Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Friday, March 5, 2010
"Don't Be Afraid"
The message today is about fear. I have been made aware lately of how many decisions I make in life which are fear based. Here are just a couple, and hopefully a solution for the future.I was out shopping the other day with the family at a thrift store. They were having a half price sale and I really like treasure hunting. There was a man down the clothing isle not far from me with a baby stroller and he was taking clothes from the rack, unhanging them, neatly folding them and then checking on his baby, who apparently wore size 36 pants, as the neatly folded pants would never return from inside the carriage. I was stumped. What do I do? Do I risk my safety and the real baby strapped to the front of me to address this man? Do I notify the manager and continue shopping? Do I offer him $20 to pay for all the pants that he and his size 36 baby can carry on half price thrift store day? What would you do? What would Jesus do?
What did James do? NOTHING. I pretended not to notice and continued on my day. I did not want to get involved. I was content to notice the issue, but afraid, I left it there. My concern about him and his welfare was far outweighed by my own concern for myself.
Now this leads me to the church. I had this wonderful idea. Every month we should have BRING A FRIEND TO CHURCH DAY. We could have some fresh muffins at the back, some guitar playing with the piano at the front, maybe even a harmonica; everybody would be on their best behavior. We could make this place a really welcoming, intentionally friendly atmosphere to welcome our guests. You could all bring a friend or two, introduce them to some other people, tell them about Jesus, feed them some muffins, and hopefully see them next week as well. It would be great!! Now I know what you’re thinking, because I’ve thought it myself. Isn’t church growth the Pastor’s job?....... I know, let’s start a committee for that!......... EVANGELISM- you mean telling others about Jesus?? Isn’t that for those people on TV who are always yelling? Can’t I put 5 bucks in the offering plate and make that go away? As I was thinking about this, I was thinking it would be a great opportunity for YOU! I’m not going to invite people to church. What if they actually come?
I have heard it said that “how you do something is how you do everything”. Think about that for a second... How you do something is how you do everything. The shoplifter…. church growth… I notice the problem, but do nothing to solve it. WHY IS THAT? Because of Fear.
How many of you know what a Shih Tzu is? And a Pitbull? And a Rottweiler?
When I was younger, there was a Rottweiler that lived across the street. I used to mow the owner’s lawn, so I’d go over to their house, go through the garage, get the lawn mower and start mowing the lawn.
One day, I showed up and entered the garage and went into the backyard through the other door. WELL, I must have woken Mr. Rottweiler from his nap, and when he started barking, I started running. I ran through the garage, but didn’t close either of the two doors, and the dog chased me through the garage, out the far door, across his driveway, across the street and up the road. I ended up running to a neighbor’s house where some kids were playing basketball on the driveway. I guess I figured I could out run at least one of them, and be safe. So I go running up the driveway and let out this terrified yelp. They all stop and stare at me and I just keep on running. Once I got past a few of them, I turned around to see where this monster, I mean dog, was, and there it was, 2 or 3 houses behind me, silently watching. The basketball players had no idea why I had just come screaming through their game and stopped in the middle of it. I told them what had happened, feeling foolish for my cowardice, and left.
Since then, I have become much more comfortable around dogs. I know a guy who has an American Pitbull. This thing could rip your face off if it wanted to, and I gave it respect as such. However, and this is important!! Every time I came near, this ferocious beast would cower down like a scared cat and run away. It had no idea the power it had within itself, its God given ability, talent, and speed. If it ever did, Boy oh Boy, look out. It was built to damage, to destroy any opposition; it was an absolute powerhouse inside, but it had no idea. This dog may as well have been a kitty cat. It had no idea who it was. It had no mirror or measure to see what it was capable of, and who it was meant to be. I think a lot of Christians are the same way. We don’t know who we are because we don’t know where to get our identity from.
See a Pitbull is a large, fit animal that God gave the power to cause mass destruction to its enemy. However, this one was not living up to its God given potential. SO many Christians are the same way, myself included. We rarely take hold of the power that God has given us, rarely speak up and take our rightful place in society as leaders, influencers, culture shapers and innovators. We are content to fit right in, to go along, not stand out for fear we would be called politically incorrect or closed minded, or whatever other words society uses to try to keep us small and in check. Like Pastor Cindy said a few weeks back. “If we really knew, if we really grasped that we are God’s children, we would be dancing in the aisles.
See God revealed himself today in the first reading as YOUR SHEILD- YOUR EXCEEDINGLY GREAT REWARD. How awesome is that? How often do we limit Gods power in our lives, because we’re afraid or worried what others will think or do or say? God is calling us to rise up, to start to think and feel and act like HIS children. Children of the king. He’s our shield. He’s got our backs and our fronts. Always. Forever. Can you imagine what would happen to the devil if we as the church woke up and exercised our authority as the Children of God? If we renounced the curse of poverty. Rose above the temporary pleasures of sin, took dominion over the land and animals as we were meant to, not for selfish gain, but as stewards, and then told that devil to creep back down to that tiny swamp from which he came before we get angry and tell PAPA what he tried to get us to do.
We are the church; we are the body of Christ. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be the tonsils or the appendix, where it doesn’t matter if I’m here or not!
How is it that we are going to do this? How do we learn who we are? What place is our place? How do we find the correct measuring stick? I sat one time for over two hours in front of the mirror, giving myself a face to face chat. There was a lot that needed to be said and I needed to look myself in the eye to say it. I needed to ask myself for forgiveness, I needed to forgive myself. I needed to tell myself I love me and let me tell you, if you ever want to feel uncomfortable, try a few minutes of eye contact with yourself. It’s a good test. How often do you look deep into yourself? We check our hair, our face and clothes, but not ourselves; our integrity, our innermost being? I found the first 10 minutes really hard, I tried to leave, tried to do something else, but somewhere deep down I knew this needed to be done. So I did it, and it hurt, and we talked, and it hurt some more and we talked, and I cried, and talked and forgave and it got easier. And when I had completed what I had set out to do- come to peace with myself, I felt a mile high. I was taller, I was different. All the self help books in the world couldn’t have done for me what was worked out in those two hours. It was really good for me. I encourage you to book some time with yourself in the mirror. I took it off the wall and propped it up against the wall on the floor sat down and just started chatting. The person in the mirror has been there all along and if we fail to heal our own hurt, we’ll fail to be as effective in ministry as we need to be.
Now I want to hold up a mirror. Did you know that this shows us who we are, written by the maker of us all. This is THE owner’s manual, our guide book and our warranty. Our guarantee is eternal. This should be the measuring stick we use to see ourselves. How did Jesus resist the devil? He quoted scripture. How can we think we will be effective if we don’t know scripture? How can we know who we are if we don’t see ourselves through the eyes of the one who created us? This is our mirror. This is how the Pitbull would realize that he’s not a kitty. This is how we learn who God has created us to be and how that looks in our everyday lives.
Here are a few of the ways we are described.
• We are more than conquers
• We are God’s workmanship, created for good works through Christ
• I can do everything through him who gives me strength
• God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and of love and of self discipline.
The world wants to tell us that we are kitties and Shih Tzu’s. Do you know what the world is? The world is a Chihuahua. See a Chihuahua has the opposite problem of the pitbull I described. That little thing thinks it’s a huge dog, a powerful, strong, dominating dog. But in reality, it’s a barking RAT. It has no power beyond nipping at your shoe laces or your pant cuff. They’ll try to tell you how big they are, how much power they have, but in reality, in God’s eyes, in front of the mirror, they don’t stack up. BE the pitbull, be the Rottweiler, the Doberman, the German Sheppard. Emerge, rise up and become what God has called you to be! Children of the King! He’s got your back; he’s your shield, your exceedingly great reward.
How many days are there in a year? 365, right? Do you know how many times in the bible it says “Don’t be afraid”? 365 times. One for everyday. “Don’t be afraid”
-J. Ray
Sunday, February 1, 2009
SLOW MIRACLES
Text: Mark 1:21-28
Jesus has just called Peter, Andrew, James and John, fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, to be his disciples. They immediately follow him and the same day, it seems, they go to Capernaum, a town on the NW shore of the lake. It’s not a big lake – only 13 miles long by 7 miles wide – certainly in our context it wouldn’t be called a “sea” though it’s bigger than the lakes in southern Alberta. So it wouldn’t be a long walk from Bethsaida where the others come from, about five kilometers. Shortly after they arrive, it is the Sabbath, and Jesus goes to the synagogue. Perhaps he is known there already, and he is invited to teach, which was the custom in the Jewish faith. They didn’t ordain their preachers in order to determine who could teach in the synagogue; they simply found out who was sufficiently learned and gave those people the opportunity to speak. I think it might have been a more demanding system, since they were constantly being evaluated and public recognition could be withdrawn at any time! There was no tenure for a wandering rabbi….
