Good Friday Morning

Scapegoat No, Sacrifice Yes

This morning we remember Jesus’ last hours, as the soldiers, by Pilate’s orders, in response to the crowd’s demands, hung Jesus on the worst instrument of torture, the cross.

The characters

Remember the many characters in Jesus’ last hours. Judas, the soldiers, the High Priests Annas and Caiaphas, Pilate, Malchus, Peter, the crowd, Jesus’ Mother Mary, her sister Mary of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and of course Jesus.

Our part

None of us were present in that horrific drama more than 2000 years ago. Yet we are characters in so many terrible dramas that have taken place in our own life times, dramas that are devastatingly so similar.

Girard, Scapegoating

The French Historian and Anthropological Philosopher Rene Girard identified the similarity that ties Jesus’ last days with our all too common dramas as a common human sin, scapegoating. Girard pointed out that we all greedily strive to have more than just the necessities of life. Thinking that life is a zero sum project (that there is not enough for everyone) we try to take from others so that we will have more. That’s greed. And greed eats at our souls.

What nearly always happens next is worse. Since we cannot tolerate that we would be mutually so terrible to those close to us, we together find an innocent bystander, someone vulnerable and uninvolved, someone who we do not know well and therefore can bring ourselves to not care what happens to them. Without any justification we project all our collective sin and guilt onto that person, condemn them, judge them, and ruin them. Working together we ease the unbearable conflict between us.

Like Joseph’s brothers in the Old Testament getting rid of the evidence of their horrendous sin against their own brother, we exile the innocent person. We’ve attached our sins to that person and then collectively forgotten about them and our sins, so that we can live together in peace. The darkness hides that our peace is bought at the price of an innocent bystander’s destruction.

We are exactly like the characters

In exactly this manner Judas, the high priests, the crowds, Pilate, and the soldiers condemn and kill Jesus. And we do this so often to other people today. We may not use crosses to crucify, because we want to be able to say we are not as bad as those who have gone before us. Instead we use gossip, innuendo, and rumours to ruin innocent people’s reputations, ruin them financially, and drive them from our communities.

Even when we are not Judas or soldiers or the crowd, or the high priests or Pilate, we stand too often with the crowds watching as another person’s reputation and finances are ruined. We watch and are too afraid to interfere. We are even entertained and reassured as if to say to ourselves, “all is well in the world if evil is uncovered in others and they are made to pay. We, though, are good enough for God.”

Jesus, Clear story of God’s intent: the last scapegoat

In truth Jesus came to be the last scapegoat, the last sacrifice needed to set us all free from all sins, especially these terrible sins of greed and scapegoating, of hiding from our own sins.

God led Abraham to the mountain to sacrifice Isaac. But then God interrupts the sacrifice providing a goat instead for the ritual. God says: no more child sacrifice.

Likewise, God led Jesus to the cross, as the last scapegoat ever needed, and to give us Jesus’ life and death story so that we might learn more of God’s intention for us, which includes: no more scapegoats.

Jesus forgives those who betray, arrest, judge and crucify him. God calls us, instead of scapegoating innocent bystanders, to be that same forgiveness for all people.

Yet, we are still in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves, and we continue to sacrifice others instead of ourselves.

Today we are in the crowd again

Today we remember how we are just like that crowd again, as Jesus is raised on the cross to die a torturous death.

We beg for forgiveness … and time

We ask for forgiveness. We hope we will learn to stop sacrificing innocent people as scapegoats. We pray that God will intervene, transform our sins into blessings, and make God’s will clear also among us, in our words and through our actions.

…

Even so, we know we will continue to sin, so remembering Jesus’ story, we beg God for mercy, and forgiveness, …

and time for the amendment of our lives.

Amen

A Short Walk

Three Stand Straight, Three Lean to the Light.

Tonight I took a short walk.

Around the sand roads and through the woods.

No bugs, lots of water spread across the low spots.

No great big, throny bushes, no green trees, and no crowds … in fact great solitude and quiet.

