The Church of St. Aidan in the Beach

Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012

 Give, Pray, Fast

 Lent has always been observed by Christians as a penitential time of self-denial and self-discipline. I expect many of you have given things up for Lent, or maybe taken things on. Less wine, more vegetables – that sort of thing.

Jesus’s words from the gospel tonight indicates that he takes it for granted that his followers will give alms, fast and pray, as any good Jew in his day would. He doesn’t say, “If you give alms….” But “when you give…” And he teaches that it’s not the outer practices that matter, so much as the inner attitude. In fact the outer practices can be spiritually harmful to us, if they make us feel self-righteous and proud of our goodness. They lead inevitably to hypocrisy.

Instead, Jesus teaches that giving, praying and fasting must come from the heart’s deep desire to be one with God and God’s way. In this he is just like the prophet Isaiah who said that God wants justice, generosity and compassion, rather than sacrifices and penitential practices.

Giving is about what we do with our lives and energy; praying is about what goes on in our hearts; fasting is about how we use our bodies, what we consume.

When we give, may it be more than writing a cheque or dropping money into a box. Let it be a giving that comes from the heart; a giving of part of yourself. And that can be costly. Giving time, energy, care, compassion. There are a million ways to give from the heart.

When we pray, may we do more than say the words on the page in church. Jesus said, “Go into your inner chamber and pray in private, in secret, with God.” Make a practice of taking quiet solitary time to be alone with God, and to listen more than you talk. And bring before God those who are outside your immediate circle of family and friends. Find out about one or two of the desperate needs in the world today, educate yourself about them, then pray.

When we fast, may it be a way of being more conscious and careful about what we’re consuming, how it’s produced, its effects on the environment, on the workers involved in producing it.  Consider fasts of different kinds: fasting from your car, the internet, multi-tasking, busyness.

Tonight we examine ourselves as honestly as we can. We look at the ways we give or withhold, pray or harden our hearts, fast or indulge. And we repent, turn back, say sorry for the things that separate us from God and God’s way. As we receive the sign of ashes that remind us that we’re mortal, just here on earth for a very short time, we humble ourselves, empty ourselves before God, and start again.  May we put on Christ, and live so as to draw closer to God and God’s people with justice, generosity and compassion. Amen.

Last Sunday of Epiphany – The Transfiguration February 19, 2012

Light for the Journey

About 30 years ago, in a church I served as a deaconess in England, we had a parish study group based on a series of audio tapes that dramatized some of the conversations between Jesus and the disciples. I’ve forgotten most of them, but the one that still stands out for me was the dramatization of the Transfiguration – that strange mountaintop experience that Peter, James and John had with Jesus.

The drama begins with Jesus saying to them, his three closest male disciples, “Come on. We’re going to hike up that mountain.” And then you can hear the three grumbling and muttering to each other under their breath, as they try to follow and keep up. They’re tired, and confused. They’ve seen some extraordinary things – healings, miracles, Jesus facing down his opponents, and teaching like no one they’d ever heard before – but things have changed recently. Jesus has begun to talk about his death, and about his followers having to be ready to give up their lives. As they climb, Peter, James and John are asking each other what’s going on. They don’t understand anymore. They don’t like the way Jesus is talking.

On the tape you can hear the wind whistling, as the disciples climb higher up the mountain. You can hear them panting, talking less, struggling more. And then they reach the top, and there’s this stunned silence because of what they’re seeing – Jesus, surrounded by dazzling light, his face shining, talking with Moses and Elijah. It’s overwhelming, terrifying. They cry out in fear, and Peter’s babbling about making three tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

And then comes the voice – “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!”

And it’s over.

Listening to that very simple tape – no visuals, no computer-enhanced special effects, just an imaginative recreation of the scene from the disciples’ point of view – I realized how ordinary they were, and how extraordinary their experience with Jesus was. They were so close to Jesus, but they were constantly trying to keep up, trying to understand, trying to make sense of it all.

We know the whole story. We can say, “Ah yes, the transfiguration – the prefiguring of Christ’s glory, shown to the disciples to reveal to them the true divine nature of Jesus.” But put yourself in their shoes for a moment, and you can begin to feel how completely out of their depth they were. It was only much later that they were able to speak of it and make sense of it.

