Here's To Mud In Your Eye

4^th Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2011; John  9:1-41 (with I Samuel 16:1-13 in b.g)

What a rich story/account. Some preamble before I say what God has given me to say. This is not an account that bashes Jews! Even in this specific account not all of the Jewish people were opposed to Jesus. Lying behind this account is a historical struggle: where did the early Christians many of whom were Jewish people themselves fit within the boundaries of Judaism and the synagogue as they continued to be convinced that Jesus is Lord? Secondly this Gospel account in John's purpose is not to wrestle with the origin of sickness or illness. In this account Jesus certainly does say that many illnesses cannot be directly linked to sin (i.e. people not obeying God, individually or even collectively).

 

Having said all that, what is this Gospel about? So many things! I select only 1 or 2 to hold up for you.

 

Firstly I share 2 vignettes: Peter was in his 70's. He deeply loved his family – his children from his first marriage and his children from his second marriage. As a grandfather, he and his wife provided daycare for many of their grandchildren. And I mean what a daycare. They would pick the children up from school every day as well as often take them to school, since the children's mothers worked. A number of the mothers were single mothers. Peter and his wife, loved their grandchildren deeply.  And those children varying in age from3-15 loved their grandparents. There was an affection within this group that I have rarely seen in my 30 + years as a Pastor.

 

But then one day Peter received BAD NEWS. He hadn't been feeling well.   He had gone to the doctor. A battery of tests had been run. And the results followed the biopsy. Peter had cancer – a large tumour in his abdomen. It didn't look good – at all. In fact the night they called me for prayers, to be with the family – to talk it all over – there were lots of tears. The next day the tumour was to be removed. A course of chemotheraphy was soon thereafter to begin. Can you imagine my surprise when Peter's wife phoned me later that day to tell me that the surgeon couldn't find any traces of the tumour? When Peter and his family in the midst of their rejoicing asked "how this could be?" – the surgeon smiled and shook his head saying that he didn't know how the tumour could "disappear". All he did know was that it had been there and that now it was gone. We all rejoiced. Peter lived another 10 years before he died. How his grandchildren grew over those 10 years.

 

Jan had been a nurse for over 30 years. She had been an amazing nurse and was an amazing person. I had known her for about a year. She was the mother to 2 wonderful adult children and a number of grandchildren who lived in various places around Canada. She and her husband went to see them whenever they could. When I met Jan and her husband they had just retired. Life was good. They were living life to the fullest.  Now Jan hadn't been feeling well for awhile. She went and had some tests. The results were not good. She had contracted ovarian cancer. She underwent many treatments riding a roller coaster of ups and downs for over a year. During that time she procured a video about ovarian cancer. She made presentations to various groups all over BC. She pleased to be able to do this. It mattered so much to her. Around mid October the cancer began to ravage her body in new ways. I would visit with she and her family often. Very often she was gracious and smiling – although struggling mightily. As Christmas neared she told me how much the prayers of her congregation meant to her – the prayers of so many different people. The prayers she said gave her strength and hope – not to live necessarily longer – but to live trusting God, trusting Jesus that nothing could separate her from his love. And she told me, "I have one wish Tim – not to die on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I don't want my death to be the memory my children, and my grandchildren have of those amazing days." Jan's wish and prayer were granted. She died on December 22.

 

I wonder what you see as you look around? What did you hear and see as I told you a little bit of Peter and Jan's stories?

 

I sometimes wonder if I truly want to see – not only with my eyes, but with my heart: others, the beauty, the wonder, the miracles of life – the struggle, the pain, the brokenness within and around? Do I want to see and hear the cries of joy and pain – the miracle of life, the power of death?

 

In our account from John today a man born blind is healed by Jesus. Oh yes, there was mud and spittle involved – things that according to Jewish religious law weren't supposed to be used on the Sabbath. But my goodness, the man who had been blind could now see! You'd think that the rejoicing by him, by his parents, by his friends and even by those who remotely knew him would have been grand – greater even that the celebration that might happen in Vancouver in about 2 months.

 

But it wasn't! Instead of celebrating the new sight given this man – so many wondered, how/why? Surely THIS SIMPLE TEACHER couldn't have done this, and on the Sabbath? And almost everyone then misses what is happening. That one born blind can now see. Jesus somehow grants him sight!

