Are You a Pharisee or a Tax Collector?

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

How many of you here have ever used Facebook?

I’m glad to see I’m not alone.  For those of you who do not use Facebook, don’t worry.  What I’m going to talk about was around long before it ever hit the internet.  In fact they were around long before the internet.

How many of you have ever taken one of those quizzes with titles like “Which character on the Simpsons are you?”  (I’m Flanders).  One of the latest quizzes going around is “Why is the inquisition after me?”  According to that quiz, I practice witchcraft.

Well, today we are going to take a quiz called “Which character am I in today’s parable?”  I am going to make a few statements.  All you need to do is keep track of whether more of them are true for you or more of them are false.  Here we go.

There is only one right way to do things.

If I study hard enough, I can learn the right way.

Some things cannot be forgiven.

Prayer needs to be done in a dignified manner.

Following the rules will make me closer to God.

Being a sinner will make God love me less.

I’m a better Christian than my neighbour who isn’t here.

If you answered true to more often than false, you are a Pharisee.  If you answered false more often, you are a tax collector.  I have to admit right now that I am a sinner because I envy those of you who can easily answer false to most or all of those statements.

I want most of those to be true.  It would make following in Christ’s footsteps much easier.

I would love it if all of my study could have taught me the “right way.”  I would love to have a list to follow that would guarantee my place in heaven and God’s favour on Earth.

Unfortunately that’s not the way it works.  The only real difference between the Pharisee and the tax collector is that the Pharisee cannot see that he is just as broken as the tax collector.

I am broken.  I am a sinner.  Sometimes I am a Pharisee.  I hide behind my knowledge.  I do all the right things and I believe that makes me better that those who don’t.  When I do that, I am wrong.  I am not better.  I am just as broken.  That is part of what it means to be human.

We – I need to learn from the tax collector.  “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

I’m going to make a few more statements.  Once again, keep track of your true / false balance.

It is possible to do things right.

If I trust in God, I can find the right way for me.

Some things are easier for me to forgive than others.

The way I pray feels right for me.

Following a set of guidelines makes it easier for me to feel close to God.

I am a sinner and God loves me anyway.

I am committed to trying to follow Christ.

Congratulations.  If you answered true to at least one of these statements, you are on your way to being a tax collector.

Being a Pharisee is easy.  It is comfortable.  It is not dangerous.  No one can hurt me when I know I’m right.

Being a tax collector is risky.  As a tax collector I have to put myself out there.  I have to invite others to attack me.  I have to expect that I will do it wrong much of the time.

I have to hope that at least occasionally I am doing it right.

Thanks be to God!

Evangelism is ...

I speak to you in the name of the God who made us, the God who nourishes us, the God who never abandons us.  Amen.

Just who are God’s people anyway?

The easy answer is us.

It’s true too.

We are God’s people.  We gather here in his name to honour him and to be fed through his holy mysteries.  We give of our resources of time and money to see that God’s work is done here in this community and throughout the world.  At the end of the service I will send you out to continue to live life as God calls you to live it.  Just before we share communion I even say: “The gifts of God for the People of God.”

We are God’s people.

But are we alone?  Are we God’s only people?

No.  It’s easy to see that there are more of God’s people around.  Some of you have even married them.  There are the United folk, the Presbyterians, the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, the Alliance, just to name a few denominations.  They, and all who follow Christ, are God’s people too.

We Christians are God’s people.

But are we alone?  Are only Christians God’s people?

What makes someone one of God’s people?

Do they have to be free of sin?  Do they have to avoid working for Revenue Canada?  Not according to today’s Gospel.  Jesus kept company with sinners and tax collectors.  Jesus sought out those very people whom the “godly” avoided.

Do they have to be the right gender?  Or the right social class?  Jesus is quite clear about this too.  If anything, it is easier to hear God’s call if you are in some way disadvantaged.  The more elite you are in your society, the more distractions you have to pull you away from God.

Nothing we are or do makes us one of God’s people.  It is by the grace of God that we are named as God’s own.  Not only that, but we cannot break God’s love for us.  In our reading from first Timothy, we hear Paul’s voice telling us about God’s love.  “Even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” … “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.”  Paul was not short of knowledge about Jesus.  He knew a great deal about him and believed very little of it.  Paul’s ignorance was of the vast scope of God’s love.  He believed that he was one of God’s people.  He found out just how much God loved him.

This love is what makes a person one of God’s people.  Jesus makes it quite clear that everyone, whether they believe or not, is beloved of God.  There is not a single person in creation who is not one of God’s people.

We are all here because we have been called as Paul was called.  We have been shown God’s love in many different ways.  We are called to share that experience.  This is called “evangelism.”

When I was growing up, I spent considerable time with some of my cousins from Southern California.  Their parents attended Pentecostal churches.  They were capital “E” Evangelists and they called me their favourite heathen.  Their parents watched carefully to make sure that they didn’t start to believe the same things as I did and that they tried to “enlighten” me.  This is not evangelism.