Jesus is always recognized as a gifted teacher. In this instance, it says the people are “astounded” at his teaching. And why is that? Because he teaches “as one having authority” and not as the scribes. That means that Jesus doesn’t have to appeal to authorities other than himself, as the scribes do. The scribes cite the scriptures and the words and deeds of other teachers. Jesus is confident in his own authority. And he immediately demonstrates this when a man disturbed by a demon or suffering from a form of mental illness appears in the synagogue, challenging Jesus. The evil spirit in the man speaks out loud, identifying Jesus as a man from Nazareth and also the Holy One of God, and expressing fear of his power. Jesus gives an order and in a violent manner the spirit leaves the man. Everybody is amazed; they begin talking about his new teaching and his authority over demons. The news about Jesus spreads around the countryside.
What is interesting about this story is that the evil spirits identify Jesus as God’s Holy One. It’s not the scribes the spirits are afraid of – because the scribes only have authority derived from other authorities…mainly from the religious powers-that-be who themselves derive their power from other religious authorities. Something like the pastors and bishops of our church – the authority that we have is conferred by others and by the policies of the church. But Jesus has intrinsic power…power within himself. His power resides in who he is. Just like the evil spirits. They have power too – power to cause distortion and dysfunction and endless harmful effects – and that power comes from who they are, the servants of Satan, the Evil One.
This matter of spiritual power is one of the most frustrating things about trying to live as a Christian. We read the stories in the Gospels about Jesus’ words and actions as he travels around the countryside and we have to say that we don’t have the same experience. We don’t have the power that he has: we can’t heal sickness, we can’t free people from the things that oppress them, we can’t raise the dead. OK, so maybe we don’t have the power to do those things, but we believe Jesus still has, right? So how often do we see spiritual power doing those things? Not very often. Hardly at all. More often we see dreadful things happening and we are helpless to do anything about them. Except that we suffer along with those who suffer. And we do what we can to help them, even though we can’t do what they really need and want, which is healing or liberation or resurrection. We’re like those scribes, with no authority of our own.
That was the frustration in the inner-city ministry as well. Every day we had the opportunity to meet and get to know the most vulnerable and needy people in our society. As a group of agency-workers we were able to help some of them to the extent that they recovered from their addiction or got medication for HIV/AIDS or got some job-training so they could be employed. But the majority of them were in more or less the same situation when we left as when we came – except for those who died, and many died. The most frequent question I got asked by church people in the presentations I did about inner-city work was “Do you see a lot of improvement among the people you work with?” The answer was “No.” And then I had to justify that by explaining that many of these were damaged people – damaged by neglect, by abuse, by addictions, by chronic illness, mental health problems, brain injury and other disabilities. And their situation wasn’t going to get any better…at least not in the near future in a society that doesn’t provide enough help for those who are disabled in some way. I could have made much more amazing presentations to suburban churches if I’d been able to tell stories of miraculous recoveries and dramatic turn-arounds in people’s lives. The really amazing things were the sweetness of the street people, their hilarious black humour, their generosity with the little they had, their constant hope and their heartbreaking stories of being knocked down once again and picking themselves up yet again. And the amazing goodness of agency-workers who face that pain and degradation every day and keep hammering away at the barriers that keep people down. I know that these discoveries – and you couldn’t keep working in that situation unless you made these discoveries – weren’t convincing to outsiders. One of my pastor-colleagues came with me to the inner city one day – just to our office on the second floor of an old building on 97th Street in Edmonton, above the second-hand clothing store. I thought our office was sort of funky but comfortable…and she said, “How do you stand the dirt?” I thought, “You haven’t seen dirt, lady – this ain’t dirt.” I was stunned by her question – it hadn’t occurred to me to worry about dirt. Not that I thought it was good for anybody to live or work in a dirty place – but our office wasn’t dirty by most standards. And to this day, I don’t think ministry is about being super-clean – physically, morally or spiritually. But I could see her point. Why aren’t we cleaning the place up – doing what Jesus did: healing disease, giving sight to the blind, freeing those in bondage to addiction, making nice clean neighbourhoods out of the mean and dirty streets?
The only explanation I can offer is that we were trying to do exactly that. The inner-city health centre, set up by a group of nuns and other Catholics in the neighbourhood, made huge improvements in the health of local residents. The drunk tank and detox centre, built by the United Church, gave people the opportunity to get off the street and start addressing their addictions. The Women’s Reintegration Program, staffed by a female Anglican priest, worked with women coming out of the prison system and put them in touch with Christian people who would accompany them through their first year out of jail. I knew some of those women and that program gave them a new community of friends that saved them from falling back into criminal behaviour. A Catholic woman is the Executive Director of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton and she manages a fund and programs to assist sex-trade workers while they’re still working on the street and while they make the transition to what they call “straight” life. I guess the main difference between the miracles that Jesus did and the ones these agency-workers do is the time it takes. Jesus could do his miracles instantaneously; for us it takes longer.
So I really do think Jesus’ followers achieve miracles. “Slow miracles”, they call them, day by day, step by step, standing by, offering acceptance and encouragement and support. And in the meantime, there are small “counter-miracles” which travel the other way: I think those mini-miracles are meant to encourage Jesus’ followers, to keep us going in the face of discouragement, when we think we are getting nowhere, that there is no improvement and ultimately no hope for change. Here’s a story….It’s from a book called “Slow Miracles”, written by a minister who works in urban ministry in a US city.
In late summer, when the blackbirds are beginning to swoop in southward arcs, I…get a job….
The job is in a junior high school. They are looking for someone to work with the “behaviour problems”, the potential dropouts. I am to help these kids with their school work and see if I can keep them out of trouble….
My first student strides into class, impeccably dressed, toothpick between his gleaming teeth. One look at him and I know I will love this child.
Benjamin D. has a reputation. He carves swastikas in school desks, and sometimes in his own skin. Swears fearlessly in the face of important people. Refuses homework. Has a file as fat as an unabridged dictionary, full of phrases like “sociopathic tendencies” and “high criminal risk”. He is eleven years old….
Benjamin D., after a great deal of posing and stancing, has revealed his big secret: he can’t read.
Can’t read the textbooks, the library books. Can’t read the comments teachers have scrawled on his math worksheets. Can’t read a thing. And nobody knows it. Nobody even suspects it. He has fooled them all by acting outrageous to distract them.
“Benjamin D.,” I say, “believe me, you must be brilliant to have pulled this off. Think about it. You’ve been in the public schools for seven years, man.”
“Oh right. Yeah. That’s me. Brilliant. Sure. You bet.”
“Do you want to learn how to read?”
Long pause. “Yeah.”
“All right. Tomorrow. We’ll start…”
February….Benjamin D. and I have tried everything. Sight-word method. Phonics. Flashcards, sandtrays, games. We have gambled our pocket change on five-card stud with three-letter words. Studied street signs. Drilled and practiced and worked, hours each day, yearned and even wept. He’s not getting it. Not at all.
He’s not getting it, and I can’t get him to get it. Benjamin D. is raw with pain; he has taken the risk of his life and failed. Swastikas begin to appear in my classroom, carved on the desks, drawn on the walls. I feel like screaming.
Then I get this idea….
April…By now, Ben and I have finished at least twenty books. It’s been easy. I’ve simply read each book to him out loud. We began in February with Black Boy by Richard Wright. It riveted him to his chair, set his bright mind on fire, whetted his appetite for more.
From there we went on to other books – Malcolm X, Mohammed Ali, James Baldwin. Ben’s mind is deep and complex, and nuance never evades him. He has begun to tell his own stories and proves to be a master at weaving narrative. He has started to produce exceptional drawings that the Art teacher studies in awe.
Today, though, we are reading a text on aviation, an assignment from the Physics of Aviation class he began last month. He sits absorbed, his head resting in the palms of his hands, eyes closed.
He’s getting it. Storing it in memory. Tomorrow, when the teacher says, “Which rule…explains the phenomenon of such and such?”, his hand will go up, probably ahead of the others.
June…It is the last day of school. Benjamin D. will be gone next year, off to a magnet school that specializes in the arts.
“I will miss you. Very much.”
“Yeah. Sure. Right.” His smile is tender, though, for he knows that I speak to him from my heart.
“The school will be a good place for you. You will do well.”
Long pause.
“I have some advice for you. Can I give you some advice?”
“Sure.”
‘I know you like the Marines, but I hope you think carefully about that. You’re an artist. You have all the brilliance, the spiritual depth, of a real artist. I know you’re only twelve, but I may not get a chance to give you advice again. So I have to give it now.”
“And one more thing. I believe that there will be lots of women who will fall in love with you. Pick one who likes to read. To read out loud. That way you’ll be in books for good.”
He grins. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll do that. See you.”