 

Did you notice  that the man not only can see with his eyes but that he also begins to see so much more? He begins to see Jesus. As this sight gradually grows, becomes focused, the man is humbled and enabled to see others in new ways. He becomes quite humble himself. He comes to trust Jesus. The once blind man, now seeing, falls down and worships Jesus – not I think necessarily as a beggar or as a dog who has been beaten but as one who has been deeply touched by the grace and mercy of God.

 

What do you see and hear these days? Surely we couldn't be blind or deaf could we – not like our fathers or mothers or grandfathers or grandmothers? Surely our vision is clear – our hearing acute?

 

But be careful. Is it possible for a tumour to disappear? If not, why not? Can God, the Creator of the universe do anything? But if that's true, why don't all tumours disappear? My friend Jan came to the point where she could accept her death – not in despair or even in resignation – but in hope and even thankfulness for what had been and what yet would be. She could somehow see Jesus in the midst of her suffering and pain.

 

We gather under a cross. It's not a decorative symbol or even a good luck charm. The cross reminds us of the power of death and empire to attempt and often to succeed in eradicating anyone and anything that dares to proclaim or believe in a different way than might and power dictates. We live in a world that attempts to deny the power of death and even the reality of that which is beyond our sensory perceptions of sight, sound, smell, touch, understanding. And yet, if our eyes are being opened, if our ears can actually hear, if our minds are expansive we can by the grace of God begin to see, to hear and to think in absolutely new ever expanding ways.

 

As Jesus suffers and dies He reaches out to those who were so filled with fear that they had abandoned him or sold him out. As He touches them they are moved beyond their fear to faith, to joy and love for people that once they simply didn't care about. Might that happen among us too?

 

There's still lots of mud and spittle around. We claim that Jesus has risen from the dead. I suspect that Jan and Peter can see him even more clearly now. By God's grace may we too see and worship this one, this very Son of Man. And by God's greatest miracle may we also trust Him with the very living of our lives. Amen.

Not Coors Light

Lent 2a, March 20, 2017 (John 3:1-17)

What do you know? That question used to be a kind of salutation, kind of like, "How are you?" We know, don't we, that when someone asks us how we are while they are passing us on the street or in the hallway that they aren't really interesting in finding out how we are? They are usually just attempting to say, "hi".

 

But I want to ask more. What do you know? I mean, what do you know personally, intimately? Whom can you absolutely put your trust in?

 

It's a hard but very important question. For we human beings there's always a certain amount of uncertainty. Uncertainty in finances: investments, pension plans including Canada and Old Age Pensions. Uncertainty in education. Is what is being taught as "true" today, will still be "true" tomorrow? Uncertainty in health care: will there be enough skilled people, nurses, doctors, x-ray staff, physiotherapists, to care for us and our loved ones, should we or they need such care? Uncertainty in the work force: who will have a job tomorrow and at what wages?

 

For young people the uncertainty races and expands. In some ways young people know "more" than ever before. They scan the net. Many of them read voraciously. They tweet. Some of them have already travelled extensively. I mean I was almost 21 before I travelled by "air". Our children had already been to such places as Halifax, Toronto, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Alaska before they had reached their 15^th birthdays. By their early 20's they had travelled and lived in such places as South East Asia and a variety of places in Europe. And yet, what will the future hold for them: in terms of work, opportunities? What will the "family" look like 50 years from now? There have been times when others have said to me, "I'm sure glad that I'm not growing up now! There's too much uncertainty with absolutely no guarantees." What may be booming today may yet disappear tonight.

 

Nicodemus thought that he knew a lot. In some ways he did. He was a devoutly religious man. He may have "known" the first 5 books of the Law by memory. He would have given a significant percentage of his income to the work of his religion. He prayed. He fasted. He know "lots".

 

But then he heard about Jesus. His curiousity is piqued. He has a hunger that isn't being satisfied. Nicodemus has a yearning, a wonder. So, he comes to Jesus by night. Maybe he doesn't want others to know that he is looking. Or, maybe the darkness of night is John's way of saying that Nicodemus and maybe even some others who will hear this Gospel, don't know as much as they think they do. They may still be in the "dark".

 

Nicodemus begins his conversation with Christ: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Ah yes, Nicodemus thinks he has Jesus figured out. He attempts to place Jesus in a particular box in his own mind.

