Year B, Lectionary 12 (June 24, 2012)

·         Job 38:1-11

·         Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32 (29)

·         2 Corinthians 6:1-13

·         Mark 4:35-41

It's too bad that there is only so much time for reading in the service, because it would really be worthwhile to read not just Job 38:1-11, but God's entire speech to Job, which is chapters 38 through 41. And then Job answered the Lord:

"I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

'Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you declare to me.'

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;

Therefore I recant,
and change my mind about humanity.

(Job 42:1-6) And after Job has said this, the Lord is pleased with him, chews out his annoying friends, and restores his fortunes.

On second thought, maybe you'd have to read the whole book. In fact, you'd have to read it several times, because it's rather intricate. Luckily other people have read it and summarised it for us, so I'll summarise the summaries for you.

Once upon a time, there was Job, a righteous man. He had seven sons, three daughters, 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys, and very many servants. And he was very righteous. So one day, the being called [SQG] "Satan", that is, the Accuser, tells God "yeah, Job is righteous, but he's only righteous because everything always goes his way. I bet you if I make his life suck, he'll stop being righteous." And God takes the bet.

So the Accuser kills all Job's children, has enemies kill or steal his livestock, and sends him loathsome sores. Job goes to sit on the ash heap, scraping his sore with a broken piece of pottery, and cries, but does not curse God.

Job's friends come to comfort him. First they sit with him for a week while he cries, which is pretty decent of them. Finally after seven days, Job stops crying and curses the day of his birth. So his friend Eliphaz gives him a long speech to the effect that "well, you did mostly good, but you must have been doing seriously wrong, or else you wouldn't be in this bind." Job starts answering Eliphaz, saying "no, I didn't do anything", and then he addresses God directly. And I like this prayer of Job's:

"Am I the Sea, or the Dragon,
that you set a guard over me?

When I say, 'My bed will comfort me,
my couch will ease my complaint,'

then you scare me with dreams
and terrify me with visions,

so that I would choose strangling
and death rather than this body.

I loathe my life; I would not live forever.
Let me alone, for my days are a breath.

What are human beings, that you make so much of them,
that you set your mind on them,

visit them every morning,
test them every moment?

Will you not look away from me for a while,
let me alone until I swallow my spittle?

If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?
Why have you made me your target?
Why have I become a burden to you?

Why do you not pardon my transgression
and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;
you will seek me, but I shall not be."

(Job 7:12-21) In a sense that's a wonderful prayer for us Christians to look at, because Christ is the very answer to this lament of Job's. Christ is God's sign that he pardons our transgressions and takes away our iniquity, and that when we lie in the earth, still God will know us.

After this, Job's friend Bildad gives him another long speech about how surely he must have done all kinds of evil, and then Zophar says much the same, and Job continues to say, no, I'm innocent, but how can I defend myself before God? So this argument between Job and his friends goes on for 34 chapters, and in all this Job talks to God quite a lot. Finally God answers him out of the whirlwind, starting with our first reading and on through the four chapters.

And what God has to say to Job is more or less that "you know what, I don't watch you all the time, I have things to do other than worry about you. I'm busy watching my Creation doing what it does, because it's cool. It's not always about you." Now that may seem somewhat like an evasion of Job's question, but it's not. Job asked "why do you keep watching me so you can persecute me for my sins?" God answers "I don't watch you particularly much and I don't persecute you for your sins. Life just happens."

So the parallel with our Gospel reading is interesting. The disciples are freaking out because there is a storm at sea and Yeshua is sleeping right through it. So they wake him up and say "do you not care that we are perishing?" Well, not really. First of all they weren't actually perishing, they were catastrophising. But no, Yeshua isn't obsessing over what's happening to them. And then once he's awake, he says to the waves, "peace! Be still!" and so it is. And the disciples say "who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" That sentence is like an echo of what God said to Job:

Who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb? –

when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,

and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,

and said, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped"?

(Job 38:8-11) If you don't read all of Job, or if you don't read Job at all and take just these little bits of the Gospel where Yeshua uses the power of God's word to do [SQG] "miracles", then you get the impression that you can harass God whenever you've got troubles and he'll fix it miraculously for you. But if you read the two texts together, that's not what you hear. Yeshua isn't saying "please, feel free to wake me up every time you've got issues, I'll take care of it for you." No, what Yeshua says is "if you had faith, you'd leave me alone and deal with it yourselves." Why? Because we should know by now what God explained to Job. That Creation is his and runs to his delight, and if that doesn't always suit us, well, so what? It's not always about us.

Praise be to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Year B, Lectionary 11 (June 17, 2012)

·         Ezekiel 17:22-24

·         Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15 (12)

·         2 Corinthians 5:6-17

·         Mark 4:26-34

Let me tell you something about mustard. There are many varieties of mustard; some of them are domesticated and eaten by us, others are wild. The wild ones are called "wildflowers" when they're in the woods, and "weeds" when they're in my garden.

Now my garden is on a concrete balcony on the seventh floor. I have a bird feeder, but no birds ever come there. In the winter I put out dog food for the ravens; in the summer, I don't. I don't even get a lot of insects. And I certainly do not use my gardening tools anywhere else. So I have to ask, how in the world would a weed get into my garden? But it did. Specifically, a type of black mustard has gotten into my garden. I don't know if it's carried on the wind, or stuck to insects, or on the dog's fur, or on my clothes, but it got in somehow.

The first year that I had black mustard in my garden, I didn't know what it was, so I left it alone to see if it would turn into something pretty.

Well.

