Sermon: December 11, 2011

Readings: Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11 / 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24 / John 1: 6-8,19-28

Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down! Oh that you would make yourself known to us, so that we could see you and hear you. But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

I have a fear that I am going to become the apocalyptic preacher. There is a part of me that is confused by and with the texts this last month. I don’t remember sitting in pews hearing these readings! What is going on?

These readings, however, put me in mind of a short story. I thought I had distinct memories of climbing into my mother’s lap when I was sad, confused, a little hurt, or just down and out. They are fleeting things, those memories, and I don’t know how true they are, but the feeling that my Mum gives in those moments has stuck with me. She’s the only one who knows how to rub my back in just the right way. The weight of her hand on the small of my back is sheer joy, stillness, and comfort. As an adult I still like to rest my head on her shoulder from behind her – because I’m now taller than her – and she is still that source of great comfort to me. I do have a particular clear memory of how much her comfort means to me: University was a tough time for me. I moved away from family and friends and attempted to start up an adult life away from everything I knew. It was lonely and hard. I can remember calling Mum, in tears and very upset because I was tired and didn’t want to do it anymore. I told her that I wanted to be that little 5-year old again, so I could crawl into her lap and have her make it all better. To be comforted. There was an incredible desire for her to swoop in and make everything fall into place.

Life gets hard, and some may say that it gets harder as you get older. The reality of coming into our own is not all that great. There is so much uncertainty. I think the wise of the world know that true wisdom comes when you stop trying to maintain control over all that uncertainty. There is an allure to control, to knowing and mastering the future. We want to know what our lives will be and exactly what we need to do in order to be happy, rich, influential, and powerful. All of those things. We extend this to our faith lives as well. We want to know exactly how God will come again into the world. What is it that we need to do exactly to be good, faithful, forgiven, justified. Why can’t God just come down here and clean it all up? We want that “mighty God” again.

This is the thing about the theme of waiting in Advent: When we wait for the coming of God, we acknowledge that there is a palpable lack of a presence. We see a lack of God in the chaos and confusion around us. We feel that absence, and it is easy to feel thus abandoned. Where is God in the midst of all of the war and fighting, hatred, selfishness, injustice, and all of that? Where is God when the innocent are dying for a cause they know nothing about? When the world feels overwhelmed and heavy by all of the negativity, it looks to God for comfort and healing. The world seeks to find a God who seems so tangibly absent. As a humanity that seeks to place control within a seemingly chaotic situation, we aim to place God’s decisive action in such a way that we can point at a place or person, and say: There. There is God. We go so far as to set God’s decisive action neatly into a manger scene and try to make it nice. Almost like neatly wrapping it up with a pretty glittery bow. One you can hand over to the world’s weary, and say: Here. Here is God. Christ coming into the midst of humanity, however, is that Mighty God that we are looking for. It is an incredibly awesome thing. Christ became human, so that we would find light in the midst of all the world’s darkness.

How do we expect God to be? Where is God going to show up now and in the future? Perhaps Advent is about being aware of the places where we are convinced we’ve got God and questioning if that’s entirely true. Christ cautions us: Stay awake. Don’t get lulled into false expressions of God or of the future, because we might get caught up in preparing for the wrong event, or anticipating something that is unrealistic and incapable of happening.

The day I called my Mum was an especially low one for me. I was struggling with low grades, few friends, and little income. I was feeling an increasing pressure to perform and excel. My mother imparted great wisdom to me that day. She very calmly asked me what it was exactly that I wanted from her. What did I expect her to be? The truth of my desire was that I could never be a little girl anymore. I could never crawl into her lap again without crushing her entirely. And she couldn’t take over and make everything perfect. But she was very proud of a daughter who left everything she knew and was comfortable with to become an adult, to learn new things, see new options, and try something frightening. She told me that even though the days I was longing for were good and truly gone, she was still there, with me, going through everything that I was going through as only a mother could, and I could rely on that for encouragement and comfort. I really wasn’t alone, and she became a light of Christ in the midst of my pain.

