22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, Proper 29

Finding a Voice

Readings: Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Tim 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

No one who has suffered, who has been in pain, or who has watched a loved one die would deny the importance of a strong and resilient faith. What I have heard over the years of my ministry to those who are grieving, is how important their faith is to them at such a time. Simply being a Christian does not mean that life will be smooth sailing or free of problems. In fact the communities for which the passages of Scripture read today were written experienced terrible suffering. They were tempted to abandon hope, deny the faith and give up their vision of God’s way. But in each case their faith sustained them so that they were able to overcome their adversities. They learned that God may at times seem far away, but in reality God’s faithfulness persists. God is there on the journey every step of the way. They learned the need to persist, to continue to ask God to meet their needs, and to listen for God’s caring guidance on life’s journey.

The prophet Jeremiah continues to have great hope for the people of Israel, even though he has faced imprisonment and disaster. He believes God’s promise. He knows that God is not responsible for the terrible things that have happened, but he knows that it has meaning. That is his job as a prophet. The terrible things that they are experiencing are the result of choices that people have made. But they are not to lose heart. He knows that God is not abandoning the people of Israel. God continues to call them back into covenant and into new and intimate relationship.

And isn’t that something that we all need to remember throughout our lives? It may be the only thing that keeps us faithful when we become weary of praying, or feel as if God is far away and inaccessible. We all go through dry patches in our spiritual lives.

It certainly was an important learning for Timothy. We hear in the New Testament reading about a person encumbered with care for his community. His responsibilities have become a burden that often seems too much for him to bear. His preaching seems futile as people get “itching ears” and would rather follow teachers who will tell them what they want to hear rather than a faith fraught with difficulties and persecution. He is encouraged to hold fast to the truth and to continue to be guided by Scripture.

Our whole history as the people of God is about God’s faithfulness regardless of our disobedience and lack of faith. God will never be diverted from the path, a path that leads to justice, peace and grace. That is the gospel message!

What wonderful stories Jesus tells! His parables seem to turn the tables on all that is wrong in society. He tells a parable about two very different people. On the one hand, there is a judge, not a particularly good one, rather one who has power and influence. He embodies the establishment. And on the other hand, there is a woman, a widow, who embodies the marginal, the poor, the powerless. Because she is a widow, she is totally dependent for her livelihood on the men in the family. There are no jobs for a woman. There is no social assistance. Either she gets the help she needs from her husband’s relatives, or she begs on some street corner. She appears before the judge to ask his help in getting her rights. She is too poor to offer a bribe. So he ignores her. The Hebrew word for widow means “silent one, one unable to speak”. And yet she finds her voice. Something in her whether it be desperation or resiliance, keeps her going. She keeps demanding that justice be done. The judge makes excuses. He cannot be bothered with the widow. But she persists. Finally the judge is worn down and she wins her case.

The story of the widow is played out in our modern day world over and over again. Africa is a continent gripped by poverty, war, AIDS and diseases that in most of the world are totally preventable. They are not alone in their suffering. From every corner of the globe we hear the cries of women who suffer abuse simply because they are women.

Jesus tells the story to the disciples to remind them about their need to pray and to be persistent in the faith, but there is surely a much more important learning for us. This is a reminder that even when we feel powerless, we are called to make a stand alongside those who are truly powerless and disadvantaged. We are called to be the voice of the voiceless. Jesus will be right there standing in solidarity with us in every situation. Yet so often we do nothing because we think that what little we can do will not make a difference.

A woman was walking along a beach that was littered with dead and dying starfish. Periodically, she would stoop down, pick one up and toss it back into the ocean. A man was watching her and shouted, “There are thousands of starfish stranded on this beach. Your efforts won’t make a difference.” The strolling woman stooped and picked up one more starfish, tossed it back into the ocean and said, “It makes a difference to that one.”

She knew that she was powerless to reverse a dire situation, but she also knew that there were things she could change, no matter what anyone shouting at her thought. While we hear many stories of dire situations throughout our world, we hear too of amazing people who do what they can to bring positive change to the world. They are individuals who simply will not give up.

Who has not marvelled at the strength of Malala, the young Pakastani school girl, shot by the Taliban for her persistence in pursuing an education? That she recovered is a miracle. That she continues to speak out with such a strong voice is monumental. She has found her voice and it will not be silenced.