Just a walk around

a bit

near the sunset

before settling in as a guest of the Queen,

honoured chosen of my Lord,

on the shores of a small quite lake,

since the oil company bought it all up,

except a few pieces

which means the Queen still has a small plot

that she shares, by law, with a few homeless,

and quite a few wealthy land owners looking for

the gift of nature: health and joy.

There’s also enough detritus left around that proves there are a number of irresponsible beer drinking, condom throwing, and garbage dumping foolish visitors.

So I took a bag with me on my walk around to collect some of the detritus. Lots more, like the condoms, still lay strewn on the ground, things that I needed more than just one bag to be able to pick up and haul out for other fools.

Why does the Queen receive such fools?

Why does the Creator tolerate such fools?

Perhaps because one fool is pretty much like another, and all are fools in one way or another.

My call is to be a fool for Christ, so there is that.

And I took a quiet walk around tonight before enjoying a quiet night, with only a couple parking for hours, depositing another condom and toilet paper to found on a quiet morning walk before the full light of dawn.

Solitude is precious as are a good night’s sleep and the clear light of truth.

Midweek Lent 5 Reflection

Changing Our Plans

God Changes Our Plans

God’s Plans are Larger Than Ours

Tonight’s Theme
Our continuing theme for this Lent is from Isaiah 58, that we hold a fast acceptable to God, one that brings justice, freedom, food, and homes to those in need.
That combines with the weekly theme, always having to do with change, and tonight specifically we look at Changing Plans.

Lessons
Psalm 2
Isaiah 52:13-15
Mark 10:32-34

God’s Plans are Large Enough for Everything that Comes our Way.

Plans of Mice and [Wo]Men

We all have had plans. But God’s plans for us are larger. How many of us have planned our next steps as children moved out for jobs, university, trade school or full-time employment and even marriage. Then they rebound back home to recover before leaving again to make their way in today’s fast changing world.

The Lessons: God ‘Changes’ Plans OT vs NT God

Tonight’s readings seem to reflect an old tradition that God approached humans one way in Old Testament times. Then God changed his plans with Jesus.

In Psalm 2 God observes the nations conspiring against God and God’s anointed. God laughs at them and speaks to them with fury terrifying them, before warning them to serve the Lord in trembling submission or else God’s wrath will be quickly kindled against them and they will perish.

In comparison listen to the Gospel from Mark where God’s own people condemn the only Son of God to death. Then they hand him over to others who mock, spit on, flog and kill him.

The roles are reversed: God bears the fury and wrath of the people and in the end God perishes. It is as if instead of demanding obedience God finally figured out that humans could never stop sinning so God decided to bear the whole cost of forgiving their sins. Thereafter God asks, calls, entices, and inspires the people to do what is right and needs to be done.

Jesus reveals to us the heart of God

We know that Jesus came to teach, cure and care for people, and to die on the cross as the last sacrifice or scapegoat required. The cross on God’s heart becomes so undeniably visible with Jesus’ death and resurrection that we can only be astounded.

Even though we deserve nothing but death and void, God chooses to forgive our sins. God claims us as children, and we have the most meaningful work possible: to follow Jesus’ example of giving everything we are in order that others will have justice, freedom, food and homes.

Call to abundant life in response to Jesus

Our sacrifice may even hurt, yet this is what God created us to be and to do. This is God’s larger plan for us all so that we have life abundant. Abundant life has very little to do with abundant wealth, property, possessions, power and influence over others, or self-serving pleasures. Instead God calls us to sacrifice and to then celebrate God’s successes, when lost souls return to God. At times that is each of us.

We see more of God’s plan, God remains the same

The tradition that I accept is that God does not change God’s plan or approach to humans. Rather God was marked by the cross since the beginning of time as is witnessed to also in the OT, for example in tonight’s reading from Isaiah concerning the suffering servant. What certainly does change, and markedly, is who we people think God is. What changes is how we understand more and more of God’s larger plan for us.

Stuck with the ‘OT’ idea of God

Still we so often get stuck thinking that God demands and we have to obey; that as we merit we get rewarded with God’s protection or we perish by God’s fury, and the next generation starts all over learning to obey God or else.

Our plans vs God’s larger plans

In this view of God’s world, we must take control making worthwhile plans for ourselves. We plan for a great house, or job, or spouse, or children, or activities in retirement. Some even succeed with our plans.

