Meditations I

I occasionally preach at our Anglican church, usually when the priest is on holidays and no other person is available. I am a lay reader, so I lead Morning Prayer (Matins). Being able to preach is a privilege. It's also an opportunity to explore my ideas and beliefs in a way I couldn't do otherwise. I'll post sermons that have received positive comments, or that matter to me personally, which isn't always the same.

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 4th Sunday after Epiphany, January 30, 2022 : Prophecy and Gentiles
Copyright Wolf Kirchmeir Jeremiah 1:4-10: Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30


O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Today’s Gospel is a puzzlement. When I read it, two things caught my attention. First, that Jesus claims to be a prophet. And second, that he mentions how Elijah did not help the Israelites. I saw no obvious way to make sense of this.
     Where to begin? I looked for jokes about prophets online. Jokes often help to make sense of puzzling concepts because the humour lies in the oddities in those concepts. But the jokes were all either obvious puns, or about fortune tellers. Whatever Jesus had in mind, being a fortune teller was not it.

     Let’s begin with the concepts of prophet and prophecy. Jesus said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country.
     We humans like certainty. Sure, we know we have to take chances, but we’d rather bet on a sure thing. Or as close to a sure thing as the uncertainties of life allow. So when some people claim they know what will happen, we line up to give them our cash. Fortune tellers have always found a ready market for their flimflam.
     But Jesus doesn’t claim to be a fortune teller. He doesn’t gaze into a crystal ball, or study the lines on your palm, or poke around in the entrails of a chicken, or watch the flight of birds, or lay out cards on the table, or do any of the other things fortune tellers do to make their insights look mysterious and true. It’s time for some research into the meaning of the word “prophet”. Here’s what I found:
     The word “prophet” is borrowed from the Greek. Originally, it did not mean a person who foretells the future. It meant someone who spoke on behalf of a god, someone who passed on the divine message. Prophets answered the questions that people put to the gods. Of course, if the seeker after knowledge wanted to know about their future, the prophet would tell them what the god said about coming events. So the connection between prophecy and fortune-telling was there from the beginning.
     The translators of the Bible used the word “prophet” for the Hebrew nabj, which means soothsayer or inspired prophet. But soothsayer means truth speaker. A person inspired by the Spirit would be a truth speaker first and foremost. That’s what we find in the Bible. We also find something else: When the biblical prophets spoke of the future, it was almost always linked to the present. Mostly, their messages were variations on one theme: Keep on doing what you’re doing, and it will go badly with you. Change, and your future will be one of peace, prosperity and joy.

     In other words, what you do now is what matters. Because what you do now has consequences. And those consequences are your future.
     That’s a thought I will come back to.
 
     So now let’s take another look at the Gospel. Jesus has just read from the Torah, as we heard last Sunday. He’s read from Isaiah, and comments that today the scripture that he read was fulfilled.
     He sits down, and there’s a bit of a commotion. His listeners mutter that he’s the son of Joseph, the carpenter. How can he claim to be inspired by the Spirit? How can he claim to be an inspired prophet? And so on.
     Jesus takes note. He knows they want him to perform signs and wonders, just as he did at Capernaum. But no prophet is acceptable in his own country. And then he reminds his listeners that in a time of famine Elijah did not help the Israelite widows, but did help a widow from Sidon. And although there were many Israelite lepers, Elijah healed only Naam the Syrian.
     The implication is clear: Jesus will not perform the signs and wonders that his fellow villagers expect. It’s no surprise that they would be annoyed. But enraged enough to want to kill him? There’s a puzzle here.

     Lets look at this event from a different angle.
     Jesus was a celebrity. People had heard about him. When they knew he was nearby, they went to see and hear him. The elders of Nazareth no doubt felt that having such a famous son of their village read from the Torah would be good for them. We often ask celebrities to do small favours for us, hoping that some of that celebrity magic will rub off on us.

So did Jesus play the celebrity game? Well, he did and he didn’t. Yes, he agreed to read. But he read a text that might help people make sense of him as something other than, as someone more than a celebrity. Him that hath ears, let him hear, he says in another place. That is, Listen hard, for otherwise you may miss what I have to say. 
     So let’s listen hard.

     The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he read. That makes him a prophet, something he emphasises a few moments later. The reading is a message of hope and deliverance. His later reference to Elijah’s helping the widow and curing Naam echoes that message.
     Then he says, The scripture has been fulfilled in your presence.
     And right there we run into a stumbling block. If we think of prophecy only as being about the future, then “fulfilled” means “what was foretold has now, finally, happened.” But if we think about prophecy as truth speaking, then “fulfilled” means “The truth that Isaiah spoke then, I have spoken also.”
     And that should make us hear Jesus’s words as meaning exactly the same now as when he read them, and when Isaiah first spoke them.
     That meaning is a difficult one. Or rather, it’s difficult for us to accept.
     That meaning resonates throughout the Old and New Testaments. God doesn’t like oppression. He doesn’t like injustice. He doesn’t like the rich and powerful preying on the poor and weak. Sell what you have and give the money to the poor, Jesus says to the rich young man who wants to follow him.
     And that’s just the beginning. Because God doesn’t play favourites, either. He makes no exceptions, and accepts no excuses. Elijah ministered to a widow from Sidon, and healed a leper from Syria. Both were supposedly Israel’s enemies.
     Jesus’s point is clear: Not only is a prophet not acceptable in his own country, he doesn’t even try to be. For the truth he speaks applies to all humankind. The good news he brings is good news for all people. It’s not limited to a select few.
     No wonder the people of Nazareth were enraged with Jesus. His words meant that their God was not only their own. Their God did not care exclusively about them. Their God did not exist to meet only their needs and fulfill only their desires. Worse, by thinking of their God as exclusively theirs, they saw their God as their property, accountable only to them. And that attitude gets it exactly backwards. Jesus’s reading from Isaiah, his refusal to perform signs and wonders, and his reminder of Elijah’s career made that perfectly clear.
     No wonder they reacted with fury.
     But how different are we? Don’t we tend to think of ourselves as the elect, the ones with a special relationship to God?
     Well, we are the elect. We do have a special relationship with God. At least, I hope we do.

     But that relationship is not exclusive. God offers it to everyone and anyone.
     No exceptions, no limitations.
     Jesus did not say I came to save the ones whom I judge to be worthy. He said I came not to judge but to save (John 12:47). 
     No exceptions, no limitations. 
     Paul did not tell Timothy Christ came to save special people like you and me. Paul wrote Christ came to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15).
     No exceptions, no limitations. 
     John did not write In him was life for us alone. He wrote In him was life, and the life is the light of humankind.
     No exceptions, no limitations. 
     Nor did John write The light shines for us, so that we alone can see the path through the darkness. He wrote The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1: 4,5) 
     No exceptions, no limitations. 
     The good news is that God is the God of all of us. We are all his creatures, we are all his children, we are all his chosen ones. 
     No exceptions, no limitations. 
     What’s more, God expects us to have the same relationship with each other. And not just with our family and friends, but with everybody. 
     No exceptions, no limitations.
     Because the truth that sums up all the law and the Prophets is the commandment that Jesus quoted: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and your neighbour as yourself.
     Jesus also said Love one another as I have loved you
     It seems we always end up here, with the Great Commandment, no matter where we start from. We began with a question about what it means to be a prophet, a truth speaker. That led us to think about the truths that Jesus spoke when he attended the synagogue in Nazareth. He speaks those truths to us here and now. It’s what we do here and now that matters. What we do here and now has consequences. Those consequences are our future.

Let us pray.
Lord God, you made us, you saved us, and you guide us. Grant us the grace to recognise the truths spoken by the prophets. Give us the wisdom to see how those truths may guide our actions. Make us able to act in obedience to your command to love each other as you love us, that we may be vessels of your light. We pray in the name of the Light that lights us all, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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7th Sunday after Pentecost, 24th July 2022:  On Prayer
Copyright Wolf Kirchmeir
Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke 11:1-13


May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,
“Teach us to pray”. That’s what the disciples asked, and Jesus gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. We use the longer version as recorded in Matthew. There are also several modern versions of it. They aren’t strict translations, but paraphrases. They are intended to make the intentions of the prayer easier to understand, so that we may pray it more mindfully.

But what exactly are we doing when we pray? What is prayer?

“Teach us to pray,” the disciples asked. A simple request, wouldn’t you say? Just four words in English. And such a simple answer, just a few sentences. What’s the problem? Just repeat the words, and problem solved, right?

No problem at all, until we start to think about it. Then we may see a puzzle. Thinking usually reveals that what we think we know or understand just ain’t so. In this case, it’s the context that points the way. Usually, Jesus wasn’t with the disciples when he prayed. They didn’t know how he prayed, but they clearly thought there was something worth learning. After all, the Jewish tradition is public prayer at the temple or in the synagogue, and out loud. So when Jesus went off to pray by himself, as was his habit, the disciples wondered what was going on.

And we should wonder, too.

So let’s start at the beginning: What is prayer? That looks like an easy question, but any answer you give just raises more questions. Is it asking for some blessing? If so, does that mean that you won’t be blessed if you don’t ask? But then what about the people who don’t ask, and receive the same blessings you enjoy?
Ok then, is prayer asking for some personal favour, something just for you? Doesn’t that sound kind of selfish? And once again, other people will get just the same things you get, without asking.
Is it just talking to God? Moses talked to God, mostly about God’s plans for the Israelites. That sounds like a conference, not prayer.

Maybe we should ask instead, What is prayer for? We are supposed to engage in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. I think it’s fairly obvious that we should praise God and give thanks for all the blessings we enjoy. But then, what’s prayer? Aren’t praise and thanksgiving forms of prayer?

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Whatever we think prayer is, there’s something missing. I have a few ideas, pretty well all of which I’ve cobbled together from what wiser heads have said. I’ll share some of them with you, and pray that my words will help us not only to understand better what we think prayer is, but also help us accept the guidance of the Spirit in our practice of prayer.

I’ll begin with the story of Joe, who was trapped by a flood. The water surrounded his house and was beginning to flow in by the windows. O Lord, save me from this flood, Joe prayed. A neighbor came by in a rowboat, and offered to take Joe with him. Oh, I’ve prayed to the Lord to save me, said Joe, So thanks, I’ll wait.
The water rose some more, and Joe had to climb out onto the roof. Joe prayed again, Lord, save me from this flood. The firefighters came by in their power boat, and called for him to come with them. I’ve prayed to the Lord to save me, Joe said, so thanks anyway, I’ll wait.
The water rose still higher, and Joe moved up to the roof ridge. Save me from this flood, O Lord, he prayed. The Search and Rescue came by with a helicopter, but Joe thanked them, too. I’ve prayed to the Lord, he said, The Lord will surely save me.
The water rose still further, and Joe stood up and clung to the chimney. As the flood threatened to sweep him away, he cried out to the Lord, Save me, O Lord, or I will perish! And voice spoke from the clouds, I sent you a neighbour with a rowboat, and the firefighters with a power boat, and the Search and Rescue with a helicopter. What more do you want?

I like this story. I like it because it’s funny, it makes me laugh. But mostly I like it because makes me think.

Joe obviously knew the words. And I think it’s also obvious that he didn’t know exactly what he was praying for. He expected some sort of spectacular act by God. He expected a miracle. He didn’t expect the usual offers of help and rescue during a flood. But that’s what God sent him. God didn’t perform a miracle. He just waited for the usual flood rescue attempts to reach Joe. And Joe didn’t recognise that these were God’s answer to his prayers.
It looks like Joe really didn’t understand prayer. It looks like he thought prayer was some kind of magic spell. The rule for magic spells is simple: If you say the right words, and perform the right actions, then the magic will work. Make even one little mistake, or forget even one word of the spell, and the magic won’t work. But do it right, and God will do what you want. To me, that looks like trying to control God. And if there’s one thing you can’t do, it’s to control God.

So if asking for what you want, and using the right words, isn’t what it’s about, then what is prayer?
Look at Jesus’s example of prayer again. He lists a series of petitions. So at first glance it looks like praying means to ask God for what we want and need.
But the three first petitions focus on God. Listen.
Father, hallowed be your name. That sentence acknowledges God as the ruler of the universe.
Your kingdom come. That says that we know we have become exiles from God’s kingdom, and wish to return to it.
May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is how God’s kingdom will be re-established, and it explicitly states that it’s God will that matters, not ours.

So the first three petitions make us aware that it’s not what we want, but what God wants that counts. Prayer is not like a magic spell, we aren’t trying to control God. On the contrary, we are reminding ourselves that God is in control. With these three petitions we give up control to God. We align our desires with God’s desires for us.

Having aligned ourselves with God’s will, we ask for the essentials. Listen.
First, we ask for the means of bodily life: Give us each day our daily bread.
Second, we ask for the means of spiritual life: Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And third, we ask for protection against the dangers that surround us: And lead us not into temptation.

Now, we don’t really have to ask for these essentials. God will provide them. So why does Jesus recommend that we ask for them? What’s the point of asking for what we will receive anyhow?
Well, I’m reminded that when I was very young I was taught to ask politely for a snack, to say “Please”. And then of course to say “Thank you”. I knew of course that I would get the cookie or the glass of milk, but asking and giving thanks for it made some kind of sense. What kind of sense? The sense of belonging, of being part of the family, of being loved.

I think that’s a clue. I think prayer is like asking for the snack we know we will get anyhow. I think prayer is about belonging. It expresses our desire to be a child of God. It acknowledges that we are unable to be good children without help. It asks for those changes in mind and heart that enable us to be part of God’s family. Prayer asks for that transformation that we cannot accomplish on our own.

Prayer is of course not a uniquely Christian practice. All faith traditions require prayer. All offer some guidance in how to pray. They use different labels than we do, but they agree on what prayer is and what it is for. Prayer may be expressed in words, but it is an action, it’s something we do, it’s like exercise. Its purpose is to connect us to the Divine in ourselves and in others. It purpose is to make us aware of the creative and sustaining power that brought this universe and us into being. Its purpose is to transform our relationship to each other and to the world in which we live.

So how do we do this praying thing?
First and foremost, we begin by focusing our attention on that divine power that we label the Creator.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Second, we open ourselves to the guidance of that divine wisdom that we label the Spirit.
Thy kingdom come.
Third, we ask that we may amend our lives to practice the love that we label the Christ.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Then we acknowledge the source of our life by asking for the bread that sustains it.
Give us this day our daily bread.
We ask for renewal by asking for forgiveness.
Forgive us our trespasses.
And we ask for a loving relationship with each other.
As we forgive those that trespass against us.
Finally, we ask that the troubles which we will meet will not overwhelm us.
And lead us not into temptation.

The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples covers the ground. It’s a model for us, not so much in the words, but in what those words imply, in what those words describe, in what those words say. They imply that prayer connects us to the Creator, they describe that connection as one of love, the say that we are connected to each other by and through that love.

Let us praise God for the gift of life, and give thanks for his everlasting love. Amen

 
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21st after Pentecost October 25, 2020: On Law
Copyright Wolf Kirchmeir

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Today’s gospel begins with a question from a lawyer.
     Lawyers. There are lots of lawyer jokes. Jokes are often criticisms of their targets. That’s how it is with lawyer jokes.
     For example, A 50-year-old lawyer has been practicing since he was 25. He dies and arrives at the Pearly Gates for judgment. The lawyer says to St. Peter, “There must be some mistake! I’m only 50 years old, that’s far too young to die.” St. Peter frowns and consults his book. “That’s funny, when we add up the hours you billed, you should be at least 83 by now!”
     Lawyers. We love to make fun of them. We love to be cynical about them. We don’t like it when lawyers insist on applying the law as written. We don’t like it when they argue that the law as written is somehow wrong. We don’t like it when they get us all tangled up in the fine print. We don’t like it when there’s no fine print to protect us. Our attitude is basically Heads I win, tails you lose. If you’re a lawyer, you can’t win. Except in court.
     I suppose one of the reasons for that attitude is that we need lawyers. Words do not have simple, single, clear meanings. People have trouble putting their intentions into simple, clear writing. Language is ambiguous and vague, and even worse, it changes over time. The laws our ancestors made often no longer apply, or can’t deal with modern situations. People change their minds about what they wanted, and go to court to change contracts. People make bad choices. People are poor planners.
     The world is not perfect, human beings in particular are not perfect. That’s why we need lawyers. That’s why we need that cumbersome machine we call the justice system, which sometimes seems to cause more damage than it repairs.
     Lawyers, laws, courts of law, the police, rules and regulations, all these remind us that we are liable to make mistakes at best, and to wish for and do evil at worst. The need for law and lawyers feels like an insult to our self-esteem. No wonder we have mixed feelings about lawyers, and that’s putting it mildly.
     I’m sure you’ve seen Peter Cavanagh’s billboard that says, Everyone hates lawyers. Until.... Yes, until we need one.

