war.
Psalm 23 includes the phrase "the valley of the shadow of death;" and sometimes that image reminds me of our own neighbourhood. The United States houses its land-based nuclear weapons in silos just over the border from us, near Minot North Dakota, Great Falls Montana, and Cheyenne Wyoming. In this sense, Borderlands seems literally to be part of the valley of the shadow of death. At any moment, the hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles housed across the line could be launched and obliterate most people on the planet.
When President Obama first took office four years ago, he spent a lot of effort trying to advance talks to rid the world of nuclear weapons, and with good reason. Each night Obama goes to sleep knowing that he could be awoken with news of a crisis and be asked to make a split-second decision to deploy these weapons and kill millions or even billions of people. Talk about terror and fear!
If only the nuclear genie could be put back into the bottle . If only we didn't have to live every moment of our lives with the threat of the ultimate violence lying in the hills to the south of us. But this is the world in which we live. And it is a world in which Psalm 23 can speak clearly to us.
The Psalm is not naive, I believe. It does not mean that regulators of industry will always do their utmost to keep us safe. It does not mean that fanatical youth won't sometimes attack the ills of the world or their own alienation with horrible acts of terror. It does not mean that nuclear weapons will never be used again.
What the Psalm does is remind us that God's Spirit is with us always -- through life, at the end of life, and after life is over. The Psalm reminds us to fear no evil precisely at the moments when we seem to have the most to fear: as our loved ones are dying, as horrible industrial or natural disasters are occurring, or as war is breaking out despite our best efforts to prevent it.
In fragile lives and in a society plagued by conflict and violence, fear seems unavoidable. The antidote to that fear is not wishful thinking that bad things will never happen to us. The antidote to fear is our faith that we are in God's hands come what may; that we are blessed by God come what may.
I pray with all my heart and soul that the ICBMs across the line are never used. But if those silos ever do open and the missiles are fired, I imagine that I will recite the 23rd Psalm. Its poetry will remind me that even in a world of violence and at my life's end, we need fear no evil, for God is with us both now and always.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Blinded by the light
Texts: Acts 9 1-20 (Saul/Paul on the Road to Damascus); Luke 24 36-53 (the Risen Christ)
With today's Gospel reading, we end what we began during Holy Week -- a complete reading of the last three chapters of Luke. The readings began on Holy Thursday, continued on Good Friday and have now carried us through the first three Sundays of the season of Easter. Luke's final chapters tell of the betrayal, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.
Today's reading focuses on Easter Sunday evening. After the discovery at dawn that Jesus' tomb was empty and his appearance later in the day to two disciples as they walk to the village of Emmaus, Jesus finally appears to all of his disciples in Jerusalem. As he had done earlier with the two with whom he walked, Jesus now opens all of their minds to how the Hebrew Scriptures relate to his death and resurrection. He also wishes his disciples peace, and assures them in word and deed that he is not a ghost.
One might assume from today's reading that Jesus also ascends to heaven on that same evening. But in his later book, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke writes that the ascension occurs "40 days" after Easter Sunday and 10 days before Pentecost.
Following the ascension, no one sees Jesus in the flesh again. Some people, however, have visions of Jesus; and the most famous of those visions is told in our first reading today from Acts: the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus. Saul, who later changes his name to Paul, and whose letters make up half of the New Testament, is blinded by a vision of Jesus.
Both of today's readings tell of an encounter with the Risen Christ -- one in the flesh on Easter Sunday, the second in a vision some months later. Both of these encounters help Jesus' first followers turn their lives around. Saul changes his name to Paul and becomes an apostle of Christ instead of a violent opponent. The disciples in Jerusalem move from defeat and despair to wonder and joy, and they too obey Jesus' command to travel to all the corners of the Roman Empire and preach the good news of God's salvation through Christ.
We, like these first Christians, have moments in which we could benefit from an encounter with the Risen Christ -- either in the flesh or in a blinding vision. Unfortunately, only the first apostles have the privilege of seeing the Risen Christ in the flesh. Unfortunately, few of us are like Saul and have a blinding vision of Jesus.
Personally, I have never had a vision of Jesus nor heard direct instruction from heaven. When I have come to a dead end in my life, I have had to try and turn things around and follow God without the kind of spectacular help that Saul gets. I wonder, is this fair? Should I perhaps be jealous of Saul?