God always has larger plans for us.

More than 7 decades ago a farm boy, inspired by a missionary visiting at his church, decided to become a missionary doctor. He worked his way through college, through a tour with the army in Korea, through medical school and reported to the church for service.

The church eventually sent him to Africa. The man planned to spend his life there with his wife and children. But God’s plan for him was larger.

The man got sick, was forced to return home to a family practice. God had larger plans for him and the man ended up studying again to become a pathologist. He set up a business in the ever-changing world of medicine, brought in a partner to expand and improve their services. Still God’s plan for him was larger.

On it went with God always moving the man about, even to Antarctica in the winter when he was 70, until at the age of 75 with his back crumbling, a double heart by-pass, and needing both knees and a hip to be replaced the man was ready to rest and stay home. But God’s plan for him was larger. The church sought him out to return to Africa to rebuild a medical delivery system that had fallen apart mostly due to corruption. Now in his 90’s he still travels six months of every year raising funds and the other six months he oversees the building of a children’s hospital in Zinga, TZ.

Sometimes God’s plan sees that we need to be rescued from disaster. I heard from another pastor about Sarah, who went to college in the States. Sarah met Jim, through campus ministry. They made great plans. He planned to be a surgeon and she a nurse. They both wanted lots of children. God seemed to agree with their plans as they married and both were accepted into their respective majors.

But Jim was drafted for Vietnam. He served as a medic and came back in a wheelchair with one arm and unable to have children. All their plans were taken from Jim and Sarah.

I’m not sure that was God’s plan for them, but God was there for them. Then Jim died suddenly one night, a hidden complication from his injuries.

Sarah changed plans and became a family doctor. She married a farmer and they had three wonderful children, now grown up with families of their own. God had a large enough plan for Sarah.

Sometimes the Devil has his way with our lives, but always God’s plans are larger.

Surprise

If we’ve thought God is vengeful, demanding, wrathful, and the warrior protector of us, then we may be in for a great surprise.

The CIA regime control

To protect US interests around the world the CIA often provided wet work and weapons to bring to and keep in power tyrannical dictators who do the US’s bidding and keep their people in line. It is a devil’s plan, in response to which God often brings in a larger plan.

CAI vs CIA

In Three Cups of Teaand Stones into Schools Greg Mortenson tells the story of the Central Asia Institute, the CAI, not to be confused with the CIA.

Mortenson’s project was born of a plan to change the world toward peace through providing schools and schooling to girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The girls, who would likely become mothers, would then educate their daughters and their sons. We know education is the most crucial piece to help the poorest in the world make life better for themselves.

The Central Asia Institute was hardly perfect because Mortenson, raised in Tanzania, was unpredictable and spontaneous. He rarely operated on a clock or even a calendar. Still the CAI was an effective project that made a real difference in a real way: by sacrifice and through real education.

The idea of education for young girls was picked up by the CIA as a model for diffusing hostilities, to little effect. Hatred of the west runs deep.

Terrorists also adopted the plan, unfortunately with great success, destroying schools for girls and establishing madrassas for boys which taught hatred of the west, and trained them for terrorist attacks around the world.

In real life the devil has life destroying plans.

As we Grow, we see the appropriate fast for us

We grow and change. Our plans change as we grow. As we learn more of God’s larger plans for us, we can better be God’s agents of grace for the strangers, refugees, hungry, homeless, the oppressed, and all those suffering injustice. Yet often God’s large plans catch us off guard.

The challenge is to discern at this time a) what is God’s larger plan for us to bring life abundant to others, and b) what the devil is trying to do to our lives that takes life from us and others.

God is always there for us, no matter what plans we have, but God wants us to change our plans to better match Jesus’ model for our lives. Jesus’ model is about making the acceptable fast, the sacrifice so that others may have life abundant.

Amen

Changing Hearts

The ‘Final’ Version

Our Way Through the Waters, to God’s Glory

Psalm 119 starts: Happy are those whose way is blameless

Wouldn’t it be spectacular if we could change our hearts and follow all God’s laws and be blameless for the rest of our lives. We would be profoundly happy, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength! Nothing would defile us from within or from outside ourselves.