     Today’s gospel begins with a question, a question about the Law. The Pharisees had seen how Jesus had silenced the Sadducees. They were going to do better. They had a trick question to put to Jesus. They were trying to test him, and if possible to trap him. They begin by addressing Jesus as Teacher. This acknowledges that Jesus, like them, considers the Law to be God’s guide to righteous living. Understanding the Law, and applying it correctly, is essential to being a good person.
      The Jewish religious Law is recorded in the Talmud. It’s central to Judaism, because it specifies the rites and rituals that an observant Jew should perform. More importantly, it discusses the ethical questions that we all face, and how the Law applies to them. It gives guidance for the religious and personal and day-to-day life. It consists mostly of commentaries on the Torah, the five books of Moses, and commentaries on those commentaries.
     Discussion of the Law is essential. One needs to understand what the Law was, and how it applied in the past. That should lead to understanding how the Law should apply now, in the present. That’s important because things change. We change. The available choices change. How we can exercise those choices change. New options displace old ones. All this and more means we constantly have new ethical and moral questions to answer.
      There are several ways of thinking about the Law. At one extreme, we may think of the Law as a set fixed rules. But then we have problems when the rules have nothing to say about new situations, new issues, new options. For example, our smart phones keep a log of all our calls nd emails and photos and such. Very convenient for us. And also for the police. Can they search our phones? There are no generally agreed upon rules about that.
      At the other extreme we may see the Law as a way of making sense of the predicaments of what we call everyday life, so that we can figure how to do right thing. For example, the law says that if we do not take reasonable care, then an unintentional injury to someone else can make us liable for paying damages at least, and a criminal conviction at worst. For example, how much care should you take to keep the path to your front door clear of ice in the winter? What do you think?

     So the Sadducees had failed to trip up Jesus. The Pharisees decided they could do better. Their test question would work better than the one the Sadducees had asked. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?
     This is both a trick and a test. It’s a trick, because to say one commandment is the greatest would mean that all the others are less great, that they don’t matter as much. But every commandment in the Law is important, because every commandment comes from God, right? By picking one, Jesus would be showing some personal preference. But the reason for having the Law is that personal preferences are not a reliable guide to righteousness. Why obey the Law if all that really matters is what you like or don’t like? So, any answer that suggested a personal preference would be a win for the Pharisees.
      The question is also a test, because Jesus’s answer would show how well Jesus understood the Law. Why elevate some rule to the number one spot? Why not another rule? He might reveal some gap in his knowledge. He might misquote, or put the commandment into his own words. There’s lots of opportunity for error when you’re referring to a text of many hundreds of thousands of words.
      Jesus answers the question by quoting from the Talmud: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’

      The first part of this Law puts God at the centre of each our lives. The second part is the Talmudic version of what’s been called the Golden Rule: Deal with others as you yourself would wish to be dealt with. Some people would like to say this is a supremely Christian Law. It’s not. First of all, it’s in the Talmud. Secondly, it’s at the centre of all the great world religions. Islam means “submission to God”, and the prime duty of a Muslim towards his fellow humans is charity. The Buddha said we must put aside the self, and exercise compassion for all things. The Hindu advises union with the Spirit that breathes life into all things, and peaceful co-operation with our fellow humans. All these are versions of the Great commandment, they are different ways of expressing the same insight.

     So where do we go from here? How does the Great Commandment apply to us here and now?
I think it does so in several ways. Firstly, it provides the framework for relating to the world into which we are born, and in which we must find our way: Love God.
     Then it provides the framework for relating to each other in this community into which we are born, and in which we must live: Love your neighbour.
      Finally, it reminds us that we need a principle to interpret the rules so that we can apply them properly, and extend them to cover whatever new problems we face: On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. This principle is a rule about rules. It’s a law about laws. It guides interpretation and creation of the laws that we must make in our efforts to resolve conflicts, promote security and prosperity, and strengthen the community without which we cannot survive.

     No wonder the Pharisees and others no longer dared to ask Jesus any more questions. But maybe they should have. Because seeing that these two laws are central doesn’t make the work of answering the ethical and moral questions any easier.
     We may now understand the questions better, but figuring out specific answers to specific problems is still hard work. We need all the help we can get. We get that help from our traditions. We get it from the experts. We get it from each other.
     And most of all we get that help from the Spirit. We trust that we will be able to do the best we can. Any mistakes we make will be corrected, if not by us, then by someone else; and of not now, then later. As the cliche has it, the only thing that doesn’t change is change.
     Herodotus, a Greek philosopher, said you can’t step into the same river twice, for it has flowed on while you dried your feet before stepping into the water again. But by measuring our choices by the principles encoded in the Great Commandment, we can be sure that we won’t drown.

Let us pray.
Lord God, creator and law-giver, grant us such insight into your will that we may guided to do your work of love. We ask this in the name of him who embodied the Great Law in his life and death, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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18th after Pentecost October 4, 2010: The Vineyard
Copyright W. Kirchmeir

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Today I want to talk about both the psalm and the gospel. The psalm is about the heavens, and some very interesting things have happened in astronomy this past month. The gospel is the parable about the vineyard. I think what links them is the idea of God the Creator, and I’ll offer a few thoughts about what that means for us.

    The psalmist says, 1The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.

    Psalm 19 is one of my favourites, because of this wonderful opening passage. It expresses the awe we feel when we look at the night sky and see the stars. It expresses the comfort of seeing the sun rise and set day after day.
    Our history as humans begins not with writing, which is a mere 6,000 or so years old. It begins with the stone circles and stone tombs set up to capture the rising and setting sun at the spring and winter solstices. We don’t know how people kept track of the sun, and figured out this astonishing regularity. But somehow they devised a calendar. Calendars are older than writing.
     We still look at the skies with awe and wonder. We know more about the universe than even our parents knew, and we want to know more. We want to know what knowledge the heavens display. We pay astronomers to record and interpret the data that their telescopes deliver.
     About three weeks ago, a team led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University announced that they had probably found phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. Phosphine is a gas. They had not expected to find traces of it. Phosphine, as far as we know, is made only by living organisms. That includes us humans, who make it and use it for some industrial processes. But phosphine is made naturally only by certain bacteria, who produce it when they eat dead things.
     The astronomers who found the phosphine traces are scientists, so they are cautious. Very cautious. Perhaps there is no phosphine after all. Perhaps there is some unknown inorganic process that’s making phosphine. That would make this discovery an interesting addition to our knowledge of chemistry.
     But if there is no other way to make phosphine on Venus, it would be a totally unexpected discovery. We may have found ET, and it’s a microbe.
     The psalmist of course knew nothing of this. He didn’t know how huge the universe is. His description of the sun’s passage across the sky probably means he didn’t know that the Earth moves round the Sun.
     But when he looked at the sky, he felt awe and wonder. What’s up there testifies to the creative energy that brought the universe into being, a creative energy that we believe comes from our God.
Our indigenous brothers and sisters refer to God as the Creator. I think the Psalmist would have felt total sympathy and agreement with this emphasis on God’s creative power. One reason I think so is that in the second half of the psalm we read, The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.
     The psalmist connects the knowledge of the heavens with the knowledge of God’s law. For the heavens show regularity and order. The sun rises and sets every day, the moon grows from nothing to a bright disk and then shrinks to nothing again, the seasons follow a cycle marked by the Sun and the Moon and the stars. It looks like the heavenly realms obey God’s law. That obedience makes for order, for beauty, for certainty.
     The obvious thought is that we too should obey God’s law.
     Which raises the question: What is God’s law? We’ll come back to this question later.

     The Gospel tells us of a man who bought a vineyard, dug a winepress in it, and rented it out for a share of the crop. When the grapes were ripe, he wanted his share, so he sent some servants to collect it. But the tenants beat the servants, killed one, and drove the rest away. So the owner sent more servants, but the tenants beat them too. So he sent his son, thinking that the tenants wouldn’t dare to lay a hand on him. But they did. In fact they killed him.
     Then Jesus asked the chief priests and the Pharisees what will happen to the tenants. “They will be arrested, tried, and executed,” they said. Jesus then alludes to a passage in the Talmud that speaks of righteous punishment. The Pharisees know he means them: They are the tenants working in God’s vineyard, and they have not been faithful stewards of the crop entrusted to them.

    It would be easy to point fingers at them, and interpret this parable as one more piece of evidence that the Pharisees were in the wrong. But it’s not just the Pharisees who are bad stewards of the vineyard. We are, too.
     The vineyard is a symbol. It’s been interpreted many ways. I think the key to understanding it is to pay attention to what the tenants want. They don’t want to pay the rent. They want the whole crop for themselves.
     This may remind us of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, where he charged the priests with profiteering instead of serving the people by performing the sacrifices as required.
     Or it may remind us of the televangelists who use their preaching skills to get money from their audience.
     More generally, this parable may remind us of all the many ways that people who have responsibilities of care and nurture instead exploit and abuse the people in their care.
     More generally still, it may remind us that we are stewards of God’s creation, but instead of nurturing the Earth, we destroy it with our heedless greed and selfishness.

     It’s that last reminder that connects Psalm 19 to Jesus’s parable. The Psalmist sees the heavens, and they remind him of the Creator. They remind him also of the Creator’s Law, which he loves. And that in turn reminds him of his sin, his repeated disobedience. He pleads for help: Keep your servant also from wilful sins; may they not rule over me.

     The first reading this morning tells of how Moses brought the Law to the people. Try this experiment: Look at the commandments as reminders of what to do and what not to do in order to live together peaceably.
     Start with the prohibitions. Don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t commit adultery, don’t covet – these are all reminders that selfishness and pride destroy our relationships with each other, for if we all did those things, our community would fall apart pretty quickly. If you can’t rely on each other to keep the peace, what’s the point of living together? Yet each of us alone is a naked wretch, with very little chance of living a long and happy life.
     Then there are the exhortations. Keep the Sabbath, for our communal life depends on communal celebrations. Honour your father and mother, for they brought you into this world, nurtured you, and taught you their hard-learned wisdom. Respect those who built our community.
     Then consider the commandments relating to our spiritual life, that part of us that yearns for meaning and purpose. Don’t make idols because focusing on the wrong things will lead us astray. Don’t swear reminds us that there is no magic formula to make things happen the way we want.
     Make God the centre of your life, and everything else will fall into place. Even when you don’t fully understand, God’s presence will comfort you with the assurance that your life has meaning and purpose. When you gaze at the night sky and wonder at the stars, when you feel the warmth of the sun, you will know that there is order and harmony in the universe, and that you are part of it.

     Like the Pharisees, we too often focus on the customs and traditions of our religion as if they were what it’s all about. In doing this, we neglect to tend God’s vineyard. We don’t nurture and care for his people. But his people is all humankind. For Jesus came into the world save us all.
     Nor do we nurture and care for his creation, instead arguing about how to balance the needs of the environment against our own whims and desires. As if nature were some theme park that we are obliged to maintain. As if we could exist without nature. For we too are creatures, and like all creatures, we depend on each other in an intricate web of connections with the rest of creation.
     That creation includes the heavens. We now know that when a star explodes into a nova, that explosion creates the elements of which we are made. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, iron, phosphorus, and the rest. Our very existence as living beings on this planet depends on the heavens above us.
     The heavens that declare the glory of the Creator.
     The Creator whom we recognise not only as the source of our being, but the source of the love that sustains us.

     Let us pray.
Lord God, Creator, when we look upon your creation, give us the grace of knowing its order and harmony, that we may perceive in it the love that you bear for us and all your creatures. Give us the grace to know how to nurture it, and how to take our proper place in it, that we may be good and faithful stewards of the bounty you have granted us. We pray in Jesus’s name, the firstborn of all creation, whose life and death and resurrection assure us of your love. Amen.

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Epiphany 5, February 9th, 2020: The Law and the Prophets
Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12), Psalm 112:1-9 (10) ; 1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16); Matthew 5:13-20 
© W. Kirchmeir

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.


Dear Friends in Christ,

Jesus said, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

     The Law and the Prophets. A phrase that we’ve heard many times before. Just what does it mean? What do we mean by “law”? Do we mean Justice? We know better than that. Unjust laws have been enacted as far back as we have history. What about the laws of nature? Are rules and regulations the same as laws? And so on.
      We’ll come back to this question of the law. I want to begin with a brief look at prophecy.

     Prophets. The modern meaning of the word “prophet” is “someone who foretells the future”. The word originally meant “spokesperson, interpreter, one who speaks on behalf of another.” That includes one who interprets the signs and omens, who explains what they mean. That includes what may happen in the future, and so we come to our modern meaning: one who foretells, one who predicts.
     Here’s story about a prophet:
     Moishe, a medieval Jewish astrologer, prophesied that the king’s favourite horse would soon die. Sure enough, the horse died a short time later. The king was outraged at the astrologer, he was certain that his prophecy had brought about the horse’s death. He summoned Moishe and commanded him, "Prophet, tell me when you will die!"
     Moishe realized that the king was planning to kill him immediately no matter what answer he gave, so he had to answer carefully. "I do not know when I will die," he answered finally. "I only know that whenever I die, the king will die three days later."

     Good call. Moishe admitted he didn’t know everything, and that made his limited prediction more believable. Neat way to save his life.

     The Bible is full of prophecies. The prophets speak on behalf of God. Many of the prophecies are very specific. Many of them are vague, the kind of predictions that could refer to many things. Prophecies of wars and natural disasters are common. Well, actual wars and natural disasters are common, too, so to prophesy that they will happen is easy. It’s a little more difficult to make precise predictions of when they will happen. Volcanoes are good example. Predicting an eruption is much more difficult than predicting the weather.
     There are plenty of people who are more than willing to tell you what Bible prophecies really mean. For example, there have been many predictions of the end of the world, with precise dates and times, and even locations. None of them have come true. Nevertheless, these readers of the prophecies are certain that End Times are just about to happen, and they have the inside information. They are willing to share it, too, especially if you give them a free-will offering of  $29.95 for the book that explains it all.
     Political events and social changes that annoy someone will also be dragged in as evidence that the End Is Near. Of course, those that agree will be prepared. Better yet, they will be saved when the Tribulation comes, and will watch with gloomy satisfaction as the unbelievers suffer for their sins.
     The track record of these prophet interpreters is dismal. Does that mean that Bible prophecies are meaningless? I don’t think so, but you can tell I don’t believe that figuring out times and dates is what they are about. I’ll come back to this question again. Now let’s take a brief look at the Law.

     There are perhaps even more people who claim to know exactly what the Law means. They know exactly which of the Old Testament Laws apply to us, and which don’t. For some reason, the Laws these legalists talk most about are the ones that promise punishment for things they don’t like. But they often disagree with each other, and that suggests that the Law also needs to be interpreted.
     What is a law, anyhow? We’re used to the idea that the law is something we legislate. If there’s some problem that bothers enough people, the politicians will pass a law. Passing a law will certainly solve the problem. Or maybe not. And if not, you can always pass another law.
     But a law needs to be enforced, so we get the Justice System. But as we know only too well, law and justice aren’t always the same. Innocent people have been convicted, and some of them have been executed. Or neighbours go to court to settle some dispute, and too often the losing side thinks they were hard done by, and appeal the decision, which leads to more court time and more costs. In the end, someone will be disappointed, and will be convinced that justice wasn’t done. Plus, a lot of money was wasted.
     Then there are rules and regulations. When we don’t like them, we call them Red Tape, and argue that they interfere with business. Or worse, they violate common sense. Or worst of all, they attack freedom and liberty. In fact, there is a political movement called Libertarianism founded on the principle that there should be as little law and regulation as possible.
     In short, Law as often as not is something we don’t want. We like it when it’s on our side, but not when it’s against us.

     So what are we to do? How are we to understand the Law and the Prophets?

     Let’s start at the beginning. What was Jesus talking about?
     When Jesus refers to the Law and the Prophets, he is talking about the Talmud, the collection of scripture and the commentaries. They are guides to righteous living. They have always been living guides. The Jews then and now argued about and discussed how the Law and the prophetic announcements applied to life right here, right now, in this place and time. Jesus did that, too.
     Why did he discuss the Law and the Prophets? Things change. New things are invented. New possibilities arise. Old things are forgotten or discarded. Fashions come and go. Technology offers new choices. Trade expands, and we meet people who are different from us. Politics changes – it always changes, and affects people’s loyalties. We try to avoid the mistakes of our ancestors, and make new mistakes of our own. And too often we get stuck in some idea about what the Law says, and we apply it without thinking.
     All these things and more cause problems in interpreting the law. All these things and more sooner or later make some application of a rule or regulation silly, or worse. All these things and more may mislead us into misinterpreting the Law.
     Yet the Law and the Prophets must somehow continue to apply. They will not be abolished. It all must, somehow, make sense.