 

But Jesus cares about Nicodemus. He won't allow Nicodemus to stay in that place, confined, even entrapped by the limits of his own mind. Jesus responds to Nicodemus directly: "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born form above." And a little later, "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit." ... Then lastly, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

 

Now Nicodemus is moved. He is moved beyond his certainty – beyond the deadly illusion that he has all things, including God, figured out, neatly packaged in the box, the finite space of his mind. Now Nicodemus is being moved to an honest question for Jesus, "How can these things be?"

 

So, what do you know? Sometimes it's tempting to appear to be humble and say, "absolutely nothing." But if that is the case, what have we been doing throughout our life? Haven't we been watching, listening, interacting, even learning? Don't we also feel the wind, rubbing our faces, seeing the leaves blown as the wind whistles over their branches. Don't we see the lakes' waters ripple and become waves whipped by the wind?

 

And what of God? Do we know God? Like Nicodemus we may have heard all kinds of things about God – from our parents, siblings, teachers and television. We may have formed opinions about God – about God's power and might, about God's love and judgment, about God's presence or absence. But do we know God? Do we realize that God doesn't have any grandchildren only children? Are we being born as Christ puts it, from above, by the gifts of God's own Spirit?   Do you experience God's presence in the middle of your life now? Do you trust God with everything you are and have, realizing that somehow, miraculously this all is a gift from God? Or, are we like Nicodemus, thinking we sort of have things figured out, while ignoring our deep hunger within – a desire to not just know about God, but to actually know God? Do we dare ask Jesus ourselves, "HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE?"

 

If we are to be open to Jesus, to actually "following" him we will need to have our own categories redefined, our pet "boxes" about God and ourselves dismantled. The Spirit of God may well blow us into places that we have not dreamed of, possibilities we may have not yet imagined. See Abram and Sara. See Paul.

 

Let me tell you a story – profoundly true. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, one of NYC's most courageous and tireless workers against the disease was a physician by the name of Joyce Wallace. To help stem the tide of the virus, Dr. Wallace allowed herself to be blown by the wind of the Spirit in new directions: she followed the light of God into dark places, not only treating infected patients but also cruising the West Side of Manhattan in a specially equipped medical van, paying men and women engaged in prostitution $20 to be tested on the spot for AIDS. Though she experienced the scepticism of many of her medical colleagues and the daily disappointments of watching patient after patient die, she refused to be dissuaded from her mission or confined by the conventional definitions of what was possible and impossible.

 

She drew inspiration from her own mother, a teacher of brain injured children. One particularly powerful memory was when her mother had her class stage a production of My Fair Lady, and she gave the lead role to a little girl in a wheelchair. It never occurred to her mother, Dr. Wallace reported, that the audience, so conditioned by life's boundaries of possible and impossible, would weep when the little girl rolled herself across the stage singing, "I could have danced all night"...

 

"If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe", Christ asked Nicodemus, "How can you believe (know?) if I tell you about heavenly things?" Jesus was not moving Nicodemus toward a new theology so much as toward a new life, a new way of wonder, a new way of wonder and worship. The point is not for Nicodemus to replace his old understanding, his so-called "knowing" with a better version of knowledge or knowing about, but to fall on his knees, turning to God for forgiveness, for all his arrogant thinking. Then the Spirit's breeze blows new life into him and through him.

 

There is a place (many places) for thinking seriously about God and life – but always these need to be tempered with humility. All of our thoughts and experiences of God are still only glimpses of the blazing light of God.

 

And what of Nicodemus? We meet him at the end of John's Gospel. Jesus is dead. He has been crucified. Then Nicodemus comes, not seeming to know everything about Jesus, but rather as a disciple, as one who would follow this Light of God. Now Nicodemus does not say, "We know". Rather he doesn't say anything, but comes, bearing spices of worship, praise and hope for this One who has died. The aroma of Nicodemus' offering will be carried by the wind of the Spirit of God, that blows where it will.

 

I wonder: what do we know of God, of ourselves? Will our lives become opened as was the life of Nicodemus, so that the Spirit of God may blow us also where it will?    AMEN.   

 

 

 

 

A Blown Certainty

Lent 2a, March 20, 2011 (John 3:1-17)

What do you know? That question used to be a kind of salutation, kind of like, "How are you?" We know, don't we, that when someone asks us how we are while they are passing us on the street or in the hallway that they aren't really interesting in finding out how we are? They are usually just attempting to say, "hi".

 

But I want to ask more. What do you know? I mean, what do you know personally, intimately? Whom can you absolutely put your trust in?