On hearing again the account of Saul's conversion on the Road to Damascus, I am struck by how little content the story has. Yes, it has the drama of a sudden appearance, three days of blindness, and the arrival of the prophet Ananias, who heals, instructs and baptizes Saul as Jesus had promised. It is a very famous story; even people who never come to church probably have associations with the phrase a "Road to Damascus conversion."
But given that most of never have spectacular visions of Jesus, what good is it to us to know this story?
We often hear that people with tough problems need to hit rock bottom before they can turn things around. Sometimes in crises like divorce, medical diagnoses, or job loss, people abandon old ambitions and put their trust in God. And I believe there is a lot of truth in this notion.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, which we looked at in Lent, shows us this pattern more clearly than does the story of Saul/Paul on the Road to Damascus. The Prodigal Son does not have a blinding vision of Jesus. Instead, he has the pain of poverty, hunger, and humiliation; and in this dark place, he remembers the generosity of his Father, and decides to return home.
Saul may also be experiencing a dark night. Perhaps he feels guilty about the violence he uses in his self-righteous defence of religious law. The Book of Acts does not say that Saul is a murderer. But it shows that he is an accomplice in the murder of the first martyred disciple, Simon. And our reading today says he is breathing murderous threats against Christians as he heads to Damascus.
In Saul's letters -- which he writes under his later name Paul -- we don't get a first-person account of his "Road to Damascus" conversion. But in his letter to the church in Phillipi, he talks about the costs as well as the gains of his conversion.
Paul writes: "I was born a Jew . . . as far as keeping the Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee; and you can judge my enthusiasm for the faith by my active persecution of the Church. As far as the Law’s righteousness is concerned, I don’t think anyone could have found fault with me. Yet every advantage that I had gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake . . . for his sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of everything, but I now consider those things useless rubbish compared with being able to win Christ [and even to] share Christ's sufferings and to die as he died, so that I may perhaps attain as he did, the resurrection from the dead."
Paul realizes that his conversion comes with loss and pain. But the gains are of vastly greater value. Paul doesn't write about a blinding vision, but he does write about the joy of new life in Christ, which is available to us all.
People turn away from sin and towards God all the time without the benefit of seeing the Risen Christ in the flesh, as the first disciples did, or without a blinding vision of Jesus like that experienced by Saul.
People like us who have never seen Jesus in a vision or heard a voice from heaven nevertheless follow the way of Jesus and accept its costly grace. This path comes with loss, but as with Paul, the gains are incalculable.
The first disciples lost their hopes for military victory over the Romans and for political glory. But their encounter with the Risen Christ showed them there was something more important -- a Love that survives all of our worldly ambitions.
Paul lost his hopes for the salvation that comes from following the strict letter of the Law in the way Pharisees like him had interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures. But his vision of the Risen Christ helped him see that there was something more important -- a Love that trumps all religious laws.
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus teaches that “everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Before his conversion, Paul thought that he was following the Law of Moses. But after his conversion he came to see it differently.
What he learned, I believe, is that God is often found through death and defeat. It was only after the Babylonians burned God's Temple to the ground 600 years before Jesus that the Hebrew Scriptures were compiled. In Exile in Babylon, Jewish leaders discovered that God survives the defeat of the hopes of the nation. All national ambitions are eventually dashed by the grinding of the wheels of history, and each life moves inevitably to the grave. But God's Love lives on within, between and all around us.
The Christian path is not about achievement. It is about abandoning personal or national ambitions and relying upon God. As Paul will later teach, "life has three great lasting qualities -- faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love."
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that even though we cannot see him in the flesh, we encounter the Risen Christ in everyone we meet. In the people we love serve and nourish, we meet Jesus.
Unlike the disciples, we are not privileged to see the Risen Christ in the flesh. Unlike Saul on the Road to Damascus, we are not usually privileged to have a blinding vision of Jesus to help us turn our life around.
What we do have are family members and neighbours whom we love. We have fellow pilgrims on the road to the cross. We have a tradition that values Grace over Law, Love over victory, and life despite death. We have a path of service that takes us out of ourselves and that puts us in touch with Christ in our neighbours. We have faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.
This is Easter. This is new life in Christ. This is our beautiful vision on the Road to Damascus, both now and always.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
With today's Gospel reading, we end what we began during Holy Week -- a complete reading of the last three chapters of Luke. The readings began on Holy Thursday, continued on Good Friday and have now carried us through the first three Sundays of the season of Easter. Luke's final chapters tell of the betrayal, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.