     I think that’s what Jesus means when he says he has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. He’s come to show the full sense of the Law and the Prophets. He won’t abolish any of it, he will complete it. He will show us how to make true sense of it.
     Making sense of the Law and the Prophets. That’s what Jesus was doing throughout his ministry. He repeated the same message over and over again: The Kingdom is here, it’s now, and the Son of Man has come to show us how to become citizens in that Kingdom.
     He also quoted the summary of the Law and the Prophets: Love God, and love your neighbour.
     That Summary should guide our interpretation of the Law and the Prophets. When we want to figure out how to apply the Law in our own time, that application must agree with the Summary. When we want to understand the Law as a guide to righteous living, that understanding must agree with the Summary. When we want to make some rule of life for ourselves, that rule must agree with the Summary.

     And how are we to make sense of the Prophets? They speak the same truth as Jesus: The Kingdom is at hand. When we want to make sense of a prophecy, that sense must point to the Kingdom. When we want to read a prophecy as a guide to action, that guide must point to the Kingdom. When we look for the meaning of our lives, that meaning will show us the Kingdom.

     Love God and love your neighbour, for the Kingdom is at hand. That’s the Law. That’s the Prophets. That’s all there is. There isn’t any more.
     But it’s more than enough to guide our lives, to inspire our actions, and to give us hope.

Let us pray.

Lord God, Maker, Saviour, and Guide, we ask you to grant us the grace of so understanding the Law and the Prophets so that our words and deeds will show how your Promise of the Kingdom may be fulfilled. We ask this in the name of Him who is that Promise made flesh, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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Epiphany 5, 5 February 2012: Looking for God
© Wolf Kirchmeir
[Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147 1-11; I Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39]

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,
     When I was reading the passages appointed for today, one phrase jumped out at me: the whole town gathered at the door. This, I thought, is about looking for God. So that’s what I want to talk about today: looking for God, and what happens when we find him.
     I think you’ve all heard the story of the somewhat inebriated gentleman who was crawling around on his hands and knees under a lamp post. A passing policeman asked what he was doing. “I’m looking for my house keys,” answered the gentleman. So the policeman looked around, too, but saw nothing resembling the missing keys. “Sir, where did you lose the keys?” he asked. The unsteady gentleman waved towards the darkness down the street. “Over there,” he said. “I lost them over there. In the dark.” “Good grief,” said the policeman. “Why are looking for them here?” “Because,” said the gentleman, “Because this is where the light is.”
     The gospel today continues the story of Jesus early days of ministry. He was visiting Simon and Andrew’s home town, preaching and healing. A whole lot of things happen. For example, Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law of a fever. People hear about Jesus’s healing and preaching, so they come looking for him. Mark reports that the whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases.
     The people of the town came looking for Jesus. They wanted his healing and his wisdom. And unlike the drunk who was looking in the wrong place, they came to the right place and found what they were looking for. They came looking for Jesus because that is where the light was. They came looking for him because he was the light.
     Jesus is the light, still. He is the light that lightens our darkness, the light that illuminates our minds, that warms our hearts, that shows us the way. The question is, will we come looking for him where he is, or will we wander around like the drunk who looked for his keys where they were not?
     There’s a picture of Jesus that has become popular: You see Jesus knocking on a door, and listening for a response. The picture asks a question: Will you respond to Jesus’s knock and let him in? If we think this picture shows us all we need to know about how we meet Jesus, then I think we’ve made a subtle mistake. I think so because Mark’s story turns this right around. His story doesn’t ask, Will you answer when Jesus comes looking for you? His story asks, Will you go looking for Jesus? The townspeople didn’t sit in their houses and gardens waiting for Jesus to come by. No, they gathered at the door.
     There are many other reminders in the Bible that God expects us to look for him. Recall Jesus’s saying, Seek, and you will find. And, Knock, and it shall be opened to you. These are not exhortations to wait for Jesus to show up. The advice is not, Wait, and Jesus will come to you. God doesn’t say, You don’t have to do anything, I’ll be along soon. He doesn’t want passive believers who think they’ve arrived at the truth, he wants active seekers who know there’s still a long way to go.
     It’s a bad idea to wait around for important things to happen. The Bible is not the only place we can find this message. One of the most famous plays of the 1960s was Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. In it, Estragon and Vladimir, two friends who have seen better days, sit around waiting for Godot to show up. They pass the time arguing about why they should wait, what Godot will do when he gets there, whether they should keep on waiting, how to bring some interest or variation into their boring existence, and so on. They’re not sure whether Godot exists, and confess they can’t be sure they will recognise him if and when he shows up. There’s a lot of conversation along these lines.
     Then Pozzo, a slave owner, arrives leading his heavily-laden slave Lucky. Pozzo eats a meal, which he doesn’t share. Lucky is ordered to entertain the group by dancing, which he does. He then makes a jumbled speech consisting mostly of nonsense. Pozzo and Lucky wander off. A boy appears, announcing that Godot will come tomorrow.
     The second act takes place next day, and repeats the events and conversations of the first act, with variations. As the play ends, the two main characters are still waiting for Godot.
     As you may guess, the play isn’t exactly an action drama. In fact nothing much happens. Estragon and Vladimir just hang around waiting. They don’t do anything, and they know almost nothing. They know only that somehow Godot is important, and the encounter with him will be crucial. “Life-changing” is the phrase people use these days. But the play does offer many moments of comedy. The very situation is absurd: two guys waiting for somebody they have never met. Somebody they may not recognise when he does come. Somebody who may never come. The play draws you into its crazy universe despite yourself.
     The play also demands that you think about it. As you might expect, people have disagreed about what it means. The most obvious interpretation is that it’s about finding meaning in one’s life. The two friends are waiting for something or someone that will give some final meaning or purpose to their lives. The play contains numerous references to the Bible and Jesus, so I prefer to conclude that it’s about waiting for God.
     But of course God doesn’t show up.
     Now why did I say that?  “Of course, God doesn’t show up.” Because I don’t think God will show up. Or rather, he’s here, there, and everywhere, but just waiting for him to reveal himself is not the best way to find him. Quite the contrary: We have to do something. We have to look for him. We have to gather at the door, like the Galileans did. We have to seek. We have to knock.
     That sounds pretty simple and easy to do, doesn’t it? But if you have travelled any distance on the road of faith, you know that things that look easy and simple are neither easy nor simple.
     So you’ve realised you should go looking for God, and not wait around on the off-chance that he may show up. You now have at least three questions. How do you go about looking for God? How will you recognise him when he shows up? What will you do when you’ve found him?
     Let’s think about how we may look for God. There are a couple of hints in the Old Testament readings for today. Isaiah tells us that God has created the world around us. [Is. 40:26] Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
     So just looking at this creation that we are part of should show us God, right? Well, again, it’s not that simple. Many pious naturalists have claimed to see God’s hand and mind in the design of the natural world. They point to the beauty of the butterfly, the fragrance of the rose. How could this not be the work of God? How can we not see God’s design in these delights? But I’ve noticed that none of these pious naturalists has ever explained parasites, some of which cause horrendous pain and suffering to their hosts as they slowly kill them. The natural world is amazing and wonderful, mysterious, an intricate interplay of forces and actions and energies that we are barely able to understand. To claim that the beauty of the butterfly and the rose testify to God’s bounteous love isn’t good enough. God also made the tapeworm and the bot fly.
     What Isaiah emphasises in his vision of God the Creator is on the one hand God’s power, and on the other our inability to understand him. God’s power is beyond out grasp; his purposes are beyond our understanding. [Is. 40:28] Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no-one can fathom. No matter how much we try to understand the universe, there will always be something beyond our ability to explain. To say “Well, God made it” isn’t an explanation. Isaiah is very clear about this: we may know or believe that God made the universe, but that’s not the same as understanding it.
     So what’s Isaiah’s point? Why is he emphasising the power and inscrutability of God the Creator? Simply this: God’s power will sustain you: [Is. 40:29] He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Trust in him, and you will have all you need to prevail against the troubles that encompass you.
     And that’s one clue on how to find God: look for him in the strength you didn’t know you had, in the healing you didn’t expect, in the light of hope that shines like a candle in the darkness.
     It’s not easy to do this. We may despair, crumble under the pain, wail in grief and sorrow. We may want to curse whenever fate has brought us low. Yet even in that darkness, we may see the light. Even as all the evils and trials of this world threaten to break us, we can trust in God: [Is. 40:30-31] Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
     Now you may want to say, “But those are just words. Wait till you’ve felt the pain that I’ve felt, wait till you’ve suffered the loss that I’ve suffered, wait till you’ve walked in terror as I have walked, and these words will not be so easy to say!” True. No one said it was going to be easy. But look for God in your pain, your loss, your fear, and you will find him.
     And when you’ve found him, what then? The Psalm tells us something about what to do when you’ve recognised God’s work in your life: Hallelu Yah! Praise the Lord! For he has done great things for you, for me, for us. [Ps. 147:1-5] Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him! The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. And even in that praise, the psalmist reminds ourselves of both the power that sustains us and the purposes which we cannot fathom.
     Praise is one response to the recognition of God. Sharing what we now know is another.
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians tells us how he responded when he found God. Remember, Paul was a deeply pious man long before he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. He did his best to live according to the law, and it was ambition that sent him on the road to Damascus. He intended to round up the Christians there and hand them over to the authorities. He was looking for confirmation that he was acting righteously. Looking for just such confirmation is one of the ways in which we seek God.
     Paul met God in a blaze of light that blinded him, and heard a voice that reproached him. Jesus reproached Paul not for his misunderstanding, but for his actions, for the persecution of the early church. And Paul became not only a Christian, he became the most zealous of missionaries.
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul explains what his encounter with God did to him: [1Co. 9:16] Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!
     Will we do as Paul did? Can we do as Paul did? With God’s grace, we can. We can do it in the way we live our daily lives. We can do it in our meditating on how far beyond our understanding God’s purposes are, and yet how closely God’s hand guides us in our lives. We can remind ourselves that to see God means to see the divine light in each other. We can honour God the Creator in our stewardship of this, his creation. We can make our trust in God the background of our lives, the foundation that supports the building, the harmony that sounds underneath the song and gives it shape. Knowing that we have met God, and that his promises are sure, we can get on with doing what we have to do.
     Go out there, look for Jesus. Go out there, the journey is long, and you won’t get anywhere if you don’t take the first step.
     Let us pray.
     Lord God, Creator and Sustainer, give us grace that we may find you when we seek you in your creation, in each other, and in the tasks that you have given us to do. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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The Reign of Christ (Pentecost 24)
November 24, 2019 © Wolf Kirchmeir

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 1:68-79: Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,
     Today we celebrate the Reign of Christ. So why is our Gospel reading from Luke's account of the Crucifixion?
     There is a simple answer to this: Here Luke tells us that Jesus's reign begins on the Cross. The soldiers have fastened a poster above Jesus's head proclaiming that THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.  One of the criminals executed with Jesus asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom. So the conclusion is a no-brainer: Jesus will reign in his kingdom.
     But as always, the simple answer doesn't take us far enough. Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me when I read this Gospel.

     In another version of the Crucifixion, the temple authorities object to the poster.
Write, He said he was King of the Jews they ask. But Pilate says, What I have written, I have written. But Jesus did not claim to be King of the Jews. Both the Temple authorities and Pilate were wrong about that. In fact, Jesus doesn't claim to be a King at all. All he ever says is that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
     When Pilate asks Are you the King of the Jews? Jesus answers So you say. Even here, he tells the penitent criminal Today you will be with me in paradise. He does not say I will remember you when I return to my throne.

     So why do we keep talking about Jesus as King? Why do we think about the End of Days as the beginning of Christ's reign on Earth? Why do we think about the Kingdom as something that will happen in the future?

     Listen again: Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
     Paradise. An ancient Greek word that originally referred to an orchard or a garden. Early in Christian history, the word was used to refer to the Garden of Eden. About 900 years ago, Christians began to use it to refer to heaven, the dwelling place of the dead, who will live in the presence of God forever.
     It seems to me that here Jesus is talking about his and the penitent's immediate personal future. He's not even talking about the Kingdom, let alone about himself as King.

     Well, then, how do we make sense of the Kingdom of God, and of Christ as the King?
     I think we have to let go of notions of royalty. I think we have to let go of notions of a future age when Christ will reign on Earth. I think we have to let go of notions of Jesus being a king like the kings we have known in our history. They're a sorry lot. They're weak, cruel, ambitious, power hungry. That's not Jesus.
     I think we have to think again about Jesus as King. I think so mostly because Jesus said over and over again The Kingdom of God is at hand. Any notion of the Reign of Christ has to work with this claim. The Kingdom of God is at hand. The Kingdom is here, now. The Kingdom has been here since the beginning of time. The Kingdom will endure to the End of Creation.

     Where, then is the Kingdom? Where is "here"?
     The Kingdom is in our hearts and minds. The Kingdom is in our relationships with each other. The Kingdom is  in our communities, our churches, our families. The hymn says
Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run;
His Kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.


     The Kingdom is eternal, it has no beginning and no end. Yet the Kingdom exists in time, it exists in us. That's a mystery. It's a mystery whose meaning we work out whenever we contemplate Jesus's reminder that we exist to love God and our neighbour. It's a mystery whose meaning we work out whenever we contemplate the promise of the Crucifixion, Today you will be with me in paradise. It's a mystery whose meaning we begin to understand when we see Jesus as the embodiment of God's love.

Let us pray.

Lord God, who reigns over all Creation, take up your throne in our hearts, that we may in our words and deeds show the fulfillment of your promise that you will be with us forever. We pray in the name Jesus Christ, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

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Pentecost 4, July 7, 2019 : Missionaries
© Wolf Kirchmeir

2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Isaiah 66:10-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,
     Jesus sends out 72 disciples, two-by-two, to tell the people that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He also gives them advice. Reading this passage, I thought, Aha, this is about messages! So I fired up my trusty search engine and looked for a story about messaging. Here’s one that I found:
     A priest and pastor from the local parishes are standing by the side of the road holding up a sign that reads, "The End is Near! Turn yourself around now before it's too late!"
     "Leave us alone, you religious nuts!" yelled the first driver as he sped by. From around the corner they heard screeching tires and a big splash.
     "Do you think," said one clergyman to the other, "we should just put up a sign that says, 'Collapsed Bridge'?"

     Messages. You’ve got to make sure you get them right. That applies both to the one sending the message and the one receiving it. Jesus sent a couple of busloads of disciples into the country to spread the message of the Kingdom. They were to go to the towns and villages ahead of him to tell them that Kingdom was near. Before they left, he gave them advice and instructions. Some may sound a bit odd to us, and some may be a puzzle.

     Let’s look at one of the odd ones first: “When you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say,`Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you.” What’s with this wiping the dust off one’s feet? It’s clearly some kind of reprimand, but why?
     Dirt on the feet has always been a problem, even before most people had shoes. Every tribe and nation has rules about feet and shoes and dirt. We here in Canada take off our shoes at the door so we don’t track dirt into the house.
     I think that from the beginning one of the primary purposes of footwear was to protect you from dirt. You wiped your feet or took off your sandals so you wouldn’t carry dirt into the house. And that’s why wiping the dust off your feet can be a reprimand. When you wipe the dust of the street off your feet, you show that town is so unworthy that you don’t want to carry even its dust on your feet as you go along the road.
     What does this have to do with messages? It’s all about context. The meaning of a message depends on the situation in which it’s sent. That’s why the driver in the joke misunderstood the sign: he thought it was a religious message because two clergymen were holding the sign. Our customs around dirt on the feet are different, so we need to know what the rules were 2,000 years ago in Judah.
     The other advice for the travellers makes sense when you recall that back then they didn’t have motels and restaurants and other such conveniences for travellers. Sure, major towns on the major trade routes had inns, but in other places you basically relied on the kindness of strangers. In fact, the custom was and is that people took in strangers. A guest was treated as family while they stayed in the house. So it makes sense to remind the disciples act like family. Greet the householder with a blessing before entering. Eat what’s offered, in other words, don’t cause extra work or trouble for the host. And so on.

     Then we come to main instructions: Heal the sick who are there and tell them, `The kingdom of God is near you.’

     Jesus sent the 72 disciples out as missionaries.  He gave them instructions and advice. These instructions and advice have guided missionaries ever since.
     Well, they are supposed to guide missionaries, but that hasn’t always happened.
     Missionaries. They’ve been a mixed bag, as they say. These first ones did exactly what Jesus asked them to do. When they returned, they were very pleased: “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name,” they said. “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven,” Jesus said.