 

It's a hard but very important question. For we human beings there's always a certain amount of uncertainty. Uncertainty in finances: investments, pension plans including Canada and Old Age Pensions. Uncertainty in education. Is what is being taught as "true" today, will still be "true" tomorrow? Uncertainty in health care: will there be enough skilled people, nurses, doctors, x-ray staff, physiotherapists, to care for us and our loved ones, should we or they need such care? Uncertainty in the work force: who will have a job tomorrow and at what wages?

 

For young people the uncertainty races and expands. In some ways young people know "more" than ever before. They scan the net. Many of them read voraciously. They tweet. Some of them have already travelled extensively. I mean I was almost 21 before I travelled by "air". Our children had already been to such places as Halifax, Toronto, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Alaska before they had reached their 15^th birthdays. By their early 20's they had travelled and lived in such places as South East Asia and a variety of places in Europe. And yet, what will the future hold for them: in terms of work, opportunities? What will the "family" look like 50 years from now? There have been times when others have said to me, "I'm sure glad that I'm not growing up now! There's too much uncertainty with absolutely no guarantees." What may be booming today may yet disappear tonight.

 

Nicodemus thought that he knew a lot. In some ways he did. He was a devoutly religious man. He may have "known" the first 5 books of the Law by memory. He would have given a significant percentage of his income to the work of his religion. He prayed. He fasted. He know "lots".

 

But then he heard about Jesus. His curiousity is piqued. He has a hunger that isn't being satisfied. Nicodemus has a yearning, a wonder. So, he comes to Jesus by night. Maybe he doesn't want others to know that he is looking. Or, maybe the darkness of night is John's way of saying that Nicodemus and maybe even some others who will hear this Gospel, don't know as much as they think they do. They may still be in the "dark".

 

Nicodemus begins his conversation with Christ: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Ah yes, Nicodemus thinks he has Jesus figured out. He attempts to place Jesus in a particular box in his own mind.

 

But Jesus cares about Nicodemus. He won't allow Nicodemus to stay in that place, confined, even entrapped by the limits of his own mind. Jesus responds to Nicodemus directly: "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born form above." And a little later, "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit." ... Then lastly, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

 

Now Nicodemus is moved. He is moved beyond his certainty – beyond the deadly illusion that he has all things, including God, figured out, neatly packaged in the box, the finite space of his mind. Now Nicodemus is being moved to an honest question for Jesus, "How can these things be?"

 

So, what do you know? Sometimes it's tempting to appear to be humble and say, "absolutely nothing." But if that is the case, what have we been doing throughout our life? Haven't we been watching, listening, interacting, even learning? Don't we also feel the wind, rubbing our faces, seeing the leaves blown as the wind whistles over their branches. Don't we see the lakes' waters ripple and become waves whipped by the wind?

 

And what of God? Do we know God? Like Nicodemus we may have heard all kinds of things about God – from our parents, siblings, teachers and television. We may have formed opinions about God – about God's power and might, about God's love and judgment, about God's presence or absence. But do we know God? Do we realize that God doesn't have any grandchildren only children? Are we being born as Christ puts it, from above, by the gifts of God's own Spirit?   Do you experience God's presence in the middle of your life now? Do you trust God with everything you are and have, realizing that somehow, miraculously this all is a gift from God? Or, are we like Nicodemus, thinking we sort of have things figured out, while ignoring our deep hunger within – a desire to not just know about God, but to actually know God? Do we dare ask Jesus ourselves, "HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE?"

 

If we are to be open to Jesus, to actually "following" him we will need to have our own categories redefined, our pet "boxes" about God and ourselves dismantled. The Spirit of God may well blow us into places that we have not dreamed of, possibilities we may have not yet imagined. See Abram and Sara. See Paul.

 

Let me tell you a story – profoundly true. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, one of NYC's most courageous and tireless workers against the disease was a physician by the name of Joyce Wallace. To help stem the tide of the virus, Dr. Wallace allowed herself to be blown by the wind of the Spirit in new directions: she followed the light of God into dark places, not only treating infected patients but also cruising the West Side of Manhattan in a specially equipped medical van, paying men and women engaged in prostitution $20 to be tested on the spot for AIDS. Though she experienced the scepticism of many of her medical colleagues and the daily disappointments of watching patient after patient die, she refused to be dissuaded from her mission or confined by the conventional definitions of what was possible and impossible.