In 1998 I attended the Women’s Festival in Harare, Zimbabwe, celebrating the World Council of Churches Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women. I was there as a speaker, but I learned far more than I taught. Part of the experience was a woman to woman visit with a family in another part of Africa. I stayed with a family in one of the townships in South Africa. As part of the experience I visited two women who had founded a collective. They were widowed very young and found themselves in desperate circumstances. The one thing they knew how to do was bead work. They set up a small business in their village and began to make lovely jewellery. They found a buyer and soon began to find that they could not keep up with the demand for their product. They hired other women in the village, rented a derelict building and got down to work. The building was quite large. They diversified, and got some other people in the town to do tie dyed scarves and other lovely articles of clothing. They noted that there were still many people in the village without work. They began to do their own contracting to sell their products. They were able to hire more people. Eventually they began to bid for government contracts to do road work. What began as a way of providing for their own needs became the means of providing for a whole village. They are amazing women who found their voice.

Our First Nations people are beginning to find their voices. They need our support. They need us to learn their history so that we can understand the systemic nature of the abuse that caused their current circumstances. Our Canadian history is a sad one about broken treaties, about depriving people of their human rights, about causing disease and hardship, about taking away a rich cultural heritage. They continue to suffer. Homelessness, lack of affordable housing, health care issues, violence against women, child poverty – these things are a National disgrace. A First Nations woman up at Curve Lake said to me, “You know, it took seven generations to get us into this cyclical mess. It will take seven generations for us to find our way back.

But they are doing exactly that. This community took part in an appeal for clean water for Pikangikum a few years back. I read an article this week about their new school, finally completed ten years after the old school was destroyed in a fire. There are also talks about finally giving equal funding to First Nations schools who at the moment receive thirty percent less than those funded by the provinces. Our First Nations people are beginning to find their voices. Thankfully the Anglican Church is part of that change.

Many in our world are hoping for peace and justice. It must seem for them a long time in coming. There is Jeremiah’s voice, reminding us of that God of love whom we worship, calling out across the ages, “The days are surely coming! I will sow with the seed of humans and the seed of animals.” What a wonderfully hopeful word ‘sow’ is! It speaks of future hope and possibility. It speaks of nurture and growth. It speaks of change brought about by justice. It speaks of a world where God reigns. And there too is the widow, her nagging voice calling out for justice, for redressing the wrongs of the past. How can we fail to hear such a voice? Let us join in her call for justice. Let us persist in the faith, knowing that God is constantly showing us new and just ways to live.

Proper 22, Year B

Getting at the Fire Within

Readings: Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I love the synchronicity of God. As I was working on the readings this week, Graham told me about a Roman Catholic Benedictine monk, David Steindl-Rast. He is known amongst other things for his work on the interaction between spirituality and science, right up Graham’s alley. He says the following in an interview: “I compare mysticism to a volcano that gushes forth and then the magma flows down the sides of the mountain and cools off. And when it reaches the bottom, it is just rocks. You would never guess that there was fire in it.”

“So after a couple of hundred years, or two thousand years or more, what was once alive is dead rock. Doctrine becomes doctrinaire. Morals become moralistic. Ritual becomes ritualistic. What do we do with it? We have to push through this crust and go to the fire that is within it.”

That in a nutshell is what I want to say today. In his short and pithy way of presenting the gospel, Mark forces us to consider whether or not how we follow Jesus truly represents the faith in our hearts. What we say and what we do matter, for they reveal who we truly are. It is that simple. If we wish to get to the fire within, we have to push through the crust.

The reading focuses on ritual that simply becomes ritualistic and loses its meaning, loses its fire. It begins with a specific and cutting question. The Pharisees demand an explanation from Jesus about the behaviour of his disciples. “Why do your disciples eat with unclean hands?” They ask. It is not that they are being fastidious about cleanliness. It has to do with Jewish law, with conforming to Judaic tradition, with carrying out ritual acts in the prescribed manner. The disciples had not washed their hands in the way the Pharisees said people should. They had failed to follow the ritual practices of their religion. The purpose of such purifying was not to change outward appearance in any way. It was not to protect from disease. It was for outward show. Simply put, following the rules would make Jesus’ disciples more acceptable to the Pharisees.