     The mission of the church, of every Christian, is to heal the sick and to announce that the Kingdom is near. Simple instructions, and a simple message. Shouldn’t be too hard to get it right, right? Yet too often, we Christians have got it wrong.
     We’ve got it wrong because we think we know better. We think it’s not enough to heal the sick, we have to fix their life styles and customs to bring them into line with ours.
     We think it’s not enough to tell the unsaved that the Kingdom is near, we have to impose our liturgy and theology on them, and warn them against other Christians who do these things differently. Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not take a purse or bag or sandals”. Not only have we brought along our purses and bags and sandals, so to speak, we have also brought along the powers of empire and conquest.
     Instead of saying "Peace to this house", we’ve said “We claim this land in the name of our King”.
     We’ve insisted on doing things our way instead of learning and respecting the laws and customs of the country.
     And in Canada, we’ve collaborated with the government in destroying a way of life. Why? Because the residential school system was seen as a kind of missionary work. The children would not only be turned into good little Canadians, they would be turned into good little Anglicans, and Catholics, and Presbyterians.
     We have too often ignored Jesus’s instructions. “Spreading the Word” is good, it’s what we are supposed to do. So criticising what missionaries have done and still do is often seen as refusing Jesus’s command to spread the word. But if we stick to his instructions, we can’t go wrong. They can be summarised as follows:
     1. Heal the sick wherever you find them.
     2. Announce the coming of the Kingdom.
     3. Don’t pick fights, but leave places where you’re not wanted.
     4. Behave yourself by observing the customs of the country (such as eating what’s put in front of you).

     That last instruction may deserve a little more explanation. Remember that much of the Law recorded in the Old Testament is about food, about what and when and how to prepare and eat the food that God has given us. For observant Jews, keeping kosher is important. So when Jesus tells the 72 disciples to eat what they were given, he’s saying “Your customs and rules about food don’t apply everywhere.” But what’s true of food is also true of all other aspects of a way of life.
     So, Behave Yourself.

     Simple instructions, really. So why is following them so difficult?

     It’s difficult because of two temptations that we find almost irresistible. First, we love to complicate things. Secondly, we interpret advice to suit our egos.

     We have often complicated the simple instructions of Jesus. “Tell them the Kingdom is near”, he said. Well, it can’t possibly be as simple as that, right? After all, we have different notions of what the Kingdom is, so we have to make sure that the heathen get the correct ideas! And what does “Tell them” mean? Is that all? Shouldn’t we explain it all to them? And shouldn’t we persuade them? They will be damned if they don’t listen and understand, so we really ought to make sure they do listen and understand. Even if we have to use strong measures to get the job done.
     And so on. And so forth. It really can get quite complicated, and the more complicated it gets, the harder we try yo justify what we’re doing. It’s the human thing to do.
     And that’s where our ego comes in. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. If only a few people have come to be baptised, we’ve failed to reap the harvest. Failure is something we can’t accept. So we try harder to spread the word, and measure success by the number of souls saved, by the number baptised, by the number who have made a decision for Christ.

     So what’s to be done? Let’s start with the proposition that we also have been sent, like the 72 disciples. We also are to heal the sick and tell of the Kingdom. How do we do that? We aren’t all cut out for travel to foreign lands, or work in the inner city, or even to teach Sunday School. We can support those who do these things by giving money and other support so they can do their work. But I’m sure you sometimes may have the same uneasy feeling I have when I’m writing a cheque, or donating food and clothing, or buying a box of art supplies, that doing these things isn’t quite enough. Good as these actions are, they may be a way of avoiding the hard work ourselves.

     Well, there’s lots of good advice out there. Some commentators have said: Just live the Christian life wherever you are, and that witness will testify to the power of God’s love in your life, and the meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

     When you think about your daily life, you know that there are plenty of occasions to talk about what God means to you. You don’t have to say much. Sometimes a phrase of blessing is enough. At other times, you may be able to say that your faith is like solid ground under your feet. We Anglicans tend to be shy about expressing our deepest feelings. We don’t want to be thought of as religious nuts, because that means we’ve put people off. But really, it’s OK to be up front about what you believe, and why.

     There’s also much occasion for serving our neighbour. It could be a donation to some charity that does the kind of work you want done. It could be helping a neighbour get their groceries home. It could be visiting a sick or grieving friend or acquaintance. It could be a friendly word or chat with someone at the post office or the store. It could be yielding the right of way to a car when you arrive at the stop sign at the same time.
     In fact, serving your neighbour starts with common courtesy and good manners. It builds from there to the kind of help that someone wouldn’t get any other way.

     So where are we now in our meandering around the story of the 72 disciples and the instructions Jesus gave them?

     We’ve arrived once again at the Summary of the Law and the Prophets. Healing the sick and telling of the Good News applies the summary of the Law and the Prophets. You love God, so talk about him as occasion offers. You love your neighbour, so serve all people that you meet, as occasion offers.

     Let us pray.

Lord God, grant us the grace to know when to speak and when to act, that your love may be shown in our lives. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

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3rd Sunday in Lent: Money
(March 8, 2015)© Wolf Kirchmeir
 
[Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-22; John 2:13-22]

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel is St John’s version of the Cleansing of the Temple. St John tells us that Jesus made a whip, and drove the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals from the temple. It’s told in a few verses in each of the four Gospels.

It’s an exciting story. Many artists have painted the scene. Imagine, Jesus wielding a whip, overturning tables, shouting at people, using harsh language: Take these things away. Do not make my Father’s house a place of merchandise. In another Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying My Father’s house is a house of prayer, you have made it a den of thieves.

Considering how few words are used to tell the story, it has attracted a lot of attention. Why is this? I think that it’s not just the drama of the event. I think it’s that this event touches on many questions which all relate to the single most basic one: What is life for? It does so in two ways. It shows us that money and wealth can be serious problems. And it symbolises the radical reorganisation of life, the universe, and everything, which Jesus offered in his ministry, and which culminates in his death on the cross.

Let’s have a closer look at the core of this event. Why did Jesus cleanse the Temple?  The simple answer is that he was deeply offended by the focus on doing business in the Temple. Sure, people needed to buy sacrificial animals, but trading in them was not what the Temple was for. Doing business was not the business of the Temple.

Does Jesus say anything about money and wealth anywhere else? He sure does. He points out how the widow who donates one dollar gives a much larger proportion of her wealth than does the Pharisee who gives a hundred. He tells the young lawyer that he should sell everything he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and become a disciple. He tells a parable about a man who has filled his storehouses with wealth, and plans to lead a leisurely life of retirement, except that he will die that night. He says that we cannot serve both God and Mammon. He holds up a coin and says, Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And so on.

Jesus has a lot to say about money and wealth. So do the writers of the Epistles. So does the Old Testament.

And that leads to the obvious question: What does the Bible teach us about how to think about money and wealth?

Some people will no doubt say that the Bible is not an economics textbook. That’s true, if you think of economics as being all about the numbers. But the economy isn’t just about the numbers. In fact, the numbers are the least of it. The economy is the way we’ve organised our community life so as to produce and share the goods and services that we need. That’s all.

So what’s the role of money? Money is a method for making the exchange of goods and services easier. Sure, we can use it for many other purposes. We can use it track the costs of production and distribution. We can use it to account for debt. We can use it to calculate how much each partner contributes to a common enterprise. We can even use it to save for the future. Instead of storing actual wheat in actual storehouses for future use, we can create a money debt so that we have a claim on wheat that’s grown years later, when we need it.

Money is one of the great inventions of humankind. I put it right up there with the wheel. By the time the books of the Bible were written down, money was already important. It was so important that the Old Testament has many rules about fair wages and fair prices and fair measures, and how to handle debt, and how to deal with people who don’t follow these rules. And every seven years you were supposed to cancel all debts.

By the time Jesus came up to the Temple and attacked the money changers, money was already taken for granted as the main medium of exchange among strangers. The Temple was important because it was the only place at which the Jews could perform the sacrifices according to the law. The temple forecourt was where money and religious observance came together.

To perform a sacrifice you had to give an unblemished dove or lamb or other animal to the priests, who performed the actual sacrifice. Most people bought the sacrificial animal in the Temple forecourt. For this, you needed coinage without stamped portraits of emperors and such. Those are graven images. Using them to buy a sacrifice would be blasphemy. Hence the need for money changers.

There was a lot of money changing hands, and the Temple authorities got a cut of the proceeds. When Jesus tossed out the money changers, the Temple authorities were of course annoyed. How dare this upstart wandering preacher interfere with their business?

Let’s take a little side trip and think about money. Money makes the world go around, so they say. That’s an odd idea, when you think about it for a while. You can’t eat money, you can’t breathe it, you can’t drink it. You can’t drive it from here to there, you can’t plow it and grow wheat in it, you can’t do much of anything that you need to live, or that you like to do to make life more pleasant.
      In fact, it’s pretty useless in itself. It’s only useful when you spend it. Then you can eat or drink something, or you can put some gas in the car and get from here to there. Or you can get a tractor and a plow and a seed drill and plow your patch of ground and plant wheat in it.

So why do we think money is so important? Because we’ve created an economic system in which we need money to buy and sell. Money makes trading very convenient, which is certainly a good thing. It makes trading so convenient that we’ve built the most complicated economic system the world has ever seen. Most of the things we buy are made and brought to us by people we will never meet face to face. Amazing, when you realise that. Imagine: dozens, possibly hundreds of people do their jobs day in and day out, and the result is that you can buy a pen for 98 cents. Plus tax.

So money is very, very convenient. But that convenience comes at a price. The price is our ideas about and attitudes towards wealth. Money shapes our notions of what’s important. Money is a number, so we confuse price and value. We need money to buy what we need and want, so money distracts us from what makes life worth living. And money buys power, so it distorts our politics.

We take money for granted. About the only time most of us think about money is when something goes wrong with the economy. And then we have at best confused ideas about what money is, and too often we have wrong ones. Worse, many, perhaps most people, become frightened when the money economy begins to fail. The worst effect of this fear is hyperinflation. That’s when people no longer trust what money means, so they want more and more money, and eventually a wheelbarrow full of banknotes will just barely buy a loaf of bread.

Yes, no doubt about it. Money is important in our lives. But everything the Bible says about money and wealth elaborates on three themes. First, that we should share the wealth. Second, that trading requires justice. And third, that our relationship with money is problematic, to put it politely. Paul’s words are harsher: in his first letter to Timothy we read that The love of money is the root of all evil.
      In short, the Biblical record, in both Testaments, reminds us that ethics are at the heart of economics. An economic system that doesn’t promote ethical dealing and fair sharing of wealth is a bad one. If there are few or no incentives to deal ethically and fairly with each other, then something is seriously wrong.

There was something seriously wrong with the system for providing sacrifices for the worshippers who came to the Temple. Doves were the cheapest sacrifices, sold for dollar or two in our money, and supplied because poor people couldn’t afford lambs and goats and young bullocks. No problem with that. But as I said before, the Temple authorities got a cut of every sale. I think that’s the main reason Jesus was annoyed. The Temple authorities no longer saw the trade in doves and other animals as a necessary and useful service for the worshippers, they saw it as a way of making money. It had become a lucrative business. It was now a profit centre.

Trade is good. It makes life better for everybody. That is its purpose. But the traders and money changers and Temple authorities used trade as a way to enrich themselves. In economic language, they used trade to transfer wealth from other people to themselves. They did not simply exchange wealth for wealth.  Jesus called what they did robbery.

Jesus makes it quite clear that he disapproves of enriching oneself at the expense of others. Transfer of wealth isn’t what the economy is about. Sharing the wealth is what it’s about. Money is just a method for making that easier, and if used rightly, it makes sharing the wealth fairer.

So what’s the lesson for us?

Should we stop using money? Of course not. It makes trade easier.

Should we stop doing business? Of course not. Our way of doing business ensures that we have enough of what we need and what we like.

Should we stop making a profit? Of course not. Profit is on the one hand the seller’s income, his wage. And on the other hand, profit is an efficient incentive for pooling resources so that we can do things together that no one of us could do on their own.

Then what should we do?

And here’s where the symbolism of cleansing of the Temple comes in. What does Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple mean? It means that the Kingdom of God is not about doing business. That life is not about making money. That making a living is not the purpose of living. That these things are methods, not purposes. We need to do them so that we are have the time and the energy to do what really matters.

How do we apply this lesson to economics? The answer is simple. We should do business the same way we should do everything else: as a way of relating to each other in mutual service and love. Prices should reflect actual value. Contracts should be equitable, and not give one side an advantage. Profit should be enough for you to stay in business, and if possible improve the quality of what you offer. Wages should be sufficient for a decent life. Promises to pay should be kept. And so on. Any code of ethics will fill in the details.

Most of all, we should keep in mind that there are vastly more important things in life than making money.

There’s time spent with family and friends. Playing games, enjoying meals together, celebrating birthdays, hanging out at Timmy’s chatting about whatever comes to mind. There’s doing things that give you deep satisfaction, whether it’s reading a book, going fishing, playing a fiddle, building a table, growing vegetables, even organising and neatening up your house. Or just going for a walk and breathing fresh air and seeing how the sun makes the landscape glow. There are so many good things that we can do, so many things that bring us joy.

And there are needs to be met wherever we look, for the world doesn’t run on Jesus’s economics. People are cheated out of wages. They aren’t paid enough to enjoy a decent standard of living. Fraudsters trick people out of their life savings. Random accidents and illness make it impossible for people to work for a living.

Most of all, fear for our own future makes us selfish and unwilling to share what we have. No one will help us when we need help, we must look out for number one. But when everyone looks out for number one, none of us looks out for each other.

We are fortunate in this town. Most of us have enough income to live a good life. Jesus calls us to share what we have. His economic theory is simple: Share the wealth, and everyone will have enough. That’s the Economics 101 version of his command to Love one another as I have loved you.

Let us pray.
Lord God, give us grace so to trust in your promise of more abundant life that we may in this life share the abundance that you have provided of your bountiful goodness; and that in the life to come, we may share in the joys of your Kingdom. We pray in the name of him who gave his life that we might have life, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

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Why Give Up Something for Lent?