Today's reading focuses on Easter Sunday evening. After the discovery at dawn that Jesus' tomb was empty and his appearance later in the day to two disciples as they walk to the village of Emmaus, Jesus finally appears to all of his disciples in Jerusalem. As he had done earlier with the two with whom he walked, Jesus now opens all of their minds to how the Hebrew Scriptures relate to his death and resurrection. He also wishes his disciples peace, and assures them in word and deed that he is not a ghost.
One might assume from today's reading that Jesus also ascends to heaven on that same evening. But in his later book, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke writes that the ascension occurs "40 days" after Easter Sunday and 10 days before Pentecost.
Following the ascension, no one sees Jesus in the flesh again. Some people, however, have visions of Jesus; and the most famous of those visions is told in our first reading today from Acts: the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus. Saul, who later changes his name to Paul, and whose letters make up half of the New Testament, is blinded by a vision of Jesus.
Both of today's readings tell of an encounter with the Risen Christ -- one in the flesh on Easter Sunday, the second in a vision some months later. Both of these encounters help Jesus' first followers turn their lives around. Saul changes his name to Paul and becomes an apostle of Christ instead of a violent opponent. The disciples in Jerusalem move from defeat and despair to wonder and joy, and they too obey Jesus' command to travel to all the corners of the Roman Empire and preach the good news of God's salvation through Christ.
We, like these first Christians, have moments in which we could benefit from an encounter with the Risen Christ -- either in the flesh or in a blinding vision. Unfortunately, only the first apostles have the privilege of seeing the Risen Christ in the flesh. Unfortunately, few of us are like Saul and have a blinding vision of Jesus.
Personally, I have never had a vision of Jesus nor heard direct instruction from heaven. When I have come to a dead end in my life, I have had to try and turn things around and follow God without the kind of spectacular help that Saul gets. I wonder, is this fair? Should I perhaps be jealous of Saul?
On hearing again the account of Saul's conversion on the Road to Damascus, I am struck by how little content the story has. Yes, it has the drama of a sudden appearance, three days of blindness, and the arrival of the prophet Ananias, who heals, instructs and baptizes Saul as Jesus had promised. It is a very famous story; even people who never come to church probably have associations with the phrase a "Road to Damascus conversion."
But given that most of never have spectacular visions of Jesus, what good is it to us to know this story?
We often hear that people with tough problems need to hit rock bottom before they can turn things around. Sometimes in crises like divorce, medical diagnoses, or job loss, people abandon old ambitions and put their trust in God. And I believe there is a lot of truth in this notion.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, which we looked at in Lent, shows us this pattern more clearly than does the story of Saul/Paul on the Road to Damascus. The Prodigal Son does not have a blinding vision of Jesus. Instead, he has the pain of poverty, hunger, and humiliation; and in this dark place, he remembers the generosity of his Father, and decides to return home.
Saul may also be experiencing a dark night. Perhaps he feels guilty about the violence he uses in his self-righteous defence of religious law. The Book of Acts does not say that Saul is a murderer. But it shows that he is an accomplice in the murder of the first martyred disciple, Simon. And our reading today says he is breathing murderous threats against Christians as he heads to Damascus.
In Saul's letters -- which he writes under his later name Paul -- we don't get a first-person account of his "Road to Damascus" conversion. But in his letter to the church in Phillipi, he talks about the costs as well as the gains of his conversion.
Paul writes: "I was born a Jew . . . as far as keeping the Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee; and you can judge my enthusiasm for the faith by my active persecution of the Church. As far as the Law’s righteousness is concerned, I don’t think anyone could have found fault with me. Yet every advantage that I had gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake . . . for his sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of everything, but I now consider those things useless rubbish compared with being able to win Christ [and even to] share Christ's sufferings and to die as he died, so that I may perhaps attain as he did, the resurrection from the dead."
Paul realizes that his conversion comes with loss and pain. But the gains are of vastly greater value. Paul doesn't write about a blinding vision, but he does write about the joy of new life in Christ, which is available to us all.
People turn away from sin and towards God all the time without the benefit of seeing the Risen Christ in the flesh, as the first disciples did, or without a blinding vision of Jesus like that experienced by Saul.
People like us who have never seen Jesus in a vision or heard a voice from heaven nevertheless follow the way of Jesus and accept its costly grace. This path comes with loss, but as with Paul, the gains are incalculable.
