A while back, I was having a conversation with a friend that I was very close to during my seminary days. This friend has long since left the church. My friend asked me, “Dawn do you still believe in Jesus?” I remembered all the long conversations in seminary about believing in Jesus and at that very moment I had an epiphany of sorts. I hesitated to answer, because like all epiphanies, I recognized that if I let myself go to the place where my epiphany was pointing me to, I would be in very unfamiliar territory. My friend would not let me off the hook, “It’s a simple question Dawn. Do you still believe in Jesus?”
“No.” I said, and my friend smiled, the way she used to smile when she scored a point against me in some theological debate. My epiphany was shedding light on what could prove to be a painful reality. After all, from where my friend now sits, outside of the church and beyond all the church’s teachings, belief in Jesus is kind of a non-negotiable bottom line for a pastor. From her perspective, I ought to be able to give an unequivocal, “YES” to her question.
“No.” I said it again. “I do not believe in Jesus.”
My friend’s smile seemed to shine brighter than my epiphany. It was as if she was already celebrating my departure from the church. Before she could welcome me to the place where she now stands, outside the church, I said it again. “No, I do not believe in Jesus. But, ……….I do believe Jesus. I believe Jesus. I believe Jesus. I believe what Jesus said. I believe what Jesus said .I believe what Jesus taught. I believe that the way Jesus lived embodies a new way of being human. I believe Jesus when he says, “Do not be afraid.” I believe Jesus when he speaks about the MYSTERY that we call God. I believe Jesus when he insists that justice is worth dying for. I believe Jesus when he risks everything for the sake of his conviction that non-violent resistance is the way to achieve justice. I believe Jesus, the way he lived, the way he died, and the way he lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who follow his way of being human. I believe Jesus. I also believe that it doesn’t matter a whole hill of beans whether or not I or anybody else believes in Jesus. But it makes all the difference in the world and to the world that we believe Jesus, because at the core of who Jesus was and what Jesus taught is LOVE. LOVE God with all your heart, with, all your soul, and with all your mind and LOVE your neighbour as you LOVE yourself; this I believe is a way BEYOND the kind of humanity that is always being consumed by itself. This LOVE moves us in to a new way of being. I believe Jesus’ call to look beyond our selfish needs, our selfish desires, our self-self-centeredness, and to move beyond our fears, to LOVE.
A lot of water has flown under the bridge between believing in Jesus and simply believing Jesus. Now I realize that some people would say that they don’t see much difference between believing in and simply believing. Well that’s where the story of the Wedding at Cana is helpful. You see, so many people see the story about the Wedding at Cana as a miracle story; a story that proves Jesus is who people say he is. You either believe in Jesus or you don’t. You either believe in the fact that Jesus turned actual water into wine, or you don’t. You either believe in miracles or you don’t. Well, I believe the story of the Wedding at Cana, but I do not believe in miracles; at least not the kind of miracles that defy reality. I believe the story about Jesus turning water into wine. But I don’t believe that any water actually turned into wine. I believe the story, but I don’t believe that Jesus was some sort of super-natural being who instantaneously changed water into wine. I believe the story, because the story points to the truth.Continue reading →
My first conscious memory of hearing the BAT KOL, the Daughter of a Sound, the still small voice of DIVINITY happened on a sojourn into a Thin Place during a summer camping trip when I was just 13. My family had travelled to the west coast of Vancouver Island to what was back then, a mostly unknown treasure. Pachena Bay is by far one of the most beautiful places in all of creation. These days hikers on the Pacific Rim trail often begin or end their hike by camping at Pachena Bay. But way back then; the bay was only accessible by the most treacherous of logging roads. And there was no official campsite back then. You simply asked the members of the First Nation for permission to pitch your tents on their land. As a result of this splendid isolation, we spent several weeks as the only family camped in this idyllic bay.
One of the main attractions at Pachena Bay were the pods of whales that are attracted to the bay. Pachena Bay with its warm Pacific waters, heated even more by virtue of its shallow depths, attracted schools of salmon, ling cod and halibut, who make up a veritable smorgasbord for the pods of whales, that continue to visit the bay to this very day. One quiet afternoon my brother Alan and I were playing on the shore. Our parents were sound asleep when the whales arrived. I’m not sure how many whales entered the bay. Our count was based on the number of spouts that emanated from their blowholes. So, there could have been half a dozen or there could have been only one whale. Anyway, we did what any self-respecting kid would have done in our position. We jumped into the rubber dingy, and we paddled as fast as we could, determined to chase whales. Now, the dingy wasn’t totally inflated on account of the leak that it had sprung the day before. So, it made it difficult for us to work up much speed. But I must tell you, when that first whale jumped up out of the water, and we saw the tell-tale signs of those white patches on its side, we moved faster than you’d think two kids in a slowly deflating rubber dingy ought to be able to manage.
Killer whales. These days they are called orcas. But Alan and I, we knew exactly what they were, and they certainly weren’t beautiful orcas to us. They were big giant killer whales, and we knew that we were their lunch. Suddenly, one of those magnificent monsters rubbed up against the bottom of our dingy. I went headfirst into the ocean, and I sank like a stone. The underwater sight of two killer whales caused me to open my mouth to scream and water rushed into my lungs. I knew I was about to drown. That’s when I heard the small voice. It was a very quiet little voice deep down inside of me, at least I think it was inside of me. The small voice within my very soul said only one word “Swim.”
And swim we did all the way back to shore. When our heartbeats returned to normal, we decided that we’d made a clean escape and we chose not to share the adventure with our sleeping parents. As frightened as I was, I was determined to get close to these magnificent beasts. So, the next morning I rose early, and as the mist was rising over the water I paddled out toward the mouth of the bay and waited. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that I was in the presence of something much larger than myself. As a whale gently brushed the underside of the dingy, a strange calm came over me and I was not afraid. It was as if my whole being was alive. One of the whales rose out of the water and as she came crashing down, I marveled at the magnificence of this beast. After what seemed like hours but was probably just a few minutes, the whales moved on and I was left to clumsily put words onto the depth of my experiences, in what the ancient Celts would call a Thin Place; a place where the lines between the ordinary and the sacred are thin, and we can see, feel, touch, hear the MYSTERY which lies at the very heart of reality.
There’s a story in the Hebrew Scriptures which resonates with me in light of some of my own experiences in Thin Places, in the presence of MYSTERY. You’ll find it in the first Book of Kings. (1 Kings 19:1-12) It is about a prophet named Elijah, who was struggling to understand the will of the they knew as YHWH, the HEBREW name for the MYSTERY we call God, which can be translated as I AM, WHO AM or I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE or the GREAT I AM. Our HEBREW ancestors, JESUS’ very own kin, understood the MYSTERY which we call GOD, as the verb TO BE, for this MYSTERY IS BEING itself. Anyway, poor old Elijah suffered in his quest to bring the WORD of YHWH to his people and in the midst of his turmoil, Elijah was lost and fearing for his life. As the ancient storytellers weave their tail, Elijah was familiar with the voice of YHWH, so much so that he dared to argue with the voice.