Starting from a seed so small I've never even seen one, the black mustard can grow two feet tall and as thick as my thumb within six weeks. And this is north of 60°, remember, where the sun isn't that strong. Oh yeah, and my garden is in part shade. So imagine how ginormous this creature would get in a sunny spot in Israel. Then, and here is what gets me, the mustard puts out the tiniest, most ridiculous puny unspectacular flowers. They're maybe 2 mm, tops. That's about 1/16th of an inch. That explains why the seeds are so minuscule, then.

Now that I know, of course, I pull the black mustard seedlings as soon as I spot them. And I'm a pretty fastidious person, so I keep a pretty sharp eye on my weeds, if I do say so myself. Yet, I keep finding mustard in bloom in my garden. How can it get from zero to flower within me noticing it? I don't know. Maybe it's just that the leaves are similarly-shaped to some of my actual flowers, and I just don't look closely enough.

So the Kingdom of God is like that. You can't even see the seed. You certainly don't see it coming. Maybe it comes on the wind, or on a raven's feet. It comes unnoticed, on the wings of something completely mundane. And then it grows. And you don't even see it grow, even though it's shooting up like a weed before your very eyes. You're looking right at it at least twice a day, and you don't even notice it. Until one day, it flowers, and then you're like "whoa, where did that come from?" And by the time you try to weed it out, it's probably put out its seeds for the next generation already. There is no getting rid of it. It's not just the immensity of it that's interesting, it's the way it has of sneaking up on you from nothing at all.

So then what? What do we do once we find the Kingdom of God growing in these unlikely places?

Conveniently, the author of Mark juxtaposed the mustard seed and the man with the sickle. And I love the man with the sickle. Sows his seeds, goes about his business. And then suddenly, he leaps into action with his sickle, because the time has come. Frankly, I love anyone who will leap into action instead of sitting on his hands hemming and hawing. I can't stand slackers.

Of course this parable came up in a Bible study I was at, and I tried to say that obviously Jesus is telling us to act, not sit down and pray and wait for him to take care of everything. As always, nobody's buying that. Nope, Jesus does not expect us to do anything, all we gotta do is make shopping lists and say "we ask this in Jesus's name amen" and poof, Jesus is gonna take care of everything.

Yeah, well, that's nice, but that's not what he said about the guy with the sickle. It clearly says right here in the book: "when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come." And of course Jesus also told us, as I always like to quote, "keep awake, for you do not know when the time will come."

Jesus expects us to be ready, and nowhere does it say that we have to be ready to sit down and do nothing. Oh, pardon me, sit down and pray and wait for someone else to solve our problems. I think Jesus made it very clear, in this parable and at other times, that he expects us to act. So how do we know when, and how do we know how?

I think, when you look at the Gospels, it seems like Jesus expected us to know exactly what we're looking for. Whenever someone asks him, he says something a lot like "it's self-evident." He never really tells you what, exactly, "it" is. You're supposed to know it. So it's got to be something that is gonna be really obvious when you see it. You don't know what you're waiting for, but all of sudden you will see it and you'll know immediately that this is it, this is what you've been waiting for. And whatever it is, we already know that it calls for decisive action.

So what is the Kingdom of God? I think you should be seeing it for yourself. It's very obvious. It's right in front of your eyes. It's any moment when you know without having to think about it that God expects you to act. Not sit down and pray, act. Whenever you see an opportunity to do something for the Lord, you've seen the Kingdom of God. Corollary: if you're not seeing any opportunities to do something for the Lord, you're not awake. You're not keeping watch.

If you're not finding opportunities to serve the Lord, if you're not seeing them all around you, and if you're not leaping into action without hesitation, I think you might want to rethink your approach. Because you may be saved by grace through faith, but if you can't see the Kingdom of God when it's right before your eyes, do you really have faith? Did you actually hear what Jesus said? Or are you just talking a lot of talk?

Keep awake, therefore, and be ready to get to work when you see the Kingdom of God before you.

Today's hymn: #798, Will You Come and Follow Me.

Year B, Lectionary 15 (July 15, 2012)

·         Amos 7:7-15

·         Psalm 85:8-13 (8)

·         Ephesians 1:3-14

·         Mark 6:14-29

This line in Amos is one of my favourite in the Hebrew part of the Bible: "I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by." (Amos 7:8)

Being a carpenter myself, I can tell you this about a plumb line: it is the only tool that is always true. A level, a square, a measuring tape, they all become warped if you mishandle them, but a plumb line can never go wrong. You hang it, it shows you exactly the way down. And there is something even more interesting about the plumb line. For the layman, it's a tool for plumbing walls or columns. In fact, that's why we call something [SQG] "plumb" when it's truly vertical. But for a trained carpenter, it's also a layout tool, that allows you to bring a mark down from where it's measured to where the construction will take place. We can use it to transfer the layout of a foundation to the bottom of an excavation. We can use it to locate the bottom of a column when we know where the superstructure will be.

So isn't that the most excellent metaphor for Christ? Compare Christ to the plumb line. Not only is he the only man who is entirely true to the Lord and incorruptible, but he is also the one who brings down the layout of God's plan to us, at the bottom of the excavation. He takes the lines of God's plan and draws them in the dirt for us, and then he begins to build the foundation. In stone, of course.

By the way, contrary to popular belief, carpenters do not work only in wood, neither today nor three thousand years ago. A carpenter does structural work, whether it's wood, concrete, stone, mud brick, metal, fiberglass, whether it's a house or a ship. So the man Yeshua, son of a carpenter, is a man who was building structures. The man Yeshua knew how to transfer a layout with a plumb line. He knew how to build a wall that's structurally sound. God didn't just pick anybody to do this job, he picked a carpenter. He picked someone who knew how to read a plan and realise it.

