My job as a GOD-Botherer. . .

As I prepare to embark on my last week with you, I can’t help looking back at all that has transpired during our 23 plus years together. It occurs to me that there have been so many moments when the SPIRIT, the RAUCH, the HOLY SPIRIT, the PNEUMA, the BREATH of LOVE has been present among us. Not in the tongues of fire sense as it is described in the book of Acts. But certainly, in ways which have moved us, disturbed us, pushed us, and sometimes turned our well-intentioned plans upside down and inside out. One of the things I’ve learned over these years, is that we are pretty good at pointing to the actions of the SPIRIT in Church. But when it comes to recognizing the work of the SPIRIT in our lives, well let’s just say, that the SPIRIT would need tongues of fire to get most 21st century mainline Christians to recognize the SPIRIT. So, as it’s Pentecost, I’d like to call out the SPIRIT. Don’t panic.  I’m not about to give up the habits of a lifetime and start acting like some sort of Pentecostal preacher who’s been slain by the SPIRIT. There will be no speaking in tongues. The SPIRIT is clever enough to go easy on us frozen chosen types. You see one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that when all is said and done the role of a pastor is pretty basic, my role, my calling, my responsibility, is quite simple really. My job is to recognize the SACRED when and where the SACRED can be seen and then point it out to you.

It’s pretty basic, recognize the MYSTERY which we call GOD, and then point out the MYSTERY to all of you. Yes, there’s all that complicated theology we learn, and then there’s all the technical hermeneutical skills for exegeting ancient texts, the Hebrew, the Greek, and even the Latin, the homiletical technics, the liturgical practices, the psychology, the pastoral approaches, not to mention, the reality that every pastor must face, at some point or other, when our role as pastor is reduced to cursing as we do our best to fix the church toilet, and we are left wondering why they failed to teach us janitorial skills in seminary. I can still remember the Sunday after my ordination, when I was preparing for my very first baptism, and I plugged the coffee-pot, because every Lutheran pastor knows that you can’t have church without coffee. Just imagine the panic when I blew all the electrics in this place. I can assure you that I spoke in tongues and those tongues had a blue streak to them. Where I come from, in Belfast, there’s a reason they call people who wear a collar, “GOD-Botherers” Clergy are more than adept at cursing up a blue streak and we are not afraid to bother the MYSTERY, the CREATOR of all that is, was, and ever shall be, with our ramblings.

But bothering GOD is not what my job is all about. Not when you get right down to the heart of what it is I’ve been trying to do here all these many years. This GOD-Botherer’s job, my real job, is to recognize the SACRED, and to point the SACRED out to you, in the hope that when the SACRED shows up in your lives, you will recognize it as the SACRED. So, on this Pentecost Sunday, let me do my job and point to the SACRED and say, “there it is. Right there. Can you see it?  Can you see the ONE which is BEYOND the BEYOND and BEYOND that also?”

The trouble is that there are so many GOD-Botherers who have made us believe, or at least given us the impression that the SACRED is a pretty rarefied thing; all dressed up in fancy words, with lots of churchy stuff attached to it.  For far too many people, the word GOD has become so “holier than thou” that most of us frozen chosen types, would never presume to point to anything in our lives and say, there, there IT is, there is GOD, or the MYSTERY, or the ONE that IS DIVINITY, the GREAT I AM, YAHWEH, BREATH of LOVE. The truth is we are in GOD and GOD is in us.

Each and every day, each and every moment in time, we are held in the embrace of the LOVE which is GOD. All around us, here, there, and everywhere, the BREATH of LOVE caresses us and if we just pause for but a moment, we can feel the SPIRIT’s BREATH breathing in us. So, please for just a few moments, try to forget that you are in church. Those of you online, try to forget that you are trying to worship online. Just breathe. In and out. Just breathe.