But we confess that we are all sinful and unable to free ourselves. Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Luther and many others have made it crystal clear that no one can be entirely blameless. If anyone were able to be blameless the whole course of human history would be changed.

What then can we do to change our hearts? Can we change our hearts of stone for healthy hearts filled with God’s Spirit?

Since 1967, when Bernard Christian transplanted the first human heart, we can have surgeons transplant our diseased hearts with new hearts. Heart transplant patients report it is more than just a physical experience. Something more changes, as another person’s heart gives them life. The other person has met an untimely death. The transplant patient carries on with life, for themselves and in a small yet noticeable way for the donor.

Though our meaning tonight for changing our hearts is hardly physically accurate, we are talking about changing the seat of our emotions, the centre of our wills, and the motive behind our thinking and doing.

First off this is a very complicated idea. Secondly it is nearly out of the realm of human possibility. We so often get it all wrong.

Once a well-heeled congregation decided to look outside themselves and do something really good for a poor neighbourhood nearby. After carefully looking through the neighbourhood they found a deserted chunk of land, filled with weeds, stones, and syringes. They decided it would make the perfect neighbourhood playground. They bought the land, and brought in topsoil, sod, and playground equipment. Then they headed to the community centre to invite the community to make use of it. The community leaders said only a very polite thank you.

“What’s wrong?” a congregation member blurted out.

“Well,” said one of the community leaders, “we had plans for that land. We had been saving money and applying for grants, gotten corporate sponsors, and invested in getting drawings made up. We were on track to break ground in 6 months. Our plans included a picnic area, a play area, community gardens and even a basketball court on one end.

“Now we’ll have to let all that go and enjoy the playground.”

We can try to fix the world with our privilege, power, and wealth. Or we can use our ears to listen to those in need, our minds to discern what the real issues are, and our hearts to empathize with their plight so that how we act will actually meet the real needs of the people we try to help.

There are things we can do to change our hearts, to change how we feel about another person, our situation in life, and the events that happen around us. While we cannot change our individual emotional responses to events, we can slowly, through diligent practice of habits, change the range of our emotions. We can over time move ourselves from a destructive, disengaged range of emotional responses, to a hope-filled, engaged range of emotional responses to the same kind of events. It takes lots of time, diligent work, and a motivation that only the Holy Spirit can maintain in us.

The first thing we can do is forgive others. We act as if the other has not sinned against us. We treat them special, even giving them gifts they really want. When we behave as if they were precious, they become precious to us again. In time we will realize, we have actually forgiven them.

Only with the help of the Holy Spirit can we truly change our hearts. We need God to send people to help. Hearts change the course of our lives, and the course of our communities, our churches, our countries, and even the course of human history.

St. Augustine, perhaps the most influential of Christianity’s early thinkers, writers, preachers, and practitioners of faith, did not start out a Christian. Born of a Christian mother and a pagan father, he was denied baptism. He spent his youth as a Manichaean, and according to his own account lost himself in pleasures and wanton living. He was befriended by Ambrose, who he met since they both shared exceptional skills as orators. While Ambrose’s preaching was exceptional and his message was the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, it was Ambrose’s friendship that deeply affected Augustine’s heart and drew him to convert to Christianity. St. Augustine gave himself to the work of Christ on earth, ending his life serving as the Bishop of Hippo in north Africa, where he wrote and preached. Imperfect, rescued, and saved Augustine steered the course of Christianity to be the faith we recognize today. He also steered the Roman Empire towards Christianity.

Because there was one human, Jesus, who lived entirely blameless before God, the whole of human history is changed. Yours and mine, and each of our lives are inexorably changed toward God, toward life, and toward giving everything we have and are in order that others may know God’s Grace as well. Augustine was one piece of this course of history.

Our hearts inform and equip us to turn our lives in new directions. As the Holy Spirit moves our hearts to love the Lord with all our hearts, minds, and strength, then we focus on faith, ideas, words, and actions which can affect others’ hearts with the same Grace that saves us each day.

We trust that God is always with us. We can be blameless and joyful therefore, not because we are perfect, but because Jesus steps in for us and we are reckoned to have Jesus’ blameless track record.