One day, Elijah demanded of the voice, “I have been very zealous for YHWH God Omnipotent. The people of Israel have abandoned your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death by the sword. I am the only one left, and now they’re trying to kill me, too.” Elohim (that’s an ancient Hebrew word which we translate simply as God or Lord. The word literally translates as EL – the generic term for a god, put together with the feminine form of the word for “majesty” – so clearly “LORD” is not a correct translation for ELOHIM the God who is described as more than one QUEEN?) But I digress. “ELOHIM,” the GOD who is the feminine plural of MAJESTY, said to Elijah: “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of YHWEH, for YAHWEH is about to pass by.” Imagine the MYSTERY, which is the I AM, the very essence of BEING is about to pass by. Our Hebrew storyteller paints such a vivid picture of the Thin Place in which Elijah stands. “Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountain apart and shattered the rocks by YHWEH’s power—but YHWH was not in the whirlwind. After the wind there was an earthquake—but YHWH was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire—but YHWH was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still small voice.”
“A still small voice.” Our English translations do not do the HEBREW justice. For after the fire came a BAT KOL. BAT KOL, the DAUGHTER OF A SOUND or as some translations put it the DAUGHTER OF A VOICE. ELOHIM the MYSTERY which IS the god known by our ancestors as the GOD who IS the feminine plural of MAJESTY, the ONE Elijah knew as YHWH, the ONE who IS the verb TO BE, the I AM, this ONE comes to Elijah in the DAUGHTER OF A SOUND.Continue reading →
While he was dying of cancer, American poet and short story writer Raymond Carver, penned a poem which, although it is but a fragment of a poem, it has the power to move me into the deepest part of my very self. This poem would eventually be titled, “Late Fragment”
“And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
Carver’s fragment, offered as he lay dying, is a tantalizing broken piece which is almost completely whole. Some may doubt the power of fragments to heal us. I don’t. I’m convinced that my life, and I suspect your lives are often made whole by fragments; broken pieces barely recognizable, but when we see them, really see them, they have the power to make us whole.
Today, the last Sunday of the Easter season, I want to give you some powerful fragments. For weeks now we have been celebrating resurrection. Not the physical resuscitation of a corpse kind of resurrection for we know only full well the power of medicine to bring corpses back to life. Alas, resuscitation of a corpse doesn’t necessary lead to resurrection. Even though the resuscitated live again, their life is not always one of resurrection and they too must die. Our celebration of resurrection is about awakening to life, new life, fuller life, abundant life, life with an eternal quality.
As I look back to the fragments left to us by our ancestors, I long to see the promise of the Risen CHRIST. Among the broken bits of history, I catch a fleeting glimpse of Mary, the one who in the early morning light, through her tears of grief, was able to see the face of CHRIST in a gardener. Mary, this migdal, this first Apostle whose ability to see CHRIST, resurrected her from the grief and torment of death to life as the Apostle to the Apostle, where she stood as a tower, a migdal in Hebrew, a tower, head and shoulders above the rest of the first fledgling followers of Jesus’ way of being in the world. Dubbed Mary Magdalene by the men who would reduce her legacy to that of prostitute and relegate the fragments of her story to the margins, despite the absence of evidence for their convictions. Sifting through the dispersed fragments of her story, a new story rises up. A story slowly and painstakingly being resurrected by those whose hope is found not in CHRIST ascending to the clouds, but in CHRIST rising up from the Earth itself to live and love here and now. In the fragments, of the Gospel which bears her name new life arises as herstory is pieced together.
From the tattered remains of Mary’s reputation, her accusers can be easily dismissed once and for all. Mary a woman described in the canon of the gospels as “a sinner from the city,” who discovers healing in Jesus company, is set free by the fragments of her own gospel, which for too long now has been set aside by those who would rather bury her witness. Although the author of the gospel attributed to Mary is unknown, this gospel story resurrects the Migdal restoring her relationship as the Tower who stood at Jesus’ right hand, remained faithful to her beloved Jesus while others abandoned him, followed Jesus beyond the cross to the tomb and was able to see that not even the forces of Empire could destroy the CHRIST which she saw, which she experienced in Jesus.
Mary the Migdal, who from the moment she was able to see the face of CHRIST in a gardener, went forth to proclaim the power of resurrection. Mary proclaimed, “I have seen the CHRIST” and sifting through the fragments of herstory, we too can see the CHRIST, in words her followers attributed to Mary, words which continue to offer hope, “Do not weep and be distressed nor let your hearts be troubled. For CHRIST’s grace will be with you all and will shelter you. Rather we should praise CHRIST’s greatness, for CHRIST has joined us together and made us fully human.”
Mary saw the risen CHRIST in the face of a gardener. Mary understood Jesus’ practice of referring to himself as the “Fully Human ONE”. The title “Fully Human ONE” comes from the Greek – gios tou anthrópou – which translators have been rendering as the “Son of Man”. Son of Man is not, I repeat, not an adequate translation of this important phrase which according to the gospels that did make the biblical canon, Jesus used to describe himself 81 times: gios tou anthropou Anthroupou or Anthropos – we get our English word anthropology from the same root. It does not mean man! It means human. There is a perfectly good Greek word that is used in the New Testament for man – that word is “aner”. The anonymous writers of the gospels deliberately did not translate Jesus’ Aramaic sayings into Greek using the word for “man”. Instead, some 81 times they chose instead, the Greek word for human which includes both males and females. We can only guess why the English translators failed to be so inclusive. Some of us have paid the price for their failure. All of us have missed the incredible, radical meaning of Jesus’ declaration that he is the HUMAN ONE. The Gospel of Mary spells out this tragedy in detail. The Gospel of Mary points us toward Jesus’ vision for a new way of being human. The contemplative scholar Cynthia Bourgeault translates gios tou anthropou so beautifully into English as, “Fully Human”. In the Gospel of Mary, we encounter Jesus as the FULLY HUMAN ONE whose embodiment of the CHRIST provides a vision of the transformation or the evolution of women and men into a new way of being human which transcends gender, a way of being in which we become FULLY HUMAN. As FULLY HUMAN as we can begin to recognize as Jesus did, our ONENESS with the DIVINE; as when Jesus says, “I and ABBA are ONE.”
This ONENESS with the DIVINE ought to open us to the reality that because we live and move and have our being in the DIVINE, the DIVINE is everywhere, for every THING is in the DIVINE. Embracing our FULL HUMANIY, we embrace the CHRIST which lives in, with, through, and beyond us. In the Gospel of Mary, we can begin to see a vision of what it means to follow Jesus into a new Way of Being in which we recognize Jesus as the CHRIST, but more importantly we begin to recognize CHRIST in one another. Perhaps when we begin to share Mary’s faith that the risen CHRIST can be seen, we will begin to see the face of CHRIST in those around us; in faces of the strangers we meet on the road, in the face of the homeless man as we sit and share a meal with him, in the face of a child we reach out to lift up out of poverty, in faces the women upon whose shoulders we stand, in the faces of our opponents as together we struggle for understanding, in the faces of our enemies as we begin to work for peace, in the faces of our tormentors as we strive for justice, in the faces of the sick as we seek healing, and in the faces of the poor as we offer aid, compassion, and justice. When we can look into the faces of those we meet and see the face of Christ, then perhaps we can follow in the footsteps of Mary the Migdal, the TOWER, and all the world will know by our LOVE, that we too follow CHRIST. St. Mary the Migdal, the Tower, the first Apostle, the Apostle to the Apostles, the ONE to whom the RISEN CHRIST entrusts the good news. May the power of Mary’s witness inspire us to live into our FULL HUMANITY so that we can begin to see the CHRIST in every thing and every ONE. From the fragments arise a way of being in the world, which seeks not an escape from life in the world, nor a passport into the next life, but an embrace of our FULL HUMANITY.