The first stone that Jesus picked is his best friend, Simon son of Jonah. Simon isn't much of a foundation; he's rash, unreliable, and not particularly loyal. Luckily, Jesus is also God, so he has the word that creates what it declares. Why did Jesus say "you are a rock, and on that rock I will built my church"? Well, on the one hand, we could speculate that he might not have said it at all, and that the author of Matthew wrote it in to support Peter against Paul in early church politics. But if we assume that Jesus really did say that, he didn't say it because Simon actually was a reliable person on whom to build an organisation, but because by saying it, Jesus can make it so.

Here is an interesting bit of history, by the way. If you look at the Basilica Cathedral of Saint Peter in Rome, you might say it's the epicentre of the church of Christ in the west. And if you look underneath, which of course archaeologists have done, there is an older, smaller church, and then an older one under that, and I don't know how many layers of old construction are under the modern church, but when you get through all of those, at the very bottom, there is a burial. A very simple burial, just a body covered with a plain cairn of tile, as I recall. That body was recovered and examined, and it's got nothing to do with anything. It was apparently a decoy for grave-robbers. But next to the cairn there is a retaining wall that was built to prevent erosion of the hill and therefore the graves on the hill. Oh yeah, because before there was a basilica there, the Vatican was a hill. And in the retaining wall, there was a hidden hole with bones in it. On the wall there was an ancient graffiti that said "Peter is here." And the bones were tested and they were a man between 65 and 70 years old, which is the age Peter is thought to have died. And there are no foot bones, as if the guy had his feet broken or cut off, say, to get him off a cross he might have been nailed to. And the bones have a purple dye stain on them, from being wrapped in purple and cloth-of-gold, not at death, but after the flesh had decayed away and only the bones remained. And the dirt on the bones showed it decayed in dirt, not in a cavity in a wall, and the dirt matched exactly the dirt under that decoy tile cairn.

So the conclusion of the Roman Catholic Church as of June 1968, is that these are the bones of Saint Peter, who was first buried in a pauper's grave, and then removed, wrapped in rich cloth, and re-buried in a hidden cavity in the wall where his bones would be safe. And when they dug up the bone yard in the third century or so, they left that wall and built the church over it, and then the next church, and the next church. So as far as we can tell, it seems that the physical church of Christ really was built, literally, on Peter.

But as for the real church of God, the spiritual one, it takes a lot more than one stone to build it. And we are all stones in God's church. If Jesus can make a rock out of unreliable Simon Bar-Jonah, he can make a rock out of any of us, for his sake. And he sets us in the wall that's built with the plumb line. Each one of us might be a stone, but it takes all of us to make up the walls that make up the church of God.

That's very important. I saw something on Facebook a while back that said "life is not about finding yourself, it's about discovering who God created you to be." Well, I think that's complete hogwash. Because the point of God is not about you. Yes, yes, God loves you. But that's not the point. The whole point of Jesus was that it's not about you. Why do you think he said "deny yourself, take up your cross, then come, follow me?" Deny yourself. That's the first step. Stop thinking it's all about you.

Jesus taught us two kinds of things: things about the Kingdom of Heaven, and things about how to live this life. And if you pay attention, all the things he taught about living this life are to forget ourselves. Give what we have to others. Forsake possessions. Forsake status and family and all our attachment to material desires. And then work, not for ourselves, but for the poor, and for the glory of God. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say you need to "discover who God created you to be." God created you to have free will and be anything you want to be; Jesus called you to forget what you want and work for him.

So when we look at this image of the plumb line, it should remind us that God's plan is a plan for all of us, not for each of us. The great design of God involves all of us working as one; one wall, set along the lines drawn down from God's plan, built with the plumb line of Christ who alone is always true. One wall, straight, plumb, solid. One church, standing as one to do the work of the Lord in the world. Wherever we are, whether in a large congregation or alone in the wilderness, we are no longer one individual, but an indivisible part of the church of God. Wherever we are, we do his work. Wherever we are, we follow the lines that Christ has drawn down for us. We are not individuals; we are stones in the wall built with the plumb line. Let us act like it.

The hymn for today is #576, We All Are One in Mission.

Year B, Lectionary 10 (June 10, 2012)

·         Genesis 3:8-15

·         Psalm 130 (7)

·         2 Corinthians 4:13 - 5:1

·         Mark 3:20-25

Ordinary time at last!

The first six months of the Church year are very busy. First we have Advent, Christmas, time after Christmas, Epiphany, then up to eight weeks of ordinary time, then Lent, Easter, time after Easter, Pentecost, and Holy Trinity. Now for the other half of the year, we have "ordinary time." Time when nothing in particular happens. I suppose this might seem like a bad thing in our over-stimulated society, but I like ordinary time. It's a good time to read, study, learn, and simply live with the Lord without all the commotion. It's like staying in instead of going out on Friday night. It's restful, and it's what our relationship with God and with the church is built on.

During Ordinary Time, the lectionary is set by the date, not by reference to any of the major festivals. So the Sunday that's between June 5 and 11 is always Lectionary 10, if after Holy Trinity. But because the date of Easter is variable, some of the early weeks of Ordinary Time don't happen every year. In fact, Lectionary 10 happens only 54% of years. And since the lectionary works on a three-year cycle, we only get Lectionary 10, Year B about once every six years; and then again there are two choices of lectionary in Ordinary Time: one series that complements the Gospel readings, and one semi-continuous reading of the Old Testament. If you alternate between the two series each time you go through the cycle, you might hear this exact lectionary once every twelve years. In churches that only use the semi-continuous readings, you'd never even hear it at all.