There is something spectacular to being the donor of Christ’s heart to those in need. It is to give to another the seat of our will and passion, the centre of our life, and to give our hearts to another in order that they may live, and that living they may have life abundant.

Have a heart. Have a change of heart. Because the Holy Spirit helps us surrender our hearts to the will, passion, and purpose of Jesus Christ, therefore we live, heart and all, as God calls and equips us to live.

We live as never before. We live the fast that is acceptable to God, the fast that through our sacrifice others receive justice, freedom, food, and homes.

Amen

Rough Draft: A Change of Heart, Lent 4 Midweek Reflection

This is really still way too rough, but here it is, as a way-point along the way. Before it is done it needs to be half as long, and more focused.

There’s work to be done on it.

Lenten Theme:
Isaiah 58:
A fast that is acceptable to God: sacrifice for justice, freedom, food, homes.

This week’s Theme:
Change of Heart

Lessons:
Ezekiel 36.22-28
Psalm 119. 1-16
Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Our Hearts are chaotic, reflecting so much of our lives, but they are not without the Light of Christ! We are never alone.

A Change of Heart

Happy are those whose way is blameless

Blameless No one!

Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Luther and many more Christian theologians and teachers have made it crystal clear that if anyone were to be able to be blameless the whole course of the human species would be entirely different. No one can be entirely blameless.

In fact we confess that we are all sinful and unable to free ourselves, that we require Jesus’ intervention of grace so that we can live in God’s promise that we are God’s children, God’s ambassadors of grace to all people.

Only Obey if written on our Hearts

The only way that we at all can obey God’s commandments and statutes is if through the Holy Spirit, they are emblazoned on our hearts, so that we can do no other than follow them.

Change Hearts: God does us right with God

Wednesdays after a soup supper we’ve looked at change of season, change of circumstance, change of habits, and today we look at changing our hearts.

The starting reminder is that this is not possible for us alone; and further that not our habits, nor our words, nor our thoughts, nor even our beliefs put us right with God. We never are right enough with God. God takes us in as Children, as recipients and bearers of Good News, as Ambassadors of Christ, as the voice, the hands, the feet, and the compassionate Grace of Jesus Christ for other people. God does it all, and then we get to respond, because the Holy Spirit equips us to respond.

We can practice responding, bathing ourselves first in reminders that we need the Holy Spirit to work in us, in order that our practice will be any good at all. Then we can set forth, practising all we can; Praying that the Holy Spirit will transform our feeble efforts into the real Grace of Jesus the Christ.

What can we do to change our hearts?

Transplants

Since 1967, when Bernard Christian transplanted the first human heart, we can have surgeons transplant our diseased heart with a new heart. Heart transplant patients report that having one’s heart changed is more than just a physical experience. Something more changes, as another person’s heart gives them life, a person that has met an untimely death. The patient carries on with life, for themselves and in a noticeable small way for the donor of the heart.

What is the heart to us? What exactly are we trying to change?

In many ways the heart is much more than it was thought to be in old Hebrew thought, or even in the thoughts concerning heart, mind and soul in Jesus’ day.

[fill in OT thoughts of heart, Greek thoughts of heart, compared to mind and soul, and compared to today: heart, the seat of emotion. Maybe maybe not?]

In many minds today the heart is the seat of emotion, of passion, of a person’s will. This may not match much of what we know about the physical anatomy of the human body and mind; but it is common in literature and in everyday thought.

Whether our understanding of the heart is accurate or not, this evening’s theme is precisely about more than changing just a physical heart. We are talking about changing that which is the seat of one’s emotions, the center of one’s own will, and the motive center behind one’s thinking and actions.

Nearly Impossible

To change the seat of emotions, the center of one’s will, the motives behind one’s thinking and actions is first off, a very complicated concept.

Secondly it is so much more complicated to accomplish. It is nearly out of the realm of human possibility, but not wholly.