Evangelism is sharing the good news of God’s love in the way we act, both inside and outside of these walls.  Evangelism is helping others to realize that God loves them too, that they are never alone.  Evangelism is about opening ourselves up and letting others see what God has done for us.

At the end of September, we will be celebrating together at St. Paul’s with a Dr. Seuss liturgy.  Evangelism is what this celebration is all about.  This service is a way of reaching out and showing that God’s love is for all and that our response can be expressed in different ways.

We are not having this celebration in order to bring in greater numbers, or to increase the offering in the plate.  It is not even about showing our children that we can be silly and have fun at church.

The Dr. Seuss celebration is about spreading God’s word in different ways.  It is about reaching out to say that no matter what your age or your background, God is calling you.  God loves you!

This is evangelism … spreading the good news, the Gospel, to all who have ears to hear it.  We are merely the planters of the seeds.  It is God who tends the garden.

If we can keep God’s love in our hearts and truly believe that God loves everyone, we will be a place where they want to come when they are ready.

Thanks be to God.

I Need More Oil In My Lamp -- Do You?

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.”

God is calling us to be ready to serve at any time.  God is calling us to be watching at all times for the need.  God is calling us at all times to be aware of his presence.

I don’t know about you, but I find that everything I do takes some of my energy.  By the time I have done everything that I need to do I have very little energy left.

Always watching, always being ready to act, this could take up all of my energy all by itself.  How am I, how are we, supposed to find the energy to do this and to do everything else we have to do?  It’s hard enough to find the energy to plan some time for God each day, but God is asking us to devote all of our time to him, or at least to be ready to jump in when needed and be aware enough to notice the need.

I just don’t have the energy to do that.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

God wants us to do this.  God wants us to notice when he is acting in our lives.  God must have given us some way to do this.  But how?

I think we need help.  I think we have two major sources of help.  I’ve talked about both of them before.  Does anyone remember what the word “church” really means?  It comes from the Greek word “kuriakos” which mean “of the Lord.”  Now this might seem like a good basis for our gathering here today, but it has almost nothing to do with this (hold up the Bible).  “Kuriakos” only appears in here twice; once talking about the Lord’s Supper and once about the Lord’s Day.

That’s where the word “church” comes from.  But it is not the only word we translate as “church.”  There is another Greek word, “ekklesia,” which has been translated as “church” since the time of the King James version of the Bible.  The earlier translation, by Tyndale, did not use “church,” it used “congregation.”  “Ekklesia” appears in here more than 115 times.  In ancient Greece, the ekklesia was the civil body of elected or “called out” individuals who met to make decisions on behalf of everyone else, otherwise known as a town or city council.

The definition I was given at VST was “a group of concerned citizens taking council for the greater good.”

Now, what does all of this have to do with finding the energy to keep that flame of awareness going at all times?  How does the meaning of “church” give us strength to remain vigilant at all times and to respond to God when we do become aware of God’s presence and mission around us?

“A group of concerned citizens .”  We are not alone.  What we cannot do as individuals, we can do as a community where we depend on each other.  Because we have each other, we don’t have to respond personally to every need we see.  If it is something that we know someone else would be good at, we can bring it to their attention.  If it is beyond any one of us, we can bring it to this ekklesia, this gathering of concerned citizens.  Together, we can remain vigilant.  Together we can respond to God’s call at all times.  Depend not only on yourselves, but also on each other.  We are a community.

As I said earlier, we also have another source of help.  --- God!

When we need help from God, what do we do?

Yes – we pray!

I think I know just the right prayer for to ask God to help us stay vigilant.  It is a song called “Give me oil in my lamp.”  I’m going to sing it a few times.  There are many different versions of this song, so even if you know it, please listen the first time through and then join in with me when I repeat it.

Teach:

Give me oil in my lamp,

Keep me burnin’

Give me oil in my lamp I pray – Halelujah

Give me oil in my lamp,

Keep me burnin’, burnin’, burnin’,

Keep me burnin’ ‘til the end of day.

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna to the King of kings,

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna to the King

Amen.

Making Time For God

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Our world is a very busy place.  When I moved my family to Cape Breton from Vancouver I was hoping we would get away from that.  And to some extent we did.  At least here it was not frantic.  But it was still busy.  There was never enough time to get everything done.  I still heard the words “I don’t have time” far too often.

This business is a fact of life.  It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.  It just is.

Many of the things that keep us busy are very important and truly need to be done.  We have to work.  We have to pay bills.  We have to see that our children get where they need to be.  And somewhere in there we definitely need to have some social interaction.

Life is just busy.

In our Gospel today we have the story of the Good Samaritan.  In this story, we have three people all passing a badly injured man.  All three of these people make decisions as they pass.  They look at what rules they have to live by and weigh their priorities.

For the priest and the Levite, the need for ritual purity outweighs the need to help the poor, the needy, and the sick.  For both of them, if they were to touch or even come to close to the man and he turned out to be dead, they would have to go through a long process to once again be ritually clean and to return to their jobs in the temple.