“And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
In the fragments of herstory, let us find a Way to see CHRIST who is the embodiment of the LOVE which is DIVINITY in the face of every ONE and every THING so that ONE with CHRIST we, you and I might be LOVE the world. Feel yourself as beloved, here and now on the Earth, loved by the ONE who is our LOVER, BELOVED, and LOVE HESELF. Amen.
I must confess that I have never found the image of the cross to be a compelling symbol. Not even an empty cross can disguise the ugliness of this implement of torture and execution. So, Good Friday’s use of the cross to summon up images of Jesus’ passion leave me cold. There’s more than enough horror and sorrow in the stories handed down to us without resorting to the instrument of Jesus’ execution. When I think back upon the executions of compassionate heroes like Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, I cannot imagine using the pistols with which they were shot to illustrate their compassion. The forces of Empire used crucifixion to terrorize people. Historians tell us that there would have been hundreds of corpses rotting on trees outside many of the conquered cities of the Empire. That the instrument used to inflict terror should have become the symbol of Jesus who embodied a Way of resisting persecution which refused to take up the sword is a bit like using a suicide vest as the symbol for United Nations Peacekeepers.
The symbol of the cross on Good Friday always reminds me of how I felt the very first time I visited Rome. I remember thinking how odd it was that a non-violent, revolutionary, peasant from Galilee should have inspired the creation of the fortress-like Vatican complex. I was doing the obligatory tour of St. Peter’s Basilica and I was beginning to believe that Rome held no treasures that I wanted to see, when out of the corner of my eye, tucked away to side of the main entrance, I caught a glimpse of a marble statue. At the time, I knew little or nothing about art and if the truth be told, I was growing weary of the endless cathedrals and museums, so it’s no wonder I missed the marble on my way into the Basilica. There was something about the image that drew me in. I overheard one of the guides tell her group that the sculpture was created by Michelangelo when he was just 24 years old. At the time, I was barely 20 and I could not imagine the skill of the artist who was able to capture an image of everything I had ever imagined about the tragedy of Jesus’ death.
The Pieta, somehow the English translation, The Pity, just doesn’t capture the passion which is depicted in Mary’s cradling of her tortured son. We’ve devalued the word pity. The word pity means, the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others. The Pieta, The Pity, The Compassion, The Commiseration, The Condolence, The Sympathy these are all different ways of saying, the tender act or of sharing the pain of another. Compared to the coldness of the cross, The Pieta’s delicate portrayal of the death of Jesus inspires such compassion in me. The kind of compassion that I can well imagine oozed from Mary’s being as she tenderly held her son.
It is not easy to gaze upon The Pieta, there is nothing easy in that marble likeness of suffering. If you let it, The Pieta will reduce you to tears. Mary’s compassion was not easily given. It took courage to stand at the foot of the cross. It took courage to linger. It took courage to tend to the needs of her fallen child. The kind of compassion that our world needs now. It is not easy to see what is happening in the world. If we let it, it will reduce us to tears. Maybe we do need a cross to symbolize suffering. Maybe the true horror of Jesus something needs to be looked at for what it is, so that we can begin to summon up the courage we need to be LOVE in the world.
On this Good Friday it is the compassion of a loving mother that gives me hope. When so many people are suffering and dying, it is the tender embrace of one human being of another that gives me hope. All over the world The Pieta is embodied in the compassion of health-care workers, who day after day, don inadequate protective gear to tend the sick and the dying. The passion of Jesus lives and moves and has being in everyone who summons up the compassion that lives in them to tend to the needs of others. On this particularly, dark Good Friday, when we long for the release which resurrection brings may we find hope in the compassion that lives and breathes in with through and beyond every, nurse, doctor, orderly, chaplain, cleaner, cook, first-responder, scientist, and physical-distancer.
I can well imagine the tears Mary shed over Jesus; before and after his death. I can also imagine the tears that are being shed all over the world on this Good Friday. May the ONE who IS LOVE, continue to live, and breathe, in us, through us, and beyond us, so that together we can nurse our world back to health. Every Good Friday, I make a point of reminding people that Christ dies over and over and over again, each and every day.
Let us not forget that CHRIST rises over and over and over again, each and every day. In every act of compassion, LOVE is born again, and again, and again. May we always remember to look for those Pieta moments, for in those acts of compassion we can be assured that the darkness shall never overcome us. This too shall pass, and when it does, let it be said of us, that in us the passion of CHRIST lives and moves and has being. Now and always. But for now, let us keep watch and wait. Let us reach beyond our fear. Let us be the passion of CHIRST. Amen.
The songs/hymns we sing in worship continue to shape us. Nobody goes home humming the sermon. We can preach until we are blue in the face only to have our efforts contradicted by an old favourite hymn that re-inscribes an old theology and perpetuates doctrines we no longer teach. So, I for one, am always on the lookout for new songs to sing during worship. My latest find is a new collection that has just been released by The Hymn society of the U.S. and Canada: “Songs for the Holy Other: Hymns Affirming the LGBTQIA2S+ Community.” The collection contains 48 songs for congregational use.
GOOD NEWS this collection is a free download – in exchange for your email address! Follow this link – Hymn Society
Christ is Risen!Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! During the Easter season we punctuate our celebration of resurrection by declaring that, “Christ is risen!” and sometimes I wonder if our liturgical utterances of resurrection are in danger of becoming the last gasps of a Church that is all but dead. Are we who gather in churches on a Sunday morning members of a church that is the living body of the risen Christ or are we mourners at the funeral of a religion that died in the last century because it did not have the stamina for 21st century?
As congregations shrink, churches close, and the few mourners who are left insist upon preserving what’s left of the corpse, the season of Easter, designed to celebrate resurrection, is in danger of becoming the church’s final attempt at denying the corpse of Christianity. Generations to come may look back upon this critical time in the church’s life and pronounce that resurrection itself was the cause of the church’s death. While worshipers remained fixated upon the physical resuscitation of Jesus’ corpse determined to defend the doctrines of the church, the life-blood of the body of Christ slipped away, no longer able to congeal around the idea of a deity so small that “HE” could only be worshipped by those who could narrow their thinking so that it could fit into the boxes created by the need to suspend everything they have learned about the nature of reality.
Gathering around the ancient stories of resurrection, those who sought to save the church could not agree on the treatment necessary to save the church. While some insisted that a good dose of biblical literalism was the only way to save Christianity, others advocated for a more radical treatment, one that took on board all that we have learned about the cosmos and what it means to be human. Still others looked to more nuanced forms of treatment and reached into the long traditions of the church which have always worked wonders in the past; traditions that honoured the human need for reason while they still managed to encompass the unfolding mysteries of the cosmos. While the theologians, priests, laypeople, hierarchy’s, would be evangelists, charlatans, worshippers, seekers, and philosophers, tended to the perceived needs of the church, the members of the Body slipped away to seek nourishment and healing elsewhere; leaving the patient to die a slow and laborious death. Oh there are a faithful few, huddling around the corpse doing their damnedest to resuscitate the corpse of Christianity. But life has long since left the patient. All that is left are the mourners who simply cannot believe that their beloved is dead. But like all deaths, life goes on, and the world scarcely notices all that has been lost. Some of us, hang around, finding solace in one another, remembering the good old days, longing for the future we had hoped to see.