So Many Efforts Miss

A well-heeled congregation decided to do something really good for a poor neighbourhood nearby. After carefully looking through the neighbourhood they found a deserted chunk of land, filled with weeds, stones, even the odd syringe. They decided it would make the perfect neighbourhood playground. They bought the land, brought in good topsoil, sod, and finally playground equipment. Then they headed to a community hall to “hand over” ownership. The community leaders said a very polite thank you, but seemed lacking in enthusiasm.

“What’s wrong?” a congregation member blurted out.

“Well,” said one of the community leaders, “we had plans for that land. We had been saving money and applying for grants with corporate sponsors, invested in getting drawings done and we were about 6 months from startup. It would have had a play area, community gardens and even a basketball court on one end.

“Now we’ll have to let all that go and enjoy the playground.”

But still we can start trying

There are things we can do to change our hearts, to change how we feel about another person, our situation in life, the events that happen around us. While we cannot change our individual emotional responses to events, we can slowly, through diligent practice of habits, change the range of our emotions that we experience. We can over time, encountering pretty much the same kind of events, move ourselves from a sad, downward unengaged emotional response to common enough events, to a hope-filled, engaged, even joy-filled emotional response to the same common events.

It takes lots of time, diligent work, and a motivation that is nearly without limit.

Holy Spirit is writing on our Hearts

And that is when we see that, though we may like to think we can accomplish such a change of heart, the Holy Spirit is required to change our hearts to be those of people to serve Christ and Christ’s people.

On the other hand if we ever would want to change our hearts away from God, then we need to fight off the Holy Spirit first. We need to fight against the Spirit to be able to think we taken even one step distance from God who has promised to be with us for life and beyond.

What we can do, forgive: act as if the other has not sinned against us. Treat them special, even. Give them gifts they really want. Behave that they are precious to us; they become precious, and then we realize, we have actually forgiven them. We’ve moved beyond the emotional load experienced when we remember what they have done to us. We still remember, but it is not an emotional drain. It is more and more like information that does not impact us.

Changing a Heart makes huge differences

In many ways we suffer what happens to our hearts.

But we can choose to set parameters for our hearts. We can choose the universe that our hearts operate in. Other people influence our hearts more than we will ever know.

St. Augustine, perhaps the most influential of Christianity’s early thinkers, writers, preachers, and practitioners of faith, did not start out a Christian. Born of a Christian mother and a pagan father, he was denied baptism. He spent his youth as a Manichaean, and according to his own accounts lost himself in pleasures and wanton living. He was befriended by Ambrose, who he met since they both shared exceptional skills as rhetoricians. It was Ambrose’s friendship that deeply effected St. Augustine’s heart. He converted to Christianity, was baptized, and ended his life serving as the Bishop of Hippo in north Africa, where he wrote and preached; and steered the course of Christianity to the faith we recognize today, as well as the Roman empire towards Christianity.

It is the heart that informs and equips us to turn our lives in a different direction, which can either be for ill or for the better. It is our hearts devoted to Christ, thankful for all Christ has done to give us breath and renewed life, which focus us on faith, ideas, words, and actions which can help others experience what we experience from Christ.

Hearts change the course of our lives, and the course of our communities, our churches, our countries, and even the course of human history.

Joyful and blameless; a gift

We trust that God is always with us. We can be blameless and joyful therefore, not because it is our track record, but because Jesus steps in for us and we are reckoned to have Jesus’ blameless track record.

One person, the Christ, was blameless, gifts his to us

Because there was one human who lived and lived entirely blameless before God, the whole of human history is changed, yours and mine, and each of our lives are inexorably changed toward God, toward life, and toward giving everything we have and are in order that others may know God’s grace as well.

Donor of a Heart; call to sacrifice so others may live with great hearts

There is something to being a human heart donor, besides that first one is on the other side of death. It is to give to another the seat of one’s will and passion, the center of one’s life, and to give it to another in order that they may live, and living may have life abundant.

Have a heart. Have a change of heart. Give your heart to living as God calls and equips you to live.

Surrender you heart to the will, passion, and purpose of Jesus Christ.

And live as never before: live the fast that is acceptable to God, the fast that through our sacrifice others receive justice, freedom, food, and homes.

