"Sitting in the (Literal) Dark, Seeking Enlightenment" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 26, 2023

Scripture Reading:  John 3:1-17

 

 

(Note:  In our Story for All Ages this week, we read The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown - there is a brief reference to this story towards the end of the reflection.)

 

 

That reading that we just from the Gospel of John contains some pretty well-known verses in the bible.  There’s the verse that is beloved by football fans across North America:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  And then there are the bits about “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” and “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”  And there is my favourite verse:  “The Wind-Spirit blows where she chooses, and you hear the sound of her, but you do not know where she comes from or where she goes.”

 

I could probably preach three or four sermons on any one of those verses, but that’s not the path I want to go down this morning.

 

Instead, because our Lent theme is reading stories about people who encountered Jesus, I want to look at the person who encountered Jesus in this story – Nicodemus.

 

We’re not told much about Nicodemus in this passage. We are told that he is a Pharisee – Pharisees were the Jewish people of that time who believed that anyone could be set apart or made holy by observing all of the law in the Torah.  In the Pharisees’ understanding of the world, holiness was not limited to a small group of people, the priests who could approach God in the temple, but holiness was accessible to everyone.  In the bible we often see the Pharisees in conflict with Jesus, and I can kind of understand where they were coming from. They wanted holiness and access to God to be available to everyone, and in their understanding of the world, this was only possible by strict observance of the Torah.  So when Jesus came along, teaching a different way of interpreting the Torah, I’m sure that they thought that he was preventing people from being able to access God.

 

But here, in Nicodemus, we have a Pharisee who seems to be curious about Jesus and what he is teaching.  We see Nicodemus coming to Jesus to ask some questions.  He comes to Jesus at night, which I find to be a curious detail.  Did he want to stay hidden away?  Was he afraid of what his colleagues might say if they knew that he was coming to talk to this renegade rabbi?

 

Some scholars suggest that Nicodemus was a plant – sent by the others to try and trip Jesus up, which means that he wasn’t authentic in his questions.  But I prefer to take Nicodemus at face-value – as a spiritual seeker – as someone who is seeking enlightenment, even as he comes to Jesus in the literal dark.

 

When I read the dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus, I hear it as a conversation between prose and poetry.  Nicodemus opens the dialogue with a prosaic question, asking if Jesus comes from God, since how else would he be able to do the things that he is doing.  Jesus responds in metaphor, speaking about being born from above.  Nicodemus takes the metaphor literally, puzzled by how someone could be born again after having grown old.  Jesus replies with more poetry about being born of both water and Spirit, and how the Spirit blows where she chooses.  Nicodemus, still puzzled, asks, “How can these things be?” And Jesus, after insulting Nicodemus for still not getting it, still doesn’t drop the poetry but talks about the Son of Man being raised up just as Moses raised up a serpent in the wilderness.

 

After that last question, “How can these things be?” Nicodemus just seems to disappear from the conversation.  Jesus keeps on talking, long beyond the part of the story we heard this morning, but we don’t hear from Nicodemus again. He just seems to fade into the shadows.  He’s a shadowy figure to begin with, and now he seems to slip back into the shadows of the night.

 

But the thing is, this isn’t the last time we hear from Nicodemus in the Gospel of John.  This isn’t the end of his story.  This isn’t his final encounter with Jesus; and I don’t think that we can talk about Nicodemus’s story without reading the rest of his story.

 

If we were to flip ahead to the end of chapter 7, we would run into Nicodemus again.  This time, Jesus has been teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, teaching again about the Holy Spirit saying, “All who are thirsty should come to me!  All who believe in me should drink!”  The crowd is divided on the wisdom of his preaching, and their grumbling catches the attention of the guards who go to the chief priests and Pharisees to ask what they should do.

 

In the following discussion, Nicodemus stands up for Jesus, saying, “Our Law doesn’t judge someone without first hearing him and learning what he is doing, does it?”  It’s almost like Jesus’s teachings have been working in Nicodemus’s heart ever since he first heard them.  It’s almost like Nicodemus is starting to understand what Jesus was teaching… or at least understand that there might be some value in his words.

 

But when his colleagues accuse him of sympathizing with Jesus – “You’re not from Galilee too, are you?” – Nicodemus falls quiet, and we don’t hear from him again.

 

We don’t hear from him again until the very end of the gospel story.  If you flip ahead to the end of Chapter 19, you’ll find Nicodemus again.  This is after the crucifixion.  Jesus has been arrested, has been put on trial, has been tortured, and has been nailed to a cross and left there to die.  After he is dead, Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus, approaches Pilate and asks for the body of Jesus.  Pilate gives him permission, and so Joseph of Arimathea takes his body down from the cross to bury him.  And Joseph is accompanied by none other than Nicodemus, the one who at first had come to Jesus at night.  And Nicodemus is bringing with him a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloe, the spices needed to prepare a body for burial – an extravagant amount of them.  And together, the two of them lay Jesus’s body to rest in a tomb.