 

She drew inspiration from her own mother, a teacher of brain injured children. One particularly powerful memory was when her mother had her class stage a production of My Fair Lady, and she gave the lead role to a little girl in a wheelchair. It never occurred to her mother, Dr. Wallace reported, that the audience, so conditioned by life's boundaries of possible and impossible, would weep when the little girl rolled herself across the stage singing, "I could have danced all night"...

 

"If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe", Christ asked Nicodemus, "How can you believe (know?) if I tell you about heavenly things?" Jesus was not moving Nicodemus toward a new theology so much as toward a new life, a new way of wonder, a new way of wonder and worship. The point is not for Nicodemus to replace his old understanding, his so-called "knowing" with a better version of knowledge or knowing about, but to fall on his knees, turning to God for forgiveness, for all his arrogant thinking. Then the Spirit's breeze blows new life into him and through him.

 

There is a place (many places) for thinking seriously about God and life – but always these need to be tempered with humility. All of our thoughts and experiences of God are still only glimpses of the blazing light of God.

 

And what of Nicodemus? We meet him at the end of John's Gospel. Jesus is dead. He has been crucified. Then Nicodemus comes, not seeming to know everything about Jesus, but rather as a disciple, as one who would follow this Light of God. Now Nicodemus does not say, "We know". Rather he doesn't say anything, but comes, bearing spices of worship, praise and hope for this One who has died. The aroma of Nicodemus' offering will be carried by the wind of the Spirit of God, that blows where it will.

 

I wonder: what do we know of God, of ourselves? Will our lives become opened as was the life of Nicodemus, so that the Spirit of God may blow us also where it will?    AMEN.   

 

 

 

 

Hungry Reflections

March 13, 2011 (Lent 1a, Matthew 4:1-11)

What do you do when you are hungry?

 

What do you do when you are thirsty?

 

Ah, but what do you eat and what do you drink?

 

Jesus was hungry and very likely thirsty. To be sure, these were his own choices. He had been fasting a long time. Fasting is not in vogue these days. But at its best fasting is intended to deny oneself some basic needs in order  to focus on the goodness of God, to ask God to open our hearts and minds to God's presence and to be honest with one's self in doing so. You can be sure that after a significant time of fasting that  Jesus was hungry and thirsty.

 

It's then that the tempter comes to Jesus – and to us. When we are most vulnerable. I don't know about you but when I'm hungry I can be a bear. In my hunger I am less patient, less kind, more demanding, more prone to rage. Similarly when I am tired my behaviour is often less than exemplary. Or when I am particularly singled out for what I have said or done I am more prone to do things that are destructive to myself than when I am experiencing much acceptance. There are many times and circumstances in which I become more vulnerable. How about you?

 

So we meet Jesus. He is hungry and thirsty. At times we are also "hungry" and "thirsty". It is often in those times that the tempter draws near. At first glance, temptations may seem harmless. What could be wrong with satisfying one's hunger? Surely God wouldn't want us to be hungry?  If Jesus had decided to do what the tempter was so seductively inviting him to do – make bread out of stones, a kind of magical thing – who knows how many could have been fed? I am sure that the bread so made could have benefitted many people.  Similarly today in places like Japan,  Libya, many areas of Africa and in many soup kitchens and food banks in  Canada. The tempter's word to Jesus seemed so straight forward. It was either "If you are the Son of God" .... or, "Since you are the Son of God". The tempter's word was a challenge to Jesus' identity – to Jesus' trust of God the Creator. Prove that you are who say you are, the tempter is saying.

 

Thanks be to God that Jesus does resist the tempter. In doing so Jesus points out a fundamental truth – lifted from the Scriptures: one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Wow!  In Jesus' response to the tempter we see that Jesus is very clear about whom he trusts.

 

But the tempter does not give up. Once again the tempter challenges Jesus identity. If you are the Son of God or since you are, throw yourself down from a very high holy place. Surely God will take care of you, since you are God's son! But once again Jesus resists the temptation, the challenge to, in some sense, prove his identity. He responds to the tempter, "Do not tempt the Lord your God!"

 

Once again the tempter is foiled. But he does not give up. He ventures into the political realm.   Wouldn't you like magical power over all the realms and machinations of the world without having to suffer or really do anything for it? If we could magically have such power, what would we have done?

 

But Jesus will not cut a deal. He will not trust anyone else before God regardless of their power. Jesus cuts to the chase, "Away with you Satan, for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him'."

 

With that the tempter withdraws – but not forever.  

 

In some ways all of this seems surreal – or at the very least long ago and far away. But is it?