Amen

Afraid: men women will (kill them with) laugh

2019 Mar 26 Men, Fear Or Vistas of Hope

Margaret Atwood’s quote, ” Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” is too simplified to honestly live on it’s own, unless it is just meant to honour women, and disparage men.

That’s the real deep problem of illuminating only part of reality, but that is what we are at most capable of.

Used as misadrism it’s not really helpful, it kills the human spirit.

More honest is to say:

Women are afraid men will kill them, men they know, but especially men they do not know. Their fear is real, and tragically accurate of a few men.

Men are afraid women will drive them to kill themselves, especially women they know, but generally all women. Their fear is real, and tragically accurate of more than a few women.

This fear is of real, literal death; but also of smaller deaths, even figurative deaths, deaths that rob a man (or a woman) of life at the core.

The real killer is the fear. Living in fear limits the horizon to only well guarded, defensive stances.

Or as Atwood also wrote: “I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‘race’ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.”

Life for each and every one of us is intended to be lived looking to God’s horizon that is so far out-reaches any of ours that we can only be astounded as we glimpse the vistas available to us, each and all.

Health is measured in how we help each other see those vistas and the creator of them.

Rain was forecast this morning. Instead we received snow, fluffy big heavy flakes that made noise landing on the tarps shelter.

Spring is the time of re-newed life. But first, as the snows of the winter melt, we must face the dreck of the life through the winter, records of the mess we’ve lived and made.

So instead of rain that makes mud, to get snow that gives a fresh cover again over the remains of past efforts to live, including many painful failures,

This vista reaches deep inside as the horizon is clouded away and the light is dimmed.

Fresh

Clean

Promising

Hope

Sounds like a winter baptism of the world and for the creatures.

The Clear Blue (-ish white) of Spring Snow

Fear, of how the past will catch us, is no way to live. There are renewals that do not hide or cover up that past.

They are called forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope …

hope that allows one to laugh with instead of at another person.

What Land Do We Possess?

March 10, 2019
First Sunday in Lent, Year C

Opening question

What land do we possess, where have we settled, that does God continue to give to us, that continues to produce for us that we can share with others?

The land that God gives us each minute has ripple effects on us, which catch the light of Christ, resplendent.

Theme for Lent: what is the acceptable fast?

Isaiah 58

⁶Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
⁸Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

In Deuteronomy’s reading for today the promised land is possessed and settled. The land is survival and security, the land is yearly crops for food, for trade to provide for other needs, the land is status and a place to call home … sort of.

For the land is provided by God. It is not earned or deserved. God one sided promises it. God continues to give it each day.

Knowing our history is key to living life abundantly. We know history, not just to avoid repeating bad history, but to know the good of history, to know God’s story, and our place in it. To remember how much God has blessed us.

What is it for each of us that God promises and gives us to posses and settle, that provides us survival and security, that is a place to call home, to share with our family. A place from which we are known to be grounded and where we come from.

For a few of us it also includes land, literally, a piece of ground that we hold the title to. For most of us it is something else, a profession, a career, or a job that included a retirement plan of some kind that still produces some kind of an income for us. Or perhaps it is family before us or after us, who have provided or still provide for us, security, survival, a place to call home. Or perhaps it is our reputation, that brings us recognition, respect, and a sense of worth. Or perhaps it is our ability to make friends, or our ability to write, or produce art or music. Or it is our ability to listen, understand, and comfort others in duress.

This is the land that God is giving to us. The text makes the point that God’s giving us the promised land is ongoing, each day.

God sends Isaiah to tell us what our response is to be: Each year at harvest we give first fruits that this land has produced and we recite God’s history with us, how God delivered us, we who were in our past aliens, formerly hungry, once unclothed, used to be captives, once upon a time … before we are what we are now, we used to be those kind of people, if not in this generation then in our ancestors’ time. Now God gives us the land not because we are good, or pious, or righteous, but because the land remains God’s and God chooses to give it to us. Though we posses it and settle it the land is always God’s.

When we are done giving the first fruits then Isaiah reminds us that God wants us to celebrate that God’s land has produced again, and just as we once were outcasts, outsiders, or aliens, so also we celebrate with the outcasts, outsiders, and aliens in our midst. In Canada we call them immigrants or refugees, and others designated as outcasts, outsiders,
personae non gratae.