 

Like I said, I see Nicodemus as a spiritual seeker, someone who moves from the shadows of the night towards enlightenment.  If we look at his full story, we can see him moving from curiosity and confusion towards discipleship, serving Jesus at the end, even when it was too late for Jesus to be aware of this service.

 

And for us, I think that the good news of Nicodemus’s story is that our journey isn’t over yet.  Our story is never over.  We always have the opportunity to deepen our faith, to grow in our love towards God and towards our neighbours.  And so wherever you are along your faith journey, it’s not over yet.  The Holy Spirit is still working in you, turning you towards Jesus.  You are deeply, deeply loved, and God is always calling you, chasing after you like the mother bunny, and drawing you even more deeply into love. Thanks be to God!

 

 

Image:  “Nicodemus” by JESUS MAFA

From Art in the Christian Tradition

Used with Permission

"It is Good to Be Here" (Annual Meeting Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 19, 2023

Transfiguration Sunday and Annual Meeting Sunday

Scripture:  Matthew 17:1-9

 

 

(Here at Two Rivers, our annual congregational meetings are woven together with our worship, and my reflection ties in my Minister's Report. If you want to read the Annual Report, you can download a copy from our website.)

This Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday – the day when we remember the time when Jesus and three of his disciples climbed up a mountain, and Jesus’s physical body was transformed as his disciples watched – his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzlingly bright. His disciples could see that Jesus was still the friend and teacher they had been following and learning from, but in that moment they could also see that he was so much more. They could see God even more fully revealed in Jesus.

 

Peter, being Peter, blusters in and asks if he should build tents there on top of the mountain in order to prolong the experience, but before he does that, he acknowledges, “It is good to be here.”  It is good to be here, here on this mountaintop, here in this moment, here in the presence of God.  And even though Peter couldn’t see the future, I wonder if remembering this moment on the mountaintop sustained him through all of the challenges he was going to encounter when they reached Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week began to unfold.

 

Mountaintop experiences – those moments when we are intensely aware of God’s presence, moments when we are almost painfully aware that we are standing on holy ground – they don’t happen every day, but they can sustain us through our times in the valleys.

 

And I wonder if, as we wander through the valleys carrying our memories of the mountaintop, we might gradually come to recognize God’s presence there as well.  God’s presence isn’t confined to our mountaintop experiences, but God is with us at all times.

 

As you read through my Minister’s Report, you will see that I have highlighted some of my mountaintop times, some of our mountaintop times in the past year – gathering together to worship, opening Ida’s Cupboard to provide food for our community, concerts and musicals, confirmation, weddings, sabbath time.  These were moments when it was easy to see God’s presence in our midst – times when it was easy to exclaim, like Peter, “It is good to be here!”

 

And in my report I also mention some of the valleys of 2022 – the loss of beloved members of our churches, the turmoil caused by the ongoing presence of Covid.

 

But I can be assured that God is present in these moments as well; and in any moment when God is with us, we can proclaim, “It is good to be here.” Whether we are on the mountaintop or in the deepest valley, we can proclaim, “It is good to be here!”  Our whole lives can become a song of praise to God who is always with us.

 

I say this frequently to the Official Board –at every meeting, I think – but I am so very grateful to be here at Two Rivers Pastoral Charge, working alongside all of you.  I don’t say this often enough, but I am so very grateful for all of you, and for your ministry and for your commitment to reflecting the face of Christ to the world around you.  Truly, truly I say, it is good to be here.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

"Choose Life. Choose Love." (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 12, 2022

Scripture:  Deuteronomy 30:11-20

(The Harper Collins strike that I mentioned in my last post has been resolved, and so I have resumed my normal practice of linking the bible reading from Bible Gateway, a site run by Zondervan, a Harper Collins imprint.)

 

 

I’m going to say something that may shock you.  I love the book of Deuteronomy.  (Though I think that I’ve said this here before, so it may not be as shocking to you as it would be to people who didn’t know me!)

 

Like Leviticus, which we’re reading in Bible Study right now, Deuteronomy can be a bit of a slog to get through if you try to read it from beginning to end – when I took a course on Deuteronomy at AST and part of our homework for the first week was to read the book, I chose to listen to it on my bible app to keep my eyes from glazing over and skipping over large chunks of it.  Most of the book is filled with a great long list of “thou shalt do this’s” and “thou shalt not to that’s” and it’s really easy for my eyes to start skipping around on the page.