Now come with me in your SACRED imaginations, away from church, away from thoughts about worshipping. I’m travelling back in time to a place long, long, ago, when I was just a child. I couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. I was lying in the grass, looking up at the sky, when something happened. Something this preacher doesn’t have words for. Something that let me know that I was connected with the sky, the blades of grass, in a way that to this day, I cannot even begin to describe. It was just a few moments, but moments which have stayed we me for sixty years. Moments powerful enough to feed me even now. I can see the blueness of the sky, and the greens, oh the greens of those magnificent blades of grass, blades all together, waving in the gentle winds which blew through my hair, caressing my scalp, and tickling my fancy so much so that I burst into laughter. My joy in the presence of the ONE which IS my very SOURCE can still move me to joy.

Now fast-forward with me now, I’m nine-teen years old, back-packing around Europe. We’re in Copenhagen.  We’re wandering around a gallery, the Carlsberg Glypotek and I’m bored. When you’ve visited one art gallery in Europe, you can be astonished. But when you’re on your umpteenth gallery, well you’ve seen enough. Especially when you’re dreaming of adventures. I was looking for the exit, when I came around a corner and there it was, Van Gough’s painting of Saint Remy. It took my breath away. Never before had I seen such beauty on canvass. I was mesmerized. I could feel, feel not see, every brushstroke, every colour. I was overwhelmed by the way in which the painting moved. Each blade of grass moved. The trees moved. The clouds in the sky moved. For the first time in my life, I was in a painting, lying in that grass and looking up at that sky. I could feel IT. I was connected to IT. The WIND, the SACRED, the HOLY, the SPIRIT, the BREATH of LOVE. I’ve spent years, decades returning to that place, feeling the feels, trying desperately to find words to express this DIVINE encounter with the ONE which is MYSTERY.

My desire to find words eventually, after many twists and turns, lead me to seminary, where I was compelled to complete my clinical training in a hospital. It was there where I encountered the depths of the SACRED. Imagine if you will a trembling younger me, standing in a hospital room, with new parents. I’m holding in my arms a stillborn baby, a little girl, not fully formed, whose lungs never drew air. We were engulfed by darkness; an incredible darkness, a beautiful darkness, a darkness so still, it could take your breath away, a darkness of which we were intimately connected to, a soothing darkness which enfolded me, which enfolded that young mother and father. I was not there…and yet…I was everywhere. In that darkness we felt the caress of MYSTERY.

I wish I could explain what happened. But we could be here all day and I would never find the words. So, come with me now to a place, I’ve taken you too many times before. Niagara Falls. For our American friends, you need to come over to the Canadian side. Where you can stand at the top of the falls and watch the force of the water, actually feel the force of the water in motion just before it tumbles over the cliff. Now walk with me along the pathway, to a spot where you can see the power and the majesty of the water as it falls. Feel the force, the power, the majesty of the water as it rushes down, down, down, and the spray dampens your body, pulling you into the force, the power, the majesty of you know not what. It was in a moment like this that I caught a glimpse of a tear flowing down my lover’s cheek. In that tear, on the face of my beloved, I saw everything. I was not there and yet I was everywhere and everywhere was in me, and there was no distance between me, and whatever it is that lies at the heart of reality.

I could go on and on. My point is that so could you. Each and every one of us has encountered the SACRED over and over again in our lives. But far too many of us aren’t bold enough to recognize, and name the SACRED. There are moments when we are exposed to the MYSTERY we have come to call, “GOD”. These moments expose us to the reality that we are in GOD and GOD is in us. Whether you call that MYSTERY “GOD” or “SPIRIT” or DIVINITY, FATHER, MOTHER, ABBA, YAHEWH, ALAH, BUDDHA, the MOST HIGH, ELOHIM, EL SHADDAI, SOPHIA, SHEKENAH, ADONAI, HOLY, or SACRED, that MYSTERY is LOVE. LOVE beyond words. We are in LOVE and LOVE is in us.

Do this old GOD-Botherer a favour, forget the words and just breathe, breathe in the BREATH of LOVE and when you feel the SPIRIT in you, breathe out the BREATH of LOVE. For you are ONE with the MYSTERY which is BEYOND the BEYOND and BEYOND that also, our LOVER, BELOVED, and BREATH of LOVE,  for you dear ones are SACRED, HOLY, LOVE, now and forever more.  Amen.