I grin back. “See you….”[1]
Sometimes we need to look more carefully at the things that happen, so we can see the miracles. They may not be so easy to see…but miracles do happen for people who believe they can happen. Jesus hasn’t lost any of his power.
[1] G.F. Thompson, Slow Miracles, Lura Media, Inc.: San Diego, CA, 1995, pp. 69-72.
Jesus has just called Peter, Andrew, James and John, fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, to be his disciples. They immediately follow him and the same day, it seems, they go to Capernaum, a town on the NW shore of the lake. It’s not a big lake – only 13 miles long by 7 miles wide – certainly in our context it wouldn’t be called a “sea” though it’s bigger than the lakes in southern Alberta. So it wouldn’t be a long walk from Bethsaida where the others come from, about five kilometers. Shortly after they arrive, it is the Sabbath, and Jesus goes to the synagogue. Perhaps he is known there already, and he is invited to teach, which was the custom in the Jewish faith. They didn’t ordain their preachers in order to determine who could teach in the synagogue; they simply found out who was sufficiently learned and gave those people the opportunity to speak. I think it might have been a more demanding system, since they were constantly being evaluated and public recognition could be withdrawn at any time! There was no tenure for a wandering rabbi….
Jesus is always recognized as a gifted teacher. In this instance, it says the people are “astounded” at his teaching. And why is that? Because he teaches “as one having authority” and not as the scribes. That means that Jesus doesn’t have to appeal to authorities other than himself, as the scribes do. The scribes cite the scriptures and the words and deeds of other teachers. Jesus is confident in his own authority. And he immediately demonstrates this when a man disturbed by a demon or suffering from a form of mental illness appears in the synagogue, challenging Jesus. The evil spirit in the man speaks out loud, identifying Jesus as a man from Nazareth and also the Holy One of God, and expressing fear of his power. Jesus gives an order and in a violent manner the spirit leaves the man. Everybody is amazed; they begin talking about his new teaching and his authority over demons. The news about Jesus spreads around the countryside.
What is interesting about this story is that the evil spirits identify Jesus as God’s Holy One. It’s not the scribes the spirits are afraid of – because the scribes only have authority derived from other authorities…mainly from the religious powers-that-be who themselves derive their power from other religious authorities. Something like the pastors and bishops of our church – the authority that we have is conferred by others and by the policies of the church. But Jesus has intrinsic power…power within himself. His power resides in who he is. Just like the evil spirits. They have power too – power to cause distortion and dysfunction and endless harmful effects – and that power comes from who they are, the servants of Satan, the Evil One.
This matter of spiritual power is one of the most frustrating things about trying to live as a Christian. We read the stories in the Gospels about Jesus’ words and actions as he travels around the countryside and we have to say that we don’t have the same experience. We don’t have the power that he has: we can’t heal sickness, we can’t free people from the things that oppress them, we can’t raise the dead. OK, so maybe we don’t have the power to do those things, but we believe Jesus still has, right? So how often do we see spiritual power doing those things? Not very often. Hardly at all. More often we see dreadful things happening and we are helpless to do anything about them. Except that we suffer along with those who suffer. And we do what we can to help them, even though we can’t do what they really need and want, which is healing or liberation or resurrection. We’re like those scribes, with no authority of our own.
That was the frustration in the inner-city ministry as well. Every day we had the opportunity to meet and get to know the most vulnerable and needy people in our society. As a group of agency-workers we were able to help some of them to the extent that they recovered from their addiction or got medication for HIV/AIDS or got some job-training so they could be employed. But the majority of them were in more or less the same situation when we left as when we came – except for those who died, and many died. The most frequent question I got asked by church people in the presentations I did about inner-city work was “Do you see a lot of improvement among the people you work with?” The answer was “No.” And then I had to justify that by explaining that many of these were damaged people – damaged by neglect, by abuse, by addictions, by chronic illness, mental health problems, brain injury and other disabilities. And their situation wasn’t going to get any better…at least not in the near future in a society that doesn’t provide enough help for those who are disabled in some way. I could have made much more amazing presentations to suburban churches if I’d been able to tell stories of miraculous recoveries and dramatic turn-arounds in people’s lives. The really amazing things were the sweetness of the street people, their hilarious black humour, their generosity with the little they had, their constant hope and their heartbreaking stories of being knocked down once again and picking themselves up yet again. And the amazing goodness of agency-workers who face that pain and degradation every day and keep hammering away at the barriers that keep people down. I know that these discoveries – and you couldn’t keep working in that situation unless you made these discoveries – weren’t convincing to outsiders. One of my pastor-colleagues came with me to the inner city one day – just to our office on the second floor of an old building on 97th Street in Edmonton, above the second-hand clothing store. I thought our office was sort of funky but comfortable…and she said, “How do you stand the dirt?” I thought, “You haven’t seen dirt, lady – this ain’t dirt.” I was stunned by her question – it hadn’t occurred to me to worry about dirt. Not that I thought it was good for anybody to live or work in a dirty place – but our office wasn’t dirty by most standards. And to this day, I don’t think ministry is about being super-clean – physically, morally or spiritually. But I could see her point. Why aren’t we cleaning the place up – doing what Jesus did: healing disease, giving sight to the blind, freeing those in bondage to addiction, making nice clean neighbourhoods out of the mean and dirty streets?
The only explanation I can offer is that we were trying to do exactly that. The inner-city health centre, set up by a group of nuns and other Catholics in the neighbourhood, made huge improvements in the health of local residents. The drunk tank and detox centre, built by the United Church, gave people the opportunity to get off the street and start addressing their addictions. The Women’s Reintegration Program, staffed by a female Anglican priest, worked with women coming out of the prison system and put them in touch with Christian people who would accompany them through their first year out of jail. I knew some of those women and that program gave them a new community of friends that saved them from falling back into criminal behaviour. A Catholic woman is the Executive Director of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton and she manages a fund and programs to assist sex-trade workers while they’re still working on the street and while they make the transition to what they call “straight” life. I guess the main difference between the miracles that Jesus did and the ones these agency-workers do is the time it takes. Jesus could do his miracles instantaneously; for us it takes longer.
So I really do think Jesus’ followers achieve miracles. “Slow miracles”, they call them, day by day, step by step, standing by, offering acceptance and encouragement and support. And in the meantime, there are small “counter-miracles” which travel the other way: I think those mini-miracles are meant to encourage Jesus’ followers, to keep us going in the face of discouragement, when we think we are getting nowhere, that there is no improvement and ultimately no hope for change. Here’s a story….It’s from a book called “Slow Miracles”, written by a minister who works in urban ministry in a US city.
In late summer, when the blackbirds are beginning to swoop in southward arcs, I…get a job….
The job is in a junior high school. They are looking for someone to work with the “behaviour problems”, the potential dropouts. I am to help these kids with their school work and see if I can keep them out of trouble….
My first student strides into class, impeccably dressed, toothpick between his gleaming teeth. One look at him and I know I will love this child.
Benjamin D. has a reputation. He carves swastikas in school desks, and sometimes in his own skin. Swears fearlessly in the face of important people. Refuses homework. Has a file as fat as an unabridged dictionary, full of phrases like “sociopathic tendencies” and “high criminal risk”. He is eleven years old….
Benjamin D., after a great deal of posing and stancing, has revealed his big secret: he can’t read.
Can’t read the textbooks, the library books. Can’t read the comments teachers have scrawled on his math worksheets. Can’t read a thing. And nobody knows it. Nobody even suspects it. He has fooled them all by acting outrageous to distract them.
“Benjamin D.,” I say, “believe me, you must be brilliant to have pulled this off. Think about it. You’ve been in the public schools for seven years, man.”
“Oh right. Yeah. That’s me. Brilliant. Sure. You bet.”
“Do you want to learn how to read?”
Long pause. “Yeah.”
“All right. Tomorrow. We’ll start…”
February….Benjamin D. and I have tried everything. Sight-word method. Phonics. Flashcards, sandtrays, games. We have gambled our pocket change on five-card stud with three-letter words. Studied street signs. Drilled and practiced and worked, hours each day, yearned and even wept. He’s not getting it. Not at all.
He’s not getting it, and I can’t get him to get it. Benjamin D. is raw with pain; he has taken the risk of his life and failed. Swastikas begin to appear in my classroom, carved on the desks, drawn on the walls. I feel like screaming.
Then I get this idea….
April…By now, Ben and I have finished at least twenty books. It’s been easy. I’ve simply read each book to him out loud. We began in February with Black Boy by Richard Wright. It riveted him to his chair, set his bright mind on fire, whetted his appetite for more.
From there we went on to other books – Malcolm X, Mohammed Ali, James Baldwin. Ben’s mind is deep and complex, and nuance never evades him. He has begun to tell his own stories and proves to be a master at weaving narrative. He has started to produce exceptional drawings that the Art teacher studies in awe.