     I grew up Lutheran in Austria, a Catholic country. Most Austrians, Catholic and Lutheran, gave up something for Lent. Giving up chocolate was popular. I don’t think it was really much of a sacrifice, because chocolate was expensive, so you never had much. Giving up something you can hardly ever enjoy is not a great sacrifice. But it was the symbolism that counted. Giving up something reminded you of the pain and suffering of Our Lord, who gave up his life for us. In medieval times, this custom could be tough. If you gave up meat, for example, you in effect went on a near-starvation diet. The phrase “a Lenten feast” meant a meal with just the basics, and not much of those.
     Giving up something for Lent is a custom that some people still honour. But in a world where we have and enjoy so much more than our ancestors did, giving up chocolate is at best a token sacrifice. There are so many other treats and snacks, you’ll hardly miss chocolate. It’s no real hardship. Besides, you can lay in a stock of chocolate Easter eggs while you’re waiting, and binge on Easter Sunday.
     It might be harder to give up video games, though. For some people, anyhow. And imagine going without TV or Netflix for weeks on end.
     I think it’s worthwhile thinking about Lenten sacrifice. It requires not only doing without something you like, it requires self-control. It’s that aspect that interests me. Self-control relates to freedom. Long ago I came across the idea that true freedom isn’t being able to do what you want to do whenever you want to do it. That kind of freedom is beyond your control, since nature and other people can prevent you from doing what you want.
     True freedom is living within your own control. But the only control you have is to either do or not do what you desire to do. So true freedom is being able to not do what you want to do, or to do what you don’t want to do. It’s being able to say No to yourself.
     This is ancient wisdom, found in all the great traditions of religion and philosophy. It’s tied in with the ability to endure pain and suffering. “Suffering builds character,” they say. That’s another version of this same idea. The idea also shows up in the philosophy of martial arts, which teach not merely the skills of fighting, but the mindset of focussing on the moment, of ignoring the fear of pain, and the fear of defeat, which in many ways is worse.
     Jesus knew this principle of self-control, as did Paul. Paul says, That which I would, that I do not; and that which I would not, that I do. In other words, he needs help controlling his desires and wishes, and so do we all. Jesus’s version is more nuanced: He that would save his life shall lose it; but he that loses his life for my sake, he shall save it. A paradox: How can you lose your life by saving it, and vice versa?
     The most immediate solution to the paradox might well apply to those who face the choice of denying their faith or being killed if they don’t. This has happened throughout history, and still happens today. Sadly, Christians have persecuted each other in the same way. We humans don’t like people who question our beliefs. “Shoot the messenger” is the standard method of getting rid of disagreeable ideas and facts.
     But I think there’s more to Jesus’s paradox than the reminder that one may have to give up this earthly life in order to gain eternal life. I think it connects to the baptismal vows, and to self-control, and to freedom. The Anglican baptismal rite asks, Do you renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil?  In other words, Do you renounce all the rewards of this earthly life? The answer is I renounce them.
     That is, you will let go of earthly goals like status and power and wealth. You will learn to say No to yourself. You will gain control over the old Adam. You will become a servant of God, and his service is perfect freedom. You will do all this not by your own reason and strength, but by the grace of God.
     Let us pray.
O God Creator, Redeemer, and Comforter, by your grace grant us the ability to give up the things of this world, both now in the season of Lent and in our lives thereafter, that we may enter into your service and do what you would have us do; and that by so doing we may preach both in our words and in our actions the Good News, which is the coming of your Kingdom. This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who gave up his life for us, and who rules with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

(ICC 2018-02-28)

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A few thoughts about Taxes
     Jesus had a reputation as a teacher, as an interpreter of the law and the prophets. The Temple authorities didn’t like his teachings, so they tried to trap him. Teacher, they asked, is it lawful to pay taxes to the Romans? Many Jews believed that the only lawful taxes were for the upkeep of the Temple, so if Jesus’s answer was a simple Yes it could upset a lot of people. Bring me a coin, answered Jesus. Whose image do you see on it? It was of course Caesar’s image. Then pay to God what belongs to God, and pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, said Jesus.
     And like so many of Jesus’s answers, it raises more questions. Here, the questions are, What belongs to God? And what belongs to Caesar? Jesus leaves it up to us to figure it out. Like a Zen Master, Jesus wants us to think for ourselves.
     It seems to me the obvious answer is, Everything belongs to God, including Caesar and his Empire. But this answer is a puzzle too. For if it’s true, what does it mean to say This belongs to me? And That belongs to you? What is ownership, anyhow?
     We humans have developed a lot of rules and customs around ownership. There’s the negative rule, Don’t steal. That is, don’t take what does not belong to you. You need the owner’s permission to take that thing; for example, he may be willing to trade.
     There’s also the positive rule, Share what you have. Again, every society we know of has complicated rules and customs around that. You are supposed to give things away, but not just anything, and not just anytime. The rules of gift giving are mostly unwritten, and they constantly change. But as with buying and selling, we expect something in return, if not now, then later, and if not from the one we give it to, then from someone else.
     Oh, yes, ownership is a complicated business. So what looks like a simple answer is really a complicated one.
     Basically, ownership is a specific kind of control over the use of some thing or other. In trade and gift-giving, we expect things to balance out, to be fair. Give to God what belongs to God, and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. That’s nicely balanced advice. Sounds fair, right?
     But what if it’s not really ours to give? If everything is a gift from God, it’s not really ours, is it? William Howe wrote a hymn about that: We give Thee but Thine own, Whate'er the gift may be; All that we have is Thine alone, A trust, O Lord, from Thee.
     Note that word “trust”. It reminds me of the parable of the talents. The master gave his servants money to take care of for him. Two were rewarded for investing the money and making a profit. One was punished. He did nothing with his capital.
     I came across a saying some time ago which goes like this: What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.  There’s the same idea as in the parable. We must invest what God has given us so that we may return it to him showing a profit. How do we do that? By living according to his law, which is to love him and love our neighbour. We each have different talents, so we each have different ways of fulfilling the law.
     And oddly enough, when we do that we also render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. For Caesar too has a gift to invest, the gift of power and authority. Government is one of the methods we use to love our neighbour. We do this by keeping the peace, regulating trade, providing for public needs and wants, defending against those who would harm us, and so on. That’s what those taxes are supposed to be for.
     Lord God, show us how to use our treasure, talents, and skills to do the work of love you have given us to do. In Jesus’s name. Amen
     2017-10-25
 
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Love 5th Sunday of Easter 2 May 2010 [John 13:31-35]

Love one another. That was Jesus’ last command to the disciples. Love one another as I have loved you, he said.
     I wish we would. I wish we could.
     What’s love anyway? Everybody knows that the word “love” refers to many things. What comes to mind when you hear the word? What does “I love you” mean to you? The Summary of the Law says you should love God and love your neighbour as yourself. What do you think that means? How do you imagine doing that? How do you imagine feeling about yourself? How do you imagine feeling about your neighbour?
     These are not easy questions to answer, but we have to start somewhere. So here are some random thoughts about love, which I may be able to tie up in a nice neat bundle at the end. Or not, as the case may be.
     James Thurber said that love is what you’ve been through with somebody. Someone who loves chocolate may have that in mind when they decide to have another piece. Or not, as the case may be.
     One thing is for sure. Love, however you define it, is risky. Tina Turner has a song What’s Love Got to Do with it? It’s a lover’s lament, a very common kind of love song, especially in country music. Lovin’ hurts. The love Tina sings about is painful:

What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love, but a sweet old-fashioned notion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken
?

     Leonard Cohen has a song about the pain of love, too:

There ain't no cure for love, there ain't no cure for love,
All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky,
The holy books are open wide, the doctors working day and night,
But they'll never ever find that cure for love.
There ain't no drink, no drug, ah, tell them, angels,
There's nothing pure enough to be a cure for love.


     If pain is a sign and symptom of love, then love is a disease. Or not, as the case may be.
     I've been reading Gwynne Dyer's book about war. He wrote it in 1982, basing it on a television series on war that he made for the CBC and PBS. It's a gloomy and depressing subject, but anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take account of war. Dyer’s thesis is that civilisation and war were both born of the agricultural revolution in neolithic times, around 10 to 15,000 years ago. That change in food production led to an increasing human population, and eventually to the invention of cities. Cities have to be defended, so humans invented war. War and wealth accelerated developments of technology and science, and now war has become a suicidal institution.
     One thing is for sure: war is not an expression of love between nations. Maybe if nations could love each other the way people love each other, war might come to and end. Or not, as the case may be.
     Love can cause strife. Jealousy is a twisted, possessive form of love in which the lover cannot accept that his beloved may have a focus other than himself. He can’t tolerate the thought that someone or something else matters to his beloved
     Well, we could go on, but I don’t think we would find an answer to help us understand what Jesus is commanding us to do. The reason is simple: all the notions of love that I’ve touched on so far can’t be commanded. Love as understood in these examples is a condition, it’s a state of mind or emotion, it’s an attitude towards someone else, it’s a need or desire. You can’t command these, because they are not actions. You can command people to do something, but it’s pointless to command them to feel good about it.
     That’s the first insight: that love is an active verb. What Jesus is telling us is to do something, to perform certain kinds of acts, to make things happen.
     So what is he telling us to do? The fact is that the desires and feelings mentioned earlier do make us behave in certain ways. When we feel love for someone, we want to do things for them and with them. Do any of these desired actions fit what Jesus wants us to do? Maybe they do. But to answer the question, we have to understand somewhat better what we mean by the word “love.”
     C S Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves. In it, he discusses what people refer to when they say “I love”. He ignores the casual use of the word in expressions such as “I love chocolate”, because what we really mean is “I like chocolate a lot.” He talks about four kinds of love between and for other people.
     The first is affection, that good feeling we have towards people in our social and family circle. It’s affection that makes us happy to see them, and grieve when they are in trouble. It helps us get along with each other, it forms the bonds that make us into communities. Affection enables us to overlook and tolerate the minor flaws and quirks that would otherwise annoy us. It’s basic, and human, and starts and ends with familiarity. It’s that basic good feeling that grows out of living together in a family or community. It strengthens those ties, and that’s what makes it valuable. But we feel affection only towards those whom we know. Affection depends on physical presence; affection for someone you don’t know is impossible.
     Many of us think of affection as the basis of friendship, but Lewis says friendship goes further. Lewis was a great befriender. He knew that friendship can be a source of pleasure, joy, and satisfaction. He says that friends have in common a love for something outside themselves. You discover that someone else shares your pleasure in some activity, some aspect of the natural or human world, and that’s where your friendship starts. You like the same books, you meet on the golf course, you are both quilters or hunters, something draws you together. Friendship consists of doing things together, but the focus is outside yourself. That external focus makes friendship selfless in way that affection is not.
     A stronger love is eros, or being in love. That’s the love that Tina Turner and Leonard Cohen sing about. Lewis knows perfectly well that this love can be extreme or twisted or too self-centred, that it may be no more than an attraction to or a desire for an imaginary person, an ideal that we’ve formed. When we are first in love, we see the beloved not as she or he is, but as we want them to be. But at its best, eros changes into something stronger and more lasting than this fantasy attraction. It can make us aware of another person as a person. We love him or her because of who and what they are, with all their flaws and weaknesses, even despite their flaws and weaknesses.
     This love is powerful. Merely being in the beloved’s presence may be enough to make a bad day good. Eros may move us to sacrifice ourselves for the happiness of the beloved. Like friendship, eros may be selfless.
     The fourth love is charity. Lewis does not mean simply writing a cheque or dropping a toonie in the Sally Ann’s Christmas basket, although these actions may be valuable and necessary. He means love for other people just because they are people.
     And at this point action does become important. Charity is above all doing things for others. That’s why we think of charitable organisations as helping people, and automatically think of volunteers. You donate to the Cancer Society to help them help cancer patients and support research. You help out at Community Days. You volunteer to serve food at a parish supper. And so on. You do these things not because you like the people that will be helped, although you may in fact like them a lot. You do these things even if you do not know the people you are helping. And if you do know them, you may not like them, you may think they aren’t good or respectable enough, they aren’t your kind of people. This makes it difficult to help them. But you help anyhow. It’s what Jesus would do. It’s what Jesus actually did.
     And one of the odd things is that when you perform these acts of loving kindness, you may well develop affection or fondness for the people you help. You may even begin to see them as persons, not just as recipients of your charity. That’s why personal acts of charity are so important.
And of course, charitable work is rewarding. People feel good about themselves when they see the good they’ve done for other people.
     These four kinds of love and loving and all their variations do feel good. Affection, friendship, eros, charity –  these all can and do make us feel very good. Life is better when we love. I think it’s this good feeling that makes it easy to think of love as simply a feeling. It’s also this good feeling which makes us seek love. But that good feeling may shift our focus from the person we love to the good feeling of loving. We may do what we do less for the sake of the other person, and more for the sake of ourselves. That’s when we discover that the good feelings of love don’t last, and we say that love doesn’t last, that our hearts can be broken.
     But what really happened is that we thought those feedings were the whole of it, the point of the game, what love is all about. We failed to see that love is what we do, not what we feel.
     So we come to the love of God, which in Greek is called agape  (ah-gap-eh), selfless love. The word agape is used in John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. It’s used in the Gospel we heard today.
     In the Christian context, agape refers to God’s love for us. That love is in itself an action. God’s love is seen in the act of creation. It’s seen in his gift of free will. It’s seen in his self-sacrifice when we misused that free will.
     We can aspire to return that love by loving each other with a selfless love. It’s not easy. It’s hard to feel affection for a person who is unlovable, and so it’s hard to do things for them. But that’s exactly what Jesus wants us to do. It’s not only here, as he takes leave of his disciples, that he says so. He has already said, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, turn the other cheek, if someone needs your coat give him your shirt too. Love your neighbour as yourself.
     Those are hard sayings, they go against our natural inclinations and then some. But we can try to do as Jesus has commanded. Start with little things. Practice the virtues of love. Patience is one. When someone for the 3,027th time does one of those little things that irritate you so much, bite your tongue, and say nothing.
     Kindness is another. Hold the door for someone who’s carrying two large bags of groceries. Better yet, carry them for her. Or him, as the case may be.
     Be generous. When the Kidney Foundation canvasser comes to the door, and you haven’t got a five dollar bill, give her a ten. If you have a fight with a family member, don’t insist on being right, but try to understand why they are angry. Plan how you will avoid causing that anger again.
     We could take all day sharing little nuggets of advice like these. But really, what have I said that you didn’t already know? We all know what to do. We learned it in kindergarten. We just need the will and the strength to do it. For that we need help. Jesus will provide that help, we only have to ask. We won’t change into perfect examples of loving kindness overnight, or even by the end of our lives. But we can and will do better.
     Jesus commands us to love each other as he loved us, selflessly, not because it feels good, not because it raises our self esteem, not because it’s rewarding, not because it’s fun, not because we like someone, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Let us pray.

Lord God, loving Father, Brother, and Friend: help us learn our failings, that we may correct them; and by your grace strengthen and guide us in the works of love that you have commanded us to do, that by our actions we may show your love and glorify your name. Amen.


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Repentance [2nd Sunday of Lent, 21st February, 2016, Luke 13:31-35]

     Today’s Gospel story is one of the more difficult ones. Jesus says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her own brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
     That’s not exactly a happy speech. It’s one of Jesus’s harshest sayings. It sounds very much as of he’s writing off Jerusalem, and I suppose in a way he is. However, looking at it in terms of the Passion of Christ, there is what looks like a smidgen of hope:  and I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. When Jesus returns to Jerusalem, the people will welcome him with just those words. But a few days later they will shout Crucify him! Crucify him!
     What’s going on here?
     When I read the Bible, I never stop with just the facts of the story. Any story about some specific people is also a story about us, about you and me. Every story shows us something about what it means to be human, about how people behave, about what matters to them, about the choices they make and why they make them. What makes the stories in the Bible so believable is that the stories show us all these things. And that means that every story in the Bible has some meaning beyond itself. Usually, the easiest of these meanings is how the story applies to us, here and now.
     So I will talk about how this incident in Jesus’s ministry applies to us.
     But Bible stories aren’t just about humans. They are also about God. Every story shows us something about how we relate to God, about how God relates to us, and how this relationship affects and shapes the way we relate to each other. I take it for granted that understanding the Bible means understanding these aspects of the Biblical story too.
     Let’s start with the story itself.
     Jesus was expanding his ministry, and that was causing trouble. People came and listened to him, and they wanted to know what they could or should do to enter the Kingdom of God. In chapter 13, Luke includes several parables. There’s the one about the fig tree, in which the keeper of the orchard asks for one more chance to fertilise the ground so that the tree might bear fruit. If it fails, it will be uprooted and burned.
     There’s the comparisons of the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, and to yeast. You are the yeast, he tells his disciples. You need yeast to make bread. And the one about the house shut against those who claim a right to enter it, but the door is barred against them. There will be weeping and wailing among those who are on the wrong side of the door.
     There’s a healing, too. A woman has suffered for eighteen years, bent double with what we would call severe arthritis. Jesus healed her. But he healed her on the Sabbath, which annoyed the rulers of the synagogue, who complained that Jesus broke the law. Whereupon Jesus pointed out that necessary work, such as watering one’s animals, was permitted, so why not the work of healing?
     There’s also one of the most famous of Jesus’s sayings, The last shall be first and the first shall be last. There’s no way around its meaning: What we think of as being important does not match what God wants.
     One of the major themes of Luke’s Gospel is that the established order of things will be overturned. The Kingdom of God is at hand, and the Kingdom of God is not, as Jesus says, “of this world.” It’s not organised the way this world is organised. It’s not based on the values of this world. It’s not one in which it’s enough to obey the law and be respectable and behave like everybody else and not cause trouble. It’s not a Kingdom in which the great movers and shakers will rule, as they do in this world. It’s not a world in which power and wealth matter.
     It’s radically different.
     Over and over again, in his parables and in his sermons, Jesus condemned power and wealth. Over and over again, in his talk and in his actions, Jesus warned against mistaking the outward show of piety and moral worth for the real thing. Over and over again, Jesus said that to seek the Kingdom of God means giving up the things that bring success in this world.
     And that’s why the authorities were more than a little annoyed at him. That’s why Herod wanted to get rid of him. A man who preaches radical moral and personal change preaches radical political and economic change, too. Radical change in one aspect of your life requires radical change in all aspects of your life. It’s all or nothing.
     Scary, really, to commit yourself to radical change. But that’s what Jesus expects of us.
     Some of the Pharisees were sympathetic to Jesus’s teachings, so they warned him about Herod’s plans, and for a while he escaped the danger. Some time later Jesus will return to Jerusalem, the crowds will welcome him with shouts of Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of God. And then he will be arrested, charged with blasphemy, convicted, and executed.
     But now, as he leaves Jerusalem, he says that he wished Jerusalem would hear his message. He wants to gather her in, he says, like a hen that gathers her chicks under her wings to protect them. He wants to save Jerusalem from itself, but it will not listen. It continues on its way, seeking wealth and power and worldly fame. He foresees that Jerusalem will be left desolate. Because it plays the game of power, it will be destroyed by people who play a stronger game. That is indeed what happened to Jerusalem more than once in its history. Just as it has happened to every city or nation that has played the power game.
     What does this mean for us?
     Well, I think we can see here several messages. Personal ones, that apply to how we choose to live our lives. Communal ones, about how we live and work and play together. Political ones, about how we do, and how we should, use power.
     But most of all, a warning: Choices have consequences. That’s obvious, but we keep trying to avoid those consequences. We sometimes say, But I had no choice. What we really mean is that the other choice was just too hard. And sometimes it is. But too often it was merely unpleasant or inconvenient. Or, like taking your medicine, it tastes bitter, but you need it. Children have a hard time accepting that. I trust that we grownups will take our medicine without complaining.
     It’s hard enough to accept that choices have consequences we may not like. It’s harder to accept that we have bad reasons for our choices. Ideas have consequences too, because ideas govern our choices. We choose what we choose because we believe some things are worth having. We justify our beliefs in all kinds of ways, with arguments, with appeals to habits, with excuses of one kind or another.
     And here is where it gets tricky. It gets up close up and personal. Because when we make a bad choice, we then try to excuse ourselves. Or we give an apology in which we claim that we take full responsibility, and do nothing. Or we blame someone or something else. We may even attack the accuser. Kill the messenger of bad news, and the bad news goes away, right?
     No, it doesn’t.
     We like to think of Jesus as meek and mild. Charles Wesley wrote a poem to this effect:
          Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
          Look upon a little child;
          Pity my simplicity,
          Suffer me to come to Thee.