For the Samaritan, the priorities are different.  For the Samaritan, there is a long history of his people and the Jews being enemies.  He does not have the same religious reason to help the sick and needy.  Since he was traveling deep within Judah and had the financial means to help, he was probably a merchant.  He would probably know at least something about the Jewish rules of cleanliness.  For him, if the man turned out to be dead, it could mean that his profits for his current trip could be drastically reduced or he might even lose money.

All three passers-by had nothing to gain and much to lose by helping the man.  All three had to look at their priorities and make a decision.

All of the priorities that I have listed are personal.  They are all about how helping the man will affect their day to day lives.  What these priorities leave out is their relationship with God.

That’s what our Gospel today is really about: our relationship with God.

We don’t have the same problems facing us that the three men in our story did.  None of us is going to have our livelihood damaged by helping someone on the side of the road.  None of us will be kept from going to work because we came near someone who was “unclean.”

I think our problems today are even greater.  In our Gospel today, none of the passers-by had any difficulty seeing the need.  They all saw and they all made their decisions about how to respond.  Our problem goes much deeper.

We are too busy.

We are not just too busy to help.  We are too busy to see the need.

We have so much going on in our lives that we walk right past the need without ever noticing it.  We never even get to the point of looking at our priorities and making a decision.

We are just too busy.

I am going to put out a challenge today, both to myself and to all of you.

For the rest of the month, I challenge us all to make time for God.  I challenge us to do something every day which is not for ourselves.  It doesn't matter if it takes ten minutes or two hours, just that it happens every day.

There are so many things that we could do that it won’t be hard to find something.  It might mean spending some extra time praying for someone or something in need.  It might mean walking down the street and picking up any garbage that you see.  It might mean dropping in on a neighbour we don’t know well and finding out how they are doing.  It might even mean taking a walk and looking for things that remind us of the glory of God.

At the end of the month I’m hoping that this will have become a habit which we can’t break.  After all, we are all here today not because we've dedicated our Sundays to God but because we've dedicated our entire lives to God.  Let’s not keep God waiting any longer.

The Flying Pigs of Gerasa

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

And now for something completely different.

Possession.  Casting out of demons.  Flying pigs drowning themselves in the Sea of Galilee.  Oh, my!!!

For those of you who haven’t covered this passage in a Bible study, I’ll give you a bit of background for that last one.  – The city of Gerasa was about 50 kilometers southeast of the Lake, which we now call the Sea of Galilee.  Pigs, which have no sweat glands, would die long before they reached the sea by running.  They must have flown down the hill.

So we have possession, casting out of demons and flying pigs all in one short story.  This story seems to be completely out of our world view, and for the most part it probably is.

In Jesus’ time, most mental illnesses and some physical illnesses were thought to be caused by demons or unclean spirits.  These demons were eternal somethings (the word literally means minor divinities) looking for somewhere to settle down.  When they got into somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, for instance a human being, they caused all kinds of problems.  Casting them out would instantly fix these problems, but there were very few people who could do this.  Jesus was one of them.  This particular man was possessed by many spirits, enough so that they called themselves legion (which would make 6,000 of them).  Jesus was probably the only one with enough power to cast out that many.

Today we don’t blame sickness on demons, at least not usually.  We do still have the rite of exorcism available to us in the Anglican tradition.  And from historical accounts, some of which are quite recent, exorcism sometimes works.  Though I’m not sure when it was last used in this diocese.  There is no cannon or policy on its use.

But as I said, we don’t often blame sickness on demons anymore.  So how do we make sense of this reading in our current world view?

Today’s version of this story would be about faith healing.  We have our own legion of demons to choose from: cancers of all varieties, depression, cerebral palsy, dementia, addiction.  The list goes on and on: diseases and conditions which are difficult or impossible to cure or even to manage with medicine.

We hear story after story about people traveling around the world for treatments which are not medically proven.  Some of these people get better.  Many don’t.  This is a type of faith healing.  This healing is sometimes medicine which just hasn’t been proven yet, but more often than not it is healing that happens because people believe so strongly that it the treatment will help.  They have faith in the medicine.  The power this kind of belief has over our bodies can be awesome and unexplainable.  This is not the kind of faith healing that this story is about.

Placing that kind of absolute belief in God is transformative.  It can sometimes accomplish the same type of physical healing, but that is only a side benefit.  The healing that comes from faith in God transforms our lives in other ways.

If we look at the man healed in today’s story we see a man who has been cast out of society in just about every way possible.  Jesus comes and the man kneels at his feet, acknowledging his power.  Jesus transforms this man.  Healing him of his afflictions does not make him just another ordinary citizen of Gerasa.  No – he returns to a city which is terrified of him because of the extreme change.  He goes back to a city where there is no real Jewish presence, where there are no followers of Jesus.  He goes back to that city to proclaim a message which will leave him separated from the rest of society in a different way than before: just as isolated but with a real purpose to his life.