Why this long preface? Partly because I find the workings of the lectionary interesting, but maybe that's just me. But I'm also trying to draw your attention to the fact that our first reading for today is a text you're hardly ever going to hear in church. And that's really too bad, because what we see here is how God reacted the first time Adam disobeyed him. I think that's important.

First of all, notice that God has to ask. "Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" Nowadays we say that God is all-seeing and all-knowing, but in the Old Testament, God actually asks people what they've been up to. God does not actually spend all his time watching you with a beady eye keeping track of what you're doing. Besides giving us free will, God also gave us privacy. And really, we wouldn't have one without the other. And what's interesting, too, is that God gives Adam a chance to say something. God knows immediately what's happened, as soon as Adam speaks, but he doesn't say "you ate from the tree"; he says "did you eat from the tree?" It's a detail, but I think it's an important detail, because once again, God gives Adam a choice. Adam could have said "dude, I don't know what you're talking and I resent the accusation." Adam could have said "as a matter of fact, I did." Adam could have said a lot of things. What he does is shift the blame. He doesn't say yes, he doesn't say no, he says "that woman you gave me did it" and then after that "yeah, I guess so did I, but it was all her fault."

So God turns to the woman, and the woman does the same thing "well, actually it was the snake; I just went along with him." And the snake doesn't have anyone to blame, so that's who takes the fall. The snake is the only one who actually gets cursed in all this. The reading stops at verse 15, but in the book it continues:

To the woman (God) said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

And to the man he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it', cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.

Then the Lord God said, "See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" – therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:16-24)

So if you notice, God doesn't actually get mad. God doesn't get mad nearly as often as we pretend he does. It takes an awful lot to get God angry. And in this reading, it's not even a case of "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed." God hands out some consequences for everyone, which is pretty fair. No reason we shouldn't get a consequence when we screw up. So God gives out consequences, and then he fixes the mess. The man is uncomfortable about being naked, so God makes garments of skin. And then God kicks them out of the garden, not because he's angry, but because of the tree of life. If the man ate from the tree of life, then he'd live forever. And although some people seem to think that's the goal of life, we really can't live forever. We'd just waste it anyway, and we're miserable enough with the time we do have. We need to die. It's good for us. So God is not kicking Adam out of the garden out of anger, but to keep him safe from the tree of life.

What this tells us is really sad. It's not that God is angry and we're all going to Hell. God didn't even say that; somebody just made it up later. In fact it aggravates me immensely when people go on about how we're such horrible people, and we've sinned so horribly against God, and it's impossible that anyone would love us, let alone God, and we're gonna beat our breast and make a great show of accusing ourselves and pretending to repent and somehow that will make a difference. Honestly, I think that's complete nonsense. Granted we're all douchebags deep down, and many of us not too deep down either. But we're decent enough people that we can even love each other, so why pretend we believe God couldn't possibly love us? God is a better person than us; if we can love someone, all the more so can God. So no, it's not a miracle that God loves us. And no, we haven't sinned horribly against God. Yeah, so Adam ate from the tree, and then Israel worshipped false gods, and we haven't kept the Sabbaths and all the commandments. You think God is keeping track? God has things to do. God isn't keeping track of your sins unless you're doing something really egregious, like casting golden calves.

What really happened between Adam and God isn't that Adam made God angry. What happened, and it's a lot sadder, is that Adam lost God's trust. God didn't kick us out of the garden as punishment, he kicked us out because he couldn't trust us to leave the tree of life alone. And that's really, really sad.

But the good news is, God offered his trust to us again, through our Redeemer. Forgiveness of sins? Sure. But we always had that. Just look at the psalm:

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness in you,
so that you may be revered.

(Psalm 130:3-4) This theme is all over the Old Testament. God's forgiveness is not new with Jesus Christ. It was already there all along, and Israel always knew it. But what God offered us is a new Covenant; a new deal between him and us. There is no deal without trust, so when God offers us a covenant, he's offering his trust back to us.

The question is, are you going to live up to God's trust this time?

Today's hymn: #608, Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling.

Zut alors...

K, I don't know how I managed it, but I totally started in the wrong place in the lectionary. I had June 10 marked as Lectionary 13 when in reality it's Lectionary 10. So the good news is, now I have sermons for the next two Sundays; the bad news is, I'm missing three weeks of sermons. Good thing I don't actually preach to a congregation... Anyway, if you're reading this (are you? no one ever comments) and you also go to church, you might find the whole thing confusing; if not, just keep calm and carry on.

Year B, Lectionary 14 (July 8, 2012)

·         Ezekiel 2:1-5

·         Psalm 123 (2)

·         2 Corinthians 12:2-10

·         Mark 6:1-13

The theme in this week's lectionary is fairly clear: go preach the word of the Lord, and don't expect any thanks for it.

I think that's pretty much a lost cause with modern Christianity, especially here in the rich world. A third of people here are obese, another third is overweight, and almost no one can tolerate the least criticism. So the odds that any modern, rich-world Christian is going to hit the road with nothing to his or her name and go preach the word of God at the risk of a stoning, forty lashes minus one, imprisonment, or other personal discomfort are pretty minimal. Latter-Day Saints still go on missions, but not without material resources, and not at any particular risk to their person.

Now you might think it's not necessary anymore for Christians to go through all that discomfort, because God's good news has already reached around the world. You'd be wrong. First of all, obviously most people did not hear the part of God's good news that says "sell all you have, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me."