     But as Luke reminds us, Jesus was often the messenger of bad news. Like John the Baptist before him, he reminded people that they had made the wrong choices. Powerful people don’t like to be told they are doing bad things. Neither do we, the less than powerful people. If we can’t ignore the messenger, we turn on him:  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her.
     Lent is the time the Church has traditionally set aside for us to contemplate the bad news, that we make bad choices, that we fail to love each other, that we resist the reminder that we have sinned and need to repent. Gloomy and dark, right? Well, it’s not completely gloomy and dark. Tied up inside that bad news is the good news: that by God’s grace we may repent, and so enter into the Kingdom. Jesus does not condemn the sinner. He warns the sinner. He offers a way out: Repent!
     I’ll end with a few thoughts about repentance.
     It’s not enough to feel guilty. For that matter, feeling guilty is merely a kind of shame. It doesn’t get you very far. When Jesus says Repent! he doesn’t mean “I want you to feel bad, because you did something bad”. The grammar teacher in me reminds you that “Repent!” is a verb in the imperative mood. It’s a command. You can’t command someone to feel a certain way. You can only command someone to act, to do something.
     So what is it that we should do when we repent?
     We should change the way we make choices. We should examine our reasons, our beliefs, our values, and when these tend to lead to bad choices, we should drop them or change them. We should put a lower value on our own convenience and pleasure, and a higher value on what’s good for us, and what’s good for other people. We should think not in terms of Will I like it? but in terms of Is it the right thing to do? We should ask Is it necessary? and not Do I want it?
     In short, we should shift our perspective, our point of view, our way of looking at things. We should try to look at other people and the world as creatures of God, and therefore worthy of our nurture, our support, our protection, and our love.
     When we take the command to repent seriously, we accept another command: To love God, and to love our neighbour.
     Let us pray.
     Lord God, you created us, you saved us, you help us. Grant us the grace of repentance, that we may think and speak and act in accordance with your will. Show us how serve you by serving each other, so that our present life may be a foretaste of your Kingdom. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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    The Leper   6th Sunday after Epiphany, 15th February, 2015, Mark 1:40-45
    
     The Gospel of Mark doesn’t shilly-shally. It’s short and to the point. It starts in the middle of the action, and it moves fast, wasting no words. In the first chapter, just a page and half in a typical bible, this is what we get:
     John the Baptist preaches in the desert;
     John baptises Jesus;
     The Spirit of God descends upon Jesus;
     Jesus announces that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand;
     Jesus calls four disciples to follow him;
     Jesus teaches in the synagogue at Capernaum;
     Jesus casts out an unclean spirit from a sick man;
     Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law;
     Jesus heals many other people;
     Jesus goes into the desert to pray;
     Jesus preaches in other synagogues in Galilee;
     Jesus heals a leper;
     Jesus withdraws into the desert to escape the crowds.

     That’s quite a list. Mark doesn’t give us much in the way of dates and times; he wasn’t writing an essay for a history course. But it’s clear that this first chapter covers a lot of ground and time, many miles, and many days if not weeks.
     Mark also doesn’t give us much in the way of help about how to understand the stories of Jesus’s ministry that he has chosen to tell us. He simply tells us what happened, sometimes saying it was the next day, sometimes not. For example, he mentions in passing that John was put in prison. We are left to infer that some time must have passed between Jesus’s baptism and this event.
     Then there’s Mark’s narrative method. In some places he uses dialogue to move the story along, for example when Jesus tells Simon and Andrew he will make them fishers of men. In other places, he uses dialogue to slow down the story, so that we will dwell on that event a little longer, as in the healing of the leper. And many things are merely mentioned, such as the teaching and preaching in the synagogues. Jesus did that, but Mark doesn’t tell us Jesus said. In many ways, Mark’s Gospel is more of a chronicle than a history. History deals not only with what happened, but with why, with people’s motives and desires and goals, how they achieved their goals, or not. And so on.
   Mark usually just tells us “This happened, then this happened, then that happened.”

     So we have to pick up every hint of meaning that we can. There are two here that I noticed among many. First, in the second half of this chapter, Jesus’s ministry consists of preaching and healing. Second, there are references to his growing fame. People were talking. People were talking a lot. And Jesus wasn’t exactly happy about that.
     What are the lessons can we draw from this first chapter of Mark?
     Let’s start with the leper. Leprosy is a nasty disease. It can be cured with antibiotics these days, but it can still cause disfigurement. In Jesus’s time, its causes weren’t understood, and there was no cure. Lepers were outcasts, they were homeless. They were allowed to beg by the roadside, but they were not allowed to live in town. No one touched them, no one even handed food to them. They had to leave their bowls by the side of the road, then go away while someone came by to bring food.
     Imagine being told you have to leave home because of your illness. Imagine people being afraid of you because of your illness. Imagine people not even looking at you when they give you a coin.
     Jesus heals the leper, and he tells him, “Don’t talk to anybody; but show yourself to the priest, and perform the sacrifices according to the law.”
     So the leper dances off. Well, I think of him as dancing off, I mean wouldn’t you dance if you’d just been healed of a horrible disease that made you an outcast? He dances off, shows himself to the priest, and starts talking to everybody whose ears are close enough about this wonderful thing that’s happened to him, and who did it. So much so, that Jesus was recognised everywhere he went, and had to go to less populated places. Yet still people came to see and hear him.
     By curing him, Jesus gave the leper his life back. He could once again be a part of his family and community. No wonder he told everybody about the wonderful thing Jesus had done. Wouldn’t you?

     Why then did Jesus tell the leper to keep it quiet? Jesus had no qualms about preaching and teaching in the synagogues. He didn’t object when people admired his insights into the Torah and the Commentaries. Mark tells us that he went all over Galilee preaching and casting out devils, and healing people of diverse diseases.
     To understand Jesus’s unwillingness to have the leper talk about his healing we have to look further. Jesus makes the same request of some other people he healed. And most significantly, he complains that people want him to perform signs and wonders.  He doesn’t want people to believe his message just because they see him doing miracles. He wants them to understand his message and apply it to their own lives. Miracles can be a distraction.

     If we consider the miracles that Jesus did, we can see a pattern, a pattern that reinforces Jesus’s message to us. The miracles weren’t merely tricks that demonstrated his power. They weren’t designed to amaze us. They weren’t even proofs that he was the Son of God. The disciples performed miracles, too. So did Elijah. Magicians do things that seem impossible. In both Jesus’s day and ours, most magicians made a living entertaining people, and some made a living deceiving people. Why would Jesus want to compete with them?
     Well, he didn’t. All of Jesus’s miracles helped people. He cured their diseases. He filled their bellies. He calmed their fears. In his very first miracle he turned water into wine at a wedding. He turned what could have been a failed celebration into a better feast than the groom had planned. His miracles all remove pain, the pain of illness, the pangs of hunger, the anguish of fear, the misery of social disgrace.
     In short, Jesus’ miracles made life better for people. That’s the first lesson for today.

     The second lesson comes from an earlier part of this first chapter of Mark: “The kingdom of God is at hand”, says Jesus. That’s the framework, the context, the purpose of Jesus’s ministry. “Repent, and believe the good news”, he says. The good news is that he’s come to make our lives better in every way, physically, socially, spiritually. And Mark’s focus throughout his account is on how Jesus does just that. This first chapter sets up two major themes of Mark’s Gospel: That the Kingdom of God is at hand, and that Jesus heals us.

     The healing of the leper touches on both of these themes. It touches on healing directly, and on the presence of the Kingdom of God indirectly. The healing of the leper is the healing of an outcast. We aren’t likely to get leprosy these days, and we no longer have rules and regulations that would make us homeless if we do get it. But there are many ways in which we can be outcasts, or feel like one.
     It’s terrible to feel outcast, to be an outsider because other people don’t want you. In my first draft of this meditation, I had a long passage about mental illness and homelessness, and the helplessness we feel when someone we love suffers from an illness, any illness at all. It was quite a downer, so I’ve decide to focus on how today’s Gospel story reassures us.
     It reassures us that Jesus will heal us, that he will be there when healing is needed. The leper faced a lifetime of slowly increasing pain and ugliness, and of being shunned by his people. His future looked dark, and looked to be getting darker. Jesus changed that. He changed that because the leper asked him for healing. “Make me clean,” he said, “I know you can do it.” And Jesus did.

     When we are so far down that we think there’s no way up, we too can ask Jesus to heal us. And one way or another, Jesus will do that. He may help us change the way we see ourselves and our situation so that we can see a way out. He may help us trust friends and family to support us as the body and the mind heal. He may give us the confidence to hang in there until things get better. He may lead us to a healer, a spirit guide, a doctor, who will use their gifts to bring us out of the darkness. He may grant us a vision of himself that will energise us so that we can move on and up, away from depths that threaten to drown us.
     For you see the story of the leper is also a story about the power of prayer. If you pray with faith, your prayer will be answered. Prayer is not a magic spell. Prayer is a way of connecting with the Spirit, and that Spirit will enable us to recognise what has been there all along, the healing power of faith and trust in the One who embodied love.
     Accept that love when it’s offered.
     Offer that love when it’s needed.
     Let us pray.
     Lord God, who made us, redeemed us, and keeps us, grant us so to trust you that we will pray for your healing power. Give use the humility to recognise that healing when it is offered, and the confidence to offer that healing when we see the need. We ask this in the name of the One who healed us all by his death on the Cross. Amen.

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  Jesus's Advice  6th Sunday after Epiphany 6th Sunday after Epiphany, 16 February 2014
  
     Think back to when you were a child.

     Remember that sometimes you were clumsy, and accidents happened. Maybe you bumped into a table and the flower vase on it crashed to the ground and shattered. Bits of crockery, water, and flowers all over the carpet. Oh, but Mom was unhappy about that!
     Maybe you reached for the jam and pushed the milk jug over. A pint of white liquid all over the table cloth, soaking into the toast, splashed into the butter and jam dishes. Oh, everybody was mad about that!
     Maybe you rushed through a door and slammed it shut just as your little sister followed you, and there was a nosebleed. Blood on her face, blood on her sweater, blood dripping onto the floor. Plus her screams of pain. Oh, but that made you feel awful!
     Or maybe something much worse happened, which you’d rather not remember ever again.
     Do you remember how you excused yourself? You said I didn’t mean it! Even as a child you knew that intending to do something bad was wrong. Doing it was worse. Causing harm was bad, but it was worse if you wanted to do it. Causing harm that you did not want wasn’t as bad as causing harm that you wanted. When we do something bad by accident, we excuse ourselves by saying, But we didn’t mean it!
     On the other hand, when we feel like doing something bad, but don’t do it, we pat ourselves on the back and think, But I didn’t do anything! Apparently, not doing something bad that we wanted to do is a Good Thing. It’s Resisting Temptation, after all. It proves we know right from wrong. It proves we can choose the right.
     Looks to me like what we see here is kind of having it both ways. Not intending harm reduces the guilt of the action. On the other hand, not acting reduces the guilt of the intention. We choose the rule that makes us look good.
     And that is what today’s Gospel is about: it’s about intentions, it’s about attitudes, it’s about motives and desires. It’s about what is sometimes called moral philosophy or ethics. It’s about righteousness, about moral responsibility. These are heavy topics, they’re not easy to analyse, nor is it easy to agree. It’s fairly easy to agree on general principles, but it can get very complicated when we try to apply these principles. What Jesus says is, I think, very helpful here. He is quite clear about one point: intentions, attitudes, feelings, these all matter, even when they do not lead to actions:
     You know the commandment Thou shalt not kill, and whoever kills is in danger of judgement, says Jesus. But I say to you that if you are angry with your brother, you will be in danger of judgement; if you say to your brother, You are worthless, you will be brought before the council; and if you say to your brother, You fool, you will be in danger of hellfire.
     This is serious stuff. Jesus ups the ante: it’s not enough to refrain from acting, he says. You have to refrain from wanting to act. More than that, you must not even express an wrongful desire or attitude. He has no patience with the old saying, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. That’s what a victim of bullying says to comfort himself. But we all know it’s not true.
     So let’s think for a while about actions and intentions.
     I’ll start with ethics. Many organisations and businesses have a code of ethics. They spell out the principles people should apply when doing their work. These principles put limits on actions. For example, it’s OK to try to get the best price for the car you’re selling, but it’s not OK to promise services you know you can’t deliver. It’s OK to talk only about the car’s good features, but it’s not OK to exaggerate them, and it’s definitely wrong to lie about shortcomings if the customer asks about them. And so on.
     Ethical behaviour is so important that we’ve invented so-called civil law to deal with unethical behaviour. Most lawsuits are about alleged breaches of ethics. The law states what the ethical rules are, and when you go to court, you are basically saying that someone else behaved unethically towards you. Or vice versa, if someone sues you. Anyone who’s followed civil law cases knows that, as the saying goes, there are arguments on both sides. If there weren’t two sides to the question, we wouldn’t go to court.
     Ethics are also personal. What limits do you put on your own behaviour? Here’s where things get tough, because we dearly want to think of ourselves as good people. We want to believe that our standards are the right ones. We want to reassure ourselves that what we want out of life is OK, or more than OK. We all want to believe that other people respect us as good, upstanding citizens who can do no wrong. And that when we do wrong, it was just a mistake.
     In short, we hunger for righteousness. But since we know that we harbour motives that we don’t care to make public, we’ll settle for respectability. Respectability consists of acting according to the rules
    Or rather, respectability consists of being seen to act according to the rules. Jesus had a lot to say about this kind of visible righteousness, and it got him into trouble with the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were eminently respectable people. Most of them were no doubt sincere in their attempts to do the right thing. That’s why they followed the rules, and got so annoyed with Jesus when he said it wasn’t enough.
     Rules are pretty easy to make and to follow. The thing about rules is that you don’t have to think much about whether what you are doing is the right thing to do. Just follow the rules, and you’ll be OK. I was just following the rules is an excuse many people have used when it turned out they were doing bad things. In fact, we raise following the rules to the status of doing your duty. And doing your duty is a good thing, right?
     Well, it is and it isn’t. I’ve just finished reading a book about Adolf Hitler, and it reminded me once again that if your leader commands you to do evil things, then doing your duty means doing evil things. I’m just doing my job is no excuse. It’s shifting the blame to someone else, the one who told you what to do. But by shifting the blame you show that you knew what you were doing, and that it was bad. So why did you do it? Because it was easier to follow the rules, to follow orders, to just be a cog in the machine. It’s much harder to take responsibility for your actions. It’s always dangerous. It could be lethal.
     I think that’s what Jesus’s discussion of motives and feelings and attitudes is really about. It’s about taking moral responsibility for your actions, and that begins with taking moral responsibility for your feelings.
     Desiring someone’s death while in a rage is just an impulsive second away from deciding to kill. Many people with a gun handy have profoundly regretted yielding to that impulse.
    Thinking of someone as worthless implies indifference or contempt. Indifference or contempt often leads to withholding help to those that need it.
    Calling someone a fool expresses hate, and hate can lead to a lot more than name-calling.
    Attitudes and feelings matter because all decisions ultimately arise from attitudes and feelings. We flatter ourselves by calling our species homo sapiens, the wise man. We believe that we base our decisions on reason, on thinking things through. But you can reason all week, and think things through for months, and if you don’t want one thing more than another thing, you will never decide what to do. Only how you feel, only your attitudes, only your desires will prompt you to make a choice.
     That’s elementary psychology. It’s human nature. It’s how we operate.
     And Jesus understood human nature from the inside out, after all. He was a fully human being, so he knew what he was talking about. That makes his practical advice about morality, about ethical action, about righteousness all the more valuable.
     And that advice is very practical: psychologists have demonstrated that if you make people feel good, they will make kinder choices. If you make them feel bad, they will make crueller choices. In other words, psychology experiments merely prove that Jesus was right. Feelings, intentions, attitudes matter.
     But deep down we already knew that. That’s why Jesus’s reminders annoyed the rule-followers of his time, and that’s why they annoy us today. Because it’s hard, very hard, to follow Jesus’s advice.
     Jesus knew that. That’s why he not only tells us about what matters in our quest to live a virtuous life, he also offers help. He not only tells us about the bad attitudes we should avoid, he lists the good ones we should cultivate. The passage we read today is part of his Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s account, the advice on bad attitudes follows immediately after the advice on good ones. Jesus said, Be merciful. Be a peacemaker. Be meek. Humble yourself. Hunger and thirst after righteousness.
     We can’t stop feeling a bad attitude by trying to stop feeling it. But we can replace it with a good attitude. As more than one thoughtful person has said, sometimes the best solution to a problem is to avoid it. Cultivating the good attitudes means avoiding the bad ones.
     It’s hard to do that, though. We need help. Jesus has promised to provide it. How do we get that help? By asking for it. By trusting that we will get it. By accepting that no matter how often we fail, if we trust in Jesus’s promises, we can try again, and do better next time.
     So let’s cultivate those positive attitudes. Let’s focus on what’s good about each other, our gifts, our quirks, our virtues. Let’s expect a good time instead of a bad time. Let’s expect the best results even though we make plans for when things go wrong.
     Above let’s remember the first and great and only commandment, which fulfills all the others: Love God will all your soul, mind, heart, and strength; and your neighbour as yourself. Amen.