Today, though, we are reading a text on aviation, an assignment from the Physics of Aviation class he began last month. He sits absorbed, his head resting in the palms of his hands, eyes closed.
He’s getting it. Storing it in memory. Tomorrow, when the teacher says, “Which rule…explains the phenomenon of such and such?”, his hand will go up, probably ahead of the others.
June…It is the last day of school. Benjamin D. will be gone next year, off to a magnet school that specializes in the arts.
“I will miss you. Very much.”
“Yeah. Sure. Right.” His smile is tender, though, for he knows that I speak to him from my heart.
“The school will be a good place for you. You will do well.”
Long pause.
“I have some advice for you. Can I give you some advice?”
“Sure.”
‘I know you like the Marines, but I hope you think carefully about that. You’re an artist. You have all the brilliance, the spiritual depth, of a real artist. I know you’re only twelve, but I may not get a chance to give you advice again. So I have to give it now.”
“And one more thing. I believe that there will be lots of women who will fall in love with you. Pick one who likes to read. To read out loud. That way you’ll be in books for good.”
He grins. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll do that. See you.”
I grin back. “See you….”[1]
Sometimes we need to look more carefully at the things that happen, so we can see the miracles. They may not be so easy to see…but miracles do happen for people who believe they can happen. Jesus hasn’t lost any of his power.
[1] G.F. Thompson, Slow Miracles, Lura Media, Inc.: San Diego, CA, 1995, pp. 69-72.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
GIVING OUR WHOLE LIFE BACK TO GOD
Text: Mark 1:14-20
We’ve heard a lot of hoopla in the last few weeks about US President Obama. I heard that they spent $150 million on the inauguration celebration, which some commentators are calling the closest thing the American republic can get to a coronation. It seems excessive in the current economic climate. But it’s not only about the economy. It’s about the survival of the American dream, about a future for America. Americans truly hope this man who represents the possibility that Americans really believe in – that any American child can become President – can find the way to lead them out of the mess their former leaders have got them into. And more than that: they hope that the greed and corruption and violence that characterize American society can be transformed into something better. President Obama appears to be an intelligent man and a man of integrity; we know he is an educated man, and from somewhere the American government still seems to get money to buy the best information and support available, so he has access to the wisdom and experience of the best advisors in the US.
Not only is Barack Obama being treated like an American king…he’s also being treated like an American saviour. Americans are looking to him to save them from the errors and the excesses of the last few years. But I suspect that the real hope is that the average American won’t have to pay the price for the errors and excesses. Certainly we know that the leaders who promoted the errors and the excesses won’t likely have to pay. And if President Obama sets up a scenario where Americans have to pay for the sins of the past, President Obama will pay. That’s the way the system works. It’s based not only on the last few years but on the whole history of America, which has always made the weak and the vulnerable pay for the good fortune of the powerful. It’s the American way. Unfortunately it’s also the way of lots of other societies, perhaps even including our own.
So in spite of the high hopes that have been expressed for the “new America”, I suspect it will be very difficult even for a man as gifted and with as large an electoral mandate as President Obama. Not because he isn’t a good man with some good plans, but because the system is rotten. A total overhaul is needed, and it’s unlikely that anyone is willing to undergo that kind of change.
So in our Gospel lesson today, we see a somewhat parallel situation in the Palestine of the first century. The system is rotten; it’s presided over by greedy and violent leaders, namely the representatives of the Roman Empire and collaborators among the Jewish people themselves. A prophet comes along, John the Baptist, who condemns the rottenness and convinces people that great changes are needed. John sets up a scenario in which he criticizes the leaders, and demands repentance of everyone, the ordinary people included. And we know what happens to John. He tells the truth to the wrong person – to King Herod himself – and he loses his head – literally. The head of John the Baptist is brought before the king on a platter, specifically to please Herod’s vicious wife, Herodias, who hates John for naming her sin.
Well, that could have been the end of it, and first-century society in Galilee and Judea would have continued in its accustomed way, where the weak and vulnerable were exploited by the rich and powerful, and nobody believed in the possibility of positive change. But that wasn’t the end of it. “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God….” And what did Jesus command people to do? “Repent, and believe in the good news.” Jesus didn’t come with huge media hype costing 150 million dollars; he came with a “new commandment” that would change the world – confess your sins, change your ways and believe that good things will happen. That’s what America needs, that’s what Canada needs, that’s what we all need. And it’s not just talk; it’s action that reaches all the way to the bottom of our problems, roots out our sin and puts us on a path to forgiveness and holiness. Sadly, President Obama doesn’t have the power to do that; no politician has the power to do that. Only God has the power to do that.
Look at the story of Jonah and the city of Nineveh in the Old Testament reading. Jonah is sent by God to proclaim the good news to Nineveh. Jonah doesn’t even believe the message himself, but when he obeys God and gives the people the message, they repent, the calamity that God had threatened doesn’t happen, and Nineveh is saved. And in the Epistle reading, Paul gives the same message to the Christians at Corinth: recognize that it’s a crisis, obey God, change your ways and your world will change too.
So Jesus begins his ministry by recruiting a few fishermen for his assistants. They don’t seem to be the most promising prospects, but if Jesus had recruited the wealthy and powerful, his kingdom would have been a very different kingdom. He’s not looking to keep a particular party in power; he’s trying to turn the world upside-down. That’s what he succeeds in doing, and in the process he loses his life and so do a lot of other believers. This is not mere party politics; it’s major upheaval.
And that’s what Jesus does in our lives too – he turns things upside-down. That is, he turns things upside-down spiritually. He makes us look at ourselves with different eyes, decide that we need to change, and he gives us the power to change. For some people, that change is a turning away from crime or addiction; for most of us, it’s a turning away from bad habits and bad attitudes; it’s a turning toward Jesus’ way of holiness: devotion to God, denial of self, dedication to the service of others. And when enough people follow Jesus in this way – heck, when even a few people follow Jesus in this way – it changes the world around them.
Here’s a story of a saint who came alive:
Awhile back a pastor told about a wonderful saint in his congregation down in Texas. Her name was Idalia. Her grown-up children called the pastor and asked if he would stop in and visit her because they admitted that seeing her very often was just a chore. She was crotchety, she was negative – not the kind of person even her children really wanted to hang out with. So, being the good pastor that he was, he set his watch for one hour and went to put in his time with Idalia.
Idalia was 90 years old and hadn’t been to church in years. This wasn’t the first time the pastor had been to visit her, but all of a sudden as they were talking he noticed a greenhouse kind of room that went off the back of Idalia’s house. And from the living room where they were sitting, he could see in that greenhouse ivy plants with the biggest leaves he had ever seen in his life. Gigantic leaves!
He said to Idalia, “I never noticed your greenhouse before. The plants are remarkable!’
“Well, you’re always in such a rush to get out of here, you probably haven’t noticed a lot of things.”
The pastor thought that was probably true. He hadn’t really looked before. Suddenly, he had an idea. Every Sunday after services, members of his congregation delivered a small plant to the home of all the first-time visitors.
“Idalia,” he asked, “would you be willing to give us some of your beautiful ivy to share with those who visit our church for the first time?”
“No,” she answered.
“Well, what are you going to do with them? You have so many!”
“I just throw ‘em out when they die,” she said.
Well, he talked her into giving him just a few to share this one time. He decided this week that he would personally deliver these wonderful ivy plants to a few of their first-time visitors. And as he brought them around that Sunday, he told the people about Idalia and asked if they wouldn’t mind giving her a quick phone call to thank her for the exceptional ivy.
A week later at church, there was Idalia out in the narthex, all smiles. People who hadn’t seen her in years were greeting her, hugging her, welcoming her back.
Well, of course Idalia continued to grow the ivy for the first-time visitors at Colonial Hills Church. And a year and a half later, the pastor asked Idalia ifshe would give a testimony in church. She stood up in front of the congregation at 91 ½ years old and said, “I became a Christian at age 90 when someone taught me that it’s better to give than to receive.” She said “Life has got to be recycled. Everything we get has to be passed on to someone else.” Idalia had finally answered the question “So what?” for herself. She had spent her life hearing the promises of Jesus Christ…Idalia had been given the gift of a green thumb, but she never connected what she’d been given to her faith life. She had discovered at age 90 that giving – giving our whole life back to God – is what it’s all about. It is, isn’t it?
We’ve heard a lot of hoopla in the last few weeks about US President Obama. I heard that they spent $150 million on the inauguration celebration, which some commentators are calling the closest thing the American republic can get to a coronation. It seems excessive in the current economic climate. But it’s not only about the economy. It’s about the survival of the American dream, about a future for America. Americans truly hope this man who represents the possibility that Americans really believe in – that any American child can become President – can find the way to lead them out of the mess their former leaders have got them into. And more than that: they hope that the greed and corruption and violence that characterize American society can be transformed into something better. President Obama appears to be an intelligent man and a man of integrity; we know he is an educated man, and from somewhere the American government still seems to get money to buy the best information and support available, so he has access to the wisdom and experience of the best advisors in the US.