View the full worship video below

CLICK HERE to DOWNLOAD the Worship Bulletin

Pentecost Sunday Sermons

CLICK on the Tittles below:

Back to NORMAL!

I Can’t Breathe!

Is the Church dead? or Can these Bones Live?

Not Yet Christians: Pentecost/Confirmation

Dream Dreams

God In Between

The Spirit in Our Midst

Pentecost: a Human Phenomenon

Beyond Tribalism – Preaching a 21st Century Pentecost

Celebrating Pentecost in the 21st Century

Pentecost Tongues Aflame with the Prayer attributed to Jesus

Global Engagement, Chaos Theory, the Butterfly Effect and a New Pentecost

 

“I Can’t Breathe!” – Pentecost sermon

The SPIRIT of Pentecost inflames our worship with images of tongues of fire and shouting excited crowds creating a cacophony of sound. Preachers pontificate about the birth of a movement which became the Church, with talk of rushing wind, and breath, breath of the SPIRIT breathing life into our churches. Breath, wind, and flame. And yet, there are those who cannot breathe, and the only wind that seems to blow are the ill winds that bring angry, desperate, frustrated, and oh so intemperate tongues of fire,  which dance upon our screens as a visual expression of the virus which threatens to suck the life out of all that we hold dear. It is oh so very tempting, to discard the masks designed to protect us from disease so that we can breathe the fresh air which blows just beyond our gasp.

We cannot breathe freely and so we look away. As we cling to our all but useless masks of denial, the tut tutting begins. “It is not happening here.” “The United States is not Canada.” “We are different.” “They had slavery.” “We freed slaves.” “They are a melting pot.” “We are multi-cultural.” “Those poor Americans.” “I’m so glad we live in Canada.” “Let’s put on our masks of denial and look away.  We are not infected by their virus.”

But we cannot breathe freely or deeply behind our masks. Looking away will not cure the virus which infects even us. Even us with our polite Canadian sensibilities, we are infected with a strain of the virus, albeit a strain born out of a different history, still powerful enough to crush the life out of even its healthiest victims. So, God knows what the weak or wounded among us will do to find relief.  He can’t breathe.  She can’t breathe. Come Holy SPIRIT, come.

Like many of you I have watched a wept as over and over again, young black men and women have their breath taken from them as they are murdered in the streets, in their yards, on their porches, and in their beds by the very ones who are sworn to protect and serve them. I too have shaken my head and tut tutted as I caught my own precious breath and turned away convinced that my own liberal, progressive, christian, Lutheran, Canadian attitudes have saved me from the virus. I am not a racist.  You are not racists. We are “nice” polite Canadians. Just look at the numbers. Our death tolls versus their death tolls, surely this proves that our rates of infection are less.

Shall we look at the numbers?  One-in-five Canadians do not think it’s safe to sit next to an Asian or Chinese person on a bus, while a quarter of Canadians “don’t know” if it’s safe. Anti-Asian attacks are on the rise in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. This week anti-semitism was visited upon a synagogue in Montreal. This week, during an encounter with Toronto police, a young black woman fell to her death. The cause of Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s death has not been fully explained. Whatever happened, it is telling that her family, friends and neighbours, quickly suspected malpractice by the officers involved. I hope this is not the case. I pray that this was a tragic accident.  But the fact that trust between the black population of Toronto and the police force is so tenuous speaks volumes about the symptoms of the virus which lurks in the hearts and minds of those who fear the systemic nature of the illness and those who are privileged by the systemic nature of the very racism which we deny.

Decades ago, activist and educator Jane Elliot, asked a class of privileged white students to raise their hands if they would be happy to receive the same treatment as black citizens receive. Not surprisingly none of the privileged white students raised their hands. They knew full well the benefits of their own privilege. I remember studying Jane Elliot’s work when I was in university. I also remember feeling rather smug about my own enlightened attitudes, right up until the moment our professor asked us to raise our hands if we would be happy to receive the same education and housing as citizens of First Nations enjoy under the auspices of the administrators of Canada’s Indian Act. Not a single one of us privileged white students and yes, all my classmates except for one was white, and not one of us raised our hands.