This is a story that has come to us layered in the rich symbolism of the scriptures. We know that Moses represents the law, and Elijah the prophets – the two great strands of the Hebrew religion. We know that light represents God’s presence, as does cloud covering a mountaintop. We know that the voice that they heard was the same as the voice that spoke at Jesus’ baptism, saying, “You are my Son, my Beloved.” The whole story has been skillfully woven together for us, and we have our Bible commentaries and studies to help us. But Peter, James and John were simply experiencing it raw, with all the confusion and terror and awe that entailed.

If we’re honest, isn’t that what our lives are like? Raw experiences, without a handy commentary telling us how to interpret them. We have our mountaintop moments, our epiphanies, and our moments of fear and confusion. We have experiences which are life-changing when we look back on them, but at the time were chaotic and seemed meaningless. A lot of the time we’re winging it, hoping for the best, managing as best we can, without a clear road map.

But we’re people of faith, and although that doesn’t give us all the answers it does give us two things: a belief that our lives aren’t random and meaningless, but are a journey; and a light for that journey.

St Paul, in today’s epistle, writes that God “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

“God has shone in our hearts” – that’s why we’re here; that’s what drew you to faith, no matter when or how it happened.

“To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” – this spark that was kindled in your heart is meant to draw you to the great blazing light that is God. Everything we experience in our lives, the good, the bad and the ugly, can draw us closer to that blazing light.

“In the face of Jesus Christ” – in Christ we see God revealed. In his healing, teaching, suffering, death and resurrection, we see the truth of who God is.

Peter, James and John arrived at the top of the mountain out of breath, tired and confused, and they witnessed something that overwhelmed and terrified them. But later they understood it for what it was – a glimpse of Jesus’ glorious reality as the Beloved of God. And that experience became part of their journey of faith. They trusted it and valued it enough to tell it to us.

We live our lives without commentaries and study notes. We don’t have theologians writing it all down and explaining what it means. But we are children of the light. God has shone in our hearts. Our lives are not random, but are part of a journey towards the great blazing light.

As Lent begins this week, give yourself time to ponder and pray. No matter where you are in your journey – just beginning to follow Jesus, or slogging halfway up the mountain, or dazed and confused, or standing in awe at the top – remember that God has shone in your heart. You too are God’s Beloved.  Follow Jesus, and listen to him.  Amen.

Epiphany 6 – February 12, 2012 Healing, Mystery and Prayer

 What does it mean to be healed? Why are some people healed, while others succumb to their illnesses? What role does faith play in healing? The Hebrew scriptures and the gospel reading today raise these questions, and healing has been much on my mind lately.

I think we come to this with various assumptions. Naaman, in the first reading, an army commander and “a mighty warrior”, certainly had assumptions, and they nearly ruined his chances of being healed. He had a skin disease, and went to Elisha who had a reputation as a healer. But he assumed that Elisha the great prophet of Israel would do certain things, perform certain rituals. When Elisha didn’t even come out to see him in person, but just sent a message telling him to wash in the muddy waters of the Jordan river, Naaman was not impressed. He was disillusioned and angry. He stomped off in a huff, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy.” He was a proud man: he wanted special treatment and a spectacular miracle. And he didn’t fancy washing in a river he considered inferior to those in his own country.

It was Naaman’s servants, perhaps because they were more used to obeying instructions, who persuaded him to do what Elisha had said, and then lo and behold he was healed.

Naaman’s pride almost cost him his healing. But he was desperate. His disease had cast him low enough to listen to his servants and carry out the instructions of a prophet in a foreign land.

Illness and pain dethrone us. They cast us down. Our language makes that clear: a patient is literally one who is passive. We’re no longer masters of our own destiny when we’re sick. We become dependent, we need others, we can’t manage alone. Worse yet, sickness is a doorway into not knowing: there’s so much we don’t understand and can’t know. Why does one person develop cancer, not another? Why does one respond to treatment, and another doesn’t?