Jesus Christ, if he preached one thing, preached ascetic living. Repentance, sure. But repentance in the midst of self-gratification is thoroughly unconvincing. To repent is to deny ourselves, and we can't very well deny ourselves while wallowing in wealth until it kills us. So it might be a good idea for Christians to get out and preach, if not exactly Mother Theresa-like self-denial, at least simple, non-destructive living. And you're apt to get a pretty bad reception preaching that, I think.

The other thing Jesus Christ preached, if I recall, was forgiveness. And that's another one that nobody seems to be listening to. And when you think about it, forgiveness is another way to deny yourself. Yes, yes, it's a gift to yourself, yadda yadda. But in order to forgive with any kind of sincerity, you first have to accept that your hurt feelings are not paramount after all. And you're not gonna get very far preaching that one either, I can tell you.

But, that's not what I really want to talk about. You're not going to go forth in the clothes you're standing in now, taking not even your wallet, and preach poverty and forgiveness to other overweight egotistical people. Yet there is one thing left out of these three readings that is still accessible to most people. The part where God says to Ezekiel, "whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them."

You can do that without imposing, without risking your personal comfort or your ego, without denying yourself in any way. Or, maybe you can't. Some people can't give any level of service to others without feeling they're denying themselves. But hopefully as Christians, you're not that kind of people. Hopefully as Christians, you love serving others, because you are storing up rewards in Heaven, and whatever you have done to the smallest of these you have done to Christ.

So here is what you do: first of all, wear a cross. And don't just wear it as jewelry or inconspicuously. Find a cross pendant that is unadorned and large enough to be clearly visible. I have two crosses myself, a 3" one and a 1" one. They're made of olive wood on a brown string. Why? Partly because they're cheap and I'm not made of money, but mostly because I think that's the right way to wear a cross. A cross is not jewelry. It is not a gewgaw to adorn ourselves like painted whores. The cross signifies that we belong to the Lord, and yet most of us wear crosses that clearly show we belong to the Beast. So I wear a cross that cannot possibly be mistaken as an ornament, and I wear it so that it can be seen.

Then, wearing your cross so you can be clearly identified as a Christian, go out and serve others. Serve them directly with your own hands, not in some remote manner, like selling raffle tickets or praying for their migraine to be removed. Don't do it in an organised fashion, by joining a group that makes a show of doing good deeds. Find an actual human being in need of some tedious, time-consuming, possibly back-breaking chore, and do that for them. Don't call it "volunteering", count up your hours and get an award. Just make yourself personally useful to a person, without any recognition.

And third, and this is the most important part, let God's love shine through you as you do it.

How do you do that? I can't tell you a method for it. If you're a Christian, and the Spirit is in you, it will come out naturally when you serve others, because that's the very essence of the Spirit. As a Christian, when you are serving others, you are doing exactly what you are in the world for, and it will show naturally, I think. But I suppose it doesn't hurt to smile, make eye-contact, be attentive, joyful and gracious, and treat the person you are serving with dignity.

If you get an opportunity to talk about the Lord as you do this service, great. If you don't, still great. It doesn't need to be said. Whether they hear you or refuse to hear, by your gracious, Christ-like service and by the cross you are wearing, they will know that there has been a prophet among them.

Praise be to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Year B, Lectionary 13 (July 1, 2012)

·         Lamentations 3:22-33

·         Psalm 30 (1)

·         2 Corinthians 8:7-15

·         Mark 5:21-43

Our first reading, from Lamentations, reminds us of the most essential quality of the Lord: faithfulness. The Lord is faithful to us. The Lord provides. He gives food for the cattle, and for the young ravens when they cry. His mercy endures for ever and yet is new every morning.

"The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." How wonderful. Or we could say again, "the Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing that I shall want."

First we remember that the Lord provides for us abundantly, and then in our second reading, we are reminded to give abundantly. "Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." And of course we remember what the Lord said in Luke 6:38: "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

Now Paul had an agenda which is different from mine, as is usually the case. But whatever point he was making, I'm making this point to you: give abundantly, and there will be enough for you as well. Look around you, you see people who spend their money on themselves and never have enough, and you see those who give abundantly and have more than enough for themselves.

Some of it, of course, is lack of wisdom. Some people just don't manage their money. And yet I think it is also a sign of the Lord's mercy. Receive gratefully from the Lord, and give abundantly to the Lord's people, and you will not want. Hoard and waste, and you will never have enough.

I visited a person at home once. It was broad daylight outside, but we sat in a room on the shady side of the building, with the drapes closed, and turned a lamp on. There's nothing wrong with the tap water, but we drank bottled stuff. I thought, "why are you rejecting the Lord's gifts?"

The Lord gives us beautiful, free sunlight that makes us healthy; we shut it out and burn fossil fuels to make a dimmer light without the health benefits of the sun. The Lord (and, granted, the municipality) gives us good, clean water practically for free; we buy expensive bottled stuff brought from who knows where by truck. The Lord gives us feet, legs, a spinal cord so we can control our muscles, stand up and walk; we sit down and burn fossil fuels to get here and there, until we get so fat and sick that our legs have to be amputated at great expense.

Now this person I visited is much wealthier than I, in dollars and cents. And unlike me, she doesn't have to work. And yet, she has neither the time nor the money to help others. She does a bit of volunteering here and there, like we all do, but she doesn't have time to come to you and do something for you. She doesn't even have time to receive you. And if she does, she doesn't have time to listen to you, because she's got to be doing the talking. She has every material blessing that can reasonably be desired in life, and yet she has nothing to give to others. It reminds me of something I saw on Facebook recently: "some people are so poor, all they have is money."