 

What are you hungry and thirsty for? What do you yearn and long for? Escape from responsibility? Peace and quiet? A respite from financial worries? Assurance that you will be physically or mentally well? Magical deliverance from any pain or struggle?  Relief from compulsion and compunction to overeat or under eat, to purge or even to seek thrills without any repercussions?

 

An important part of being human is that we have longings, yearnings, sometimes almost an insatiable thirst or hunger. These "drives" may be for many things. They may take on many forms. We are very often  like the old country singer used to twang,  looking for love in all the wrong places. I suspect that lyricist knew something about the reality of temptation.

 

St. Augustine also knew something about temptation.  He said something like this (I paraphrase) – our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee – meaning in God.

 

God has created us to be in relationship – with God, with others, with creation. This yearning is deeply embedded in our beings. Some might even say that in some mystical way, these yearnings are part of the makeup of our DNA. But too often we think, we feel that we can  control the fulfilment of such yearnings ourselves. Then we take the piece of "fruit".  Overstep-ping our boundaries we place our trust in ourselves or someone or something else, rather than  God. Then instead of loving God  others we seek to love things and use people. We forget whose we are and then lose sight of who we are.

 

I have to tell you it's not  easy to remember whose we are  and to live that way. Even though most of us have had the cross marked on our foreheads for a long time and even though in that moment God promised to seal us with the Holy Spirit forever, there are other spirits at work in this universe. Such spirits are similar to that first tempter who addressed Adam and Eve and then who "seductively invited Jesus" to throw himself down for a kingdom. Such spirits seek to worm their way into our hearts and minds: to deceptively manipulate us into thinking that we are in control when in reality they are seeking to control us. 

 

But beware people, giving into such temptation leads only to momentary "highs" accompanied by long and depressing lows resulting in ultimate emptiness and heartbreak both for us and others.  

 

As human beings we cannot escape temptation. Nor will we will  always be successful in resisting temptation. This is sad but true.

 

But this One who marks us in our baptism with Christ's love and victory over sin, death and evil in the sign of the cross, loves us deeply. This One, this God in the flesh, keeps on seeking us, calling us to remember whose we are, inviting us to follow His Son in obedience.  

 

So I invite you, you who are hungry and thirsty. Be sure to be honest with yourself and with others. Know that there is food which fills, enabling us to be healthy – to love and be loved, to forgive as we are being forgiven, to care with all we have even as Jesus has cared for us by emptying himself. This is the food and the drink that God wills for us. May we eat and drink of these slowly and deeply.  We still will be far from perfect – but in our humility, by God's grace, we will be enabled to live as God's children. Who knows by God's grace some others may even see the face of Christ reflected in our faces.  Amen.

 

An ashy birth!

Ash Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Texts are: Joel 2:1-2,12 – 17; II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 and Matthew 6:1-6,15-21. Also Psalm 51

 

Quick – what's your favourite day of the church year? No one picked Ash Wednesday! I have to confess it's not my favourite day either. I think this is so because there is just so much honesty about myself, ourselves as human beings encouraged by the day and the texts.

 

Many years ago all three of our daughters would come with their mother to the Ash Wednesday service. When the time came they would come forward for the imposition of ashes. I would make the sign of the cross on their tiny foreheads and then say these words: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return!" In those days when they were so young and small – I didn't want to face their mortality! In some ways I suspect I didn't want them to have to even consider it themselves.

 

But our mortality is important. Being mortal is an integral a part of who we are. And whether we remember it so that we work at cherishing each moment of our lives, each experience, bad, good and otherwise or whether we face it to also acknowledge our literal dependence on God for life on every level:  physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, relational; it's important to face – even with the accompanying discomfort.

 

So there is our mortality thing in those ashes.

 

But the ashes of Ash Wednesday also remind me of more than literal death. They remind me of  the overarching power, the stench of death. Whether it's the stench of the power of death in a trailer fire that I walked through with one of the very first couples I married – trying to find any of their things that remained, or the brokenness of families – former spouses, siblings that don't get along – the pain of addictions or neglect or abandonment,  such death reminds me of our human brokenness. The Bible through her prophets, apostles and Jesus himself this latter "stuff" sin.