It’s tempting to run to easy answers to make ourselves feel better, feel more in control. That person got sick because they smoked, or didn’t exercise, or whatever. Or that person died because they didn’t have enough faith, didn’t use positive thinking, or the right sort of visualizations, or vitamins, or whatever. Or, the ultimate answer, it was God’s will. We embrace a sort of “Que sera sera” fatalism, and close the door to the mystery, because we’re just so uneasy with not knowing, not understanding. We hate the powerlessness of it, the darkness within it.

But wait a minute. Doesn’t God always want wholeness for us? The leper said to Jesus, “If you choose, if you want to, you can heal/cleanse me.” And Jesus said, “I do want to! Be cleansed/healed.” Jesus never refused to heal someone who asked. God always wants us to be healed. But, but… that isn’t the same as being cured, getting physically better. Sometimes death is part of the healing. Sometimes sickness can be an invitation to a deeper letting go of the illusion that we’re in control of our lives.

Let me give you a small example. Last March I was skiing in Whistler when I fell, on my second run. It wasn’t a bad fall, but I landed badly on my right shoulder, and it snapped the collarbone. I had to be taken down the mountain on a toboggan sledge, loaded up with painkillers and sent back to Victoria for surgery and a metal plate to be screwed onto the bone to put it back together. I was off work for a month, and in worse pain than I’d ever experienced before. And I felt like a total, useless idiot! A skiing accident, of all things. How gratuitous. It was utterly humbling. I couldn’t dress myself, sit up or lie down in bed by myself, wash myself. I had to let other people do almost everything for me. I hated it! I had to let go – stop being busy and productive and independent and capable. And I kept thinking, why me? Why did it have to happen?

It was a difficult emotional and spiritual journey for me. And that was just a broken bone! How much more so when we or someone we love falls gravely ill and doesn’t recover?

In the Christian tradition, week by week we pray for those who are sick and suffering. We name them aloud before God and with each other. And I picture that prayer as being like the safety net spread out underneath the tightrope and trapezes in a circus: if an acrobat falls, the net is there to hold them up. The prayer of the community holds up those who are suffering – it holds them up before God, and wraps them round, and makes it possible for them to let go into the mystery of God’s healing power.

And yes, it’s a mystery. We can’t make it all come out right. We can’t guarantee a miracle. But our prayer is never wasted. I believe that prayer works in ways we can’t begin to fathom or measure. It may bring the energy to bounce back and live another day; it may bring the sense of being loved; or it might bring peace, and the surrender to a quiet death. These are all different aspects of healing. And these are all signs of God’s presence with us.

Someone said that to walk with God is to walk into the unknown. Mystery is part of the deal. We can only see through the glass dimly; only understand a tiny part of the whole picture. But faith is what we have to hold onto in the darkness – the faith that God is with us, no matter what; the faith that prayer makes a difference, whether we can see it or not; the faith that God always wants us to be healed, to journey to wholeness.

So let us stretch wide and strong the net of our prayer to uphold others. Let us become more comfortable with saying, “I don’t know,” about some of the deep questions in life. And let us trust God’s love enough to let go and fall into the mystery of grace.             Amen.

Epiphany 4 – January 29, 2012

 Discerning God’s Word and Jesus’ Way

 When you’re a priest, people often seem to feel compelled to tell you why they don’t go to church. And the number one reason I’ve heard over the years is the bad behaviour of Christians through the ages – the wars they’ve started, the atrocities they’ve committed, the hypocrisy, the judgmentalism…. The list is a long one. Maybe it’s the same for other professions: lawyers probably get sick of hearing jokes about sharks, and doctors must get tired of the endless anecdotes about when the health care system has failed.

But the matter of Christians living unchristian lives is a serious one, and today’s readings all have something to say about this.

In the passage from Deuteronomy Moses is talking about the terrible danger of claiming to speak God’s words when in fact the message is not from God: “Any prophet who presumes to speak in [God’s] name a word that [God] has not commanded the prophet to speak shall die.” It’s a dire warning, because the danger is so great. And far too often religious leaders of all sorts, Christians included, have committed this offence – speaking in God’s name when the message is their own.