Not only is Barack Obama being treated like an American king…he’s also being treated like an American saviour. Americans are looking to him to save them from the errors and the excesses of the last few years. But I suspect that the real hope is that the average American won’t have to pay the price for the errors and excesses. Certainly we know that the leaders who promoted the errors and the excesses won’t likely have to pay. And if President Obama sets up a scenario where Americans have to pay for the sins of the past, President Obama will pay. That’s the way the system works. It’s based not only on the last few years but on the whole history of America, which has always made the weak and the vulnerable pay for the good fortune of the powerful. It’s the American way. Unfortunately it’s also the way of lots of other societies, perhaps even including our own.
So in spite of the high hopes that have been expressed for the “new America”, I suspect it will be very difficult even for a man as gifted and with as large an electoral mandate as President Obama. Not because he isn’t a good man with some good plans, but because the system is rotten. A total overhaul is needed, and it’s unlikely that anyone is willing to undergo that kind of change.
So in our Gospel lesson today, we see a somewhat parallel situation in the Palestine of the first century. The system is rotten; it’s presided over by greedy and violent leaders, namely the representatives of the Roman Empire and collaborators among the Jewish people themselves. A prophet comes along, John the Baptist, who condemns the rottenness and convinces people that great changes are needed. John sets up a scenario in which he criticizes the leaders, and demands repentance of everyone, the ordinary people included. And we know what happens to John. He tells the truth to the wrong person – to King Herod himself – and he loses his head – literally. The head of John the Baptist is brought before the king on a platter, specifically to please Herod’s vicious wife, Herodias, who hates John for naming her sin.
Well, that could have been the end of it, and first-century society in Galilee and Judea would have continued in its accustomed way, where the weak and vulnerable were exploited by the rich and powerful, and nobody believed in the possibility of positive change. But that wasn’t the end of it. “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God….” And what did Jesus command people to do? “Repent, and believe in the good news.” Jesus didn’t come with huge media hype costing 150 million dollars; he came with a “new commandment” that would change the world – confess your sins, change your ways and believe that good things will happen. That’s what America needs, that’s what Canada needs, that’s what we all need. And it’s not just talk; it’s action that reaches all the way to the bottom of our problems, roots out our sin and puts us on a path to forgiveness and holiness. Sadly, President Obama doesn’t have the power to do that; no politician has the power to do that. Only God has the power to do that.
Look at the story of Jonah and the city of Nineveh in the Old Testament reading. Jonah is sent by God to proclaim the good news to Nineveh. Jonah doesn’t even believe the message himself, but when he obeys God and gives the people the message, they repent, the calamity that God had threatened doesn’t happen, and Nineveh is saved. And in the Epistle reading, Paul gives the same message to the Christians at Corinth: recognize that it’s a crisis, obey God, change your ways and your world will change too.
So Jesus begins his ministry by recruiting a few fishermen for his assistants. They don’t seem to be the most promising prospects, but if Jesus had recruited the wealthy and powerful, his kingdom would have been a very different kingdom. He’s not looking to keep a particular party in power; he’s trying to turn the world upside-down. That’s what he succeeds in doing, and in the process he loses his life and so do a lot of other believers. This is not mere party politics; it’s major upheaval.
And that’s what Jesus does in our lives too – he turns things upside-down. That is, he turns things upside-down spiritually. He makes us look at ourselves with different eyes, decide that we need to change, and he gives us the power to change. For some people, that change is a turning away from crime or addiction; for most of us, it’s a turning away from bad habits and bad attitudes; it’s a turning toward Jesus’ way of holiness: devotion to God, denial of self, dedication to the service of others. And when enough people follow Jesus in this way – heck, when even a few people follow Jesus in this way – it changes the world around them.
Here’s a story of a saint who came alive:
Awhile back a pastor told about a wonderful saint in his congregation down in Texas. Her name was Idalia. Her grown-up children called the pastor and asked if he would stop in and visit her because they admitted that seeing her very often was just a chore. She was crotchety, she was negative – not the kind of person even her children really wanted to hang out with. So, being the good pastor that he was, he set his watch for one hour and went to put in his time with Idalia.
Idalia was 90 years old and hadn’t been to church in years. This wasn’t the first time the pastor had been to visit her, but all of a sudden as they were talking he noticed a greenhouse kind of room that went off the back of Idalia’s house. And from the living room where they were sitting, he could see in that greenhouse ivy plants with the biggest leaves he had ever seen in his life. Gigantic leaves!
He said to Idalia, “I never noticed your greenhouse before. The plants are remarkable!’
“Well, you’re always in such a rush to get out of here, you probably haven’t noticed a lot of things.”
The pastor thought that was probably true. He hadn’t really looked before. Suddenly, he had an idea. Every Sunday after services, members of his congregation delivered a small plant to the home of all the first-time visitors.
“Idalia,” he asked, “would you be willing to give us some of your beautiful ivy to share with those who visit our church for the first time?”
“No,” she answered.
“Well, what are you going to do with them? You have so many!”
“I just throw ‘em out when they die,” she said.
Well, he talked her into giving him just a few to share this one time. He decided this week that he would personally deliver these wonderful ivy plants to a few of their first-time visitors. And as he brought them around that Sunday, he told the people about Idalia and asked if they wouldn’t mind giving her a quick phone call to thank her for the exceptional ivy.
A week later at church, there was Idalia out in the narthex, all smiles. People who hadn’t seen her in years were greeting her, hugging her, welcoming her back.
Well, of course Idalia continued to grow the ivy for the first-time visitors at Colonial Hills Church. And a year and a half later, the pastor asked Idalia ifshe would give a testimony in church. She stood up in front of the congregation at 91 ½ years old and said, “I became a Christian at age 90 when someone taught me that it’s better to give than to receive.” She said “Life has got to be recycled. Everything we get has to be passed on to someone else.” Idalia had finally answered the question “So what?” for herself. She had spent her life hearing the promises of Jesus Christ…Idalia had been given the gift of a green thumb, but she never connected what she’d been given to her faith life. She had discovered at age 90 that giving – giving our whole life back to God – is what it’s all about. It is, isn’t it?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
ORDINARY FOLKS WITH EXTRAORDINARY FAITH
Text: John 1:43-51
These are some of the first stories of conversion to Christianity. These men, Philip and Nathanael, are local residents, natives of Galilee. Philip is from Bethsaida, a town on the northeast coast of the Sea of Galilee, a fishing village - which was also Peter’s and Andrew’s home town. We might wonder why Jesus would choose these fishermen as his followers. Perhaps one reason is that they are people he is familiar with, Galileans. Another reason might be that they are ordinary working people, people with whom he can identify, since Jesus too comes from a family of tradespeople, his father Joseph being a carpenter. And they are village people, rural people. They speak his own language, they share his lifestyle, they know the hardships of poverty, just as he does. And they are also Jews, of the same religion as Jesus.
Jesus invites Philip to follow him and Philip readily agrees. And Philip immediately goes to his friend Nathanael and invites him to come and meet Jesus. Philip’s reason for inviting Nathanael is that “we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote….” But Nathanael needs a little more convincing. The one Philip has found is Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth. Maybe Nathanael’s attitude is an example of local prejudice, something like the rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton.
So Jesus enters the conversation. When he sees Nathanael, he seems to know about his suspicious attitude. Jesus appreciates that about Nathanael; he says, “Here’s an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” In other words, here’s a person who is straightforward, without any ulterior motives - an honest, forthright person who tells it as he sees it. Nathanael wants to know how Jesus knows about him. Jesus describes the exact situation where he has seen Nathanael in the village. Nathanael’s response is immediate: “You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” And now Jesus wants to know what’s going on. “Do you say that because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? That’s nothing. I’m telling you that you will see much greater things than that - you will see heaven opened and the angels of God going back and forth between heaven and the Son of Man.” I wonder what that means? Look at the picture on the front of the bulletin - an artist’s idea of angels flying between heaven and the Son of Man, who is Jesus. It’s a little bit like animation, with cartoon characters flitting back and forth. I suppose animation is about as accurate as any other depiction. I like this picture: the bright colours, the sense of swift movement, the trumpets, the clouds, the joyful expression on the face of Jesus…and his curly hair! Do you suppose Jesus had curly hair? And the angels have straight hair! It’s very imaginative, and so it should be - Jesus is challenging Nathanael to expect great things in his new adventure of being a disciple, and for that Nathanael will need not only his natural honesty and forthrightness, but also to develop his ability to imagine beyond the immediate situation with spiritual insight.