The first disciples lost their hopes for military victory over the Romans and for political glory. But their encounter with the Risen Christ showed them there was something more important -- a Love that survives all of our worldly ambitions.
Paul lost his hopes for the salvation that comes from following the strict letter of the Law in the way Pharisees like him had interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures. But his vision of the Risen Christ helped him see that there was something more important -- a Love that trumps all religious laws.
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus teaches that “everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Before his conversion, Paul thought that he was following the Law of Moses. But after his conversion he came to see it differently.
What he learned, I believe, is that God is often found through death and defeat. It was only after the Babylonians burned God's Temple to the ground 600 years before Jesus that the Hebrew Scriptures were compiled. In Exile in Babylon, Jewish leaders discovered that God survives the defeat of the hopes of the nation. All national ambitions are eventually dashed by the grinding of the wheels of history, and each life moves inevitably to the grave. But God's Love lives on within, between and all around us.
The Christian path is not about achievement. It is about abandoning personal or national ambitions and relying upon God. As Paul will later teach, "life has three great lasting qualities -- faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love."
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that even though we cannot see him in the flesh, we encounter the Risen Christ in everyone we meet. In the people we love serve and nourish, we meet Jesus.
Unlike the disciples, we are not privileged to see the Risen Christ in the flesh. Unlike Saul on the Road to Damascus, we are not usually privileged to have a blinding vision of Jesus to help us turn our life around.
What we do have are family members and neighbours whom we love. We have fellow pilgrims on the road to the cross. We have a tradition that values Grace over Law, Love over victory, and life despite death. We have a path of service that takes us out of ourselves and that puts us in touch with Christ in our neighbours. We have faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.
This is Easter. This is new life in Christ. This is our beautiful vision on the Road to Damascus, both now and always.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
God's revelation: war or peace?
Texts: Revelation 1 1-8 (Alpha and Omega); Luke 24 13-35 (road to Emmaus)
When we think about Canadian teenagers today, what worries might come to mind? Drug and alcohol abuse? Unplanned pregnancies? Lack of job opportunities? There do seem to be a lot of pitfalls facing young people today.
In this sermon, I focus on a new danger facing young Canadians -- religious conversion! This thought came to my mind as news unfolded this week of three men from London Ontario who converted to a radical form of Islam in high school. Two of them participated in a deadly terrorist attack in Algeria in January in which they themselves were killed. The third has been in jail in Mauritania for several months for reasons not yet disclosed.
More information will probably become known about these three men as journalists and police dig deeper into their story. But there is little doubt that the two who attacked a gas plant in Algeria, who participated in the murder of 40 hostages, and who were themselves killed when Algerian forces moved against them were motivated at least in part by their love of God and their devotion to a particular religious path.
I mention this incident not to denigrate Islam. Islam arose out of Judaism and Christianity and it is the third great faith of the people of Abraham. For 700 years, from 800 to 1500, Islam was the largest religion in the world. Today, it is second in size and influence only to Christianity.
Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam preaches peace. The very word Islam means wholeness, safety and peace. A Muslim is one who submits to the will of God and follows the five pillars of the faith: testimony to God, prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage. The Holy Book of Islam, the Koran, uplifts Abraham, Moses and Jesus as prophets of God. From the little that I know about Islam, it seems to be as legitimate a path to God as is Christianity.
So how can conversion to this great religion of peace lead young Canadians to engage in terrorist activity? Of the three men implicated in terrorism in this week's news reports, one was born into a Muslim family. One was raised Roman Catholic. The third was raised Greek Orthodox. How could their high school conversion lead them to commit horrific crimes?
To tackle this question, I look at today's Scripture readings. They present us with two different ways that God might be revealed to us and two different approaches to the role of peace and violence in the religious life.
The Gospel reading is about two followers of Jesus who have their faith tested and then renewed. They have been devastated by the events of Good Friday and confused by the news of Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday morning that Jesus' tomb is empty. Later that day, they encounter the risen Christ as they walk home from Jerusalem.
Given how powerful Jesus' teaching and healing was in Galilee, I can understand why these two men would have followed him to Jerusalem. Given their love for Jesus, I can understand how his arrest and crucifixion would have devastated them. Finally, I can understand why they are walking away from Jerusalem in pain and confusion.