Light is a very important thing in the Markan text. There is an interesting theme to it. Mark may be the briefest gospel text on Christ’s life and teaching, but the structure to what is there gives us insight into a deep and meaningful theology that the writer was trying to impart. Today’s Gospel reading comes from a three part section once Jesus and the disciples have made it to Jerusalem. This section is about Christ changing the perspective of the church being Jerusalem into a perspective that looks to Christ as the centre of the church. Everything that Jesus has spoken about that everyone has taken to mean a NEW Jerusalem is redirected at himself. It makes the destruction of Jerusalem seem more real, more destructive, and full of more meaning when it is turned toward a man.

My favourite text about the human character of Christ is about Jesus cursing the fig tree outside of Jerusalem. It happens right before he tosses the market at the Temple. That curse withers that poor little tree as an example of God’s power. And in today’s gospel text Jesus turns it around. That little fig tree will become tender again – there will be signs of Christ’s return, and no one will know the exact time and date, but we can have faith that no matter how negative the world gets, Heaven and earth will not pass away. Christ’s words are there to light the way.

This theme delves deeper still. Mark’s gospel text is set up like a full day with a twist. It is the day of Christ’s death and resurrection. There is evening, midnight, the cock crow, and dawn. It is not just the crucifixion and passion tale that has this theme. All of Christ’s life is this theme over and over. And to Mark, the coming of Christ is going to look a lot like it did before. We can take strength and courage from this. We are not really alone...God is still all around us. This Advent: Stand in the presence of God. The one who came and will come again. Wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart.

Sermon: November 27, 2011

Readings: Isaiah 64:1-9 / 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 / Mark 13: 24-37

Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down! Oh that you would make yourself known to us, so that we could see you and hear you. But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

I have a fear that I am going to become the apocalyptic preacher. There is a part of me that is confused by and with the texts this last month. I don’t remember sitting in pews hearing these readings! What is going on?

These readings, however, put me in mind of a short story. I thought I had distinct memories of climbing into my mother’s lap when I was sad, confused, a little hurt, or just down and out. They are fleeting things, those memories, and I don’t know how true they are, but the feeling that my Mum gives in those moments has stuck with me. She’s the only one who knows how to rub my back in just the right way. The weight of her hand on the small of my back is sheer joy, stillness, and comfort. As an adult I still like to rest my head on her shoulder from behind her – because I’m now taller than her – and she is still that source of great comfort to me. I do have a particular clear memory of how much her comfort means to me: University was a tough time for me. I moved away from family and friends and attempted to start up an adult life away from everything I knew. It was lonely and hard. I can remember calling Mum, in tears and very upset because I was tired and didn’t want to do it anymore. I told her that I wanted to be that little 5-year old again, so I could crawl into her lap and have her make it all better. To be comforted. There was an incredible desire for her to swoop in and make everything fall into place.

Life gets hard, and some may say that it gets harder as you get older. The reality of coming into our own is not all that great. There is so much uncertainty. I think the wise of the world know that true wisdom comes when you stop trying to maintain control over all that uncertainty. There is an allure to control, to knowing and mastering the future. We want to know what our lives will be and exactly what we need to do in order to be happy, rich, influential, and powerful. All of those things. We extend this to our faith lives as well. We want to know exactly how God will come again into the world. What is it that we need to do exactly to be good, faithful, forgiven, justified. Why can’t God just come down here and clean it all up? We want that “mighty God” again.