Modern examples of faith healing are everywhere.  The most common examples are probably twelve step programs for addiction.  A key step in these programs is acknowledging that we can’t do it ourselves.  We need help from God.  People who are successful in these programs are not cured of their addictions, but their lives are transformed in a way that can only come from God.

Faith healing is like this.  Our body may or may not be healed – our souls are.  By putting that kind of faith in God we are healed.  Our demons are cast out.  Even the ones we never realized were there.  We all have them.  We all have the power to give them to God.

Thanks be to God.

Justified By Love Not By Law

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

Whatever is Paul talking about?  That is one of his more convoluted arguments.  I think it needs a bit of unpacking to have any idea of what he means.

Paul uses a few very key words in our reading today: justified, the law, faith, Christ, and grace.

That first word, justified, means to be made right or proved to be right with God; in other words, to be shown or made to be righteous.  Being justified is the core of what Paul is talking about.

How do we become justified with God?  … How do we become righteous?

The Bible is full of rules.  Can anyone think of a set of rules in the Bible?  How about the Ten Commandments.  Or how about the summary of the law.  The Galatians ask Paul if we are made right with God by following all these rules.  What do you think he answered?  … “No one will be justified by the works of the law.”  That’s a pretty emphatic answer.  Has anyone here read “The Year of Living Biblically?”  A. J. Jacobs did a very good job of showing just how impossible it is to follow all of the laws all of the time.  I thank God that this is not the way to be right with God.

Paul even takes it one step further that Jacobs did.  Paul reminds us that Christ himself broke the law: “is Christ then a servant of sin?”  On several occasions, the Bible makes a point of telling us that Jesus is breaking the rules set down in God’s law.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all talk about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners.  This is important because it breaks the ritual purity laws.  All of the Gospels talk about Jesus breaking the Sabbath.  He heals and does other work on the Sabbath and makes the point that the Sabbath (and other laws) are made for us, not the other way around.  That is extremely important.  The law is given to us.  We are not given to the law.

Back to the question: how do we become justified with God?

“And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law.”

This is where grace comes in.  Being righteous is about knowing that God loves us and responding to that.  It is about faith.  All it takes for our relationship with God to be right is for us to truly believe that we have a relationship with God and that God loves us.  God became human and walked among us to show us what this relationship looks like and to prove that love to us.

So if the law does not make us right with God, why do we have it?  Does it matter at all?

Absolutely!  The law is very important.  All of those rules show us how people throughout history have felt God’s call.  When we look at them either individually or as a whole, they show us what is important to God.  There are rules about taking care of ourselves.  There are rules about taking care of the poor and the sick.  There are rules about respecting each other.  There are rules about respecting and honouring God.  There are rules that show us where society was going wrong.

All of these rules are important.  All of them can teach us something about God.  Many of them require us to understand the people who wrote them for them to mean anything to us today, but they are all important.

Jesus told us that of all the laws, if we follow two specific ones, we have understood the heart of the law.  I believe those two laws are impossible to break if you are truly living by faith.  We call them the summary of the law.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

God calls us to love.  First we are to love God.  Next we are to love ourselves and everyone else equally.

If we follow the other rules but break these we are being ruled by the law.  If we follow these two rules we are living by faith.  If we break any other rule in order to keep the laws of love, we have understood God’s gift of the law to us.  We are justified.  By the grace of God, we are right with God.

Thanks be to God.

A Simple Story From The Old Testament

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

It’s wonderful to have such a nice, simple story from the Old Testament to preach on.  I’m tired of all of these deep, confusing stories.  What a wonderful change.

So here we have a story about Elijah bumping into a widow who was gathering sticks for a cooking fire.  This story takes place in the middle of a drought so the widow, who would already be poor, does not have enough money to feed herself and her son.  Elijah reaches out to her and, by the power of God, provides for her and for her son throughout the rest of the drought.

A nice simple story about our duty help the poor, and in the Old Testament, especially widows and orphans.  Well, that’s it.  I’m done with this one.  We have a duty to provide what we can to help the poor.

But wait a minute.  Why were they having a drought anyway?  And what does that have to do with our story?

King Ahab and Queen Jezebel (and many of the Israelites) were worshiping Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility and storms instead of the God of Israel.  As a punishment for this Elijah decreed a drought.  When Elijah talks to the widow, she says “As the Lord your God lives.”  She follows the God of Israel, not Baal.  Because of this, God provides for her in the drought.

So obviously this is a story about the dangers of idolatry.  If we turn from God and follow false idols, all that we have of true value will wither and die.  If we follow God’s call, the least we have will become a great treasure.

Or it’s a story about our duty to the poor.

But wait a minute.  If this were just a story about idolatry, God would have filled her jug of oil and jar of meal as soon as Elijah and God knew that she followed God.  But they weren’t.  Elijah sent her to make food for him first.  If she made the food for Elijah, then her jug and jar would not run out.  She had to prove her faith.  She had to believe that if she gave her last crumbs to Elijah, she would still have enough for herself and for her son.

So obviously this is a story about the power of faith.