But then Jesus joins them as they walk. At first they do not recognize their crucified and risen friend. It is only when Jesus breaks and blesses the bread at supper that their eyes are opened to the fact that he is Jesus.
At this point, Jesus disappears. With renewed enthusiasm, the two then run back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples. They tell them that Jesus has opened their eyes to the meaning of their faith and revealed himself in the act of breaking bread. We can assume that from this point onwards these two will redouble their devotion to Jesus and their work for God's realm.
But will they also become dangerous converts like the three young men in London Ontario? Will the conversion of these two disciples on the road to Emmaus lead them to become violent?
The path of Jesus, like that of Islam, is one of peace. In the very next verse in the Gospel of Luke that follows our reading today, and which we will read in church next Sunday as we finish Luke's story of the resurrection, Jesus greets his disciples with the phrase "Peace be with you."
But despite the peace preached by Jesus, Christian churches have often been involved in horrific violence. Christianity tried to stop the rise of Islam 900 years ago with the Crusades. Over a span of 200 years, tens of thousands of European soldiers responded to the calls of successive popes to journey to what is now Israel and Palestine where they fought the Islamic rulers who ruled the Holy Land. These Christian soldiers slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews and Muslims, but in the end, they gave up all the territory they had won.
Christianity eventually did regain its status over Islam as the world's largest religion following the European conquest of the Americas after 1492. The church supported these conquests and used the power of the state to force conquered peoples to become Christians.
Christianity, then, is hardly immune from the use of war and violence to spread the faith and achieve the aims of the church.
Today, no one in the church still advocates war as a method of conversion. Some terrorists do claim to be Christian, such as the Norwegian who killed 77 young people at a summer camp in 2011. Fortunately, horrific incidents of terror done in the name of Christ are few and far between.
The same can be said for Islam. Of the one billion Muslims in the world, only a tiny handful believe that they can achieve God's will through terror.
This existence of religious terrorists has a negative impact on the standing of all religions. Since the terror attacks on the United States in September 2001, church attendance has fallen sharply in Canada and the United States. Many people now turn their backs on religion in part because small groups of fanatics use religion as a cover for violence.
Our first Scripture reading from Revelation points to the attraction that violence has for some Christians. Many of us love Revelation's strange imagery of a New Jerusalem: a city made with precious jewels, shining with divine light, and containing the tree of life. But there are also images of extreme violence in it: the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, winged lions, earthquakes, plagues, and painful death for most people.
Revelation was written by a Christian named John about 60 years after Jesus' resurrection. As a disciple of Jesus, John suffers in prison at the hand of the Romans. He knows the injustice of Empire first hand. In response to his hardships, he writes what is perhaps the most violent work ever to be canonized as Holy Scripture.
The only hint of that violence in the short reading we heard today is the phrase "all the tribes of the earth will wail." But what follows in Revelation are horrific descriptions of war and mass killings.
Revelation, for all that we might love about it, shows that violence appeals to some who love God. When we feel inspired by God's love and are also aware of the terrible injustices of the world, we may be tempted to take the shortcut of violence to try to reach God's promised new Jerusalem.
Jesus on the road to Emmaus points to a better way, I believe. As he walks with the two disciples, Jesus explains the connections between the Hebrew Scriptures and his own death and resurrection. He shows them how the defeat of God and the dashing of Israel's hopes can lead to the resurrection of Love. Finally, he reveals himself in the breaking of bread.
At the Last Supper the week before, Jesus had given his friends the sacrament of communion. In sharing bread and wine with friends and in giving thanks to God we experience the Risen Christ.
Christ is best revealed not in the fantastical visions of war and death found in Revelation. Christ is revealed while breaking bread at table. In this humble and common activity, we experience the flame of God within and between us.
Experiencing God at the communion table may inspire us to resist injustice. But holy communion also reminds us that Jesus did not lead an army against Rome. Instead, he sacrificed himself on the cross in solidarity with all who bear our cross . . .
Now, despite what I have said so far, I don't worry that many young Canadians will become violent fanatics. The reality for most young people today is a lack of enthusiasm and engagement much more than it is religious or political fanaticism.
Think for instance of the nine young people who were confirmed in Fife Lake and Coronach last May. To be frank, I would be surprised if any of them show up in church again before they graduate from high school.
But regardless of their attachment to the church, we can be sure that they, like any of us, will experience God throughout their lives. When they draw a connection between such moments and Christ, I trust that it will be with the Christ as revealed at the Lord's Table and not with the warrior Christ of Revelation.