The one student of colour in the classroom was a foreign student from the Southside of Chicago, who squirmed nervously in her seat. A fellow student, safely ensconced in his white privilege, asked the black woman who sat amongst a sea of white faces, “Do you think Canadians are racists?” We all presumed we knew what her answer would be. “Of course NOT!  Canadians aren’t like Americans.” To this day, I can still her response continues to ring in my ears. This wise, proud African American Woman bravely took the opportunity to respond with the words of her compatriot Angela Davis, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be antiracist.”

Sisters and brothers, from the confines of my own white privilege, I am still only beginning to learn about the powerful virus which infects our Canadian society. I suspect that many of you might think that I’m talking about the virus of racism. Well I’m not. You see, I believe that racism although it may be the most dangerous symptom of the virus, it is not the disease itself. The virus which I am talking about is white privilege. Our Canadian strain of this insidious virus did not thrive in the Petri dish of slavery, like the strain our American cousins have cultivated. But our Canadian white privilege was born of the same sin of colonialism which saw British and European “conquerors” wash up on North American shores to rob the indigenous peoples of North America of their land, their wealth, their freedom, their cultures, and indeed in oh so many cases their very lives.

Our wealth, yours and mine was birthed out of the theft of land and it is maintained by oppression. There will be many who will point to the past and say, “that was then and this is now, we cannot take responsibility for the sins of our ancestors.” Fare enough.  But you and I we continue to drink fresh clean water while so many of our Indigenous sisters and brothers do not have access to fresh, clean, drinking water. I know, we’re working on it. We all want to do better.  We must do better. But we are not racists. We are kind, well-meaning, descent, kind-hearted Canadians.

Yes, we are. But our ability to be kind, well-meaning, descent, kind-hearted Canadians is made possible by our privilege. The very wealth we hungered for, worked for, educated ourselves for, and carefully accumulated is for the most part born out of white privilege. In Canada whiteness, privilege and wealth are all intimately connected.

Lest we fall into the trap of believing that because some white people are not privileged and some people of colour are  privileged, we need to remember that all of us privileged folk, we are playing by culturally white rules. Whiteness is not just a colour, it is also a social construct. Like all social constructs it builds walls to protect the privileges folks inside the walls and creates all sorts of barriers to keep people without privilege from breeching those walls unless and until they conform, change their ways and become just like the people inside the walls.

So, if white privilege is our disease, what is the cure?

I’ve already listened to all sorts of privileged people like myself point to the chaos and the violence in the United States and argue that we need bigger walls and stronger barriers. Order must be maintained because they, them, those, people well they are just getting out of hand. Rioting must not be tolerated. Everybody needs to calm down. Anger won’t get us anywhere. I’m reminded of the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who insisted that, “riots are the language of the unheard.”

Yesterday, I listened as Bakari Sellers reminded a white American newsman that “the Boston tea party was no tea party.” It was a riot which gave birth to a rebellion. Anger is not in and of itself a bad thing. Back in the day, when we were struggling for equality for women.  I can’t tell you how many times people tried to put us back in our place by warning us not to be angry feminists. Well that is until we learned of the power of anger in the work of love.

When it comes to the disease of white privilege and the deadly symptoms of racism which are crushing the life out of so many, black and brown sisters and brothers, and the racism which emboldens fellow Canadians to spit on our Asian sisters and brothers, which continues to confine our Indigenous brothers and sisters to living conditions which are deadly, or the symptoms of privilege which confine the poorest among us to lives robbed of dignity, well its long past time to shed our veneer of calm and rise up in anger.