 

There is also a lot of the book that is not in keeping with our 21^st Century worldview, which makes it challenging to read – we generally don’t believe in stoning people these days; and fathers aren’t paid for their daughters.

 

So with all of this, why do I love the book of Deuteronomy?  It’s definitely not because of stoning people, and it’s definitely not for its great plot.  I love this book because of where it stands in the overall story of the Old Testament.

 

Remember the story.  Remember that the Ancient Israelite people, the descendants of Jacob, were slaves in Egypt.  Remember that Moses encountered God in a burning bush in the middle of the desert.  Remember that God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand that Pharaoh “let my people go.”  Remember that after a whole host of plagues descended on the land, Pharaoh did let the people go.  Remember that God worked through Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea so that the people could cross over to safety and freedom.  Remember that Moses met with God on the top of Mount Sinai where God gave Moses the 10 Commandments and the rest of the law.  Remember that God guided the people through the desert wilderness, traveling with them like a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night.  Remember that God fed them there in the desert with manna and with quail, and that God made fresh drinking water flow from a rock for them.

 

Remember that for 40 years, God was with the people in the desert, feeding them, hydrating them, guiding them, and keeping them safe.

 

All of this is the prelude, the prologue to the book of Deuteronomy.

 

At this point in the story, the people have reached the Jordan River, and they are ready to cross over into the Promised Land – to cross over into the land that God had promised to their Ancestors – to cross over into a land that, in contrast to the desert, would be metaphorically flowing with milk and honey.

 

They are about to cross from a land of scarcity into a land of abundance, and God doesn’t want the people to forget the lessons that they have learned in their 40 years in the wilderness.  God doesn’t want them to forget that they depend on God for everything – for food, for water, for protection, for guidance.  Even though God’s provision will be less obvious in the promised land where it will seem like food just appears before them, it will still be God who makes the rains fall and the ground fertile and the seeds to germinate.  And God doesn’t want the people to forget this.

 

And so this is why the first 29 chapters of Deuteronomy consist of Moses reciting the law for a second time.  The people have done very well keeping their side of their covenant with God out in the desert, and so here is one final reminder of their obligations before crossing the river.

 

And here in Chapter 30 we come to God’s exhortation – choose life.  Out there in the desert, they had no choice but to choose to follow God, but once they cross the river, they will have a choice.  They will be able to choose to turn away from God and not face immediate starvation or thirst, but God wants them to know that choosing that pathway won’t allow them to flourish; won’t allow them to experience the fullness of life that God wants for them.

 

God wants them to choose to be in relationship with God, since that is the only way that we can flourish.  Here at the end of Deuteronomy, on the banks of the Jordan River, God pleads with them, “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying God, and holding fast to God, for that means life to you and length of days so that you may live in the land.”

 

And how do we choose life?  Well, Jesus gave us a pretty good summary of God’s law when he taught that the two most important commandments are to love God with our whole being, and to love our neighbours as we love ourselves.  When we choose this way of love, then we are choosing life.

 

And God tells us that all of this is in our reach – we don’t need to ascend to heaven or cross to the other side of the sea – instead this promise is in our mouth and in our hearts for us to claim.  The Holy Spirit is in each one of us, empowering us to choose God’s way of love and life.

 

Living in a time and a place of abundance as we do, it can be easy for us to forget that God is the source of all of that abundance. It is easy to take for granted that fresh water will continue to flow down the river.  It is easy to take for granted that we can walk into a grocery store and buy a carton milk.  It is easy to take for granted that when we take a breath in, oxygen will fill our lungs and pass into our blood.

 

I wonder if sometimes we face the same challenges as our ancient ancestors did, when they crossed into the promised land.  When there is abundance, we aren’t always able to see God as the source of that abundance.  Maybe we need a Deuteronomy movement – a reminder that even when we can’t immediately see it, God is the one who provides for us.

 

I wonder if I can take that one step further, and ponder whether or not we can use the past couple of years as a wilderness time, like our ancestors wandering in the desert.  I don’t know about you, but I find that I don’t take things for granted as much as I did 3 years ago.  I don’t take it for granted that we can gather together in this place and open our mouths – safely shielded by our masks – and sing together.  I don’t take it for granted that I can hop on an airplane to celebrate Christmas with my family.  I don’t take it for granted that the grocery store will have everything on my list.  And because I don’t take these things for granted, I find that I appreciate them all the more, and I give deep thanks to God for all of these everyday blessings.

 

And as we notice these things, God implores us:  Choose life.  Choose love.  Let the Holy Spirit turn our hearts to see God and to follow God’s ways.