 

Without a doubt such sin can be personal. I can lie to you or cheat you or think or speak horrible things about you. All of that is fairly called sin: missing the mark that God wills for us – a mark that includes love and harmony, not just best wishes like on a Hallmark card, but a getting down and involved and caring for others, all others and creation. And so, sin is also collective. Sin is huge.  It can be systemic where billions of people are hungry in third world countries while many of us struggle with overeating or lack of exercise or throwing food out. Sin is collective when whole races of people are made war on, because they are of the "wrong color" or "wrong" religion or no religion. And too  often other nations are too busy, or so self absorbed trying to do their own thing that they will not lend a hand,  a voice, a will to make a difference for these vulnerable ones that are literally being "disposed of" as they are murdered or dying of diseases that we as humanity have the means to cure.

 

Ash Wednesday confronts me with my mortality, with my own personal sin and our collective sinfulness. If we listen to the voice of God, to the traditions we have received – if we dare to be silent ourselves, spend some intentional time with God each day, with others and with creation – we will know our mortality and our sin.

 

In those moments, those days,  we realize that we have something in common with  Isaiah – "Woe is me, for I am a man, a woman of unclean lips. We recognize that there is an unbridgeable gap between ourselves and God. There are also huge gaps between myself and even those whom I so deeply love. This is part of our reality as human beings. And Ash Wednesday – with the confession of our sin, the imposition of ashes is here to have us experience that remember that –to  know ourselves.

 

But  thanks be to God that's not all there is. There is also God, Father/Mother, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity. And as the prophet Joel says, "Who knows what God might do?" For God is also in addition to being holy, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abiding in steadfast love.

 

Too often we get all mixed up. We start to run, even to race. We fill our minds, our beings with worry  about this and that: money, family, creation, the environment,( yada, yada, yada). Not that these things aren't  important. But we are not God! Let me say that again – we are not God!

 

God sees into our hearts and minds. Although God may not, sometimes is not, at all pleased with what God discovers there – God also cares about us and this world. So God's invitation, God's command is for us to turn to God – to depend on God – to see who we are in God. We are also God's beloved children. We can be and often have been forgiven. We are loved and can be loving.

 

Sin and death sometimes place their bruises, their marks upon us. But God's mark in Jesus Christ, his cross is stronger and will not let us go.

 

Brothers and sisters in Christ today is the day: the day our Lord has made, the day that once again we can be reconciled with God through Jesus, This is GRACE! Be reconciled with God and then by God's grace with each other.

 

For then as dusty as we are – there is new life – life that God births, right in the ashes. Amen.  

 

When Heaven and Earth Meet

Sunday of the Transfiguration, March 6, 2011 (Matthew 17:1-9 with Exodus 24 and II Peter 1 in the background)

Can earth and heaven ever meet? Can God, the Creator of the universe, the One who dreams you and every other person on the earth into being, the One whose work shapes the ice age, the hills, the mountains and valleys, lakes rivers and oceans, the One who created the DNA code before we humans ever even thought about it, appear to us, speak directly to us, reveal some of God's very essence, God's glory to us?

 

What do you think? How might you know?

 

Have you ever had God speak directly to you, reveal something of Himself/Herself to you? Or, does God only do this somehow only to and for others? Or, did God only speak and act long ago and far away?

 

The word for these experiences, for God revealing something of God's self to human beings are mystical experiences. The essence of mystical experiences defy explanation or even full descriptors. Can any of you fully describe in a way that I might comprehend – what it was like to fall in love as you did? Or what is it like see your own child being born? Or, what is it like to come to experience God? Such realities are beyond our word smithing. We can try to describe them to someone else so that they may also know – but there is still something missing.

 

This doesn't change the truth of such realities.  Let me assure you, people have had and do continue to have mystical experiences. They occur more frequently than we might imagine. I know this, because a number of people over the last 30 years have honoured me by telling me of their own mystical experience or experiences. Such these experiences happen in a variety of ways and places. Some have had experiences of God as they have nearly died. Others have had them while they were at church singing an old hymn out of, can you believe this, the green hymnal? Other people have told me of loved ones to whom either God, Jesus or an angel has appeared and spoken to them in a vision. That message has later been corroborated in their lives or in the lives of others.

 

We claim that God and Jesus are alive – that the Spirit is moving. But do we believe that? What would we do if God chose to speak directly to us or give us a vision in some kind of way? Would we disregard that? Would we think or feel that we were losing our mind? Would we dare to tell anyone else? Might we prostrate ourselves in fear and awe?