It is time for us to turn over some tables in the temple, in all of the temples where we worship. The rush of the SPIRIT of Pentecost is by its very nature wild and chaotic. The SPIRIT is prone to turn our systems upside down as it blows out the cobwebs from our carefully controlled lives.  It’s time to do more with our anger than simply suppress or deny it. I am NOT talking about violence; violence begets violence. I’m talking about expressing our anger in ways which compel change.It is time to put the power of our anger into the work of LOVE. Which for those of us who are white privileged Canadians means taking risk of being offensive. We might just have to risk saying the wrong thing in order to engage our neighbours in deep conversations about the nature of our dis-ease. We might just have to risk saying nothing at all.  That’s right shut up and listen. It isn’t always about us. We don’t always know what is best. 

We might just have to do more than just complain about injustice. We might actually have to make sacrifices. Instead of complaining about the corporate systemic injustices which ensure our privileges while squeezing the life out of multitudes of people, we might have to begin demanding less profits to feather our retirement nests.  Ushering in the kin-dom of God, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, being swept up by the SPIRIT means not just complaining about corporate greed but working and sacrificing to build a more equitable economic system. Like many cures, it may seem like the cure is worse than the dis-ease.

Angela Davis’ words continue to ring in my ears, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be antiracist.” In the face of such dis-ease, even as the flames still burn and the breath continues to be squeezed out of so many, perhaps it’s time for those of us who have enjoyed our privilege for so long to begin to realize that it is not enough for us to not be showing the symptom of racism, it is time for us to stand up against all the symptoms of white privilege by sacrificing, by taking risks, and maybe even suffering some strong medicine in order to quell the symptoms of racism, violence, poverty, hatred, and  let the SPIRIT blow where SHE wills. Maybe then, the peace, we all long for, will break out all over this land and all people, black, brown, red, yellow, white, Indigenous, settlers, Asian, Arab, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sheik, believers and non-believers can catch our collective breaths and breathe deeply of the SPIRIT in which we live and move and have our being, the ONE who is the MYSTERY which some of us call God. Come Holy SPIRIT. Come. Amen.

View the full worship service:

Download the Order of service click here 

Not Yet Christians: Pentecost/Confirmation Sunday

So here we are. Josh, Greg, Steph, the three of you are about to affirm the promises that were made on your behalf at your baptisms.  After you make those promises for yourself, in the eyes of this congregation you will no longer children.  You are about to become adult members of this congregation. In just a few moments, I am going to ask you these really big questions, questions that concern your future and how you intend to live your life

  “Do you intend to continue in the covenant GOD made with you in Holy Baptism:

         to live among GOD’s faithful people,

         to hear GOD’s WORD and share in GOD’s supper,

         to proclaim the good news of GOD in CHRIST through word and deed,

         to serve all people, following the example of JESUS the CHRIST, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?”

         Now, I know that we have gone over this a few times, but the magnitude of what is being asked of you is intense, especially the part that says,

         “to serve all people, following the example of JESUS the CHRIST, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?”

         To serve “all people”

To follow the example of Jesus.  To strive for justice and peace in all the earth? WOW, this being a Christian is really intense.  Now just in case those of you who aren’t being confirmed today, are wondering if you yourselves are up to the task, let me remind you of something I hope you’ve heard me say often. You see, when someone asks me if I’m a Christian, I always answer, “No. I am not a Christian, not yet. I aspire to be a Christian.       I aspire to follow the teachings of Jesus, but I have a lot to learn.”

One thing I have learned along the way, is that those people who are confident that they are Christian, who believe that they have somehow arrived as fully formed followers of the Way, well those folks make me very, very nervous and I usually back away whenever I sense the super-christians are on the prowl.

I think most of us have more in common with the very first followers of Jesus than we do with the folks who think they are already Christian.  “When the day of Pentecost arrived” that’s bible-talk for “not long after the resurrection” Or not long after people began to realize that Rome couldn’t actually kill Jesus way of being in the world, that death could not destroy Jesus dream of the kin-dom, the dream of justice for all, the dream of the kind of peace where everyone has enough. Not long after the Romans thought they’d killed Jesus Way of being, those who followed the Way met in one room. Continue reading