It happened at the times of the crusades, and the witch-hunts, and the Reformation burnings of so-called heretics on both sides. Horrendous cruelty in the name of God. We see it today in the violent fundamentalism in Islam, Judaism and Christianity in many different countries, that promotes racism and war. In the name of God people are taught to hate and kill each other. And I think it must make God weep.

It can happen in more subtle ways, too. In today’s epistle reading Paul is talking about how Christians should live once they know that they are no longer under the rules and taboos and traditions of their old lives. For Jews who became converted to Christianity, that meant knowing that they didn’t have to obey the Jewish food laws, or Sabbath restrictions, for example. They were living with a new ethical freedom. As Paul puts it in an earlier chapter, “All things are lawful for me.” But he goes on to warn that “not all things are beneficial.” And he says that we have to be careful that we don’t cause another to stumble because of our new found spiritual freedom.

I think in our day a case in point is the way the worldwide Anglican Communion is trying to grapple with sexual ethics. Some parts of the church hold to the traditional teachings on marriage, for instance, while others have developed more progressive teachings. It has the potential to break the Anglican Communion apart very nastily. It has had Christians vilifying each other in the name of God. But enormous efforts are being made, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, to handle this dispute with care and respect, so that each can hear the other’s perspectives and seek a deeper mutual understanding. We are learning how to agree to differ lovingly, rather than denouncing each other with hatred.

This is all about discernment, at root: discerning how to know what God’s will is, and God’s way, in the midst of life’s complexities. We do that by learning to see life through the lens of God’s values: love, understanding, compassion, forgiveness. And the best lens of all is Jesus – God’s word in human flesh and blood. As we look at Jesus, and how he lived and taught and treated people, we learn how to be better, more faithful followers.

In today’s gospel reading people are beginning to ask themselves who this Jesus is, because they’ve noticed that he teaches with authority, he speaks from his own deep wisdom and understanding, unlike the scribes – the religious experts – who taught strictly from the traditions handed down to them. And paradoxically, it’s the man with the “unclean spirit” (mentally ill, perhaps, or suffering from epilepsy) who identifies Jesus: “You are the Holy One of God.” It’s spoken in fear, but Jesus heals the man and the readers of Mark’s gospel know that the truth has come out – Jesus is God’s Holy One.

And Jesus is the one who shows us what God’s words and God’s will are. For the disciples that learning is a life-changing relationship. He doesn’t teach them lists of new commandments – just one: Love one another. He doesn’t sit them down for long theology lectures with an exam at the end – he simply asks them to follow him, and they watch what he does. He doesn’t set himself apart as someone impossible to emulate, but tells them to be like him – to be the light of the world, as he is.

So our calling is very simple, at the same time as demanding everything of us: we’re to be like Jesus. What would Jesus do? In our hearts we usually know the answer. It’s because we don’t want to do it that we get into destructive conflicts and hurt one another, sometimes justifying ourselves by doing it in God’s name.

In this Epiphany season we’re asking all the time, how do we see God revealed now? Where does God show up in our lives? In our Epiphany Moments in these services you’ve heard some of your fellow parishioners answer that question, and speak about God touching and changing lives. Part of our calling as Christians is to be awake to these things, to pay attention to our lives and the world around, to spot where God is busily, often quietly, sometimes dramatically at work.

But above all, we need to be seeing our lives through the lens of Jesus, God-with-us, God-here-among-us. When we’re faced with a conflict, a decision, a hurt, we need to contemplate it through Jesus, in his light. What would Jesus do?

My father, a lifelong sceptic, used to say that Christianity is too complicated with all its theologies of atonement and incarnation and eschatology and so on. He had all kinds of questions about why evil exists, how Jesus’ death changes things, why Christians can be so nasty. And I used to get tied up in knots trying to defend my faith to him. But if he were alive today, I’d want to say, “Dad, it’s really very simple: we’re meant to be like Jesus. Everything else follows from that.”   Amen.

January 22, 2012 – Epiphany 3

The Time is Now!

 Jonah said, “Look out! It’s coming.”  Paul said, “Drop everything! It’s soon.” Jesus said, “Repent! It’s right here at hand.”

It’s coming. It’s soon. It’s now.