This is the thing about the theme of waiting in Advent: When we wait for the coming of God, we acknowledge that there is a palpable lack of a presence. We see a lack of God in the chaos and confusion around us. We feel that absence, and it is easy to feel thus abandoned. Where is God in the midst of all of the war and fighting, hatred, selfishness, injustice, and all of that? Where is God when the innocent are dying for a cause they know nothing about? When the world feels overwhelmed and heavy by all of the negativity, it looks to God for comfort and healing. The world seeks to find a God who seems so tangibly absent. As a humanity that seeks to place control within a seemingly chaotic situation, we aim to place God’s decisive action in such a way that we can point at a place or person, and say: There. There is God. We go so far as to set God’s decisive action neatly into a manger scene and try to make it nice. Almost like neatly wrapping it up with a pretty glittery bow. One you can hand over to the world’s weary, and say: Here. Here is God. Christ coming into the midst of humanity, however, is that Mighty God that we are looking for. It is an incredibly awesome thing. Christ became human, so that we would find light in the midst of all the world’s darkness.

How do we expect God to be? Where is God going to show up now and in the future? Perhaps Advent is about being aware of the places where we are convinced we’ve got God and questioning if that’s entirely true. Christ cautions us: Stay awake. Don’t get lulled into false expressions of God or of the future, because we might get caught up in preparing for the wrong event, or anticipating something that is unrealistic and incapable of happening.

The day I called my Mum was an especially low one for me. I was struggling with low grades, few friends, and little income. I was feeling an increasing pressure to perform and excel. My mother imparted great wisdom to me that day. She very calmly asked me what it was exactly that I wanted from her. What did I expect her to be? The truth of my desire was that I could never be a little girl anymore. I could never crawl into her lap again without crushing her entirely. And she couldn’t take over and make everything perfect. But she was very proud of a daughter who left everything she knew and was comfortable with to become an adult, to learn new things, see new options, and try something frightening. She told me that even though the days I was longing for were good and truly gone, she was still there, with me, going through everything that I was going through as only a mother could, and I could rely on that for encouragement and comfort. I really wasn’t alone, and she became a light of Christ in the midst of my pain.

Light is a very important thing in the Markan text. There is an interesting theme to it. Mark may be the briefest gospel text on Christ’s life and teaching, but the structure to what is there gives us insight into a deep and meaningful theology that the writer was trying to impart. Today’s Gospel reading comes from a three part section once Jesus and the disciples have made it to Jerusalem. This section is about Christ changing the perspective of the church being Jerusalem into a perspective that looks to Christ as the centre of the church. Everything that Jesus has spoken about that everyone has taken to mean a NEW Jerusalem is redirected at himself. It makes the destruction of Jerusalem seem more real, more destructive, and full of more meaning when it is turned toward a man.

My favourite text about the human character of Christ is about Jesus cursing the fig tree outside of Jerusalem. It happens right before he tosses the market at the Temple. That curse withers that poor little tree as an example of God’s power. And in today’s gospel text Jesus turns it around. That little fig tree will become tender again – there will be signs of Christ’s return, and no one will know the exact time and date, but we can have faith that no matter how negative the world gets, Heaven and earth will not pass away. Christ’s words are there to light the way.

This theme delves deeper still. Mark’s gospel text is set up like a full day with a twist. It is the day of Christ’s death and resurrection. There is evening, midnight, the cock crow, and dawn. It is not just the crucifixion and passion tale that has this theme. All of Christ’s life is this theme over and over. And to Mark, the coming of Christ is going to look a lot like it did before. We can take strength and courage from this. We are not really alone...God is still all around us. This Advent: Stand in the presence of God. The one who came and will come again. Wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart.

Sermon: September 25, 2011

Based on the readings from Exodus 17:1-7 and Matthew 21:23-32

I’m standing fifteen feet in the air, on the edge of a concrete wall about eighteen inches wide. Below me is a river surrounded by tall grass and trees and populated with birds I have never seen before. Huge storks. They’re almost as tall as I am. Someone next to me has pointed and asked, “Is that an alligator?” For miles and miles around there is nothing but dry, dusty earth. Here in this place, this river is teaming with life. Everything around it is thriving. Here, water is the source of life.