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WWJD? What Would Jesus Do? 7th Sunday of Easter, 12 May 2013

     What would Jesus do? A few years ago, asking that question became something of a fad. There were even bumper-stickers emblazoned with a large “WWJD question mark”. Asking this question was supposed to make you think. Thinking would lead to more thoughtful decisions.
     There is sound psychology behind this claim. Our immediate first reactions are quick, they are made without thought. We rely on our gut feelings. Much of the time, quick responses, quick decisions are good enough or even better. But sometimes, too often perhaps, quick responses are less than wise. They may be dangerous to ourselves or to other people. They may be cruel. They may simply be stupid. One thing’s for sure. If you rely on your gut feelings, you will sooner or later make a really, really bad decision. It’s just a matter of time.
     So what would Jesus do? Asking this question should save people from making a cruel or unkind decision. I’m sure that for many people asking the question did have that effect. But the problem is that it works only if you remember to ask it.
     Suppose you’re walking from the theatre to the subway in Toronto. You see a beggar sitting on the sidewalk, a Tim Horton’s coffee cup in front of him, head bowed, waiting for change to be dropped into the empty cup. You see him from far enough away that you can decide what to do. Drop a loonie in the cup? Pretend that you didn’t see him? What would Jesus do? If you ask that question, you’ll probably scrabble for some change in your pocket. If you don’t ask that question, you’ll probably walk on past. That’s what almost everybody does.
    So maybe you should make a habit of asking that question. But the trouble with a habit is that it’s a trained behaviour. Trained behaviours are always tied to a context. They are linked to some situation. That situation triggers the behaviour. It’s what a driving instructor wants to create in you so that your driving habits are safe. When you get into the car, the safe driving habits are supposed to kick in. You shouldn’t even notice that you’ve switched to safe driving mode. If you’re well trained, that’s what will happen. The psychologists will tell you that you’ve been conditioned to behave in a certain way when you drive. You can see that it’s a good thing to have strongly ingrained safe-driving habits.
     So what about WWJD? Asking that question should be a habit. In what situations should you be asking it? Well, that’s not so easy to answer. Should you ask it every time you have to make a choice? Of course not. It would be silly to ask what flavour of ice cream Jesus would choose on a hot summer afternoon. He’d choose the same as you, whatever he fancies. It might even be the same as yours.
     But what about the beggar on that Toronto street? It seems to me that asking the question once should be enough. The answer should guide you every time you see a beggar. You can’t help every beggar, but you can help this one. Maybe you should arm yourself with a pocket full of loonies and toonies, so you can help several beggars. Lord knows you’ll see quite a few in downtown Toronto.
     But what about other situations?
     I think what we’ve bumped into here is the difference between a habit, which is something you do in familiar situations, and an attitude, which is what guides your behaviour in new situations. Thinking about that difference should help us understand how to ask that question, What Would Jesus Do? I think that it’s not really about how to behave, about what to do. It’s really about how to decide what to do. It’s a question about the attitudes we have towards other people. It’s a reminder that we need to understand, or try to understand, what our relationship with each other should be.
     If you think about it, the question What Would Jesus Do is actually another question. The question is, How can we be like Jesus in our relationship with each other?
     Hearing the question this way implies that our relationship with others should be like the one that Jesus has with us, with each one of us.
     Hearing the question this way implies that we need to understand, or try to understand, what Jesus’ relationship with us actually is.
     Today’s Gospel tells us what that relationship is.
     Today’s Gospel is a prayer by Jesus to God the Father. The setting is the time immediately before he was arrested and tried and crucified. He’s been talking with his disciples, summarising his teachings, giving them one last word before his ministry comes to an end. He ends with a prayer to God the Father, and today’s reading is part of that prayer:  I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.
     Let me digress for a moment. The Gospel of John is the most theological of the four Gospels. It was written after the other three, and probably even after the Revelation, around 95AD. It was written to present a theory of God, an explanation of what the concept of “God” should mean to a Christian. For a follower of Christ, for someone who was baptised into the community of Christians as defined by Paul, for that person the Gospel of John helped him or her understand what was meant by saying Jesus was the Son of God, or that Jesus proclaimed the Good News, or that trust in Jesus meant a new relationship with God, or that Jesus was the Messiah, the Chosen One of God. And so on.
     By the time the various writings that were circulating among the Christian churches were examined, discussed, compared with each other,  and selected for inclusion in the list of books that became the New Testament, these questions and many like them had become a reason for strife and discord and mutual distrust. The Church had passed on the traditions they had received from the Apostles, and this passing on had resulted in variations and differences.
     The Church had to settle these differences. It called together several Councils, that is meetings of the bishops from the different places, to decide what the New Testament should include. However, from the beginning, the New Testament included the Gospel of John. One reason, I’m sure, was that it gave answers to people who were trying to understand who Jesus was, and what his Good News meant as a guide to life. We can state the central question at least three ways.
     One,  How does knowing Jesus as the Son of God define my relationship with other Christians?
     Two, How does knowing Jesus as the Son of God define my relationship with all other people?
     Three, How does knowing Jesus as the Son of God define my relationship with the world God made?
     I think we know the answer. Jesus told us that the most important commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; and to love our neighbours as ourselves. So what more do we need to know?
     Well, no matter what we say or think about God, about our relationship with each other, about what we believe about Jesus, our words and thoughts and ideas are inadequate and incomplete. There’s always more to be said, more testimony to be given, more experience to be shared. Even repetition matters. What we think we meant when we said “I believe” last year isn’t the same as what we think we mean when we say it this year. The life of faith, the path to enlightenment, the journey we all travel, requires language, even though language is not enough. It requires action, even though action is not enough. It requires silence, even though silence is not enough.
     So let’s focus for a few minutes on these words of Jesus:
     I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.
     I have made you known to them, Jesus says. He has made God known to his disciples, to us. He did this by the way he lived, the miracles he performed, the stories that he told. The God that he made known to his disciples is a God of love, the One who created the world, and who loves his creation. This is a God who wants us to embody his love in our lives.
     Jesus was present to his disciples, but he is also present to us. That’s what he promises, when he says, I will continue to make you known to them.
     The traditions passed on to us, the Gospels, the letters of Paul and other disciples, these are all ways of continuing to make God known to us. That implies careful study, meditation on what we read, weighing other people’s views, talking about what we think and believe. These are all ways in which God continues to reveal himself to us.
     But talking is not enough. Thinking is not enough. Talking and thinking must be translated into action. That is why the next phrase in Jesus prayer tells us the purpose of making God known to us. It is ...in order that the love you have for me may be in them...
     Here we come to the heart of the matter. The relationship between the Son and the Father is love. That love is shown in the healing and other miracles performed by Jesus. The miracles are not what you might call parlour tricks designed to show the power of God. In fact, Jesus repeatedly expresses irritation when people see his miracles as being merely demonstrations of divine power. His miracles are almost all examples of service to others. The very first one, the conversion of water into wine at the wedding in Cana, saved the bridegroom from ridicule, in fact it caused the bridegroom to be praised. The ultimate miracle is Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross.
     But Jesus adds one more thing, something that puts a new perspective on the relationship between Jesus and us, and therefore on the relationship with each other: ... and that I myself may be in them.
     Elsewhere Jesus said he would be with us till the end of the world. This is how he will do it: he will be, he is, he has always been, within us.
     Now that’s perhaps a bit of a stretch. How can Jesus be within us? Well, one way to explain this is to say that since Jesus is God, Jesus means that the divine is a part of us, that we are spirit as well as flesh. In baptism, we are said be born again of water and the Spirit. Sounds logical, right? I don’t know about you, but to me this kind of logic is true enough as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. More accurately, it doesn’t get us very far. It deflects us from the more important question, which is, How can Jesus-within-me affect the way I live?
     Hugely, I’d say. For if Jesus is truly within me, then everything I think and do and say and feel will be conditioned by his Presence. And if he’s within me, he’s also within you, and him, and her. He’s within all of us. In some thoroughly non-logical sense, we, each one of us, become one with him. And that insight illuminates some of Jesus other sayings, such as the one that anything we do or do not to each other, we do to him. It also makes crystal clear why love is at the heart of his message. Love binds us together. It makes us one.
     How do we know this? How can we know this? By being silent, and listening for the inner voice that says, You are loved. You are a creature of God. God made you, he loves you, he wants you to make plain his love for all the world. He will be with you, within you, and you will be able to love all that is.
     Which in a roundabout way brings us back to where we started. What Would Jesus Do? He would make his decisions based on love. And Jesus’ kind of love is action. Jesus-within-me is love in action, it’s what I do. It’s recognising that we are all of the family of God, even, or maybe especially, when it doesn’t look like it.
     So when you see that beggar on the street, give him a loonie, or whatever change you have. Not because he deserves it according to whatever standards of judgment you think are appropriate, but because he too has Jesus within him.

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Remembrance Day 11th November, 2012

     We all know the story of the widow’s mite, and Jesus’s praise of her offering to the Temple treasury. Jesus said, For [the rich] did cast in of their abundance; but she of her need did cast in all that she had, even all her living. (Mark12:44) There are many lessons in this single sentence, and we have no doubt heard most of them.
     We’ve certainly heard sermons using this incident as a model for our own giving to the Church. We do need such a model. Our own parish is always living on the edge of financial failure. And we are not alone. Every level of Church organisation is just barely scraping by. Even churches that we think of as doing well are seeing dark financial weather on the horizon. Attendance is falling as younger people disengage from organised religion. The congregations of every denomination are aging, and with age comes restricted income and limited ability to support the Church. I could go on, but you get the picture.
     We’ve also no doubt all heard sermons that contrast the apparent generosity of the rich, who have so much, with the real generosity of the poor, who have so little. As a matter of fact, Revenue Canada’s tax records show that Jesus’ observation is true even today. Their records show that middle- and lower-income tax payers give a larger proportion of their income to charity than the upper-middle- and upper-income tax payers do. And like the rich man in the story, the rich donors expect recognition: they want colleges, buildings, parks and so on named after them. I could go on, but you get the picture.
     However, instead of rehashing the arguments for giving more, I want to focus on an aspect of this story that is not named as such. This aspect underlies Jesus’ remark. It underlies all the most common discussions of the widow’s mite. Without it, exhortations to give until it hurts make no sense. It’s the concept of sacrifice: but she of her need did cast in all that she had, even all her living.
     The widow gave everything she had. She gave her life.
     Today we remember those whom we sent into war on our behalf, and who gave everything they had. They gave their lives. I want to think about that sacrifice, and what our remembering should inspire us to do. For it does no good to feel sad about those who died in war if our remembrance ends with those feelings. Our duty is not only to remember what the fallen soldiers have done for us, but also to act so that their deaths will have meaning.  
     I am old enough to remember the last years of the war and its aftermath. When someone of my age refers to the war, it means the Second World War, the one that started on the German-Polish border in September 1939 and ended in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945. Just how many people died in that war will never be known for sure. The best estimates average out at about 23 million soldiers and 45 million civilians. That’s more than twice today’s population of Canada.
     But those are mere statistics. If you want to know what war is like, talk with those who lived through it. Soldiers who saw combat very rarely talk about it. But you can see how their memories affect them when you watch their faces as they stand at attention at the Cenotaph during the Remembrance Day ceremonies. My father talked about it once only, when he thought the time was right for his grandchildren to learn something of what to them was only history in books.
     Those who didn’t see combat are more likely to tell stories, but they too avoid talking about the fighting that they knew indirectly, through the death and wounding of their friends. The civilians who endured bombing, flight from the front, refugee camps, starvation, invasion and counter invasion, the oppression of occupation and foreign rule, they sometimes talk about it. But they leave out a lot.
     I don’t remember much. We lived in a small town by a lake, far from the battle fronts. Bombers flew over on their way to bomb the cities and the railway yards. The sun glinted on them, they were like little silver fish high up in the blue air. The sound of their engines came from everywhere, from one side of the sky to the other. When the bombs fell on the railway yards ten kilometres away, we felt it in our bellies and the soles of our feet. A few times I saw black mushrooms grow on the horizon. Most of the time, the air-raid sirens chased us into the cellar, where we were dressed in several layers of clothing. It was a guarantee that we would have something to wear if the house was destroyed. The woolly underwear itched. There was a candle lit, and others ready to be lit if the power went out. When the bombs fell, we heard a dull thump, very far away, and dust trickled down from the ceiling. We crowded close to Mummy, and felt safe.
     I  hate war. I can’t tell you how much I hate it. And yet I know that war will come again.
     It will come because we fear those who are different, and that gives an opening to those who want to exploit that fear for their own ends.
     It will come because those who have power and wealth want to wage war for their own purposes.
     It will come because we leave too much up to the politicians that we elect to do the boring business of government for us.
     It will come because as long as we have something like a good life, we leave things up to the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: Which devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation (Mark 12:38-40)
     It’s not pleasant to think about these things.
     It’s not pleasant to think about war, or the poor, or the damage we’re doing to our planet.
     It’s not pleasant because it reminds us that we, each of us and all of us together, have a responsibility.
     But today, on Remembrance Day, we have before us the example of those whom we sent to war, who placed their bodies between us and the enemy, who gave everything they had. I know and you know that they had many different reasons for putting on the uniform. But whatever their reasons, they went.
     And too many of them died.
     We owe them.
     The last stanza of In Flanders Fields calls us to this duty:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
   In Flanders fields.