What were they talking about?

Jonah was warning the people of the city of Nineveh that God’s punishment was coming soon. It was a notoriously wicked city, so the story goes, and Jonah told the people that God was going to destroy it in forty days.

Paul was teaching that this temporal world was soon to pass away with the return of Christ, so everything people usually focused on and were busy with would be irrelevant.

Jesus, right at the start of his ministry, was announcing the good news – that the kingdom of God has come near, has in fact arrived, for those who believe.

A warning. A hope. A reality.

So which is it, for us?

Should we be warning people of the wrath of God? Is that what repentance is about? – saying sorry quickly, before you get punished?

Should we be holding out the promise or the hope that Christ is coming back any day now, so repentance is about getting ready for that?

(You may know the story of the Pope who was told by one of his staff that there was incontrovertible proof that Jesus was due to return to earth the next day. “What should we do?” he asked the Pope. “Look busy, look busy!” was the reply.)

A warning. A hope.

But Jesus says, “It’s here! It’s right beside you. It’s near at hand, all around.” In Luke’s gospel Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” or among you. That’s the good news. The time is fulfilled. And Christians believe that in Jesus heaven and earth are united. God and humanity are at one. Jesus himself is the good news – even before the cross, even before the resurrection. Jesus himself is the dawn of a new age, the light shining in darkness.

So we live with one foot in this messy, painful, broken world of sinners – knowing that we ourselves contribute to that mess and pain and brokenness through our sin, knowing that we stand in need of God’s deep forgiveness; and believing that we live with Jesus in the kingdom of heaven here and now – in the light and glory and wonder of God’s love.

There are greater glories to come. There’s a heaven we can’t even conceive of.

Yet eternal life in Christ is already a reality for us. (That’s why the priest says, in the prayer of absolution after the confession, “Almighty God have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in eternal life.”) In Christ we are already living in the kingdom of heaven, already living in eternal life. As Paul puts it, we are a new creation.

The trouble is, we lose sight of that. You might glimpse it and feel it and really know it at certain moments. For me that happens sometimes on a retreat, or when I’ve experienced a desperate need and prayed, and God has come close and changed things. Sometimes, like the first disciples, I’ve followed a calling and felt that I’ve stepped across some sort of threshold and touched the kingdom of heaven. But then normal life kicks in again: I go home from my retreat, or the sense of urgency fades, or the calling becomes disappointing and jaded. The kingdom of heaven came near, but I slipped away.

So Jesus says, “Repent – turn back again – and believe the good news!” Believe that the kingdom of heaven is near. Believe that Jesus brings our hope and our reality together in one new way of being. Then anything is possible. It’s a whole new life, like being born all over again.

When you know that this world with its material things and obsessions and occupations is passing away, your perspective changes. It’s like being hit with the realization that today might be your last day of life: it makes you see everything differently – what matters and what doesn’t. When I’ve had the privilege of being with someone as they’ve been dying, I’ve often seen how the fears and hurts and anxieties gradually fall away, and the person becomes more and more full of love, and less and less attached to this world – as though they’re becoming lighter, more full of light, as they approach the great Light. They’re given the grace to let go of the dross, the junk that gets between us and God, and see with a clarity and peace that amazes me.

That’s what it’s like to live in the good news of Christ: to let God take the junk away, set us free from the wounds that inflict us and the darkness that overshadows us, and bring us into the light where we can see more clearly, love more dearly, and follow more nearly.

David and I are trying to teach our dog Kita to come when we call, instead of running off further and further down the beach to play with other dogs, and possibly get into trouble. We can’t punish her into obedience – that doesn’t work. We want her to learn to recognize her name when we call it, and come because she chooses to, and she wants to be with us. It’s a challenge! And so it is with us and God. We’re called by name and invited to follow, invited into a relationship, but so often we’re like dogs running off down the beach and into trouble.

So repent! Turn around! Not for fear of divine punishment, but in order to be open to receive the immeasurable love of God. Repent, turn around, open your eyes, and believe the good news that God is in Christ, reconciling us, making heaven and earth one. And then follow – follow the One who is the good news, and invites us into relationship. The time is now!   Amen.