Two years ago, I travelled to Ethiopia with a group of Seminarians for a cross-cultural experience. I have heard about drought, and I have seen hot dry summers on the prairies, but nothing really prepares you for the heat of the sun that burns the skin in less than five minutes; for thirst so strong that you can easily drink four litres of water in a day; for a land so desolate that nothing grows for miles around you. We travelled to a region in the northeast part of Ethiopia called the Afar region because CLWR wanted us to see what work was being done in this place, with their help and with the guidance of a non-profit Ethiopian organization.

Fifteen feet in the air we are walking on a weir that diverts a tiny amount of water from this life-giving river. The water taken is such a tiny amount that even in the driest time of the year, the river continues to sustain its own environment. The diverted water then travels five kilometres through channels, all dug and created by hand, pushed by gravity and stepped layers, flowing to a camp and a field. We are taken along those five kilometres to show how the water moves. And we came to the end at the field and camp. This water is life-giving. The land around us, the desert, barren of anything great or spectacular, is laying in wait. It is incredibly fertile land, we are told, and you simply need to add water and it is amazing how fast everything grows. There is so much potential here.

The people who live in this desert region are nomadic goat and cattle herders. They are also vegetarians, they don’t eat their cattle. They are nomadic because they might have to travel for a full day for their animals to find enough to eat. They were open to any solution that would help them and keep their animals, or them, from starving or dying of hunger and thirst. By the work of their own hands, with the guidance of concerned neighbours, they have learned to grow rich, lush, and vibrant crops that will feed their herds and feed themselves. Water was the key.

The absolute lack of anything in the desert was trying for the Israelites too. When there’s nothing to look at, our minds can wander, complaints surface, and hardship seems even more difficult to surmount. The journey through the wilderness of Sin was really more like a moonwalk without the fun of discovery and limited gravity. There wasn’t much excitement in this journey. While in the Afar desert, all the seminarians were filled with curiosity and wonder. Everything was new and exciting to us. The ground beneath our feet was filled with fascination the second we drove onto the desert road. The people around us who were from the region thought we were all pretty silly, shuffling in the sand, making moon tracks, picking up handfuls and letting it pour out of our hands. The word "Sin" (sh-EEn) in Hebrew means 'moon'. The wilderness of Sin is most likely so-named because the only significant landmark of this region was the moon.

The Israelites were tired and thirsty. They had been travelling for weeks, moving toward a goal and a promise that only God really knew about. It didn’t take long for the grumbling to start. Even though we were filled with wonder and fun, it certainly didn’t take long for us to begin to grumble and complain either. We were in the Afar to see not one, but six of these river diversion projects. We would arrive late at night at a camp, get up early in the morning to look at a site in the cooler weather, then drive almost all day to the next camp through the heat of the day. A dry place like the Afar is fun for a short while. The dust in Ethiopia is unique. It gets into everything. Your hair, your skin pores, your lungs, your nostrils, your ears. It’ll turn a white shirt red, nigh permanently. We would arrive tired and hungry at a destination. It wasn’t the final destination, and we were prone to grumbling. I have a lot of sympathy for the Israelites. At least I knew that I had a place back in Saskatoon. They were unsure of where they were headed.

God may have been providing manna and quail daily for their hunger needs, but water became the issue of the day. Human beings are made up of mostly water, and it needs replenishing when we are taxing our bodies, when we are hot, when we are wandering around in a desert. Water is a source of life. The grumbling can quickly turn to blame. Moses became the target as the authority of the group, the so-called leader. Yet, Moses when talking to God, is just as quick to overstate the situation to God, who is the ultimate authority in this tale. The Israelites are going to stone me, they’re going to kill me. Do something to show them who’s in charge.

It’s interesting how water and authority are themes in both the Old Testament and the Gospel reading. In all the synoptic gospels, Jesus is often asked by whose authority he does something. When Jesus is questioned about authority in today’s lesson, he responds with a question of his own. The questions to Jesus aren’t usually about Jesus or learning more about this man. They are usually about the people asking the question. So, Jesus responds with a question of his own: about the baptism of John. Where does the authority for that act come from? From the divine or the human? Who do we blame for the problems we’re facing right now as we wander about it our own wilderness situations?