But then at the other hand of the spectrum, consider someone like Mother Theresa. She came from a financially comfortable background. She could have spent her life sitting on her money, rearing children, and never having enough for anyone else. Instead she left her possessions, her safe home, her comfortable posting in a girls' school, picked up her cross and followed Jesus. Mother Theresa owned nothing but the clothes she stood in, and I'm not even sure about that. And yet she always had enough for everyone. The more she gave, the more she had to give. Mother Theresa allowed herself to be poured out for the Lord, and the Lord provided for her abundantly. People say Oprah or Martha Stewart are the richest women in the world, because they have lots and lots of loot. But if you measure not the loot you have but the work you do for others, Mother Theresa must be one of the richest people ever. She was so rich, she didn't even need money.

So we have these two wonderful readings about the faithfulness of the Lord, and then we have this Gospel reading about bothering Jesus until he does something for you.

I say, forget this reading from Mark. In fact, forget everything you've ever read about healing, raising the dead, and casting out demons. And forget especially about "we-ask-this-in-Jesus's-name-amen." All that is completely beside the point. In fact, I don't think Jesus even said that at all. Jesus told us how to pray: "Our Father, who art in heaven." Definitely NOT "we ask this in Jesus's name." Forget anything you've ever heard or read about Jesus handing out loot for the asking.

If you remember one miracle Jesus did, remember Mark 6:30-44, or Matthew 14:13-21: the feeding of the five thousand. It's not in the lectionary for Year B, but it is in Year A. Anyway, Jesus and the disciples are in the wilderness with "five thousand men, besides women and children", and also five loaves of bread and two fish. So Jesus blesses the food and tells the disciples to hand it out. "And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full." (Matthew 14:20) That's exactly what I've just told you: receive the blessings the Lord gives you, give them out abundantly to others, and you'll have plenty yourself. That's all you really need to know.

So instead of the "we ask this in Jesus's name amen" prayer, let me teach you a prayer that was written by Mother Theresa, to ask the Lord for his abundant blessings. Please repeat after me:

Lord, when I am hungry – give me someone in need of food;

When I am thirsty, send me someone needing a drink;

When I am cold, send me someone to warm;

When I am grieved, offer me someone to console;

When my cross grows heavy, let me share another's cross, too;

When I am poor, lend me someone in need;

When I have not time, give me someone I can help a little while;

When I am humiliated, let me have someone to praise;

When I am disheartened, send me someone to cheer;

When I need understanding, give me someone who needs mine;

When I need to look after, send someone to care for;

When I think only of myself, draw my thoughts to another.

Predictably, our hymn for today is #733, Great Is Thy Faithfulness.

Year B, Holy Trinity (June 3, 2012)

·         Isaiah 6:1-8

·         Psalm 29 (2)

·         Romans 8:12-17

·         John 3:1-17

I love this lectionary. I think this is my most favourite lectionary ever. I have been contemplating it for days and it has worked great things in my life already. You know why? Because every time I look at this lectionary, I suddenly remember some chore I've been neglecting. I can tell you the house is spotless, all the laundry is done, folded and put away, the chequebook is balanced, everything. I've accomplished everything through this lectionary.

Well, almost everything. What I didn't accomplish is to write a sermon about the Holy Trinity. So when in doubt, of course, I googled other people's sermons. You can get all the sermons you want online. You can get different denominations, you can get one on each of the readings, you can get regular ones and ones edited for lay readers, it's awesome. But I digress again.

Seriously though, you know what I noticed about the sermons I googled up? All of them also meandered and talked about other things and kinda didn't really get to the point about the Holy Trinity very much. And really, what is the point about Trinity Sunday? We don't have any particular rituals for Trinity Sunday. We don't have any anecdotes or scriptural masterpieces, because the Trinity isn't actually in the Bible. Why do we even have Trinity Sunday? I have no idea. But apparently, we have to spend Trinity Sunday telling ourselves how mysterious the whole concept of "trinity" is.

Ok.

Well you know what? I don't actually find it very mysterious. First of all, there is God. The Big Guy. The Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. That's pretty simple. And to put it even more simply: "there is no other God than God." Everything that is divine, or proceeds from the divinity, is God. And whatever you call him, her, it or them, there is no other God than God.

Fine. So God tries to talk the Israelites into living righteously, and it doesn't work. God has an idea: he squeezes a part of his consciousness into a human body. As we say, he "sent his son." But he didn't really "send his son", as in tell some other dude that was in Heaven with him "yo, you go down there, get incarnate, get crucified under Pontius Pilate, see if that works any better." What came down was not separate from God and it was not a biological creature. It was a part of the consciousness of God, that squeezed itself into the body and mind of some guy named Yeshua.

Now we say that Jesus is God, but he's not all of God. Because obviously you cannot hold God inside a human body and mind. First of all his brain would melt and pour out his ears and nose, and that's just to begin with. Even when God passed before Moses, he hid Moses in the rock, because no human can behold the glory of God, let alone contain God. So only a part of God's consciousness was contained in the body and mind of the man Yeshua.