    The foe is not the enemy soldier. He died as our soldiers died,. His family grieved as our families grieved. Those who survived suffered the rest of their lives. The memories of war cannot be erased.
     No, the foe is us. We are the ones who wage war. The soldier is merely an instrument of war. He’s just another weapon that we, the wagers of war, use to fight our battles.
     We must change our attitudes, our feelings, our thoughts. We must replace fear with hope, hate with love, indifference with caring. It sounds like tall order, but it can be done.
     If you look at the advice that Jesus gives us, one thing stands out: he doesn’t talk about systems. He doesn’t talk about governments, or politics, or businesses, or enterprises, or organisations. He doesn’t talk about methods or processes or procedures. He doesn’t talk about checklists, or seven habits of successful people, or how to make every minute count.
     He talks about forgiveness. He talks about faith. He talks about love.
     The rich young man asks, What must I do to be saved? Sell what you have, give the money to the poor, and come and follow me, Jesus answered.
     The disciples bicker about who will be first in the Kingdom. Jesus tells them, The first in this world shall be last in the next, and the last in this world shall be first.
     What must we do to enter into the Kingdom? we ask. He that would save his life must lose it for my sake, says Jesus.
     By what rule should we live our lives? Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength; and your neighbour as yourself. That’s Jesus’ answer.
     In short, we must change. We must change the way we think, the way we feel, the way we act. We must think of all humans as being People Like Us. We must feel that every person we meet is a member of our family. We must do whatever we can to make life better for other people, just as we do whatever we can to make life better for ourselves.
     A tall order indeed. It means giving up the notion that we are the centre of the universe. It means giving up what makes us comfortable. It means giving up our lives in service. It means sacrifice. The kind of sacrifice that Jesus saw in the widow’s offering. The kind of sacrifice that we remember today. The kind of sacrifice that Jesus himself made, when he gave up his life that we might trust in his forgiveness and be free.
     Let us pray.
     Lord God, you made us, you gave yourself for us, you sustain us. By your grace give us the mind and heart and will to serve you in all that we do, and to offer ourselves in service to others. Make us truly aware of the sacrifice that sets us free to serve you by loving each other as you have loved us. Make us thankful for those who gave their lives in defending us from the enemy, and those whose lives were taken in those wars. Forgive us for making war, and help us to so change our understanding of ourselves and others that we may see that all human beings are your children, and therefore are our brothers and sisters. Grant us a change of heart, that hate may be replaced by love, fear may be replaced by joy, and indifference by caring. Grant us these our petitions for the sake of Jesus Christ, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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Babies and Hope
The following was preached on the occasion of a baptism. Our priest had been away at meetings all week, and was unable to prepare a sermon for this occasion. Advent 4, 2012

     We all like babies. Well, we like them when they’re cute and smiling and freshly diapered. Not so much when they’re grumpy and crying and smelly. Then we hand them over to their mothers or fathers to take care of them, so they’ll again be the smiley, sweet-smelling little creatures that we love.
     But even when babies are not at their best, we want to keep them.
     I think babies are amazing. I love the way they stare at everything. I love the way they smile back at you. I love they way they want to figure things out. You can almost hear their brains going click-click-click as the synapses snap together. They’re always figuring things out.
     Everything is new and fresh for them. Everything is interesting. Babies are learning machines, that’s what they are born to do, and wow, do they ever learn. They start from almost nothing. They can express pleasure and irritation. We love it when they express their pleasure. We run and try to help them when we hear them cry. We are programmed to look after them, and most of us, most of the time, we do a pretty good job of it.
     Babies are born with just a few skills. They’re born with a preference for looking at faces. Within days they know who’s family. A little later, they know who’s a stranger, and they gaze at you trying to figure out why you look different.
     They like to listen to language. Within weeks, they are trying to make language-type noises when you speak to them.  Within a few months, they start babbling to themselves. By the time they’re two or three years old, they have learned the language, they can tell you what they want, they can ask questions, they can express their opinions.
     By the time children are 5 or 6 years old, they have learned most of what they will ever learn. School is mostly filling in the gaps and connecting the dots.
     Well, today we welcome a new baby into our church family. We’re happy about that. We will gather round the baby and the mother, and make googly eyes and googly noises and smile.
     Babies are wonderful, no question.
     Why do we make such a fuss about babies and small children? Why do we take such care to protect them? Why do we feel such grief when a baby or young child dies?
     A baby is our future. In a very real sense, we live on in our children. They carry our genes. In the olden days, people talked about blood and bloodlines, but the idea is the same: our children are our future. If we have no children of our own, we may see our siblings’ children as our children. This tendency is so strong that in some societies the mother’s brother is more important in a child’s life than the father. Even cousin’s children matter, especially nowadays when we have small families.
     It seems that our sense of who is our child expands outward from our own. That’s why we may volunteer to assist organisations, or help plan events for children. At this time of year, many charities successfully beg for money to give poor children some Christmas joy. In many places, there are special parties for children. Volunteers at children’s hospitals make an extra effort. We may grumble about taxes, but we support our schools anyway. We raise money for field trips, or to buy equipment for sports and music, or even basic classroom supplies, because the anti-tax whiners don’t want to pay more.
     In short, individually and collectively we take raising and caring for and educating our children very seriously. We do this because our children represent our hope for the future.
     Hope. A short word, a small word, a simple word, but it has large and complicated meanings. When we say we hope for something, we are saying that we want something to happen, but we know it’s not guaranteed. Compare hope to expectation. We expect what we are sure will happen. We hope for what we are not sure will happen.
     Hope is one of those concepts that has probability built into it. When we start out on a path towards a hoped-for goal, we are betting that things will turn out the way we want. Life’s a gamble which we want to win. That’s the reason we like stories about long and difficult and dangerous journeys. The success of the hero reassures us that we too may hope for success.
     There can be reasonable hopes and unreasonable ones. For example, this past Thursday, we hoped that the worst of the winter storm would be over by Friday morning so that we could drive to Sudbury to pick up our son at the bus station. We knew that a storm is often not as bad as forecast. Hoping for a milder, shorter storm is reasonable: the odds are pretty good, even if they are against you. And in fact, the worst of the storm was over, and the highways were clear.
     Hope. It keeps us going.
     But we also hope for a good outcome when the odds are against us. The worse the odds, the stronger our hope. The strongest hope comes when we have no way of figuring the odds, or when the odds are very bad. Like the student who looks at the exam questions and realises he hasn’t any idea of how to answer them. But he starts writing anyhow, hoping that the answers will somehow come to him. And anyhow, the prof may give some marks for effort. It’s an unreasonable hope, but that doesn’t stop the student from trying.
     Hope. It keeps us going.
     It doesn’t take long for us to figure out that most of the time the best we can do is figure the odds. Luck, good and bad, plays a major role in our lives. When we are faced with an unexpected opportunity, we have to make a decision. We learn early in life that we often make a decision that’s not the best. So every time we face a new opportunity, we hope we’ll make the right choice. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.
     Hope. It keeps us going.
     Hope keeps us going in the face of what our reason tells us is almost certain defeat. Hope gives us the courage to try again. Or maybe hope makes us stubborn. We will not give up; maybe this time we’ll succeed.
     Hope. It keeps us going.
     When we look at our children, we hope that they will do a better job than we did. We hope that they will learn from our mistakes. We hope that this time, we’ll get it right. We will teach our children, and they will succeed where we failed. That’s one of the reasons, one of the more important reasons, that we make such a fuss about babies. They are the future that we hope will turn out better.
     For us Christians, hope has a human face. Hope was born in a human being. He was and is the hope for all humankind. That’s what we will celebrate on Christmas Day.
     The gospel reading today tells us about the Annunciation, when the angel came to Mary. He came with an announcement filled with hope. He told Mary she would bear a son, and that she should name him Jesus, and that he would be called the Son of the Most High, and that he would sit on the throne of David, and that he would reign over the house of Jacob forever. In short, her son would fulfill the hopes of his people.
     Well, as we know, actually Jesus was not a political success. In the long run, the Jews lost their homeland. A few decades after Jesus’ crucifixion, the Israelites rebelled against the rule of Rome. The rebellion was cruelly crushed, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were massacred. The temple was destroyed. That was the end of Israel as a player in the game of politics.
     Jesus certainly did not fulfill the political hopes of his people. So what hopes could Jesus fulfill? We Christians claim that Jesus is the hope of the world, that he will bring peace when he establishes his kingdom. But when we look around us, things don’t look good, and they sure seem to be getting worse.
     A large part of that feeling that the world is heading downhill, fast, is really just our increasing awareness of what’s going on around us. When we were young, we just didn’t know or care or notice what grown-ups did. We had far more important things to do. As we got older, we began to take a more active role in our community, and we began to realise that things often turn out badly. In those situations, we may try to mend the damage or prevent it. We hope that what we do will turn out well.
     There’s hope again. It keeps us going.
     What does Jesus have to do with all this? He failed as a political leader. He didn’t really offer very much in the way of becoming a success. No tips about how to grow your market. No advice on how to live your dreams. No five or seven or eleven rules for successful people. No workshops about time management, or about how to get rid of the stuff in your closets, or about how to focus on a goal and achieve it. No instruction about how to keep the poisonous stuff out of your body, or boost the immune system, or adjust the energy flow in your body to achieve a balanced metabolism. No classes in self-fulfillment, or emotional healing, or finding the inner child. No phone-ins where Jesus tells the callers how to solve their problems.
     Jesus’ advice was not the kind you can buy in a book or watch on TV or hear on the radio.
     Jesus’ advice can be summed up in three sentences:
     Love God.
     Love everybody.
     Love yourself.
     Doesn’t sound very practical, does it? So if Jesus doesn’t give us practical advice, what’s the chance living the good life we want to live? How can we keep going if there is no practical way of living our lives so that pain and suffering  and evil will stay away from us?
     The answer is hope. Or better, the answer is what hope becomes when we make God the background of our lives. When we rely on God when there doesn’t seem to be any hope left. When we ask God to stand by us when despair threatens to drown us.
     I said a few moments ago that for us, hope has a human face, that hope was born in a human being, that hope came into the world as a baby. Because of Jesus’ birth as a human being, because in Jesus the Creator and the Creature become one, because through Jesus we become children of God, because of these mysteries, hope transforms into faith. Faith is trusting that nothing can defeat us, or destroy us, or break us. It’s trusting that, because God is always there for us, we will prevail.
     There can be no greater hope than this. Today’s Gospel reminds us of this: “And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”
     Let us pray.
     Lord God, give us the grace to trust in your promises, that the hope born in your Son may become for us the staff that supports us as we journey through this life. We give you thanks that in the birth of our own children you remind us of the birth of your Son. Give us grace that we so care for our children that they too will come to know you. We rejoice that in this earthly life we may see signs and images of that eternal life that you have promised us; and we pray that in our service to each other we may bear witness to the love that you made manifest in your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

.....................................

Bread August 2012


     These last few Sundays we have heard passages from John's Gospel that deal with the bread of life. This, says Jesus, is the bread that comes from heaven. He that eats of it shall live for ever.
     Later, at the last Seder that Jesus celebrated with his disciples, he said the bread was his body and the wine was his blood, broken and shed for us. These passages in John relate to the mystery of the Eucharist, of Holy Communion.
     Now, I'm not going to go into a long and detailed explanation of the doctrines of Holy Communion. For one thing, it's been a long time since I studied them. I've forgotten most of what I once thought I knew. I would surely get things wrong and leave things out and make misleading statements. Instead, I want to muse about what this ceremony, this ritual, this sacrament could mean. If some of what I say makes sense to you, give thanks to the Spirit for leading us another step closer to the Light.
     There are so many meanings in this symbol of the bread and the broken body that it's hard to know where to begin. They all somehow relate to the Eucharist, the Holy Meal that we share here at this table. People have argued about the meaning of the bread and the wine for centuries.
     They've disagreed about what Jesus meant when he said This is my Body, This is my Blood.
     They've disagreed about what words to use to explain the mystery. They've disagreed what those words mean. What's more, our ancestors killed each other because of those disagreements. So what's the point of raking up this issue again? Leave well enough alone, and let people think what they will about the Eucharist.
     Well, that's a reasonable attitude to take. Arguments about things we cannot know objectively can break relationships. That's not a good thing. But we can share what we think and feel about the mystery. We can share our experience. Our thoughts and feelings are clues to the experience, and that experience is the heart of the mystery. That's because, somehow, we experience the Presence of Jesus when we receive the bread and the wine. Or perhaps we can say that this sacrament makes us more aware of the Presence of God in all things.
     So I'll share some of my thoughts about the bread and the wine.
     John's Gospel begins by saying that that Jesus is the source of life, of true life. Bread is often called the staff of life. Just as we use a staff to support a weary body, so bread supports our lives. Wine is water made safe to drink. In the days before water treatment plants and municipal water supplies, water could kill you. Wine was much safer.
     Without food and drink we die. It's very suitable indeed that the Seder meal focuses on bread and wine, and that Jesus made these substances symbols of his life-giving Presence. Without spiritual food, we die in the spirit. Our lives become empty and pointless. Despair knocks on the door, sits next to us on the couch, taps us on the shoulder and says, "There's no deed worth doing, no thing worth wanting, no one worth loving."
     But Jesus says, I am the Life that will never die. Trust in me, and you will live abundantly. When you receive the bread and the wine in an attitude of trust, you will find comfort and joy. The background, the foundation of your life will be the certainty that no matter how bad things seem to be, no matter how little you understand what's going on, it does have meaning and purpose. You will be able to focus on what you can do, and you will be able to do it well. That's all you need.
     Let's turn in another direction. Being an English teacher, I turned to poetry. Here's a poem by Dylan Thomas. He was very popular in the 1950s and  60s. This poem is about the bread and the wine, the grain and the grape, the blood and the body. It's  about the Spirit that makes these substances become the true Presence of Jesus at the Table of the Lord.
     As you listen to it, think of it as an expanded version of This is my body, this is my blood. Dylan Thomas imagines Jesus speaking to us about the bread and the wine. The first verse makes the connection, and reminds us of the Crucifixion:

This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.


     The second verse repeats this theme, and focuses more closely on our role in Crucifixion, which Thomas imagines as the destruction of the Light and the Spirit of God:

Once in this wind the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.


   In the last verse, Jesus identifies bread with body and wine with blood

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.


     Not exactly an easy poem to grasp on first hearing or reading, so I'll read it again.

This bread I break was once the oat,
...
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.


     Thomas wasn't concerned with the head's understanding of the mystery. The poem expresses his insight that in Holy Communion we are in communion with both the natural and the spiritual world. Jesus combines them, he makes flesh and spirit one. The Eucharist is a re-enactment of the Incarnation, when God took on human flesh and became a man. The barrier between the creature and the creator is breached: Jesus is both. And because Jesus is both, we may share in his life. Jesus can, as we say, come into our hearts.
     Jesus identified the grain and the grape as his body and blood. This may remind us that our life depends on plants. Being animals we rely on other living things to give us life. Without plants we wouldn't be here. They supply us with the oxygen we need to survive. They supply our food, directly when we eat grains and fruit and vegetables, and indirectly when we eat meat from animals that have eaten plants. Their life is a gift to us.
     Yet we rarely pay attention to this gift of life. The other night we were watching a short documentary about the Slave River. There was lots of information about the species that live in its delta: dozens of species of animals, birds and fish, we were told, make their homes in the wetlands fed by the river. But there wasn't any talk about the dozens of species of plants that live there, and without which there would be no animals, birds, or fish.
     We are a terribly self-centred species. We not only ignore the very foundation of our life, we ignore pretty well everything that doesn't have an immediate and obvious connection to us. We forget that without the natural, non-human world around us we could not survive. We think that our jobs are more important than the habitats of wild creatures, the wetlands and oceans, the forests and plains. We think that our jobs are more important even than the earth, the air, the water. Yet without those things there would be no economy, no jobs, none of the things that we think make life worth living.
     And that thought leads to another one: What does make life worth living? Right now, it seems we are all worried about debts and deficits and the economy. Money occupies our minds and hearts. Anxiety about not having enough makes us hard-hearted and cruel: we want to reduce welfare payments, spending on schools, on roads, on parks. We know bridges and waterlines need repair and replacement, but we are afraid to spend the money. We talk about finding efficiencies in healthcare, in environmental services, in care for the aged and infirm. That's code for spending less, even as costs rise.
     But we are willing to spend more on weapons, because we afraid.
     In short, we think of ourselves as individuals who are up against it. The world isn't fair or kind, and we must fight for every advantage we can get for ourselves and our children. We must protect ourselves. Let other people take care of themselves as best as they can.
     That thinking is not what Jesus taught. Throughout his ministry he emphasises inclusion and mutual service. What we do or not do for each other, we do or not do for him. We are to be one in his Spirit. We are to love one another as he loved us. Holy Communion is the sacrament that brings us together in his body, the one body that is the community of believers.
     Of course that's not easy. It's hard to give up worries and anxieties. It's hard to believe that we have more than we need, and can share what we have. It's hard to understand that "love" is a verb, not a feeling. When Jesus said "Love one another", he didn't mean "Feel nice and warm and welcoming about each other." He meant "Do what needs to be done to keep each other well and happy and contented and safe. And do it joyfully, for my service is easy and my yoke is light."
     So this is where I've come to in my meditations on the Bread of Life:
     By receiving that Bread, our  life becomes more abundant.
     By receiving that Bread, we become capable of sharing the life we have, and of sharing the wealth that sustains that life.
     By receiving that Bread, we share in the Life of Jesus, and he shares his life with us. We become one in the Spirit.
     Let us pray.
     Jesus, thou Bread of Life, nourish us that we may be strengthened to serve you by serving each other. Nourish us that we may live life more abundantly. Nourish us that we may taste the joy of  communion with you. Bring us to the Father, with whom and the Holy Spirit you reign forever. Amen.


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