When some folk return from the empty tomb that the church became, to tell us that Christ is not there, that Christ is risen. Dare we even begin to imagine that the one place we expected to find Christ is empty? Can it be true? Can Christ have escaped the empty tomb we call the church? Or, is this just one more idle tale?Continue reading →
This time last year I was in Belfast. Many of you know that I lived in Belfast when I was a child. When I visit Belfast, I always stay in the part of the city that is known as the Cathedral District. From there you easily get around to most of the attractions that Belfast has to offer. Sure, there are plenty of tourist attractions in the Cathedral District but the real attractions are the pubs in this splendid part of Belfast. Trust me I’ve walked, some would say crawled, to some of the best pubs in Belfast. Which is not surprising because you see, I do come from a long line of pub-crawlers. My Grandad was a legendary pub-crawler. Grandda loved a wee dander about, as long as that dander took him to either a pub to the dogs. Fortunately, for Grandda there was always a pub at or near the dog racing tracks. So, when I wander the streets of Belfast city, I do so haunted by images of my Grandda all done up in his best, walking with such purpose and determination at first and then with a little less of a sense of direction as he crawled the pubs. Grandda has been dead for almost 40 years but in Belfast I can still see him in all his old haunts. So, when I’m in Belfast, every pub I go into, I enter with expectation and I wonder what it must have been like when me Grandda came in here. Sometimes I actually see my me Grandda. I know he is long dead and gone. I know that he can’t possibly be there. But I can’t help myself, the feelings are so overwhelming.
We don’t really have a word in the English language that captures the emotion that I feel when I walk the streets of Belfast. There is a word that I learned a long time ago, it is a Portuguese word: “saudade.” Saudade doesn’t actually translate into English. The best translation of saudade that I have ever come across is, the presence of an absence….the presence through absence. It doesn’t appear to make any sense. How can you experience presence through absence? Something is either present or it is absent. And yet, if you speak to anyone who has ever lost someone they love and they will tell you that that person’s absence is so intense that they can actually feel them, right here, deep inside.
When a mother loses a child, the pain of that absence is so intense that she can feel the child she carried in her belly right here, inside. When a lover loses their beloved, the pain of that loss is so intense that the lost love is felt here, right her deep inside. When someone we love is gone, they are still here. We see them here there and everywhere. We catch glimpses of them on the streets. Sometimes we shake our heads knowing that what we see can’t be real, and yet we know it’s real. A loved one’s absence can be very present. Saudade, through the absence we feel a presence. Saudade.
Now I suspect that some of you are thinking and why wouldn’t you, it is Easter after all, so some of you are thinking, “Aha, I get it…this is this progressive preacher’s way of explaining the resurrection.” Pretty good ha??? Well know, there might have been a time when I would have tried to explain the anonymous gospel-story-tellers’ accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. I am after all a progressive Christian pastor, and you are all enlightened 21 century people, with a pretty clear understanding of reality. There may be one or two of you who believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead. But I’m guessing that most of us don’t hang our Christianity on the concept of the physical resuscitation of a corpse.
As for this preacher, I’m with the Apostle Paul when it comes to the resurrection. Questions about the nature of the resurrection were annoying to Paul. So much so that the Apostle Paul used pretty strong language in his letter to the church at Corinth, “Perhaps someone will ask, “How are the dead to be raised up? What kind of body will they have? What a stupid question!” Like the Apostle Paul, my faith in the reality of resurrection does not hinge on the physical resuscitation of a corpse. “The sun has one kind of brightness, the moon another, and the stars another. And star differs from star in brightness. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is a perishable body, what is raised is incorruptible. What is sown is ignoble, what is raised is glorious. Weakness is sown, strength is raised up. A natural body is sown, and a spiritual body is raised up. If there is a natural body, then there is also a spiritual body.” So says the earliest explanation we have of Jesus’ resurrection.
Saudade is not my way of trying to explain the stories of Jesus resurrection. Saudade is my way of describing what it feels like to be a progressive Christian during Holy Week. After abandoning the notion that the DIVINE source of all that IS is actually some sort of far-away person in the heavens, who orchestrated the life and the execution of a person purported to be “His only begotten Son, begotten not made,” via an execution so vile that we shouldn’t even begin to contemplate it lest we tremble, tremble, tremble; well once you come out of the closet as a 21stcentury progressive Christian, Holy Week is like a saudade festival!Continue reading →
Two images have vied for my attention this week. The first image resembles the shadowy figure on your bulletin cover. It’s the image of a person sitting atop a donkey heading toward what must be Jerusalem. It’s not surprising that a preacher should be preoccupied with such an image leading up to Palm Sunday. But the second image came as a surprise to me. I suspect that most of you have seen the photograph of the black-hole that was generated by astronomers. At least, I think it was a photograph of a black-hole. The truth is, I’m not really sure. I’m not sure what a black hole is. I can tell you what has been reported. Apparently, eight telescopes across five continents joined together for a project known as the Event Horizon to collect the data that generated the image of the black hole at the center of the galaxy called Messier 87. The blurry orange doughnut shape that has flashed across our various screens and devices, is reported to be a black hole that is 55 million light-years away from Earth. That means that the photograph we’ve all been staring is of what this black-hole looked like 55 million years ago.
Now, I confess that I’ve read several definitions and descriptions of black holes and I’m still not sure exactly what they are. Black holes are created when a star collapses and nothing not even light can escape from a black hole. According to the experts, “A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole.” I have no idea what “they” mean when “they” say that, “spacetime” is deformed. I’d never heard of “spacetime” until Wednesday. But, as this particular black hole is 55 million light years away from here, I don’t plan to worry about what it means to fuse the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time to form a single four-dimensional continuum of “spacetime.”
I confess that when I juxtapose the image of a blackhole with the shadowy image of Jesus riding a donkey, I’m not entirely sure that the image of Jesus can escape from the blackhole into which his story has been tossed. I can’t help imagining the image of Jesus on his donkey moving perilously close to the event horizon of the black hole. The event horizon is the outer ring of that makes the black hole visible. “They” say that, in theory the event horizon is a region in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In reality, the story of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem has been warped over time into some sort of theological nightmare that casts us all in a sadomasochistic tragedy of cosmic proportions, that is rapidly losing its ability to affect the average 21stcentury observer.
Attempting to see beyond a miss-remembered Jesus is like looking through the opaque lens of a black hole. Is it any wonder that we have created such dark images of the Divine MYSTERY that we call god when those images are based on our miss-rememberings of the life and death of Jesus?