Sometimes the question is more important than the answer. Sometimes the question gives us a better understanding than the answer. It doesn’t always matter what one says, it matters what one does. The people asking Jesus about his authority are concerned about their own places of power. They are the community leaders and teachers. They have the training and the call. John and Jesus are threats because the people follow them, the people give them the authority to lead, but who made them the leaders? Was it Divine or human? The Pharisees and elders aren’t sure how to answer the question because it isn’t clear. They get tangled in their own thoughts. Their grumbling and accusations surface because the time they are living in is changing – they are looking for a solution to help them survive.

Jesus says that John came to everyone in the way of righteousness. The ‘outcasts’ of the Jewish community found purpose and help in walking the way of John and Jesus. It might not be the only way, Jesus does say that they will go into the kingdom ahead of the other “leaders,” but a new action has generated new thoughts. The authority that John has is both divine and human in origin. Oh. That’s an interesting thought. Likewise, the authority that Moses has is both divine and human. It’s not about power, it’s about relationship. It’s not always about what someone is saying, but it does matter what one is doing.

Discovering how quickly sustainable environments could grow up from just a little water was an incredible blessing on that Ethiopia journey. To know that these giant oases that greet us as we travel from newer developments to older ones was incredible. To know that a simple thought about water generated these huge gardens and fields and horticultural training was incredible. To see all of the actions, people working as a community, sustaining each other and learning from each other to go in the way of righteousness. This wilderness is now turning into an Eden and Promised Land, flowing with growth and abundance. To see the potential turn into reality was awesome and inspiring. We desperately wanted to get involved, and so the question was asked: How can we help?

The reply: Tell our story. Tell it because it is now also your story. You now have the authority to speak, so go. You have seen, you now know, only you can tell your own people what is happening here. We have seen the actions and I am now sharing with you a story about the wilderness bearing forth promise and potential. Was it divine or human, or maybe it was just both.

I would like to end this tale as Jesus began his parable: What do you think?

Failing on a few counts

" I am the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness,

Make straight the way of the Lord."

John the Baptiser quoting Isaiah

I have been poked, prodded, and questioned multiple times on the theme of where my blog posts have been. And, for that I apologize. As a way to make it up, I will be posting the sermons that I have preached so far on internship so that you can also give me some feedback (if you'd like). I am feeling a bit of a failure lately when it comes to reevaluating my goals for internship. I haven't dedicated myself to them fully (mainly because some of them fall outside of the "what I can do at the office" realm of behaviour).

Internship is going well, despite the lack of personal goal control. I will be posting pictures of Grace and my office space soon. I've taken some lovely Christmas ones. I am busy.

I think it is fairly common knowledge that the Advent and Christmas season is a busy one for the church at large. I know that I knew it. Knowing, however, hasn't really prepared me for the reality. I have always been an active participant in volunteerism at the Church this time of year. And for the first time, I am actively participating on the "other side" - the staff and clergy side. All of the thinking, brainstorming, planning, discussions, rehearsals, potlucks and special dinners, etc.! There are so many ways to fill one's time with work. My challenge has been to make time for a meditation and reflection throughout Advent that centres me and brings me to the root of faith within myself. I am happy that I have taken the time to do that. I would encourage everyone to do something similar in future years. It's a nice break from all the hurriedness and heightened emotions that seem to come on just as strongly at this time of year.

The New year is not showing any signs of slowing. There is an amazing amount of activity here at Grace. We're already rehearsing for dinner theatre, and shortly the Dinner & a Study will begin as well. I have a large number of people signed up for my Bible Study. Looking forward to it! Soon it will be Easter! I will try my best to post well before that -- maybe even multiple times.

Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year!