I dare to say that even though we don’t meet Jesus as he passes by while we’re sitting under a fig tree in a Galilean village, we do meet Jesus in much the same way as Nathanael. In the Lutheran tradition, we say that we are called at the time of our baptism, and for most of us that means we are called before we even know the name of Jesus. Nevertheless, each of us is called as an individual, blessed with specific gifts, valued by Jesus for who we are and what we offer, and expected to exercise the spiritual imagination to find our way of following Jesus and serving those around us. “Spiritual imagination” is rather a complex term, but it simply means faith - being willing to believe in God whom we can’t see. And the way we exercise that faith is to do those things which we can see need to be done. We do that by imagining Jesus with us, and doing those things that by faith we see him doing.
I’m going to use excerpts from a sermon by a Christian Reformed pastor:
“Fairy tales are stories of transformation, and that’s what happened to these simple people we call the disciples. If you took the disciples and brought them al together into one room, you would never…guess by looking at them that this weak-looking pack of ordinary folks could change the world. But they did. The disciples changed the world because it was to them that the secret of the universe was first revealed.
That’s why Jesus called them in the first place. If you’re going to save the world, you’ve got to start somewhere. And if in the end you’re going to save the world through humility, gentleness, compassion and sacrifice, it makes sense to begin with a bunch of fellows who couldn’t get much more humble if they tried! The messengers fit the message. In fact, over the course of his ministry if Jesus had any significant struggles with his disciples, it was the struggle to keep them humble and ordinary-looking. Every time a couple of them started angling for power or arguing amongst themselves as to who was the greatest, Jesus slapped them back down to the street level of service. When Peter tried to wield a sword, Jesus told him to put it back in its sheath.
The disciples needed to be common, ordinary and above all humble if they were going to do Jesus any good and so change the world. Still, Jesus did need them and that’s why he called them….
Something more is going on [with Nathanael] here. Twice in this brief passage there are very clever references to a key Old Testament figure: Jacob. The first [one] crops up in the curious way that Jesus greets Nathanael. Jesus says, “Here comes a true Israelite, a man in whom there is no guile.” The Greek word for guile can also mean craftiness, trickiness, underhandedness. The most famous Biblical person who was a trickster…was Jacob himself, the crafty deceiver who was renamed Israel. That’s why some have paraphrased Jesus’ words here to say something like, “Here is an Israelite with no Jacob in him! Here is a son of Jacob who is not a chip off the old block!”
Nathanael does not have the kind of guile that characterized Jacob but rather Nathanael exhibited the straight-shooting, honest demeanor of Israel, of the new man who emerged after God knocked Jacob flat with grace. Perhaps all this is intended to point to the idea that Jesus is founding a new Israel, a brand new people. Gone are the days of craftiness and guile when people had to live by the wits to survive. A new era of innocence has dawned, a time that requires an almost child-like, naïve ability to embrace the fairy tale-like truth of Jesus. It may be another way of saying that to enter the kingdom of God, you need to be like a little child….
If you wanted to be cynical, you could say that the only reason Philip and then Nathanael were so quickly impressed by Jesus was because they were rather naïve bumpkins. There is something child-like in the way Nathanael comes to faith….But far from criticizing Nathanael’s simple faith, Jesus commends it. This is someone who is innocent enough to believe that something not just good but something of God really did come from Nazareth….We need a little holy innocence to believe that in that small band of ignorant fishermen, a cosmic treasure lay hidden. The disciples, as it turns out, are the frogs who turn into princes.
But although there is something child-like about faith - Philip’s faith, Nathanael’s faith, your faith, my faith - faith is not finally childish. Instead we hang onto our faith in the gritty realities of this very real world. In fairy tales, as surely in our present situation, dark and terrible things are present, good and evil wage horrific battle….But the child-like aspect of faith keeps hope alive because our willingness to embrace and believe the unlikely has given us a glimpse of joy. We’ve caught a glimpse of a larger world in which God is the Creator and Jesus is the true King.
Nathanael makes one other appearance in the Bible and it comes in the very last chapter of John….By the time you get to John 21, Jesus has been killed dead in plain sight of the disciples. The shrewd powers that be looked at Jesus, asked if anything good could come from Nazareth, and concluded “Nope,” and so they dispensed with him. But in the ultimate reversal of expectations, the dead one became alive again. And finally the morning dawned in John 21 when Nathanael and the others were fishing in a boat only to see some hazy figure on the distant shore, cupping his hands to his mouth and calling out, “Catch anything?”….
This Jesus now looked as if he had been to hell and back, bearing scars and looking somehow different, changed, but he was undeniably alive….He was the same man who, years before, told Nathanael that he hadn’t seen anything yet. Having now been to the cross and back, Nathanael agreed. Back on that day when he first came to faith, he had been pretty innocent all right. But in a way, despite all he’d seen, suffered, lamented and wept about, he was still innocent, still child-like enough to believe that the one he watched die was alive again, that the truth of Jesus as the living Israel was no dream. And every once in awhile, out of the corner of his eye, Nathanael was just sure he saw the flutter of angel-wings behind Jesus’ head. Blessed are the innocent and true, for they shall see God. [1] [
[1] Scott Hoezee, “The Child’s Leading”, www.calvincrc.org/sermons/2003/john1.html, pp. 2-5
These are some of the first stories of conversion to Christianity. These men, Philip and Nathanael, are local residents, natives of Galilee. Philip is from Bethsaida, a town on the northeast coast of the Sea of Galilee, a fishing village - which was also Peter’s and Andrew’s home town. We might wonder why Jesus would choose these fishermen as his followers. Perhaps one reason is that they are people he is familiar with, Galileans. Another reason might be that they are ordinary working people, people with whom he can identify, since Jesus too comes from a family of tradespeople, his father Joseph being a carpenter. And they are village people, rural people. They speak his own language, they share his lifestyle, they know the hardships of poverty, just as he does. And they are also Jews, of the same religion as Jesus.
Jesus invites Philip to follow him and Philip readily agrees. And Philip immediately goes to his friend Nathanael and invites him to come and meet Jesus. Philip’s reason for inviting Nathanael is that “we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote….” But Nathanael needs a little more convincing. The one Philip has found is Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth. Maybe Nathanael’s attitude is an example of local prejudice, something like the rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton.
So Jesus enters the conversation. When he sees Nathanael, he seems to know about his suspicious attitude. Jesus appreciates that about Nathanael; he says, “Here’s an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” In other words, here’s a person who is straightforward, without any ulterior motives - an honest, forthright person who tells it as he sees it. Nathanael wants to know how Jesus knows about him. Jesus describes the exact situation where he has seen Nathanael in the village. Nathanael’s response is immediate: “You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” And now Jesus wants to know what’s going on. “Do you say that because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? That’s nothing. I’m telling you that you will see much greater things than that - you will see heaven opened and the angels of God going back and forth between heaven and the Son of Man.” I wonder what that means? Look at the picture on the front of the bulletin - an artist’s idea of angels flying between heaven and the Son of Man, who is Jesus. It’s a little bit like animation, with cartoon characters flitting back and forth. I suppose animation is about as accurate as any other depiction. I like this picture: the bright colours, the sense of swift movement, the trumpets, the clouds, the joyful expression on the face of Jesus…and his curly hair! Do you suppose Jesus had curly hair? And the angels have straight hair! It’s very imaginative, and so it should be - Jesus is challenging Nathanael to expect great things in his new adventure of being a disciple, and for that Nathanael will need not only his natural honesty and forthrightness, but also to develop his ability to imagine beyond the immediate situation with spiritual insight.
I dare to say that even though we don’t meet Jesus as he passes by while we’re sitting under a fig tree in a Galilean village, we do meet Jesus in much the same way as Nathanael. In the Lutheran tradition, we say that we are called at the time of our baptism, and for most of us that means we are called before we even know the name of Jesus. Nevertheless, each of us is called as an individual, blessed with specific gifts, valued by Jesus for who we are and what we offer, and expected to exercise the spiritual imagination to find our way of following Jesus and serving those around us. “Spiritual imagination” is rather a complex term, but it simply means faith - being willing to believe in God whom we can’t see. And the way we exercise that faith is to do those things which we can see need to be done. We do that by imagining Jesus with us, and doing those things that by faith we see him doing.
I’m going to use excerpts from a sermon by a Christian Reformed pastor:
“Fairy tales are stories of transformation, and that’s what happened to these simple people we call the disciples. If you took the disciples and brought them al together into one room, you would never…guess by looking at them that this weak-looking pack of ordinary folks could change the world. But they did. The disciples changed the world because it was to them that the secret of the universe was first revealed.