The Church’s Holy Week commemorations warp Jesus’ journey into Jerusalem with talk of a “sacrifice for sin” that has trained generations to view Jesus’ execution as some sort of cosmic bargain, dreamed up by a maniacal sky-god determined to exact payment for a multitude of sins. This quid-pro-quo view of crucifixion casts the radical, justice-seeking, revolutionary-thinking, subversive Jesus in the role that seems to forsake everything Jesus lived for. Replacing Jesus of Nazareth with a warped image of a suicidal victim of an angry, judgemental, vengeful god who leaves his only begotten son to dangle upon a cross, distorts not only our view of Jesus, but obliterates the image of Jesus’ vision of a loving Abba-God in ways that make it almost impossible to see beyond the blood dripping from the cross upon which Jesus’ was executed by the abuses of empire.
I wonder what Jesus of Nazareth would make of the god we have created from our distorted images. What kind of petty, sadistic god would engineer the birth of, foster the life of, and then engineer the death of a beloved child? Surely such a god is no more than a wicked illusion of our own making. I wonder what Jesus would make of our Holy Week commemorations. I suspect that if Jesus is anything like the accounts of his life suggest, or his teachings imply, then Jesus would be mortified. I do mean that literally…I think that Jesus would be mortified…mortified which actually means “shamed to death” … Jesus would be shamed to death by what has become of his life’s passion. For if Jesus’ was passionate about anything, it was not about dying as some sort of sacrifice; Jesus was passionate about life.Continue reading →
During Lent we are exploring the various ways in which the work of LOVE is accomplished. Each Sunday in Lent we will view and reflect upon a video that tells a story of LOVE’s embodiment in the world. Revolutionary LOVE calls us to love, others, love our opponents, love the Earth, love ourselves and thereby LOVE the MYSTERY that we call God.
Today, Rabbi Sharon Brous’ TEDtalk: “It’s time to reclaim religion” holds a paradox in tension: “I am dust and ashes.” and “For me the world was created.” Watch the video and remind yourself that you are dust and ashes and for you the world was created. Then watch our reflections upon Rabbi Brous’ reclamation of religion from the dual scourge of extremism and routinism.
During Lent we are exploring the various ways in which the work of LOVE is accomplished. Each Sunday in Lent we will view and reflect upon a video that tells a story of LOVE’s embodiment in the world. Revolutionary LOVE calls us to love, others, love our opponents, love the Earth, love ourselves and thereby LOVE the MYSTERY that we call God.
Today, Valarie Kaur’s TEDtalk: “3 Lessons of revolutionary love in a time of rage” portrays the embodiment of LOVE in the life of a social activist, lawyer, filmmaker, Sikh, and mother, who envisions a world where LOVE is a public ethic.
First view Valarie Kaur’s empowering talk, then our reflections can be viewed in the video below. Then contemplate Valarie’s questions:
“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?” What if our future is not dead but still waiting to be born?”
Well, congratulations, it has happened again, for the fourth year in a row a miraculous truth has been revealed. So, let me take this opportunity to congratulate each and every member of this beloved community on this day, as I deliver the good news that we dear sisters and brothers, we have won the lottery! Let’s take a moment to rejoice and be glad in this marvelous news! So, how does it feel to know that we have won the lottery? That’s right my friends, for the fourth year in a row Canada has been ranked the number 1 country in the world for quality of life.
How many of you were born here in Canada? Congratulations, by happy accident you won the big lottery. You were born and have the great pleasure of living in the best country in the world when it comes to quality of life. How many of you, like me immigrated to Canada? Congratulations, you or your family came to the one place in the world that continues to be ranked number 1 in quality of life. Congratulations everyone because we all have the privilege of living in Canada, not only is Canada #1 in quality of life, but we have also been ranked as the second-best country in the world to live; second only to Switzerland. What a privilege it is to be us! First in quality of life and second over-all in terms of the best country. Apparently, we have the best job market, and the most stable and affordable economy in the world! We are the most family friendly, best income equality, most politically stable, and the safest place in the whole wide world. We have a well-developed public education system and public heal system. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, you and I live in a country that has the best quality of life on the whole freaking planet!
What a privilege it is to be us! Good News! In case you’re interested our friends to the south are ranked as #17 in the world when it comes to quality of life!!! We’re number 1, they are number 17. When it comes to quality of life, we won the lottery!
Today, in your hearing, Today the Good News is that we enjoy the great privilege of living in a place where the quality of life is second to none! Surely, all your hopes and dreams have been fulfilled! Perspective is a curious thing. From where we sit, this good news is often drowned out by the sound of our belly-aching. Oh, woe is me, woe is me, woe is me. There is so very much to complain about. If only we could escape this or that. If only we could free ourselves from this or that. If only there was less of this or less of that. If only we could have more of this or more of that. Woe is me, woe is me, woe is me. Is it any wonder that our response to the gospel, to the Good News that Jesus proclaims is so very muted?
We listen to the gospel account of Jesus proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to those who are held captive, recovery of sight to those who are blind, and release to those in prison and we tend to think one of two things. Either we identify ourselves as one of the categories of people Jesus is setting free, or we wonder what that kind of freedom might mean to our position of privilege. All too often, we see ourselves as the ones who need liberating. I mean poor, poor pitiful me, right? We are enslaved to the system, right? Set us free from the day to day grind! Release us from our debts! TODAY!
Rarely do we see ourselves as the oppressors. If we are living in the number one country in the world for quality of life, how exactly did that happen? The system that is in place, the system that guarantees our privilege exacts a huge cost from the places that don’t enjoy such quality of life. We all know that the rich are rich at the cost of the poor. So, today, who needs liberating from who?
How quickly we move from release the captives to wait a minute those captives need to stay exactly where they. Those prisoners are far too dangerous to the status quo. Freedom ain’t worth it, not if I have to lose my stuff, not if I have to give up my privilege. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose and I’ve got plenty to lose.
Slow down Jesus, wait just a minute. After all is said and done, our security, our status, our quality of life depends on maintain the status quo. No wonder Jesus’ homies tried to toss him off a cliff; good news my……you fill in the blank. I suspect that we, like everyone who has ever lived find it easier to see ourselves as the poor, the blind or the captive. Humans by our very nature always want more than we have; always looking for some kind of saviour who can make things better for us.
Today we hear Jesus’ deliver good news not to privileged people like us. Jesus marches into the synagogue at a time with his people are suffering terribly under the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire and speaks words from the sacred scriptures that encapsulate their longings to be free and has the audacity to say: “TODAY!!” Today you are free!
Jesus challenges the way in which his people see themselves. Today, you already have it all. Today, you are rich. Today, you can see. Today, you are free. Today, your debts are cleared. TODAY! You don’t need a saviour! You don’t need a messiah! TODAY! You have it all. TODAY, it is time to stop looking back at the problems of yesterday or looking forward in fear of tomorrow. All that you have is Today and today is all you need to be free. By virtue of being alive you are already blessed beyond belief. If Jesus can proclaim this gospel to a suffering people, what might this good news mean for you and I, who are enjoying a quality of life that is second to none? Today, by virtue of being alive, we are blessed beyond belief. Today, we can see if we but open our eyes to see – there’ no need to be blinded by our past, or to let our fear of the future obscure our view of the fullness of life that surrounds us. Today we are free. We don’t need a saviour. Today the burdens that have been laid upon us by the systems of the past are declared null and void and we are free – that’s what jubilee is all about: freedom. Freedom to live in the moment. No longer in debt to the past or held captive to our insecurities, or blind to reality, for we are free today! No longer searching for a saviour, or a religious system to save us. Free to live and love today.