 

And I think that God gives us Deuteronomy moments all through our lives to help to sustain us on the way.  We are given moments when we can pause; moments when we can remember; moments when we can choose the fullness of life and choose love; moments when we can choose to journey with God.  Moments when God jumps out at us and reminds us, “I’m here!”

 

For me, sometimes these moments come when I’m listening to a piece of music, or singing with a choir and the harmonies are just right.  Sometimes they come when I’m talking with someone and we are sharing from our hearts and I can sense the presence of the divine in the space between us.  One time, around this time of year when I was living in Halifax, I was given a reminder of God’s presence when I was sitting on the bus and there was a ledge that was about eye-level with where I was sitting, and someone had written in the fresh snow on the ledge, “Love > Fear.”

 

These moments, like the Ancient Israelite people pausing before crossing the river, cause me to pause and remember God’s presence with us, closer to us than our very breath; and they remind me of God pleading with us to choose the way of love and life.

 

We are coming close to the season of Lent, which will begin on Ash Wednesday, February 22 this year.  The theme that we are going to be following through Lent this year is Encountering Jesus.  In worship, we will be reading stories from the bible about people whose lives were changed by an encounter with Jesus.  At our Wednesday evening Lenten gatherings, we will have time to meditate and perhaps encounter Jesus ourselves.  And at the beginning of our worship services each week in Lent, there will be a space for all of us to share (in-person or online) times and places in the week before when we have noticed God present in the world around us.

 

So this is your 2-week notice to begin looking for those God-moments!  It’s an invitation to keep your eyes and your ears and your heart open for those times when God reminds you, “I’m here. I’m with you. I love you. Love the world.”

 

And together, we listen for God’s reminder, and then we choose the fullness of all that life has. And we choose love.

 

 

 

Crossing from a dry and barren desert

to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Choose life. Choose love.

Photo Credit:  orientalizing on Flickr

"Do Justice. Love Kindness. Walk Humbly." (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 29, 2023

Scripture:  Micah 6:1-8

(If you are a regular reader of my reflections, you may notice that the bible link this week takes you to a different website than usual. I learned this week that BibleGateway is owned by Zondervan, an imprint of Harper Collins Publisher, who have been on strike since November. I apologize for crossing the digital picket line in the past several months, and I will not be using BibleGateway until the strike is resolved.)

 

 

Micah was a prophet, and there are two things that are important to know about prophets.  The first is that prophets in every generation point people back to God and towards God’s way.  If you read the prophets we find in the Old Testament, many of them are concerned that the people are no longer following the commandments that God had given them.  They are concerned that resources aren’t being shared fairly, that widows and orphans and immigrants aren’t being cared for.  They are concerned that people are more concerned with material things than they are with God.  And so prophets are positioned so that they can both see what is going on and also see what God’s vision or plan for the world is, and then they have the courage to point out the discrepancy to people with power to make the change.

 

The same holds true for modern day prophets.  A couple of weeks ago, our neighbours in the US celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I think that he was a prophet.  He saw the racism and white supremacy in the world; he saw that racism and white supremacy aren’t in keeping with how God wants us to live in the world, and he spoke truth to power, even when that cost him his life.

 

So, if the first thing that we need to remember about prophets is that they point people back to God and back to God’s ways, the other thing that we need to know about prophets is that they were fond of a bit of drama to get their point across.  Many of them didn’t just use words, didn’t just put their message plainly, but they used actions or theatre to make their point.  Joshua commanded the sun to stay still in the sky; Elisha used a bow and arrow to make his point; Moses turned the Nile River to blood.  Possibly the most dramatic act – one that would get a modern-day prophet arrested for indecency – was Isaiah who walked around and preached naked for three years, trying to convey the urgency of his message that if people didn’t turn back to God, they would be carried into exile with nothing, not even the clothes on their back.

 

Micah wasn’t naked, but he did like his drama, and the reading that we heard this morning is structured as a courtroom drama.  God is bringing a lawsuit against the people, accusing them of not keeping the covenant that their ancestors had made with God.

 

The drama opens with the prophet serving as narrator, introducing the scene.  God is invited to present their case, with the mountains and hills as witnesses.

 

Then God presents their case – God has kept their side of the covenant since it was made with Abraham, bringing the people out of slavery in Egypt, giving them leaders in the form of Moses and Aaron and Miriam to keep them safe, working through a foreigner, Balaam, son of Boer, to protect them from King Balak of Moab as they wandered in the wilderness, and then seeing them safely across the Jordan River, crossing from Shittim to Gilgal.  Yet despite all God’s faithfulness, the people have stopped keeping their side of the covenant.