I want to be clear here. Jesus did not regard the laws as bizarre or outlandish. He is not saying that it is wrong. Elsewhere and at another time Jesus would criticize a host for not giving him water to cleanse himself. He is not questioning the action. He is concerned about how an external act has become an end in itself. Jesus understands the rituals in Jewish law and tradition. But at the same time he knows that it is the shema, loving God with heart and soul and strength that is the essence of Judaism as it is for us as Christians. He knows perfectly well that following every cleansing ritual prescribed by Jewish law will not make an iota of difference to society. He knows that it is about more than simply following the old traditions. He knows that they need to put their faith into action if it is going to be effective, if it is going to bring them closer to God, if they are going to live out their faith. He knows that what is needed to identify the people as God’s people, is an authentic faith and a sense of justice and love. He knows that it is far more about people choosing to do the right things, not because they are following the rules, but because they want to do the right thing. They want to do things because they are convinced that it is the right thing to do.

Jesus wants more than lip service from his disciples. He wants to see the true marks of discipleship in their lives. The essential mark of discipleship surely is to know yourself. Otherwise there is a deep disconnect between what we do and what we say. What we say and what we do are not separate from who we are.

James says the same thing. “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” It is rather like the expression, “Don’t believe your own press releases!” James knows that religion is not merely listening, speaking, discussing, arguing and analyzing. It is acted out. It is lived. The ultimate test of what we profess is our actions. Spirituality is never disembodied. Faith must emerge in the world as service. Otherwise it is simply rhetoric. (I am tempted at this point to get into our current political scene, but I will refrain!)

The fact is, if we expect to follow Jesus, live as Jesus lived, do as Jesus would do, keep the fire in our faith, then it requires examination of ourselves. What are our true intentions? What do we believe? What does it matter? Does it change anything because I am a Christian? It requires not only taking stock of whom we are, but also accepting responsibility for our actions.

Again and again we hear Jesus take moral issues out of the realm of mere action and into the deeper realm of motivation. How many times must we forgive? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are forgiving people. Do we say grace day after day, praying for the needs of others, but never contribute to help change their plight? Do we bring names of the sick and suffering to the altar Sunday after Sunday but never go out to minister to them? Do we have a rich liturgical life but do none of the real work of the church? Do we think that we serve God by going to church on Sunday, or by spending time in private prayer, or through our financial support of the church? These may indeed be signs of a Christian living a Christian life. But they do not change the fundamental question. “How is my heart towards God?”

Well, so far all that I have spoken is bad news. Where is the good news of the Gospel? The good news is there in Jesus’ words. “There is nothing,” Jesus says, “that goes into a person from the outside which can make that person unclean. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes one unclean.” Jesus is affirming the holiness, the sacred nature of all creation. God continues to call all of creation back into harmony.

The good news is there as well in the words of the prophets of our time. In listening to them, they can lead us to understand the disconnect between who we are and what we say and do. It is difficult to live what we believe, to speak our truth, to show in our actions what is in our hearts. After all, we are broken people. But we have a loving God. Just as our words and actions reveal the heart of who we are, so God’s words and actions reveal God’s own self. In opening up our lives to God’s forgiving grace, in taking responsibility for our actions, we rekindle the fire in our hearts. That is good news indeed! Amen

The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 32, Year A

Remembering

Readings: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

The Israelites after years of wandering in the desert were settling into life in the Promised Land. Life was good. It was easy to forget the struggle that had brought them there. So Joshua did a very wise thing. He assembled the people. He reminded them of the gracious acts of God toward them throughout their history. He reminded them of Abraham’s relationship to God and of the covenant that God had made with the people. They remembered the time of slavery in Egypt. They remembered God’s faithfulness to them in the wilderness. It was a reminder to put away the foreign gods, the false gods, that had arisen among the people and to turn back to God. It was a reminder that they could not follow the crowd and still be God’s chosen people.

Paul is speaking to the Thessalonians who are grieving for loved ones who have died before the return of the Lord. He calls on them to remember that we all live between the life of Jesus and the coming of Christ, and that all of creation will, with the coming of God’s realm, belong once again to God.

And there is the parable that Jesus told. Five foolish bridesmaids took their lamps with them to the wedding, but didn’t bring any oil. Five wise bridesmaids on the other hand came prepared with enough oil for any contingency. The bridegroom was late in arriving. The wise bridesmaids were able to trim their lamps and meet the bridegroom. The foolish ones asked for oil from the wise ones. Their request was met by refusal. It does seem rather mean-spirited that those who brought oil did not simply share what they had, but the point of the story is that we are to be ready to serve God wherever and whenever God appears. Once again, it points out to us a choice we must make between the way the world lives and the way our Christian faith calls us to live. It calls us to remember how God has been with us in the past, and how God will continue to be with us.