Three young men in London Ontario came to know and love God in high school. Unfortunately, they used the inspiration of this conversion to follow a disastrous path of violence.
John, the author of Revelation, came to know and love God in one of the early Christian communities. Unfortunately, he used his inspiration to imagine war as the way of Christ.
In contrast to this, our meals at the Lord's Table remind us of Jesus' path of peace. They remind us that God's Love is found in simple acts of hospitality. They remind us that we can resist injustice through acts of love and not through acts of violence.
Moments when God is reavealed can be powerful and and hence dangerous. But when we allow our hearts to be broken open in a meal of bread and wine that reminds us of Jesus' sacrifice and love, we avoid the dangers. We remain followers of Christ without succumbing to the violence of crusades or conquests and without the need of the violent images found in Revelation.
In a few minutes, we will gather again around the Lord's Table. In this simple meal, we will experience God. It will be a taste a love that renounces violence even as it points to lives and our world transformed.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
When we think about Canadian teenagers today, what worries might come to mind? Drug and alcohol abuse? Unplanned pregnancies? Lack of job opportunities? There do seem to be a lot of pitfalls facing young people today.
In this sermon, I focus on a new danger facing young Canadians -- religious conversion! This thought came to my mind as news unfolded this week of three men from London Ontario who converted to a radical form of Islam in high school. Two of them participated in a deadly terrorist attack in Algeria in January in which they themselves were killed. The third has been in jail in Mauritania for several months for reasons not yet disclosed.
More information will probably become known about these three men as journalists and police dig deeper into their story. But there is little doubt that the two who attacked a gas plant in Algeria, who participated in the murder of 40 hostages, and who were themselves killed when Algerian forces moved against them were motivated at least in part by their love of God and their devotion to a particular religious path.
I mention this incident not to denigrate Islam. Islam arose out of Judaism and Christianity and it is the third great faith of the people of Abraham. For 700 years, from 800 to 1500, Islam was the largest religion in the world. Today, it is second in size and influence only to Christianity.
Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam preaches peace. The very word Islam means wholeness, safety and peace. A Muslim is one who submits to the will of God and follows the five pillars of the faith: testimony to God, prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage. The Holy Book of Islam, the Koran, uplifts Abraham, Moses and Jesus as prophets of God. From the little that I know about Islam, it seems to be as legitimate a path to God as is Christianity.
So how can conversion to this great religion of peace lead young Canadians to engage in terrorist activity? Of the three men implicated in terrorism in this week's news reports, one was born into a Muslim family. One was raised Roman Catholic. The third was raised Greek Orthodox. How could their high school conversion lead them to commit horrific crimes?
To tackle this question, I look at today's Scripture readings. They present us with two different ways that God might be revealed to us and two different approaches to the role of peace and violence in the religious life.
The Gospel reading is about two followers of Jesus who have their faith tested and then renewed. They have been devastated by the events of Good Friday and confused by the news of Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday morning that Jesus' tomb is empty. Later that day, they encounter the risen Christ as they walk home from Jerusalem.
Given how powerful Jesus' teaching and healing was in Galilee, I can understand why these two men would have followed him to Jerusalem. Given their love for Jesus, I can understand how his arrest and crucifixion would have devastated them. Finally, I can understand why they are walking away from Jerusalem in pain and confusion.
But then Jesus joins them as they walk. At first they do not recognize their crucified and risen friend. It is only when Jesus breaks and blesses the bread at supper that their eyes are opened to the fact that he is Jesus.
At this point, Jesus disappears. With renewed enthusiasm, the two then run back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples. They tell them that Jesus has opened their eyes to the meaning of their faith and revealed himself in the act of breaking bread. We can assume that from this point onwards these two will redouble their devotion to Jesus and their work for God's realm.
But will they also become dangerous converts like the three young men in London Ontario? Will the conversion of these two disciples on the road to Emmaus lead them to become violent?
The path of Jesus, like that of Islam, is one of peace. In the very next verse in the Gospel of Luke that follows our reading today, and which we will read in church next Sunday as we finish Luke's story of the resurrection, Jesus greets his disciples with the phrase "Peace be with you."
But despite the peace preached by Jesus, Christian churches have often been involved in horrific violence. Christianity tried to stop the rise of Islam 900 years ago with the Crusades. Over a span of 200 years, tens of thousands of European soldiers responded to the calls of successive popes to journey to what is now Israel and Palestine where they fought the Islamic rulers who ruled the Holy Land. These Christian soldiers slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews and Muslims, but in the end, they gave up all the territory they had won.