 

Then the Israelite people have a chance to respond, but instead of trying to argue with God, they plead guilty to all charges.  “Yes; you’re right; we have not kept our covenant promises! What do we need to do to make things right? What sacrifices to we need to make to restore our relationship with God?”  This is followed by an escalating list of possible offerings to repair the relationship. “Does God want burnt offerings of calves a year old?  Does God want a thousand rams to be sacrificed?  Does God want ten thousand rivers of the finest olive oil?  What about our firstborn children?  If we offer our firstborn children to God, will that restore our relationship?”

 

The drama ends with the voice of the prophet, sounding a bit like the voice of the judge.  “No, none of these things will restore your relationship.  I don’t need to tell you what God wants; you already know what God wants.  Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly with God.  That’s it – all the rest is just window dressing.  Without these actions that come from the heart, all of the sacrifices in the world would just be going through the motions.

 

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.  That’s it.  This sounds remarkably like Jesus’s summary of all of the law and the prophets together – love God with your whole being, and love your neighbour as you love yourself.

 

This also sounds remarkably like who God is like.  God does justice because God is justice.  God loves kindness and mercy because God is kindness and mercy.  And God is the one who desires to be in relationship with us; the one who is always calling us into relationship; the one who walks alongside us.  And so when we do what the prophet calls us to do, then we are becoming God-like; we are becoming the Body of Christ; we are continuing the work that Jesus began.

 

Which is beginning to sound a little bit like last week’s message – that we are called to allow ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into who God created us to be.

 

I have to confess that I struggled to come up with a conclusion to this sermon.  All of this is well and good if you are looking for a good story – there is a beginning, a middle, and an end, with a moral all wrapped up nicely with a bow in the form of a soundbite.

 

But this is a sermon rather than a story, and as my preaching professors used to hammer home to us, a sermon should be something more than a story, more than a lecture.  There has to be a “so what” to a sermon.

 

The “so what” in Micah’s time had to do with the Ancient Israelites straying away from the covenant that they had made with God – they had strayed away from their relationship with God, and as a result they weren’t treating each other well or treating God well.  And God wanted to give them a wake-up call that if they carried down that road, things weren’t going to go well for them. Justice, kindness, and humble relationship can be matters of life-and-death if they are missing.

 

And I can’t help but wonder if they might be a matter of life-and-death in our world today too.  You don’t have to look too far beyond the headlines to see places where justice, kindness, and humble relationship would make a difference in the world.

 

I think that a world with justice would be a world where no one was killed because of the colour of their skin.  It would be a world where the original inhabitants of a land have a say in how the land is used.  It would be a world where everyone, no matter where they live, would have access to health care for their physical, mental, and spiritual health.  It would be a world where there was a guaranteed livable income for everyone, where everyone had a safe shelter over their head at night, where everyone had clean water to drink, where everyone had access to the same rights and opportunities.

 

I think that a world governed by kindness would be a world where there was no such thing as homophobia or transphobia.  A world where no one was lonely.  A world where no one would go to bed hungry.  A world where no one of any age is bullied.  A world where no one has to go through any of the hard moments in life alone.

 

And how about the walking humbly with God?  I picture a world where everyone works together, reaching beyond the boundaries of religion and political affiliation to make the world a better place for everybody.  I picture a world where relationship is more important than who is right and who is wrong.  I picture a world where I want the best for all of my neighbours, and they want the best for me.  I picture a world where every single person is valued for who they are, and not for what they contribute.

 

And I do think that these things are life-and-death matters, with just as much urgency for us as they had for Micah’s original listeners.  What can we, as the church, do, to live with more justice, to love kindness more deeply, and to walk even more humbly with God?

 

For God has told us what they want from us.  And what does the Lord require from us, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.  May we all have ears to listen and hearts that are open to change.  Amen.

 

 

 

Image: “Damaged”

by elycefeliz on flickr

Used with permission.

 

What might repair the world?

Justice. Kindness. Walk humbly with God.

Fayne - Ann-Marie MacDonald (Book Review)

Let me begin this review by saying that Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books of all-time. My original copy (a Christmas present from my aunt when I was in grade 7) is currently held together by an elastic band, but I still choose to re-read that copy rather than the newer one I purchased a couple of decades ago.

Reading Fayne gave me a similar feeling to reading Jane Eyre. It was like reading a favourite book for the first time and discovering a new world. (And I also have to say that it was a delight looking for the Jane Eyre Easter Eggs in this book. The author has confirmed that the main character's name, Charlotte Bell, is a direct nod to the author of JE - if you know, you know! I won't say any more here as that may move into spoiler territory, but the Jane Eyre references made the unfolding of Fayne even more delightful to me.)