Remembering is so important to us as humans. Whether it is a story of love, of tragedy, of faithfulness, of generosity, our human story needs to be remembered. Something forgotten does not function any more in our conscious life. It plays no conscious role in our decision-making. If it appears to us in a dream it is not understood. It goes over our heads. The tragedy of life is that everything can be forgotten. This Remembrance Sunday calls us to remember so that war will end and peace will prevail.

I have to admit to having some difficulty around Remembrance Day. I am at heart a pacifist. So when it comes to this celebration I am reminded about the tragedy of war, the loss of life, the inhumanity. I consider how we have glorified war. I consider how all sides in war have asserted, “God is on my side,” And I know that the truth is that God weeps for all of God’s children. I look back at the person closest to me who was in the military. He was my uncle, a medical doctor who rose to the rank of Brigadier General, whose whole career was in the military, but who never bore arms. He served on the Italian front in the Second World War and in Korea where he ran mobile units. I remember him recounting his stories to us when he returned from Korea. What stands out in my mind is that he considered that the bravest soldiers who served in the army were the conscientious objectors who refused to bear arms, but went onto the battlefields to carry the wounded back to military hospitals. And so, yes, I hate war, but not the soldiers who believed in their cause. I hate the cost to human life, not just in loss of life, but also in the unseen costs. We hear of veterans who come back from war suffering from Post Traumatic Stress, and I know how much they need our compassion and care. I see the events we have experienced over the last few weeks, as misguided individuals act out their hostilities on the military. And once again, I know that God weeps. And I am convinced that we need to remember. We need to remember so that it does not happen again.

Remembrance Day can be a meaningless ritual, which we continue to observe out of some sense of duty to people who are for most of us nameless individuals. Yet they died in a cause, which has benefitted us. What of the society they helped to form? As we ponder the events of the past few weeks, as we face the fact that we have moved from a country largely untouched by terrorism into one that knows the sorrow of senselessly losing young soldiers, as we begin to awaken to how quickly our peaceful society can be torn apart, let us consider how it has changed our sense of peace and well-being.

Pacifist though I will always be, I find what moves me most on Remembrance Day is something so familiar that I would have thought it would become trite. And yet, it never does. It is the poem, “In Flanders Fields”. I can recite every word of that poem. I memorized it back in grade school, complete with every nuance. Then I spent many years as a teacher preparing classes to recite it at assemblies. And yet pondering on the familiar words, I find myself reflecting on it in a new way, hearing things I have never heard before. At this stage in my life, it has less to do with the task of completing the unfinished work of those who died, of taking up the torch; rather it makes me consider just what has been taken away through war. What greatness has been lost over the centuries? What greatness did Canada lose through the death of Corporal Cirillo? We can never know. So I believe the greatest memorial we could possibly offer is in the continued struggle for peace and justice everywhere and for all people.

So let us remember. There is a sense as we gather on this Remembrance Sunday, of a kind of passing of the torch, a passing of the collective memories, of those successes and failures of the previous generations. What we may forget is that when you are the one carrying the torch, you can easily be burned. When you are the one standing alone torch in hand, there is nothing brighter. But that too can be a terrifying realization.

As we remember, we may feel a sense of grief and loss. But above all, I pray that we feel a sense of faith, a sense of hope. Faith that God gives us, faith in the promises that God makes, hope with the allaying of our fears, the uplifting of our hopes, the forgiveness of our anger, the strengthening of our faith.

As generations pass and we come closer and closer ourselves to being the older generation, the responsibility falls more and more to us. Finally it is ours completely. There is no one else to blame for the human condition. We alone bear the responsibility.

That is the time to remember that the kingdom of God does not come overnight into our lives or relationships or societies. We need to live out a sustained, lasting faith. We do not need some sudden outburst of ecstatic spirituality. We need something that will go the whole distance. We need a “for better or for worse” spirituality that will sustain us through difficult times. We need the wisdom to prepare, to have enough oil in our lamps to keep the flame alight. Let us remember that we are called to live each day in expectation of the approach of God. Let us remember to have peace in our hearts and to keep fanning the flame.