The Good News that Jesus is declaring is not the creation of yet another religious system, but the amazing reality that we are free Today, to live and to love. Free to embrace the richness of life. Freedom from all that blinds us to the beauty that surrounds us. Freedom from our fear of the future. Freedom from the captivity of the systems which entrap us and hold us prisoners. Freedom to forge new pathways. Freedom to embody all that we are, freedom to be reflections of the ONE who made us. Freedom to imagine justice. Freedom to dare to create peace. Freedom to give it all away. Freedom to set the captives free and release the debts of those whose indebtedness assures our privilege.
Today, I am reminded of all those African American Spirituals; the songs that were sung by people who were enslaved. Those spirituals were sung at great risk to the singers. If their oppressors caught wind of what the salves were singing, the punishments were severe. So, the singers often used a sort of code that only the enslaved understood. Words were used to express African American hopes for freedom. Swing low sweet chariot, isn’t just an illusion to a bible verse, it’s a description of liberation, a way to say freedom is coming. That sweet chariot was the underground railroad.
One of the words or illusions that was used in these spirituals is heaven. Does anybody know what the word heaven was code for? Heaven meant freedom and for the African American slave, freedom was Canada! Comin’ for to carry me home.. Come take me to freedom in Canada… I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? I looked over the Mississippi River, or the Ohio River and what did I see? A band of angels…the workers of the underground railroad, Coming after me…helping to reach Canada Next time you hear…over Jordan…think over the border to Canada, to freedom. Over Jordon, heaven, home, all meant Canada because Canada meant freedom.
Congratulations beloved community, for today the good news is we are home, we are free. Free to be a beacon of hope for all those who seek freedom. For if we cannot see our way clear to respond to the incredible reality of our great privilege by freeing others, then it is we who are enslaving ourselves. The truth is we can be held captive by our privilege, or we can use our privilege to free those who are being held captive for the sake of our privilege. Today, Wade in the Water, take the river of this sweet life over Jordan, to our home faraway and come home to our lord and be free. Free to be the LOVE that is MYSTERY.
A while back, I was having a conversation with a friend that I was very close to during my seminary days. This friend has long since left the church. My friend asked me, “Dawn do you still believe in Jesus?” I remembered all the long conversations in seminary about believing in Jesus and at that very moment I had an epiphany of sorts. I hesitated to answer, because like all epiphanies, I recognized that if I let myself go to the place where my epiphany was pointing me to, I would be in very unfamiliar territory. My friend would not let me off the hook, “It’s a simple question Dawn. Do you still believe in Jesus?”
“No.” I said, and my friend smiled, the way she used to smile when she scored a point against me in some theological debate. My epiphany was shedding light on what could prove to be a painful reality. After all, from where my friend now sits, outside of the church and beyond all the church’s teachings, belief in Jesus is kind of a non-negotiable bottom line for a pastor. From her perspective, I ought to be able to give an unequivocal, “YES” to her question.
“No.” I said it again. “I do not believe in Jesus.”
My friend’s smile seemed to shine brighter than my epiphany. It was as if she was already celebrating my departure from the church. Before she could welcome me to the place where she now stands, outside the church, I said it again. “No, I do not believe inJesus. But, ……….I dobelieve Jesus. I believe Jesus. I believe Jesus. I believe what Jesus said. I believe what Jesus said .I believe what Jesus taught. I believe that the way Jesus lived embodies a new way of being human. I believe Jesus when he says, “Do not be afraid.” I believe Jesus when he speaks about the MYSTERY that we call God. I believe Jesus when he insists that justice is worth dying for. I believe Jesus when he risks everything for the sake of his conviction that non-violent resistance is the way to achieve justice. I believe Jesus, the way he lived, the way he died, and the way he lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who follow his way of being human. I believe Jesus. I also believe that it doesn’t matter a whole hill of beans whether or not I or anybody else believes inJesus. But it makes all the difference in the world and tothe world that we believe Jesus, because at the core of who Jesus was and what Jesus taught is LOVE. LOVE God with all your heart, with, all your soul, and with all your mind and LOVE your neighbour as you LOVE yourself; this I believe is a way BEYOND the kind of humanity that is always consumed by itself. I believe Jesus’ call to look beyond our selfish needs, desires and wants, to move beyond our fears, to LOVE.Continue reading →
I have never much cared for John the Baptist. Everything that we read about John the Baptist in the Christian Scriptures makes me think of him as Jesus’ red-necked cousin. You know the kind of family member I mean. We all have one or two in our families. Some of you may have had the pleasure of being visited by one of your fanatical red-necked family members over the holidays. We’ve all been there. Stuck around a dinner table, trying to steer the conversation clear away from anything remotely political; fearing that at any moment our red-necked relative will go on a rant about immigrants coming into this country and threatening our culture, or the government wasting millions on foreign aid, or women with their feminist agenda’s wanting it all, and those lazy poor people who need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop expecting handouts, or heaven forbid, the relative whose neck so flaming red that they, at the drop of a hat, will sing the praises of the likes the orange fellow who lives in the White House, who they think is on to something because he refuses to be politically correct and tells it like it is. You know that relative of yours who keeps reminding you of the good old days and the need to return to them because if we spare the rod, we will spoil the child.
Take a moment and sit back and remember that relative, friend, or co-worker, and if you are blessed enough not to have such a person in your life, think about the folks who we see every day in every sort of media, the folks are calling for a return to the values you no longer share. Do you have a clear picture in your mind of someone whose constant wrangling makes you so uncomfortable that they embarrass you? Hold that image in your mind and listen as I do my best to imitate John the Baptist as he rants on:
“Pay attention people! You think my raving on and on about repentance is annoying? You think my baptism is demanding? There is somebody coming who makes me look like a wimp. There is somebody coming who has real fire in his belly. Somebody who will take your tools out of your hands, and wipe the floor with you, and toss the lot of you into the fiery pits of hell! You brood of vipers!!! You just wait! Be afraid. Be very afraid!!! You’re all going to get yours!
Repent. Turn from your modern, pinko, new age, progressive, radical ways!!! Return to the good old days!!! Days when men were men and women kept a civil tongue in their heads and kids were seen and not heard. The days when this was a God-fearing country and we rode with our neighbours to the south, to keep the world safe for the likes of us. It’s time to toughen up people and start demanding a little respect from those people, you know the ones I mean, the ones who are different than us.”