It has been a couple of years since I posted a book review on here, and even more years since I kept a dedicated book blog, but I had to write a review of this book. It was one of those books where, while I was reading it, the world of the book was more real to me than the world around me. I finished it 24 hours ago, and I am suffering from a severe book hangover at this point - I have two stacks of books in front of me to read, and I can't bear to pick any of them up for now.

My book reviewing skills feel rusty, but let me try to overview the story using journalistic prompts.
Who:  The Honourable Charlotte Bell and her family. It isn't a spoiler (since I have heard the author, Ann-Marie MacDonald share this information in interviews I've heard and at a book talk I attended) to say that Charlotte is born with intersex characteristics that shape the story of her life.
When:  1870s-1880s - a good Victorian Gothic era to be set in!
Where:  Fayne, an estate in the moors on the southern border of Scotland and/or the northern border of England, and Edinburgh. With brief sojourns in Italy and Boston.
What:  Family dynamics, Victorian medicine (espcially gynaecology), bird watching, geopolitical land disputes, feminism, queerness, fashion, magyk, bogs and moors.
Why:  Well, that is the whole point of the story, learning the motivations of each of the characters.

And as for the How, I think that was what I loved the most about this book. The structure of the book moves backwards and forwards through time, between Charlotte in the present day (1888) and the early married life of her parents, Mae and Henry, in the early 1870s. Information is gradually revealed to the reader (as it is gradually revealed to Charlotte) so that eventually the whole story of what happened felt like it landed in my lap fully formed.  It felt a bit slow to get going (though the vivid writing, descriptions of the moors, and Charlotte herself kept me engaged in the story), but momentum kept building and the more of it I read, the harder it was for me to put down.

Ann-Marie MacDonald is one of my auto-buy authors. I was excited when I heard last fall that she had a new book out, and even more excited when I got to attend a reading at the Saint John Public Library and get my copy autographed. I was saving it for after Christmas when I knew I would have more time to dive into it, and it didn't disappoint.

So, in a nutshell, Fayne is a queer, late-Victorian, Jane-Eyre-esque, gothic(ish) novel written by a master in her craft. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Now go out and read it, so that we can discuss it together!

"Change Your Hearts and Lives" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 22, 2023

Scripture:  Matthew 4:12-23

 

 

I want you to imagine what it must have been like for those first couple of disciples of Jesus – for Simon Peter, for Andrew, for James, and for John.  They were all fishermen, and at least in James and John’s case, they were sons of fishermen… and it’s quite likely that Peter and Andrew’s father was a fishermen too.

 

That was the only life they had ever known.  They had grown up next to the freshwater Sea of Galilee surrounded by nets and by boats and by the smell of fish.  Once they were old enough, their father would have taken them out on the boat and taught them to cast a net into the water, and when they weren’t out on the water, they would have been learning how to mend nets.  They likely learned at a young age all of the tricks of the trade to sell the fish that they caught – to barter in order to bring in enough coins to keep a roof over their family’s head, and likely also to pay the rent for the boat that they fished from.

 

If you flip forward a couple of chapters, you will find a story about Peter’s mother-in-law, so we know that at least one of this group of four was married.  Matthew and the other gospel writers don’t give us any other details about their families, who their spouses were, or whether they had any children.  I wonder if the four of them did have children who were now old enough so that their fathers had started to teach them about fishing, to begin to pass the family business on to the next generation.

 

And yet when Jesus shows up there on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and calls out to them, “Follow me,” we are told that immediately they left their nets and their boats and their families and followed Jesus.  Immediately.  No hesitation.  In an instant, the whole course of their life was changed.

 

I wonder what was going on in their hearts and their lives that caused such a sudden and dramatic change.

 

I’ve heard it suggested that there must have been something so powerfully attractive about Jesus that these fishermen would leave everything behind to follow.  Whether it was something in his eyes, or something in the way that he carried himself, or something in his voice – Peter, Andrew, James, and John weren’t able to do anything but obey and follow.

 

I’ve also heard it suggested that maybe they had reached the tipping point and they were ready to join the revolution.  Remember that they were living in a corner of the Roman Empire – the emperor in Rome determined how their lives were played out, and the emperor’s decisions were enforced by military power.  In the history of that part of the world, there had been revolution after revolution, all with the aim of overthrowing the Roman occupation of the land; and as we know from the history books, none of them had succeeded.

 

We heard in today’s reading that Jesus’s ministry began right after he got the news that John the Baptist had been arrested.  Was this Jesus’s tipping point?  John could no longer get the message out there, so now it was up to Jesus himself.  And maybe Peter, Andrew, James, and John had reached a similar tipping point, tired and frustrated at being on the bottom rung of a society, most of their money going to the emperor, and always at risk of going hungry or losing their home. And so when they heard rumours of this preacher proclaiming a new way for the world to be, they dropped everything to join the revolution.