Or it’s a story about the dangers of idolatry.

Or it’s a story about our duty to the poor.

So much for a simple story from the Old Testament.  I guess nothing in this book is truly simple, is it?

Before I leave our simple story about Elijah and a widow, I want to share one more layer from it.  And I think this one might be the most important (though all of them are important).

I think this story is about the grace of God that we see when we are good stewards of the gifts we have been given.  What does it mean to be a good steward?  Well, the simplest meaning is to take care of the gifts that we have been given.  But as this story has shown us, simple just doesn’t cut it.  There is much more.

Does anyone remember the parable of the talents?

That simple meaning of stewardship would be like the servant that buried what he was given to make sure that he didn’t end up with less.  This type of stewardship is not favoured by God.  It doesn’t do anything to make the world a better place.  It doesn’t further God’s kingdom.

The next level of stewardship would be like a conservative investment.  We take what we have and invest it in safe, stable, traditional ways.  We get some return and still have almost no risk.  This is marginally better, but it still isn’t the type of steward God is calling each of us to be.

No, God is calling us to be sacrificial stewards like the widow in our story.  Because of her faith that God will provide, she is able to give more of her gifts than she can really afford to give.  Just as she gave her last crumbs, we are called to use all that we have and all that we are to make the world a better place.

She also gives us another important message about stewardship.  Stewardship is not about money!

That’s right.  Stewardship is not about money.  It is about gifts.  Everything we have is a gift from God.  There are many gifts.  We are given gifts of talent, gifts of time, gifts of inheritance, and yes, gifts of money, and many other gifts.  A good steward in God’s eyes gives of their gifts as they can afford and even more.

And the grace of good stewardship, the grace of sacrificial stewardship, can be seen time after time both in this book and in our lives and the lives of everyone around us.  When we are generous with the gifts we have been given, when we give as much or more than we can afford to give, we are blessed with even more gifts from God.

This is the true message of stewardship and of this Old Testament reading.  The gifts that God has given us are meant to be used.  When they are used, they bear fruit.  When they are horded, they wither away and die.

Or is it about the power of faith?

Or is it about the dangers of idolatry?

Or is it about our duty to the poor?

New Expressions - Sing to the Lord a New Song

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, o Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Finding new expressions of worship and faith that would help us bridge the gap between our current traditions and the spiritual and worship needs of our communities. Setting our parish on a path of study and renewal.

Somehow we have to reach out beyond these walls and do something new that will have meaning for people who are not here.  We have to trust that when we do that, we will enjoy the support of our God.  We need to have faith that God’s support will carry us through and bring us the support we need to spread the Gospel in new ways which will feel uncomfortable and foreign to all of us.

Not only do we need to do all of these things, but we must remain true to ourselves, our traditions, and, most importantly, to the Gospel of Christ.

What a balancing act we have ahead of us.

How do we do this?  Where can we look for directions?  Is there a map?

All of our readings today speak directly to this balancing act.  Each of them gives us part of those instructions.  Each, in its own way, gives us a small piece of our puzzle.

Our first clue comes to us from the time of Elijah.

‘So Ahab sent to all the Israelites, and assembled the prophets at Mount Carmel. Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”’ (1 Kings 18:20-21 NRSV)

God will not stop us from worshiping false gods.  God will not step up and smack us on the side of the head and say “You fools! This is wrong!”

So how do we know if we’re following God or going off on some tangent?  If we look at what happened with the Israelites, when the prophets of Baal called on him, he did nothing; when Elijah called on the LORD, he made his presence known.

When we do something new, something that truly glorifies God, in some way we will be able to see God’s presence.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians gives us another clue.  When Paul wrote this letter, it seems that the church in Galatia had somewhat lost its way.  They were trying to appeal to people by saying what they thought the people wanted to hear instead of telling them what Christ’s message was.  As we move forward into our new calling, this is a real danger.  In fact, even if we were to change nothing, this is a real danger.  Paul could easily have written this letter to the Church in Canada!

“Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10 NRSV)

We are caught between two dangers.  If we continue to worship “as we always have” we are remaining in that place of comfort.  We are pleasing ourselves.  If we choose a style of worship because we believe it will appeal to others who are not here, we are trying to please people.

Choosing what we do in order to please anyone, ourselves included, is sin.  When we do this, we turn our worship into idolatry.

Does this mean that we can’t worship in a manner that appeals to anyone?  Should we look for something that absolutely no one likes? –We seem to have a dilemma.  We can’t worship in a way that pleases people, but no one is going to come here and worship if they don’t like the worship.

Thankfully Paul doesn’t leave us without an answer.  He doesn’t actually say that worship can’t please people.  He just tells us that pleasing people can’t be the reason we do it.  No matter what way we worship, whether it be what we call “traditional” or if it is some “new expression,” we need to be seeking God’s approval.  We need to be spreading Christ’s Gospel.