I don’t know about you but these days I tend to give rednecks like John the Baptist a wide birth. If I do happen to stumble into a situation where I can’t avoid fanatics like John the Baptist, I tend to just let them ramble on, until they wear themselves out and then I take my leave, shake the dust from my feet and I move on. But the holidays, oh the holidays, it’s difficult to avoid red-necks during the holidays, especially if we are related to them. Well John the Baptist comes around every Advent ranting and raving, shouting at us to Repent, to Prepare, you brood of vipers! No wonder, we are all very quick to move on to Christmas when we can ignore John and gaze adoringly at the baby Jesus, whose beauty makes us forget that Herod is looming in the background. But no sooner is the baby born, then in the wink of an eye Jesus is a grown man, and his dear cousin John is at it again, going on and on, threatening us by suggesting that Jesus is going to rain down on us bringing the Holy Spirit to baptize us with fire. With a winnowing fork in hand, he will clear the threshing floor and gather the wheat into his granary, burning the chaff with unquenchable fire. And the way that John tells it, it sounds pretty much like we are the chaff and not the wheat, and so, we are doomed to burn in that unquenchable fire, if we don’t do what John tells us to do. Repent! Repent! Repent I say! Repent! Be afraid! Be very afraid! The Lord is coming! Fire burns!!! Hell is on the horizon!!! Turn back! Turn back!!!Continue reading →
Maybe it’s because I’ve directed too many Christmas pageants, but when I hear the story of the Magi visiting the baby Jesus, I don’t think of three kings at all. No visions of regal visitors decked out in their finest riding atop camels guided by a star for me. Just memories of little boys, all decked out in colourful shiny robes that threaten to trip them up, giggling and roughhousing, with their cardboard crowns askew. Of all the little boy kings that I’ve tried to corral, one of them stands out from all the rest. Perhaps I remember him so well because he was so little that we couldn’t have him kneel at the manger because we were afraid that he would disappear into the hay and our audience would only see two Wise Guys paying homage instead of three, or maybe it was the speed with which he dashed in and out of the gang of shepherds who threatened to trip him up with their crooks.
But I really think it was the ingenious way he solved the problem of his lost gold, that makes little Jay stand out from all the other little boy kings. Little Jay’s mother, like all the mothers of all the kings, was responsible for creating a facsimile of the gift her wise son would bestow on the baby Jesus. Unlike some of the feeble efforts that I’ve seen over the years, Jay’s gift of gold was a cut above the rest. Inside an elaborately carved box that his Dad had picked up on his travels to the Middle East, Jay’s mother had placed upon a bed of statin a carefully created block of wood wrapped in golden gift paper. When the light hit the gift, it sparkled so very splendidly. It must have impressed Jay, because he was forever opening up his box to show his fellow cast-members his sparkling gift. During the dress rehearsal, Jay’s performance was splendid. Jay positively perfected the art of gazing up at the makeshift star that hung above the altar just east of our makeshift manger. When he arrived at the place where the newborn baby Jesus lay in a makeshift manger, who just happened to be a little girl that year, Jay strode right up to her mother Mary and opened the box containing his sparkling offering and proudly announced his gift of gold for the new born king.
“They,” whoever “they” are, say that if the rehearsal does not go well then, the performance will be wonderful. So, I was more than a little worried when our dress rehearsal went off so splendidly because that could mean only one thing, and I wasn’t looking forward to a performance where things went wrong. Sure enough, unbeknownst to me, on the morning of his big performance, somewhere between his house and the church, Jay lost his golden gift. All he had was an empty box when he showed up at his father’s pew wailing because all was lost. Jay had no gold to give to the baby Jesus.
Today, as I reflect on the plight of so very many children, I can’t help thinking about that empty box and like little Jay, I simply want to wail. I think it was Boxing day, the second day of Christmas, when I first heard about the little 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died on Christmas Eve, in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Felipe Alonzo-Gomez’s death has haunted the twelve days of Christmas. Little Felipe’s death coupled with the knowledge that another child had died earlier in December, is an obscenity that ought to reduce every adult to wailing. Little Jakelin Caal Maquin was just seven years old when U.S. Customs and Border Protection failed in their duty of care. Little Jakelin and Little Felipe’s protection was sacrificed on the altar of a political idea which continues to put the protection of a border over and above the lives of children who are fleeing violence in their homeland. I confess that I’ve been more than a little obsessed this Christmas season by the plight of refugees. I’ve found myself searching for all the information that’s out there, hoping against hope that somebody, anybody has a magic solution that will safeguard the lives of refugees. But alas, like little Jay, I show up to greet the Christ child, with what appears to be nothing more than an empty box.Continue reading →
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” Yeah right Jesus…have you seen the news? Blessed are the peacemakers. They better be blessed because all their peacemaking is more than likely going to get them killed than it is to see them heralded as the Children of God!
Today, we commemorate the 100 anniversary of the end of World War I. But, since the end of that “War to End All Wars” the world has experienced the horrors of World War II in which millions suffered and died in the Holocaust, and even more millions were killed in battle and it took the dropping of not one but two atomic bombs to put an end to the madness. Since the end of World War II with its genocide upon genocide the world has seen the violence and untold murders perpetrated by the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. More recently repressive regimes together with the greed of capitalist consumption continue to perpetrate violence and genocide upon the peoples of Yemen, Somalia, and the Rohingyas. Refugees fleeing violence are cast as fearsome caravans, and kids just out to enjoy some country music are gunned down in affluent neighbourhoods. Blessed are the peacemakers indeed. Jesus hasn’t got a clue. About the only thing peacemakers are likely to inherit is the right to die trying.
Wars and rumors of war are the order of the day. Face it, humans are a violent lot and violence and war aren’t about to end soon. So, I’m sorry Jesus, but this way of life that you keep encouraging us to embrace is only going to get us all or over-run, or enslaved, and killed. But then what would Jesus know? War sure ain’t what it was in Jesus’ day. War has gotten uglier as our means of destruction have gotten more efficient.
Had enough yet? Do you wish you could just find a remote and turn me off? Doom and gloom, just like the news. Over and over again the drumbeats get more and more intense. These are dangerous times. So, be afraid. Be very afraid. We live in the midst of violence and war as horrible as it is, war is a necessary evil. So, before you tune me out, please hear me out. For the times they are a changing.
The truth is our ancestors were far more violent than we are. The truth is, and statistics will bear this out, the truth is that violence has been in decline for years and years and years. Today, dear friends we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ history. So, blessed are the peacemakers because peacemakers will be called the children of God.
Now lest you think that I am suffering from delusions, let me lay out a few facts. For centuries now, violence has been on the decline. I don’t have time to delve into the orders of magnitude in the decline of violence over the centuries. So, let’s just look at the last century. Many of us look back fondly at the good old days, of the last century, because we honestly believe that things are getter worse and not better. But the truth is that since 1945 in Europe and the Americas, there has been a steep decline in: interstate wars, deadly ethnic riots (otherwise known as pogroms), and military coups, worldwide, there has been a steep decline in deaths in interstate wars. Back in those good old days, like the 1950s the average number of deaths in battle stood at about 65,000 deaths per conflict per year. Today, that number has shrunk to less than 2,000 deaths per conflict in a year Don’t get me wrong an average 2,000 deaths per conflict per year is still way too many deaths. But since the end of World War II there has been a 90 percent reduction in deaths resulting from civil wars and genocides; a 90% reduction represents, in the history of violence, a colossal decline in violence and war. (Steven Pinker)
For the sceptics among you, who aren’t that worried about the rumors of war because you’re more concerned about violent crimes in your own neighborhoods, let me just direct your attention to our more violent neighbours to the south. In the US, the FBI compiles what it calls “Uniform Crime Statistics” which tell us that violent crime is going down, in fact in the past ten years crime rates overall have returned to levels last seen in the 1950’s. Canadian statistics are even better. You are far less likely to become the victim of a violent crime than your parents were. As for your grandchildren, they have never been safer than they are right now. That’s what the statistics tell us. As a species we have never experienced such peace. It is unprecedented. (Steven Pinker)
So, why are we living in fear? Statistics indicate that we’ve never been so afraid. Even in Canada, where we once took pride in our military because they were among the world’s most respected peace-keepers, we are responding to our fear, and over and over again we hear calls for us to build up our military, not as peace-keepers but as well-equipped warriors. We are afraid, we are very afraid.