 

I can hear the voices of the village aunties, echoing the refrain that is heard in every time and every place of war – “what a waste of five young and promising lives.”

 

But I also wonder if there might be a third explanation – something that goes beyond Jesus’s personal magnetism; something that goes beyond the promise of uprising and revolution.  Because when the Holy Spirit is working in our lives, sometimes the change is gradual, but sometimes the change is immediate and we know in the blink of an eye what we are called to do even when we can’t give any rational explanation for it.  And so I wonder if that radical and immediate change that we see in the lives of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, isn’t for any reason that we could explain, but it is rather because the Holy Spirit changed the entire course of their lives in that instant. After their encounter with Jesus, their lives would never be the same again.

 

Change and transformation are at the very heart of Jesus’s message.  This is the very beginning of Jesus’s public ministry.  Like I mentioned last week, one literary trick that the writers of the gospels employ is to use the first public words of Jesus to be a summary of his whole ministry in the gospel.  And here in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’s first public words are, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  In fact they aren’t just his opening words, but Matthew tells us plainly that this was the message that Jesus was preaching as he traveled around Galilee.

 

The word “repentance” is one of those churchy words that has been given a bad rap, mostly because it has been used in harmful and threatening ways – “Repent of what you have done, or else.”

 

But the Greek word that most English translators translate as “repent” has a very different meaning.  Or maybe I should say that the meaning of our English word “repent” or “repentance” has shifted over the centuries so that we have lost its original meaning.

 

The Greek word here is “metanoia” and it doesn’t mean to feel sorry, or to apologize, though that may be part of it.  Instead, metanoia is an action word, meaning to change your path.  I think that I’ve used this example before, but if you set out from here to drive to Moncton, but you find yourself in Lorneville, you are on the wrong road, and you are better to metanoia, you are better to repent, you are better to change your path right away, rather than waiting until you get to St. Andrew’s exit to do so.

 

When it comes to behaviour that isn’t in keeping with the way of Jesus, then yes, we maybe should feel sorry for what we have done, and if our actions have harmed another, then an apology is likely going to be part of our metanoia, part of our repentance; but if we keep on doing the thing, then it isn’t repentance, because repentance requires us to change our path.  On that road trip to Moncton, saying sorry as you pass the signs to Lorneville and not doing anything else isn’t going to get you on the right path to Moncton!

 

One translation of the bible that I like reading from, the Common English Bible, translates that word, metanoia, not as “repent” but instead as “change your heart and life”; and I think that in the 21^st Century, that maybe captures the meaning of the word better that “repent.”  “Change your hearts and your lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!”

 

And I think that Peter, Andrew, James, and John maybe give us the ultimate example of metanoia.  In that moment, their lives that were heading down one path, a path of fishing in the Sea of Galillee, has taken a sudden turn, and now they are literally following after Jesus.  The Holy Spirit has changed their hearts and their lives in an instant, in a way that we can’t explain in any rational way.

 

And maybe this is the metanoia, the repentance, the transformation that we are all continually being called to.  It may not be as spectacularly visible as the transformation of the fishermen in today’s story, but as we move through our lives, the Holy Spirit is always working within us, always transforming us, always nudging us this way and that so that as we move through life, our lives are aligned with who God created us to be, and with the way that Jesus shows us.

 

Ross drove over to Long Reach with me this morning, and in the car we were talking about the theme of today’s service; and in our conversation, we realized that one local example of metanoia here at Two Rivers Pastoral Charge is our Affirming Journey.  We were on this pathway going this direction as a welcoming congregation, but then the Holy Spirit nudged us in our journey – nudged us to expand our love, to become more welcoming and Affirming – so that now our path is taking us in this direction, more aligned with God’s expansive love.

 

The Holy Spirit is always transforming us, so that we might be channels of peace and of love, so that we might bring God’s healing power to the world, so that we might be hope-bearers, so that we might reflect the light of Christ into the shadows.

 

This is metanoia, this is aligning our path with the path we are called to follow, this is changing our hearts and our lives so that we might be Christ’s presence in the world.

 

Rather than a threat, I hear this as an invitation.  We are invited to change our hearts and our lives; for God’s world, God’s kingdom is at hand. It’s just around the corner, and we are invited to be a part of it!  O, Holy Spirit, come and transform us, so that we can be part of this new thing.  Amen.

 

 

“Sea of Galilee”
Photo by Michael Coyer on flickr

Used with Permission

"What Are You Looking For?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 15, 2022

Scripture Reading:  John 1:29-42

 

 

“What are you looking for?”