Our Gospel today isn’t about worship: very little in the Gospels is directly about worship.  But it does relate to our balancing act.  Our Gospel tells us that if we have faith in Christ God will answer our prayers.  When we seek God in our communities, we will find him.  When we ask the Holy Spirit to guide and support us, she will be there.  The key to our future is faith.

Finally I come to the psalm.

There are two key phrases in our psalm today.  The first is an echo of our other readings.  “Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name.” (Psalm 96:7-8 NRSV)  Ascribe to the LORD.  Give credit to the LORD.  Assign to the LORD.  It is not about us.  If we make it about us, it has no meaning: it has no power.  So we give it to God and we have hope.  We give it to God and we share in God’s purpose.

And finally, “Sing to the LORD a new song.”  The Gospel, the good news, continues to be written in our hearts.  As the world changes, God’s call changes.  Our job is not to do God’s work, but rather to look for where God is working and join in.

God is singing a new song.  Can we?

The Holy Spirit As One Of The Trinity

May the Spirit of God infuse my words and all our lives that we may come from here bursting forth with God’s purpose.  Amen.

Today we have four readings from four different books in the compact library we call the Bible.  Next week we will have another four readings from this library.  And the next.  And the next ….

Sometimes, in the seasons which we call Ordinary Time, three of these readings march through our library picking up near where we left off the last week.  Sometimes, like the seasons of Lent and Advent and on feast days like today, these readings are grouped loosely around some theme.  In both cases, the psalm is chosen as a reflection on one of the readings.

Today’s theme is the Trinity.  Today’s readings all try to help us understand the mystery of One God in Three Persons.  Since we spend most of the year reading and talking about Jesus and God, they all focus our thought on the Holy Spirit.  Each of them does it from a different perspective.

Wisdom literature like we find in proverbs is some of the oldest recorded thought about God.  In ancient Hebrew thought, Wisdom is birthed by God made out of God’s own essence.  Wisdom comes before creation and either assists with creation or is delighted by it like a child looking on in wonder.  Wisdom is always female and is looked at as the mothering part of God.  Wisdom was seen as being active in our lives, helping us to understand our purpose in the world and giving us good advice on how to live.  As I understand Wisdom, Wisdom is less powerful than God but uses what power she has all the time.

Next we move on to the Gospel of John.  Does anyone remember the first words of the Gospel of John?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  This is one way the Greek culture interpreted Wisdom in John’s community.  What follows is the Word “became flesh and lived among us.”  So Jesus is Wisdom in a human body.

John also talks about the Spirit of truth which is another view of Wisdom.  John understands the Spirit of truth as a messenger, continuing to bring God’s word to the disciples after Jesus’ ascension.  The Spirit of truth does not have knowledge of its own, it merely bring the words of the Father, through Christ, to the disciples.

Finally we have the reading from Romans.  This is the first time we directly refer to the Holy Spirit.  In Paul’s understanding, the Holy Spirit is a gift from God.  It serves as kind of a conduit connecting us to God’s love.  Like wisdom, it continues to advise us and encourage us to live a life according to God’s plan.

But wait, we have two more descriptions of the Holy Spirit yet to come today.  When we recite the Apostle’s Creed, we are saying how we understand the Trinity.  In that creed we give three lines to describe God and eleven lines to describe Christ.  How many lines do we use to describe the Holy Spirit?  … One … “I believe in the Holy Spirit.”  Period.  Not very helpful is it?

The last spot we describe the Holy Spirit is in the Eucharistic Prayer.  Today we use Prayer 3 with the Trinity preface.  In this prayer we say “you reveal your glory as the glory of your Son and the Holy Spirit: three persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendour, yet one Lord, one God.”  We also talk about the activity of the Holy Spirit.  It is the Holy Spirit that sanctifies, or makes holy, both the Eucharistic gifts and us.

These last two reflect current thought about the Trinity.  The Apostle’s Creed, which was written  and rewritten starting somewhere between the second and fourth centuries and ending around the seventh century, is so vague about the Holy Spirit that it would be hard to disagree with it.  Our Eucharistic prayer today is much more specific.  It gives an equal position to all three persons of the Trinity, including the Holy Spirit.  It gives us some ideas about what role the Holy Spirit plays in our lives and in the activity of God.  It doesn’t say a thing about how the Holy Spirit does its work or the gender of the Holy Spirit.

Are you confused yet?  … I definitely am.  We have several descriptions of the Holy Spirit which are at the least inconsistent and maybe even contradictory.  Either that or the Holy Spirit has evolved from Wisdom into one of the Trinity.  So how do we choose?  Which one is right?  Three of these are directly from this library and the other two are based on it.

This is where we see the grace of God.  We don’t have to choose.  All of these descriptions are probably in some way right.  They are all examples of people, human beings with all of our frailties, seeking to understand their faith; trying to understand what the Holy Spirit is doing in their lives.  They are all images which can help us to find the Holy Spirit in our own lives.

My favourite way of looking at the Holy Spirit goes a bit like this.  Jesus told us that the good news, the Gospel, would continue to be written in our hearts.  The Holy Spirit’s job is to help us release that good news into the world and she won’t give up until she succeeds.