Christianity eventually did regain its status over Islam as the world's largest religion following the European conquest of the Americas after 1492. The church supported these conquests and used the power of the state to force conquered peoples to become Christians.
Christianity, then, is hardly immune from the use of war and violence to spread the faith and achieve the aims of the church.
Today, no one in the church still advocates war as a method of conversion. Some terrorists do claim to be Christian, such as the Norwegian who killed 77 young people at a summer camp in 2011. Fortunately, horrific incidents of terror done in the name of Christ are few and far between.
The same can be said for Islam. Of the one billion Muslims in the world, only a tiny handful believe that they can achieve God's will through terror.
This existence of religious terrorists has a negative impact on the standing of all religions. Since the terror attacks on the United States in September 2001, church attendance has fallen sharply in Canada and the United States. Many people now turn their backs on religion in part because small groups of fanatics use religion as a cover for violence.
Our first Scripture reading from Revelation points to the attraction that violence has for some Christians. Many of us love Revelation's strange imagery of a New Jerusalem: a city made with precious jewels, shining with divine light, and containing the tree of life. But there are also images of extreme violence in it: the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, winged lions, earthquakes, plagues, and painful death for most people.
Revelation was written by a Christian named John about 60 years after Jesus' resurrection. As a disciple of Jesus, John suffers in prison at the hand of the Romans. He knows the injustice of Empire first hand. In response to his hardships, he writes what is perhaps the most violent work ever to be canonized as Holy Scripture.
The only hint of that violence in the short reading we heard today is the phrase "all the tribes of the earth will wail." But what follows in Revelation are horrific descriptions of war and mass killings.
Revelation, for all that we might love about it, shows that violence appeals to some who love God. When we feel inspired by God's love and are also aware of the terrible injustices of the world, we may be tempted to take the shortcut of violence to try to reach God's promised new Jerusalem.
Jesus on the road to Emmaus points to a better way, I believe. As he walks with the two disciples, Jesus explains the connections between the Hebrew Scriptures and his own death and resurrection. He shows them how the defeat of God and the dashing of Israel's hopes can lead to the resurrection of Love. Finally, he reveals himself in the breaking of bread.
At the Last Supper the week before, Jesus had given his friends the sacrament of communion. In sharing bread and wine with friends and in giving thanks to God we experience the Risen Christ.
Christ is best revealed not in the fantastical visions of war and death found in Revelation. Christ is revealed while breaking bread at table. In this humble and common activity, we experience the flame of God within and between us.
Experiencing God at the communion table may inspire us to resist injustice. But holy communion also reminds us that Jesus did not lead an army against Rome. Instead, he sacrificed himself on the cross in solidarity with all who bear our cross . . .
Now, despite what I have said so far, I don't worry that many young Canadians will become violent fanatics. The reality for most young people today is a lack of enthusiasm and engagement much more than it is religious or political fanaticism.
Think for instance of the nine young people who were confirmed in Fife Lake and Coronach last May. To be frank, I would be surprised if any of them show up in church again before they graduate from high school.
But regardless of their attachment to the church, we can be sure that they, like any of us, will experience God throughout their lives. When they draw a connection between such moments and Christ, I trust that it will be with the Christ as revealed at the Lord's Table and not with the warrior Christ of Revelation.
Three young men in London Ontario came to know and love God in high school. Unfortunately, they used the inspiration of this conversion to follow a disastrous path of violence.
John, the author of Revelation, came to know and love God in one of the early Christian communities. Unfortunately, he used his inspiration to imagine war as the way of Christ.
In contrast to this, our meals at the Lord's Table remind us of Jesus' path of peace. They remind us that God's Love is found in simple acts of hospitality. They remind us that we can resist injustice through acts of love and not through acts of violence.
Moments when God is reavealed can be powerful and and hence dangerous. But when we allow our hearts to be broken open in a meal of bread and wine that reminds us of Jesus' sacrifice and love, we avoid the dangers. We remain followers of Christ without succumbing to the violence of crusades or conquests and without the need of the violent images found in Revelation.
In a few minutes, we will gather again around the Lord's Table. In this simple meal, we will experience God. It will be a taste a love that renounces violence even as it points to lives and our world transformed.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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