We are safer than we have ever been. We are living longer than we have ever lived. Statistically, humans have never had it so good. So, why are we living in such fear. Granted, we all know that humans now have the ability to wipe out human life with the kind of efficiency that we have never had. Our weapons have fearsome capacity. But surely, the reductions in violence and war that we have been able to make, might point us in the direction of further reductions in violence and war. Surely, if we find ways to ramp up our efforts, we can capitalize upon the great strides towards peace that we have already made?Continue reading →
This sermon relies heavily on the exegetical work of David Lose. I am indebted to Marcus Borg for teaching us the questions to ask of ancient authors and their stories. I am also indebted to the critic of my work who took the time to challenge me to “confess that Jesus died for my sins”. While I do not share my critic’s atonement theology, I am grateful for his willingness to engage in conversation.
Some of you may know that our gospel readings follow a three year lectionary. Earlier this week I received an email from one of the followers of my blog who said, “Now the Gospel has you. Now you will have to confess that Jesus died for your sins.” and so here is the part of the reading that prompted the email: “Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all. The Human One has come not to be served, but to serve—to give one life in ransom for the many.”
The message that I received had, “TO GIVE ONE LIFE IN RANSOM FOR THE MANY” in capital letters and was underlined. My critic believed that as a progressive preacher, the Gospel had captured me and that I would have to confess that Jesus died for my sins.
Well, I’ll make a confession this morning, in the past, I have always read this story about Jesus with nothing but contempt for the sons of Zebedee. I confess that the characters of James and John have always inspired me to feel more than a little bit smug and I have always felt justified, indeed dare I say it, righteous in treating these two ambitious brothers with more than a little disdain. In fact, I had a sermon ready to preach that pointed out the ridiculous arrogance of this pair of wannabes. My sermon was all done and dusted, when I settled in last night for a quiet night. Somewhere around four this morning, I was awakened by an annoying question that caused me to jump out of my bed. Let me assure you that I am not a morning person and I almost never jump out of bed. But this morning, I realized that the sermon I planned to preach, need to be moved to my computer’s trash bin.Continue reading →
On this the Second Sunday of the Season of Creation, we celebrate Humanity. In Mark 7: 24-37, the anonymous gospel storyteller that we call Mark reveals that Jesus ain’t no super-hero! Jesus is a flesh and blood, down to earth, fallible, short-tempered, and sometimes narrow-minded human being, very much like the rest of us.
The anonymous gospel storyteller that we call Mark, provides us with the shortest of the four gospels — just 16 brief chapters. But don’t let that fool you. The writer of this account of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth packs more action into his short gospel than any of the racy novels, spy thrillers, mystery novels or tell all biographies that you can find today on Amazon. Today’s reading occurs barely half way through our anonymous storyteller’s account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and already Jesus has: been baptized in the river Jordan and been tempted in the wilderness by the evilest of villains, Satan himself. Jesus has gathered together a motley crew of disciples, and he has cast out demons, cured lepers, healed the sick, the lame, and the blind. Jesus has preached to the multitudes, appointed apostles, and he has even been restrained from preaching by his own family because they feared that Jesus had gone out of his mind. Jesus has turned away his own mother and brothers in favor of teaching the crowds of people who gather to hear what this itinerate preacher has to say. Jesus has taught the crowds in parables, calmed the stormy sea and if that wasn’t enough he brought a dead girl back to life only to be rejected and scorned in his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus has had to face the death and decapitation of his cousin and fellow evangelist John the Baptist. He has somehow managed to feed five thousand people with just five loaves and two measly fish. To top it all off, Jesus, this walking, talking, healing, miracle working, super-hero has managed to walk on water.
In just six brief chapters, the anonymous gospel storyteller we call Mark has painted the picture of a mythical super-hero. A man of the people who is capable of amazing feats of daring do. Not even Superman, Superwoman, Spider Man, Wonder-woman, Bat Man, Cat-woman, James Bond or Lara Croft could match the heroic deeds of the anonymous storyteller’s amazing Jesus. Our storyteller’s Jesus is a super hero’s, super hero.
In many ways this picture of Jesus keeps our mind’s eye far away from understanding just who this itinerant preacher, who somehow managed to change the world, really was. According to our anonymous storyteller, Jesus really is some kind super-natural, super-human being. Jesus is a hero beyond all other heroes, whose abilities are beyond the bounds of the natural order of things. A hero who stands head and shoulders above all the rest. A super-hero whose abilities, sensibilities, wisdom, knowledge and kindness are beyond those of us who are but mere mortals. And if this was all there was to our storyteller’s Jesus, then there really wouldn’t be much of a story here. You see as long as we see Jesus as SUPER – super hero, super natural or super human, then following Jesus is no more demanding than following your favorite super hero in a comic strip. The exploits of these heroes may be interesting, intriguing and maybe even enlightening, but each and every one of us knows that we can’t do what they do. We may be able to follow their exploits and applaud their heroism, but we cannot be like them, any more than we can do what they do. They are after all super heroes; heroes whose abilities are beyond the average mortal. Indeed, I am sure that many of us follow Jesus in much the same way as we follow the exploits of the other heroes we have set for ourselves. We admire Jesus, we trust Jesus, we may even wish we could be more like Jesus, and we are even willing to listen to some of the things that Jesus said. But when it comes to following Jesus, we often let ourselves off the hook, because after all look at what happened to Jesus. They nailed him in the end and if it weren’t for intervention from God on high, Jesus would never have escaped the clutches of death.
Fortunately for us, there is more to our anonymous storyteller’s gospel, than there is to the story of the average comic-strip super hero. You see unlike the average super hero, Jesus is all too human. In today’s story, Jesus is a flesh and blood, down to earth, fallible, short-tempered, and sometimes narrow-minded human being, very much like the rest of us. In this story Jesus’ humanity is revealed.
Jesus has just finished teaching and feeding a huge crowd of five thousand people. After dismissing the crowd, he and a few of his followers climb aboard a small boat and head off to the other side of the sea. Jesus goes ashore alone and retreats to a mountaintop to pray. A storm picks up and Jesus walks across the water, and calms both his followers’ fears and the wind itself. When they get ashore, Jesus is quickly recognized by the waiting multitudes. Continue reading →
Jesus is not some sort of cosmic bargain with a demanding, jealous, elsewhere god, sacrificing himself so that we can live happily ever after! Jesus of Nazareth was fully human. The Christ is the experiece of Jesus his followers encountered after his death. The Cosmic Christ is neither human nor divine, but rather a gateway into the MYSTERY’s presence among us. Our BRUNCHtalks continue to explore what it means to be Progressive in approach: Christ-like in action.
You can find the all the slides from the presentation (including the ones that were skipped in the interests time) for this BRUNCHtalk here