Thanks be to God.

What's In A Name - part 2

Ramblings from the Rector

 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2:1-4 NRSV)

What’s in a name?  Just over twenty years ago many of the churches in this diocese were asking this question.  At the bishop’s direction, the diocese was adjusting parish boundaries.  Both of our parishes, Holy Faith and Touchwood Trail, were formed around this time.  Both parishes held meetings, prayed, and deliberated, and finally chose a name to carry them into the future.

Some of the churches that formed these parishes are now gone, yet their legacy and memory are carried on.  I am going to list them now and I ask that you offer a prayer for each.  With each church closed, we feel a new loss, a new pain, and we reach out with compassion to those for whom the loss is personal.

Christ Church – Abernethy

St. Mary (the Virgin) – Cupar

St. George – Ituna

Holy Trinity – Kelleher

St. Michael and All Angels – Lipton

All of these churches are gone, but they are still part of us.  We still remember them.  We still carry on their traditions.  We still minister to those who called them “my church.”

Over the past two months we have been talking about another change of parish boundaries.  We have been celebrating the coming together of two parishes to share ministries and become a new community in Christian unity.

We have been looking at possibilities for the name of the new parish.  But even more importantly, we have been looking for our calling as a new parish.  We have been asking the Holy Spirit to come among us and inspire us.  We have been praying.  And we have been listening.  We were looking for an ideal of Christian ministry that would bring us into a new future together.  And on the Day of Pentecost we came together with the Holy Spirit and voted.

This is the ideal you chose:

Finding new expressions of worship and faith that would help us bridge the gap between our current traditions and the spiritual and worship needs of our communities. Setting our parish on a path of study and renewal.

Not only was this the clear choice of our adult members, our seventy-five percent of our younger members chose the same ideal of Christian ministry.

Our choices of parish name came from this ideal.  You chose the name “The Teachers of the Faith.”

I know that this was not everyone’s choice.  No matter how we chose or what we chose, it would not be everyone’s choice.  I ask that in this time of chance we all respect this.  Whenever there is change there is both the pain of loss and the uncertainty of a new beginning.  And so I once again ask you to pray:

Gracious God, please help us all to believe in UFO’s.  Let us find unity even when we are not in agreement.  Help us to forgive the hurts that we have received and to reach out in compassion to those who are suffering.  Guide us as we move forward together so that we may discover how we can engage in outreach which aids your mission in our communities.

Teachers of the Faith

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

This week we are continuing our exploration spiritual directions for our new parish.  Our concentration this week will be Teachers of the Faith.  Teachers of the Faith is a very large category in our list of those we honour in our church year in the Anglican Church.

They start with Justin and Irenaeus in the 2^nd to 3^rd centuries and continue with Hilary, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and Leo the Great in the 4^th and 5^th centuries before we reach our more modern saints Gregory the Great (7^th century); Anselm (12^th century); Thomas Aquinas (13^th century); and the return of Francis de Sales (17^th century).

All of these lead up to the two men I am going to talk about today: the only two Teachers of the Faith that we commemorate who are truly Anglican: Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker.

Thomas Cranmer 21 March

Archbishop of Canterbury, 1556 — Commemoration

March

Thomas Cranmer was a Cambridge scholar who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 and guided the Church of England through its first two decades of independence from the Papacy.

When he assumed his office he was already committed to protestant views, but political conditions forced him to keep his sympathies a secret. For over a decade he studied the issues which divided not only protestants from Catholics, but also the protestant movement itself. His studies bore fruit when the political situation allowed him to begin serious reformation of the liturgy. He had a large hand in drafting The Book of Common Prayer, which was authorized in 1549. Three years later he oversaw a second edition of this Book, which he revised in such a way as to make its protestant doctrine unmistakable.

Soon afterwards he and his Prayer Book were overtaken by events when Queen Mary I came to the throne and restored England to communion with the Pope. Cranmer was imprisoned and endured a long, humiliating trial for heresy, at the end of which he recanted his protestant opinions in hopes of clemency. The Queen refused to hear his pleas, and he was burned at the stake on this day in the year 1556. As the flames licked around him, he thrust out his right hand — the hand which had signed his earlier recantations — so that it might be the first to be burned; and that was the posture in which the onlookers last saw him, as the fire engulfed his body.

Richard Hooker 3 November

Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1600 — Commemoration

November

Richard Hooker was an English priest who died in 1600, and we remember him today as a theologian who defended the Church of England and its choice of “the middle way” between Roman Catholic and Puritan ideologies.

Hooker entered Oxford University in 1567 and for eighteen years devoted himself to scholarship and reflection on the subtle points of theology. He became deputy professor of Hebrew, was ordained to the priesthood, and appeared to be set on a purely academic career. But his learning, moderation, and commitment to the Church of England brought him to the attention of the authorities, and he was appointed Master of the Temple, an office of great prestige because it made him the chief preacher to the legal community of London. He held this post for six years, then resigned to become the rector of a parish near Salisbury. A few years later he moved to a rectory in the diocese of Canterbury, where he died at the age of forty-six.