And this is why, I think, Jesus doesn't have full divine power. He can whither fig trees, raise the dead, cast out demons, all that. You know why? It occurred to me while I was listening to Roman Catholics talking about miracles. Then I realised, Jesus speaks the word of God. The word of God creates what it declares. So when Jesus says "get up and walk", that is created. If he said it to a snake or a rock, that would get up and walk too. Jesus can create what he declares because he has the authority to speak the word of God. But he doesn't really have unlimited powers. A lot of times he'll say "well I could have some angels do this, but I'm not going to." Because that's not part of the authority he's been given, so then he'd have to refer it to his boss, and as we know, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Nor does Jesus know everything the Father knows. It takes him quite a while to realise where the whole thing is going. He has a certain amount of foreknowledge, but he's not all-knowing. He, unlike the Father, is not [SQG] "almighty."

So Jesus, the Son, is fully human, and he contains a part of God's consciousness and a part of God's authority. Then, the prophecy is fulfilled, and the human body and mind of Yeshua are taken up to Heaven, whether physically or metaphysically. But something of the Christ remains in the world. Not the person of Yeshua, but the part of God's consciousness that indwelt him. And that is the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father. From the Father, mind you. I'm not big on the "filioque" thing. The Paraclete proceeds from the Father. It is sent from the Father to be alongside of us, to be our helper and advocate.

That's who, or what, is the Holy Spirit. And that's why we have the Holy Spirit. And as to where and when, we know that the Holy Spirit is with us in all times and places. Which leaves one last question: how is the Spirit among us? In what form? How do we know the Spirit?

As Jesus reportedly said to Nicodemus: "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8-9)

So that's how the Spirit is. It is like the wind, blowing here and there. One might even say the Spirit is going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down on it. And we hear it. We see the things that are moved by it. And like the wind, it can blow us here and there. But we don't see where it comes from or where it goes. We know what causes wind, as we know what causes the Paraclete to be with us, and we feel the wind and the Holy Spirit around us, but it doesn't answer to us.

See, the Paraclete is here to help us, but it's not here to help us with the things we want. The Paraclete does not raise the dead, or cure migraines, or get us into the job we want. The Paraclete is here to help us do the work of the Lord. All that stuff that God told us through Yeshua, that was important. God didn't take up a human body so he could raise the dead and turn water into wine. God can do that any time. What he was after was talking to us, clearly, in plain language, and showing us exactly what he wants done. Because clearly the whole thing with visions and prophecies was way over our heads. So he comes down, explains what he wants done, goes home and leaves the Paraclete behind to help us carry out the work. So we can choose to work with the Paraclete and do the work of the Lord, or not.

That's it. I think that's pretty simple. The Cliff's Notes Trinity, if you will: God creates everything; gives man free will; inhabits human body to lead by example; takes away human body, leaves consciousness to help continue his work.

Our hymn for today: #396, Spirit of Gentleness

Year B, Pentecost (May 27, 2012)

·         Ezekiel 37:1-14

·         Psalm 104:24-34, 35b (30)

·         Acts 2:1-21

·         John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

Pentecost. The day when we are baptised in the Holy Spirit.

[pause]

What does that mean, exactly, being "baptised in the Holy Spirit"?

Being baptised means to be immersed in something until we take on some of its qualities. Like a dye bath. So today we are to be immersed in the Holy Spirit until we take on some of its qualities. How do we do that, and what qualities will we take on?

Let's think about the Jewish rite that became our [SQG] "baptism". In the gospel we read that John [SQG] "baptised" people in water and Jesus will [SQG] "baptise" in the Holy Spirit. But in the rite that is called Jesus's baptism, it is not John who immerses people, but the people who immerse themselves. John only calls them to repentance, and witnesses their ritual immersion in water. John doesn't touch them.

Likewise, no one will really "baptise" us in the Holy Spirit. Jesus will not immerse us in the spirit. Jesus calls us, but it is we who immerse ourselves in the Spirit, of our own free will and by our own actions.

How do we immerse ourselves in the Holy Spirit? Good question. First of all, in order to immerse ourselves in the Holy Spirit, we have to find it, and in order to find it we have to know what it is.

In our first reading today, we see the Spirit of God at its work, the way it is throughout the Hebrew Testament. The Spirit of God is the breath of life, and the word that creates what it declares. The Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters in the very beginning. In our Gospel reading, we see the Spirit of God in John's version. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) In French it is not called the Word but the Verb, which signifies even more the active nature of the Word, or Spirit, of God. The Word is God, but more commonly it is Christ who is called the Word; and the Spirit also is the Word, and is God, and is Christ. And if you ever read any Gnostic theology, it becomes even more convoluted than that.

John, writing in Greek, calls the Holy Spirit "Paraclete", which means the Advocate, or Helper, Comforter, Encourager, Intercessor, or "the one who is called alongside." And as John has it, the Paraclete cannot come into the world unless Christ leaves. In a sense, it's a Tyler Durden thing. Jesus is Jack. Jesus is the Holy Spirit trapped in a material world where convention matters. The Paraclete is Tyler Durden. The Holy Spirit is badass. The Holy Spirit defies convention, definition, capture, death. The Holy Spirit shakes off Jesus's narrow life as a Jewish carpenter in trouble with the law, and sends off the space monkeys to free the world from capitalism, materialism, convention, attachment to material desire, the fear of pain and death, and all the things that hold us back from being free.

In the book, by the way, unlike in the movie, Jack is removed to a psychiatric facility, but the space monkeys are at large – or are they? Only if they continue Tyler Durden's work.  Otherwise they're no longer space monkeys. So that's a very good analogy to the Holy Spirit.

All right, so the Holy Spirit is a bunch of Greek words, and also Tyler Durden. Great. That really doesn't tell us how to find the Holy Spirit to immerse ourselves in it. But then, you don't find Tyler Durden, either. Tyler Durden calls you. And the Holy Spirit calls you. John called people to the first [SQG] "baptism".  As it says in Isaiah 40:3-5:

A voice cries out in the wilderness,
"Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."