That’s why Jesus called them in the first place. If you’re going to save the world, you’ve got to start somewhere. And if in the end you’re going to save the world through humility, gentleness, compassion and sacrifice, it makes sense to begin with a bunch of fellows who couldn’t get much more humble if they tried! The messengers fit the message. In fact, over the course of his ministry if Jesus had any significant struggles with his disciples, it was the struggle to keep them humble and ordinary-looking. Every time a couple of them started angling for power or arguing amongst themselves as to who was the greatest, Jesus slapped them back down to the street level of service. When Peter tried to wield a sword, Jesus told him to put it back in its sheath.
The disciples needed to be common, ordinary and above all humble if they were going to do Jesus any good and so change the world. Still, Jesus did need them and that’s why he called them….
Something more is going on [with Nathanael] here. Twice in this brief passage there are very clever references to a key Old Testament figure: Jacob. The first [one] crops up in the curious way that Jesus greets Nathanael. Jesus says, “Here comes a true Israelite, a man in whom there is no guile.” The Greek word for guile can also mean craftiness, trickiness, underhandedness. The most famous Biblical person who was a trickster…was Jacob himself, the crafty deceiver who was renamed Israel. That’s why some have paraphrased Jesus’ words here to say something like, “Here is an Israelite with no Jacob in him! Here is a son of Jacob who is not a chip off the old block!”
Nathanael does not have the kind of guile that characterized Jacob but rather Nathanael exhibited the straight-shooting, honest demeanor of Israel, of the new man who emerged after God knocked Jacob flat with grace. Perhaps all this is intended to point to the idea that Jesus is founding a new Israel, a brand new people. Gone are the days of craftiness and guile when people had to live by the wits to survive. A new era of innocence has dawned, a time that requires an almost child-like, naïve ability to embrace the fairy tale-like truth of Jesus. It may be another way of saying that to enter the kingdom of God, you need to be like a little child….
If you wanted to be cynical, you could say that the only reason Philip and then Nathanael were so quickly impressed by Jesus was because they were rather naïve bumpkins. There is something child-like in the way Nathanael comes to faith….But far from criticizing Nathanael’s simple faith, Jesus commends it. This is someone who is innocent enough to believe that something not just good but something of God really did come from Nazareth….We need a little holy innocence to believe that in that small band of ignorant fishermen, a cosmic treasure lay hidden. The disciples, as it turns out, are the frogs who turn into princes.
But although there is something child-like about faith - Philip’s faith, Nathanael’s faith, your faith, my faith - faith is not finally childish. Instead we hang onto our faith in the gritty realities of this very real world. In fairy tales, as surely in our present situation, dark and terrible things are present, good and evil wage horrific battle….But the child-like aspect of faith keeps hope alive because our willingness to embrace and believe the unlikely has given us a glimpse of joy. We’ve caught a glimpse of a larger world in which God is the Creator and Jesus is the true King.
Nathanael makes one other appearance in the Bible and it comes in the very last chapter of John….By the time you get to John 21, Jesus has been killed dead in plain sight of the disciples. The shrewd powers that be looked at Jesus, asked if anything good could come from Nazareth, and concluded “Nope,” and so they dispensed with him. But in the ultimate reversal of expectations, the dead one became alive again. And finally the morning dawned in John 21 when Nathanael and the others were fishing in a boat only to see some hazy figure on the distant shore, cupping his hands to his mouth and calling out, “Catch anything?”….
This Jesus now looked as if he had been to hell and back, bearing scars and looking somehow different, changed, but he was undeniably alive….He was the same man who, years before, told Nathanael that he hadn’t seen anything yet. Having now been to the cross and back, Nathanael agreed. Back on that day when he first came to faith, he had been pretty innocent all right. But in a way, despite all he’d seen, suffered, lamented and wept about, he was still innocent, still child-like enough to believe that the one he watched die was alive again, that the truth of Jesus as the living Israel was no dream. And every once in awhile, out of the corner of his eye, Nathanael was just sure he saw the flutter of angel-wings behind Jesus’ head. Blessed are the innocent and true, for they shall see God. [1] [
[1] Scott Hoezee, “The Child’s Leading”, www.calvincrc.org/sermons/2003/john1.html, pp. 2-5
Sunday, January 4, 2009
POWER TO BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD
Text: John 1: (1-9) 10-18
We’ve just experienced the Christmas season, and in various services I’ve had the privilege of speaking to a number of people who don’t come to church at any other time of the year. Why do they come at Christmas? Because their dear old mother wants them to, or their wife or husband insists on it for the kids’ sake, or it seems like a good thing to do on Christmas Eve, when everything else is closed. There is magic in the candlelight and in the excitement in the children’s faces. And there is nostalgia in the familiar old songs; it reminds us all of Christmases in the past, when life was simpler and happier. And all these things are OK - it’s OK to please one’s mother or spouse; it’s OK to think about the children and find a little magic on Christmas Eve; it’s OK to revive fond memories of the good old days. But unfortunately, one of my strongest impressions of these occasional churchgoers is that their eyes glaze over as they sit through the service. The actual message of Christmas doesn’t mean a great deal to them.
There is far more joy in speaking to those for whom the words and the music and the meaning of Christmas have deep, personal roots. Isn’t it strange that those who have heard the Christmas message most often still find it to be the most meaningful and important? When I was a kid going to church, I got to know a lot of hymns by heart. There’s a great deal of meaning in hymns, as you will know, having sung hymns all your lives. Certain lines always stood out for me. One of them is the line that says, “I love to tell the story, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.” As a child I used to wonder why is that…that people who know the story best want more than anyone else to hear it again? Because it’s a very important story - the most important story we know. And it’s a sad thing that many people, even people who have some contact with the church, don’t value it, don’t consider it important, don’t experience its deep meaning for them.
And I conducted a wedding this past week. Weddings are not favourite events for ministers - because the understanding of marriage in our society is mostly secular, just as the focus on Christmas is mostly secular. Again, when the pastor talks about what marriage means for serious adults and for Christian believers, many of those who attend weddings sit there with glazed eyes, looking at their watches and wondering when it will be over so they can get on with the more enjoyable part of the occasion - the hugging and kissing, the laughter, the eating and drinking and celebrating. Not to put down any of this good stuff - we all need times of celebration. But we also need to hear real and serious messages of faith and commitment and love which comes from God - only from God. If there is no faith and commitment and love which comes from God, we don’t have much to celebrate.
The church is a strange place. In the last 50 years or so, the years during which we have grown up and experienced the Christian faith, there has been a popular movement to make Christianity more palatable, easier to take, easier to practice, less demanding, less intrusive on our everyday lives. The language of the church is weird - it comes from times in the past, very far in the past, and from cultures very far away. The requirements of the church - the sacraments and other religious practices - are really different from the requirements of our domestic and working lives. Those requirements expect us to believe in things we can’t see, can’t understand, can’t control. But there is still something that attracts and sometimes fascinates people. People who hardly ever come to church still want their children baptized. People who hardly ever come to church still want to be married in the church. People who hardly ever come to church still want to receive Communion. And that’s a good thing; it indicates that they retain some concept of the importance of Christian faith. Maybe they can’t put it into words, but they don’t have to. They just need to be here, to put up with the pastor’s wedding homily which describes what Christian marriage is about, to submit their child to the ritual of baptism, to put out their hands, receive, eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ, to listen to the Christmas story and believe it as they believed it in childhood.
So today, on the second Sunday in the Christmas season - yes, we’re still in the Christmas season…it lasts from Christmas Eve midnight until Epiphany on January 6th - we hear again the timeless words from John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word….The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world….to all who received him…he gave power to become children of God….And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” We would all be hard-put to explain what that means. But nevertheless, having heard these words many, many times, and particularly in all the Christmas seasons of our lives, we do know what they mean. Perhaps we don’t know in our conscious minds, but we do know in our bones - in our inmost hearts, in our souls and in our spirits. The Word, who is God’s Son Jesus, touches a place within us where nothing else touches us. I think that having heard it so many times, we are better able to absorb it and respond to it. We don’t have to explain it; we just know it’s important - so important that it determines who we are and how we live. And that suggests that one of the best things we can do as parents and grandparents is to be sure that the children in our families are exposed to God’s Word - that they hear God’s Word read out loud, at home and at church, that they hear the name of God the Father, Jesus the Son and God the Holy Spirit spoken with reverence and faith, that they experience the love of Christ in the church community. This is really important. A young woman I know in another town, when she was describing what she knew about the church said that her grandmother told her, “Some of the nastiest people I ever knew were in the church.” You can imagine the influence hearing that would have on a young person, or a person of any age. To be positive, this same young person said that when she’s in this area sometime soon, she’d like to come to our church. She’s willing to give it a chance…which is more than I would have expected.