 

I remember one time when I was living in Tanzania, I was trying to find a house in the village 5km from the hospital to do a home visit.  I have very vague instructions – we live behind Daktari’s store – but in a place with no street names or house numbers, I wasn’t having any luck.  So I went in to Daktari’s store to ask for help.  “What are you looking for?” he asked.  When I said whose house I was looking for, he sent his assistant with me to take me right to the house.

 

“What are you looking for?”

 

I suspect that I’m not the only fan of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache books; and like many of her readers, I wish that the village of Three Pines was a real place.  In the world of the books, this is a village that is not found on any map, and people usually stumble across it by accident.  It is a village of good friends and good food.  Here is one of her descriptions of the village from the book A World of Curiosities: “Three Pines was a safe place, they’d declared. Not safe from hurt or pain. Not safe from illness or death. What the village in the valley offered was a place to heal. It offered company and companionship, in life and at the end of life. It offered a surefire cure for loneliness.”

 

“What are you looking for?”

 

There have been times in my life when I haven’t been able to name or describe the thing that I was looking for.  I think of the time in my late teens and early twenties when I was skirting on the edges of faith.  I wasn’t comfortable with where my life was at in that moment.  I was lonely.  I was feeling overwhelmed.  I didn’t really have a sense of purpose or direction in my life.  If someone had come up to me and asked me, “What are you looking for?” I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer… and maybe would have burst in to tears with the force and the implications of that question.

 

And so I ask, “What are YOU looking for?”

 

These are the very first words of Jesus in the gospel of John; and one trick that all four of the gospel writers use is putting extra significance on the first public words of Jesus.  These first public words of Jesus, even more than the opening words of the gospel itself, give us insight into what Jesus’s focus is going to be through the whole gospel story.  (And if you want to dig into Jesus’s first words in the gospel of Matthew, come back next week!)

 

Here, in John’s gospel, Jesus’s first words are, “What are you looking for?” followed almost immediately by “Come and see!”  Jesus, in John’s gospel, is most concerned with inviting people into relationship with him – inviting people to encounter God, and then transforming them into disciples, into people who follow the way of Jesus and live God’s love in the world.

 

Even when I wasn’t able to articulate what I was looking for, the invitation to come and see was still there for me.  And when I came, and when I encountered the overwhelming love of God – that was when I was able to articulate what I was looking for, what I was longing for – I was longing to know that I was loved, not for anything I had done or for anything that I hadn’t done, but simply because I was me.  And that is what I found when I answered the invitation to come and see.

 

And that invitation is for all of us.  Even when you aren’t able to name your deepest longings, the invitation to come to Jesus and see is there for you.  The invitation is there to seek the answers even when you don’t know what the question is.  The invitation is there to rest in God’s love and to allow yourself to be transformed by this love.

 

Because God’s love is transforming – God’s love meets us where we are, but doesn’t leave us where we are.  God’s love transforms us into the Body of Christ – we are literally made into new people by God’s love so that we can continue the work of Christ.

 

We start to see this at the end of the reading we heard today – Jesus invites Andrew to come and see, then Andrew became a follower, a disciple of Jesus.  Then Jesus himself didn’t need to invite Simon Peter – the invitation came from Andrew, acting as Christ, to come and see who he had found.

 

If we were to read beyond the passage we heard today, we would see this same pattern again – Jesus calls Philip to follow, then Philp invites Nathanael to “Come and see.”

 

And so I ask you again, “What are you looking for?”  What are the deepest longings of your heart?  What is it that you are seeking – that thing that is so important, so special, so sacred that you are maybe afraid to put it in to words?

 

And even if you aren’t able to put words to your longing, I invite you to “come and see.”  Come and see the face of Christ, as reflected by this community.  Come and know that you are beloved – know that you are deeply, deeply loved by God and by this community.  Come and rest in this love, for you are a beautiful, beloved Child of God.  And come and be transformed by this love – transformed into the image of Christ – transformed, not into someone different, but to be even more yourself, to be who God created you to be.

 

And when you are there, resting in Love, letting God’s love wash over you and flow through you, then it is our turn to be the ones inviting – it is our turn to be like Andrew and like Philip, inviting the people around us, the people in our lives, to come and see.

 

One of my favourite songs by U2 is “Window in the Skies,” and the chorus goes, “Oh, can’t you see what love has done? What it’s doing to me?”

 

We are transformed by love, and this transformation can be visible to the world around us.  “Oh, can’t you see what love has done and is doing to me?  Come and see what this love can do for you!”

 

 

 

“Yearning to Fly”

Tero Karppinen on flickr

Used with Permission