 

We need to be careful on 2 fronts. Our minds are important. God is the One who gives us our minds. We are to use them to their fullest potential. Don't be afraid of truth. Only fear half truths. Having said that, there are also limitations to our minds. At times our minds, our eyes, our ears can fool us. Many people realize this. Some of them are religious charlatans. They play on the truth of the possibility of mystical experience by seeking to take financial advantage of others, having them pay for some kind of contrived "mystical" experience. This may indeed involve spirits, but it is not the Spirit of God, the One whom Christians call the Holy Spirit.

 

Now this doesn't mean that we should throw out or simply pooh pooh any and all mystical experience. But we need to discern such experience. Listen to the experience, think about it, pray about it – either yours or that of someone else. Does such a mystical experience reveal in any way what Christians have come to call the "fruits of the Spirit"? These are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, service. Or instead as a result of such claimed mystical experience is there a growth of divisiveness, arrogance, hatred or selfishness? We need to be careful around mystical experience.

           

But we also need to be open to mystical experience. God is God!

 

Today we gather under this wonderful text – the Transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel. In the preceding chapter Jesus has told his disciples that he must suffer and die. Now he leads 3 of those disciples up onto a mountain apart. Once there Jesus is "transfigured". His face shines like the sun and his clothes become dazzlingly white. Moses and Elijah are suddenly there with him. Moses had lived over a thousand years before Jesus walked this earth while Elijah carried out his prophetic work hundreds of years before Jesus had been born. Moses is the representative of the law for the Jewish people. Elijah represents the prophets. In other words, the sum of all God's work with and for the people of Israel are now there with Jesus up on that mountain. Peter, James and John are privy to all of this. Wow!

 

Peter isn't sure what to do – but he's got to do something. Perhaps he should try to hold onto the experience or recall the experience of his ancestors in the wilderness. So, Peter proposes to Jesus that he, Peter, could get busy and build some tents – one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. But then Peter is interrupted. A bright cloud overshadows them. From this cloud they hear a voice, the very voice of God: "This is my Son, the beloved. With him I am well pleased. LISTEN TO HIM!"

 

Now the disciples fall to the ground overcome by fear.

Have you ever been overcome by fear or awe or reverence in the presence of God? Have you ever been moved to literally fall down because you have experienced God's presence?

 

Or, have we so rationalized, in some sense "anthropomorphized" God, made God out to be like us as a human being, that we think or feel that God is merely familiar company, not one to worship or revere? What a friend we have in Jesus?! 

Sometimes, the disciples knew better. On that mountain God is speaking to them. The Holy One, the Creator of the universe, the One who freed their ancestors from slavery to the most powerful nation of that time is speaking to them. What else could they do, but fall down on their faces in reverent fear?

 

Do we know God – not just about God, but actually know God? God loves us! God's love flows from God's holiness, from God's deep abiding concern for new and just life, life that is merciful and gracious for all. This concern leads God to battle against evil – evil that includes hatred, greed, the illusion of self-sufficiency and idolatry of power. God also battles against powers that we cannot see which conspire to enslave us to hatred, fear, selfishness, apathy, rationalization and blindness to so much reality.

 

Dear people, we need to know, in the Biblical sense of knowing, that God is God! God reveals God's self to us in Jesus. God is at work on this earth, in this time and even in this place as God's Spirit moves. God works through the Holy Spirit around us and within us, around and within others and all creation. God still speaks both directly and indirectly.

 

See what happens to those 3 disciples up on the mountain. Their noses and foreheads are pressed into the mountain's dirt and rock. They are beginning to hear God speak to them, but they are overcome with fear.

 

At times we too are afraid. We can be overcome with fear because of many things, things which do have power. But such things do not have the same power that God does!

 

See that Jesus does not leave the disciples up on the mountain overcome by their fear. He comes to them. He touches them. He bids them get up and come back down the mountain to the rest of life. They are to follow Him. By the grace of God they do. By the grace of God they become an integral part of God's good and gracious will, to bring love and mercy to others – to have us know and experience that death and evil as powerful as they are – and they are – have limits.

 

Wherever we are today – in mind, body and spirit, Jesus comes to touch us. You see earth and heaven can meet by God's grace in Jesus.

 

Be open to that – to this touch of Jesus which bids us both to listen and to get up:  to love as we are being loved, to forgive as we are being forgiven – to trust not in ourselves but in this God who can do amazing things, no matter what. You see this vision of Jesus, this gift of faith, is that which can transform us into living as whom God wills us, graces us to be, the children of God!

 

Who says earth and heaven can't meet? Amen.