He was a quiet man, loving to his wife and children, glad in his piety, and happy in his ministry. But the Church remembers him primarily for the one great work that he wrote — a majestic study entitled Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

This work was addressed to a group of English protestants who were nicknamed Puritans because they sought to purify the Church of England according to their own narrow reading of the Bible. Against this movement Hooker argued for a more liberal outlook, which coordinated the testimony of Scripture, the course of Christian history, and the values of human reason, in order to defend the English Church as a communion for all the people, not just a small group of “saints.” The experience of our tradition has confirmed his teaching, and today we honour his work as a true cornerstone of Anglican history.

When I first started looking at the Teachers of the Faith, I had in mind some kind of scholarly professor holding lectures about Anglican theology.  I was wonderfully surprised when I read about them to find out that this doesn’t describe them at all (well maybe some of the older ones like St. Thomas Aquinas).  What I found is that there are three key terms to describe a Teacher of the Faith.

1: The three-legged stool of Anglican theology.

How many of you have heard of this?  How about scripture, tradition and reason?  Anglican theology is supposedly based on a balance of these three.  Just like a three-legged stool with one leg too short or too long, it won’t stand properly unless all are considered equally.

2: The via media or the middle way.

The Anglican Church is neither protestant nor Roman Catholic.  We are somewhere in the middle.  Or more correctly, we are many places in the middle from almost Roman Catholic to almost protestant.  Just as we are many places between conservative and liberal.  But if we get too far from the middle, we stop being Anglican and become something else.

3: Renewal.

This is the one that really surprised me.  I knew about the three-legged stool and I knew about the via media, but I didn’t expect to find renewal.  Both of our Anglican Teachers of the Faith, and many of the others, worked very hard to find new ways of expressing their faith through worship and in their lives which did not stray from that middle path.  They carefully studied the scripture, their tradition, and the culture or their time and brought new expression to the church which set it on the path to the tradition that we currently enjoy.

So if we were to dedicate our parish to the Teachers of the Faith, it would commit us to studying our tradition, the scripture and our local culture.  We would be called to find new expressions of worship and faith that would help us bridge the gap between our current traditions and the spiritual and worship needs of our communities.  It would set us on a path of study and renewal.

I continue to hope that this decision will not be an easy one.  It should require prayer and discussion and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  So I pray:

Holy and Gracious God, be with us as we do our best to discern where you are calling us as a new parish.  Give us your support and your guidance that we may know our part in your purpose here in our communities and how you wish us to show our love for you in our lives.  This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

What's In A Name - part 1

Ramblings from the Rector

  When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.  (Acts 2:1-4 NRSV)

What’s in a name?  Just over twenty years ago many of the churches in this diocese were asking this question.  At the bishop’s direction, the diocese was adjusting parish boundaries.  Both of our parishes, Holy Faith and Touchwood Trail, were formed around this time.  Both parishes held meetings, prayed, and deliberated, and finally chose a name to carry them into the future.

Some of the churches that formed these parishes are now gone, yet their legacy and memory are carried on.  I am going to list them now and I ask that you offer a prayer for each.  With each church closed, we feel a new loss, a new pain, and we reach out with compassion to those for whom the loss is personal.

Christ Church – Abernethy

St. Mary (the Virgin) – Cupar

St. George – Ituna

Holy Trinity – Kelleher

St. Michael and All Angels – Lipton

All of these churches are gone, but they are still part of us.  We still remember them.  We still carry on their traditions.  We still minister to those who called them “my church.”

Over the past two months we have been talking about another change of parish boundaries.  We have been celebrating the coming together of two parishes to share ministries and become a new community in Christian unity.

We have been looking at possibilities for the name of the new parish.  But even more importantly, we have been looking for our calling as a new parish.  We have been asking the Holy Spirit to come among us and inspire us.  We have been praying.  And we have been listening.  We were looking for an ideal of Christian ministry that would bring us into a new future together.  And on the Day of Pentecost we came together with the Holy Spirit and voted.

This is the ideal you chose:

Finding new expressions of worship and faith that would help us bridge the gap between our current traditions and the spiritual and worship needs of our communities. Setting our parish on a path of study and renewal.

Not only was this the clear choice of our adult members, our seventy-five percent of our younger members chose the same ideal of Christian ministry.

Our choices of parish name came from this ideal.  You chose the name “The Teachers of the Faith.”

I know that this was not everyone’s choice.  No matter how we chose or what we chose, it would not be everyone’s choice.  I ask that in this time of chance we all respect this.  Whenever there is change there is both the pain of loss and the uncertainty of a new beginning.  And so I once again ask you to pray:

Gracious God, please help us all to believe in UFO’s.  Let us find unity even when we are not in agreement.  Help us to forgive the hurts that we have received and to reach out in compassion to those who are suffering.  Guide us as we move forward together so that we may discover how we can engage in outreach which aids your mission in our communities.