So I continue to think it’s a privilege to give the message about the love of God to those around us, even if it seems irrelevant to them. I suspect it’s not entirely irrelevant to them - just not familiar enough and important enough at this time in their lives for them to commit themselves to it. They hang around the edges of the church, wondering what it’s all about but nevertheless drawn to it. I suspect they’d really like to know what is so important about the Gospel message. How will they come to understand? By watching those of us who have made the commitment and who dare to make the Gospel the centre of our lives. We don’t need to be apologetic or embarrassed about believing this fairy tale, this story which only the pure in heart can truly believe. We don’t need to be morally perfect or theologically educated to have the right to speak of our faith: we just need to have faith.
And what does that look like? In the Ephesians reading today, we have a passionate description - more like a hymn than anything…one of those old hymns that educate our minds and hearts more than any sermon we might hear or book we might read. The writer of Ephesians says that we have received “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”, we were “chose[n] in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before [God] in love.” We are “destined for adoption as [God’s] children.” God has bestowed upon us “his glorious grace.” Because of Jesus Christ, we have “redemption”, “forgiveness” and all the “riches of [God’s] grace.” Through God’s wisdom and insight we understand the “mystery of [God’s] will”. We have “an inheritance” so that we might “live for the praise of his glory”. In Christ we have heard “the word of truth, the gospel of [our] salvation…and were marked with the seal of the…Holy Spirit….”
Can any of us explain what all this means? I doubt it. We don’t have to. We are not asked to explain. We are simply asked to believe it. And the wonder is that, in hearing it, receiving it as God’s truth, accepting it and absorbing it, it shapes our minds and hearts and becomes the basis of who we are. One of my confirmation students a couple of years ago used to say her grandmother is the “holiest” person she knows. I have met that grandmother a few times, and she is a woman who has been a churchgoer all her life. She has absorbed the Word of God which she has heard spoken and the Spirit of Christ which she has seen and felt and that has become the texture of her life. We can be sure that that grandmother has been a deep and positive influence on her granddaughter. I can’t think of anything it would be more important to do.
We’ve just experienced the Christmas season, and in various services I’ve had the privilege of speaking to a number of people who don’t come to church at any other time of the year. Why do they come at Christmas? Because their dear old mother wants them to, or their wife or husband insists on it for the kids’ sake, or it seems like a good thing to do on Christmas Eve, when everything else is closed. There is magic in the candlelight and in the excitement in the children’s faces. And there is nostalgia in the familiar old songs; it reminds us all of Christmases in the past, when life was simpler and happier. And all these things are OK - it’s OK to please one’s mother or spouse; it’s OK to think about the children and find a little magic on Christmas Eve; it’s OK to revive fond memories of the good old days. But unfortunately, one of my strongest impressions of these occasional churchgoers is that their eyes glaze over as they sit through the service. The actual message of Christmas doesn’t mean a great deal to them.
There is far more joy in speaking to those for whom the words and the music and the meaning of Christmas have deep, personal roots. Isn’t it strange that those who have heard the Christmas message most often still find it to be the most meaningful and important? When I was a kid going to church, I got to know a lot of hymns by heart. There’s a great deal of meaning in hymns, as you will know, having sung hymns all your lives. Certain lines always stood out for me. One of them is the line that says, “I love to tell the story, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.” As a child I used to wonder why is that…that people who know the story best want more than anyone else to hear it again? Because it’s a very important story - the most important story we know. And it’s a sad thing that many people, even people who have some contact with the church, don’t value it, don’t consider it important, don’t experience its deep meaning for them.
And I conducted a wedding this past week. Weddings are not favourite events for ministers - because the understanding of marriage in our society is mostly secular, just as the focus on Christmas is mostly secular. Again, when the pastor talks about what marriage means for serious adults and for Christian believers, many of those who attend weddings sit there with glazed eyes, looking at their watches and wondering when it will be over so they can get on with the more enjoyable part of the occasion - the hugging and kissing, the laughter, the eating and drinking and celebrating. Not to put down any of this good stuff - we all need times of celebration. But we also need to hear real and serious messages of faith and commitment and love which comes from God - only from God. If there is no faith and commitment and love which comes from God, we don’t have much to celebrate.
The church is a strange place. In the last 50 years or so, the years during which we have grown up and experienced the Christian faith, there has been a popular movement to make Christianity more palatable, easier to take, easier to practice, less demanding, less intrusive on our everyday lives. The language of the church is weird - it comes from times in the past, very far in the past, and from cultures very far away. The requirements of the church - the sacraments and other religious practices - are really different from the requirements of our domestic and working lives. Those requirements expect us to believe in things we can’t see, can’t understand, can’t control. But there is still something that attracts and sometimes fascinates people. People who hardly ever come to church still want their children baptized. People who hardly ever come to church still want to be married in the church. People who hardly ever come to church still want to receive Communion. And that’s a good thing; it indicates that they retain some concept of the importance of Christian faith. Maybe they can’t put it into words, but they don’t have to. They just need to be here, to put up with the pastor’s wedding homily which describes what Christian marriage is about, to submit their child to the ritual of baptism, to put out their hands, receive, eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ, to listen to the Christmas story and believe it as they believed it in childhood.
So today, on the second Sunday in the Christmas season - yes, we’re still in the Christmas season…it lasts from Christmas Eve midnight until Epiphany on January 6th - we hear again the timeless words from John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word….The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world….to all who received him…he gave power to become children of God….And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” We would all be hard-put to explain what that means. But nevertheless, having heard these words many, many times, and particularly in all the Christmas seasons of our lives, we do know what they mean. Perhaps we don’t know in our conscious minds, but we do know in our bones - in our inmost hearts, in our souls and in our spirits. The Word, who is God’s Son Jesus, touches a place within us where nothing else touches us. I think that having heard it so many times, we are better able to absorb it and respond to it. We don’t have to explain it; we just know it’s important - so important that it determines who we are and how we live. And that suggests that one of the best things we can do as parents and grandparents is to be sure that the children in our families are exposed to God’s Word - that they hear God’s Word read out loud, at home and at church, that they hear the name of God the Father, Jesus the Son and God the Holy Spirit spoken with reverence and faith, that they experience the love of Christ in the church community. This is really important. A young woman I know in another town, when she was describing what she knew about the church said that her grandmother told her, “Some of the nastiest people I ever knew were in the church.” You can imagine the influence hearing that would have on a young person, or a person of any age. To be positive, this same young person said that when she’s in this area sometime soon, she’d like to come to our church. She’s willing to give it a chance…which is more than I would have expected.
So I continue to think it’s a privilege to give the message about the love of God to those around us, even if it seems irrelevant to them. I suspect it’s not entirely irrelevant to them - just not familiar enough and important enough at this time in their lives for them to commit themselves to it. They hang around the edges of the church, wondering what it’s all about but nevertheless drawn to it. I suspect they’d really like to know what is so important about the Gospel message. How will they come to understand? By watching those of us who have made the commitment and who dare to make the Gospel the centre of our lives. We don’t need to be apologetic or embarrassed about believing this fairy tale, this story which only the pure in heart can truly believe. We don’t need to be morally perfect or theologically educated to have the right to speak of our faith: we just need to have faith.
And what does that look like? In the Ephesians reading today, we have a passionate description - more like a hymn than anything…one of those old hymns that educate our minds and hearts more than any sermon we might hear or book we might read. The writer of Ephesians says that we have received “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”, we were “chose[n] in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before [God] in love.” We are “destined for adoption as [God’s] children.” God has bestowed upon us “his glorious grace.” Because of Jesus Christ, we have “redemption”, “forgiveness” and all the “riches of [God’s] grace.” Through God’s wisdom and insight we understand the “mystery of [God’s] will”. We have “an inheritance” so that we might “live for the praise of his glory”. In Christ we have heard “the word of truth, the gospel of [our] salvation…and were marked with the seal of the…Holy Spirit….”
Can any of us explain what all this means? I doubt it. We don’t have to. We are not asked to explain. We are simply asked to believe it. And the wonder is that, in hearing it, receiving it as God’s truth, accepting it and absorbing it, it shapes our minds and hearts and becomes the basis of who we are. One of my confirmation students a couple of years ago used to say her grandmother is the “holiest” person she knows. I have met that grandmother a few times, and she is a woman who has been a churchgoer all her life. She has absorbed the Word of God which she has heard spoken and the Spirit of Christ which she has seen and felt and that has become the texture of her life. We can be sure that that grandmother has been a deep and positive influence on her granddaughter. I can’t think of anything it would be more important to do.
Monday, December 22, 2008
CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICES 2008
5:30 p.m & 7:30 p.m - Candlelight Nativity with Christmas carols
11:00 p.m Candlelight service with Holy Communion
Everyone is welcome to join in the celebration!
11:00 p.m Candlelight service with Holy Communion
Everyone is welcome to join in the celebration!
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