The Holy Spirit calls us. How? As it finds us. We all hear the call of the Spirit in different ways. And if we listen and follow the voice that calls us to prepare the way of the Lord, to change the world for the glory of the Lord, then we find the Holy Spirit. And then we immerse ourselves in it.

But again, how do we immerse ourselves in the Holy Spirit?

I think we have to go on a retreat. We have to go into the wilderness. We have to listen to the word of the Lord and meditate on it. We have to serve others. We have to praise the Lord and sing a new song to him. We have to deny ourselves. We have to take up our cross. While cannot be immersed both in the world and in the Spirit. So we have to renounce the world and devote ourselves to being immersed in the Holy Spirit. Jesus never suggested that we could do things halfway in following him. You take up your cross and follow him, or you can stay home. Or as Tyler Durden said, "sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken." It's not a weekend seminar. You have to commit. Seriously, watch Fight Club, if you haven't already. You think it's crazy? Maybe it is. But that's what Jesus is asking you to do. Not the part about trashing franchise coffee bars. Well... Maybe that part too. But walking away from everything, living with only what you need, forsaking your identity and your will for the cause, that's what Jesus calls you to. If you couldn't be a space monkey, can you really say you've committed to the Lord?

Next question: how long do we need to be immersed in the Holy Spirit?

When we were baptised in water, most of us were not immersed at all, but if we were, we came up out of the water almost as soon as we went in. And that's about enough to be [SQG] "baptised" in water, because we don't have to be immersed in water for very long to take on some of its qualities, particularly the quality of being wet. But I don't think we can be [SQG] "baptised" in the Holy Spirit by taking a quick dip like that.

Consider the Apostles. How long were they immersed in the Spirit? They lived with Jesus three years, did they not? Three years in the presence of the Lord himself, before they completed their baptism and came up from the Spirit and were sent forth. So for us, who are not in the physical presence of Jesus Christ himself, how long do we have to immerse ourselves in the Holy Spirit?

I suspect the answer is, as long as it takes. You have to remain immersed in the Holy Spirit until you take on some of its qualities. And no, it's not a weekend seminar. It's a long, long retreat. And it is difficult to stay immersed.

I can tell you when I was called. It was some time between May 3 and May 7, 2010. I know that, because the first church bulletin I have is from May 9, 2010, sixth Sunday of Easter. I was at work, in the wilderness, when I heard the voice that was calling. I heard it very clearly, and I didn't hesitate. I googled to see what churches were near me, and I saw there was a Lutheran church, and I went. The church I went to, Holy Family Lutheran Church in Yellowknife, was full of the Spirit. So I immersed myself, and I have been immersed in the Holy Spirit ever since. Sometimes it's easy to be immersed, when the world leaves me alone, and other times it's difficult to balance the world and the Spirit. But I'm still immersed. Two years and three weeks so far.

Which then begs yet another question: how do we know when we've been immersed long enough?

Well now that is a very good question. How do we know that we have taken on qualities from the Holy Spirit?

Hmmmm... Think think think.

Well, I think we need to look at what we have to do once we come up out of our immersion. In the baptism of water, we put our clothes on, walk away from the water, and carry on with our life. But in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, will we shake off the drops of Holy Spirit, clothe ourselves back in our old ways, and carry on as before?

No. If we do that, we weren't immersed long enough to take on qualities from the Holy Spirit. If we stay immersed long enough, when we come out of the immersion and walk out into the world again, we will take with us the qualities of the Holy Spirit. And first of all the Holy Spirit does not hide itself. "Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?" (Mark 4:21) Thus when the disciples completed their baptism in the Holy Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, immediately they began to speak so everyone outside could hear them. And although they had been hiding in fear of the Jews, they went out and spoke, and then they went out preaching.

Pentecost, for the disciples, was not the beginning, but the completion of their baptism. In the same way that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the shape of a dove after his baptism in water, now he descends on the disciples in the shape of tongues of fire upon their baptism in the Holy Spirit. And in the same way that Jesus's work began after his baptism in water, the work of the disciple began after their baptism in the Holy Spirit. When we have been baptised in the Holy Spirit, we will not stay silent, or stay home, but go forth and preach the good news so that all can hear.

So what does this mean for all of us here today? What does this say about our baptism?

We were baptised, most of us, as infants, others as children or even as adults. We were baptised, not even in water, but with water splashed on our heads by a human. Did the water do anything? Did the ritual mean anything? I once saw an Anglican priest baptise a stuffed Easter bunny. This [SQG] "baptism" by water may show our desire, or our parents' desire, that we be redeemed from sin by the grace that Jesus earned for us. But does it really mean anything, spiritually, when the baptised thicken on their dregs instead of serving the Lord, and when priests baptise stuffed toys?

Our baptism with water is only a beginning. It is an undertaking. From there on, we can immerse ourselves in the Holy Spirit – or not. No one can [SQG] "baptise us in the Holy Spirit." Jesus calls us, and we choose. We choose to immerse ourselves, or not. Many of us, even though we call ourselves Christians and are baptised, are not choosing to immerse ourselves in the Holy Spirit. Others are dipping themselves here and there, but are not taking on qualities of the Holy Spirit. Still others are still immersed in the Holy Spirit. And some come up out of the Holy Spirit and are sent forth to bring the word of God, the Spirit of God, the life-giving action of God, to the nations.

Our hymn for today: #669, Rise Up, O Saints of God