In today’s Gospel Jesus faces the Devil, the great deceiver. The Devil wants Jesus, hungry from fasting, to feed himself, claim power for himself, and prove for himself that God will save him.

The Devil tempts Jesus with everything for Jesus himself, just sacrifice the teensie, weensie little thing of worshipping Satan. The things the Devil offers are not bad in and of themselves. They become evil when they are hoarded for oneself, instead of provided to everyone!

The Devil tempts us with everything as though life were an if/then reality: if you serve the devil then you will succeed in life.

God assures us that life is not that way, not blessed life lived abundantly. Life lived abundantly is always an because/therefore reality:

because God blesses us therefore we can bless others.

Jesus knows clearly that the Devil is the great deceiver who perverts everything into a private if/then proposition. Jesus knows that bread is good for life, but not just for himself, rather for all people. Instead Jesus gives his life that others may eat and never be hungry.

Jesus knows that power is important, that it can save and destroy people. Jesus is not ready to take shortcuts to gain corrupt power, power promised by the great deceiver, power which is really nothing. Instead Jesus exercises God’s power by sacrificing himself so that all people may live. That’s real power.

Jesus knows clearly that people of faith trust God because of what God has done for them and that God promises to protect them. But to test God is something entirely different from trusting God.

Instead Jesus exposes the Devil’s false use of scripture. Jesus trusts that even as he faces the cross, the most horrific death known at the time, God’s angels will be on watch with him, as he sets right the chaos of the devil in all the universe for all people. Jesus demonstrates so clearly God’s grace and acceptance for everyone, so that we no longer have any real excuse to try to test God.

In Paul’s writings to the Romans Paul makes this very clear: salvation witnessed to by the confession of Jesus Christ on one’s lips and in one’s heart is not reserved for just some people. Jesus’ salvation is offered for everyone. The Holy Spirit can create faith in anyone. There is no closed club, or special skills required, or properly formed faith practices that make only certain people God’s children. God’s grace alone creates children of God. The Holy Spirit creates saints of sinners. God never stops giving to us what we need to be faithful. But the key is this: everything is dependent on God, not on us, not even on our responses.

God is in control. God continues to give land to us.

We get to respond, giving our first fruits and practising the fast that brings justice, freedom, clothes, food, and homes for those without. So we celebrate along with even the outsider, the outcast, and the alien all that God has done for us, through history and in these last days.

God’s Glory Shines, even when we forget.

Amen

Living Winter … Well

Living Winter … Well?

or living well in the winter

just

plain

still

living

through

the winter

bitter cold that

could without notice

shorten

one’s

life.

The secret is simple and widely known but seldom recognized.

Look down.

Notice what has gone before you.

Catch everything that you can from it all.

Did you notice,

the remnants of water alive,

and

not just the tracks

but the possibilities:

the sled that made perfect X-country tracks all the way across the lake

and

off

I went

all the way across the lake like never before

for wonderful and needed exercise, until a few hours later, heart pumping, breathing easier, sweating lightly,

I arrive back on this shore and tuck into work with an inspired heart and mind, if a bit tired on my legs.

And look up

See the snow of yesterday collecting light, waiting for the sun to shine gloriously on the sparkles hidden in the snow.

Look for the promise of tomorrow,

the promise that what is plain and climbing nowhere toward nothing

can ascend to beauty and truth, hope and freedom, love and trust.

And always watch the light when it arrives:

when it shines, see it,

not just a glance but see what it does to the simple landscape,

to the people

(especially those hiding in the darkness of lies and deceit, of profound sin … all which are left for God to judge, for consequences that begin now even as they choose to abandon their hearts and minds and rebuild a simulation which changes as quickly as their whim)

and the animals that move,

but marvel at how much those things that cannot move are transformed

from ho-hum

to walkers and creators of shadow

that accents the light and points to the source

even when it is not seen.

No matter the view you’ve taken

do not forget to notice the large picture,

the grand scheme of things,

God’s view of our little troubles, darkness, and the forest of challenges that lean in to overwhelm us.

Always our darkness points us to the source of light for us all.

When such destructiveness is undeservedly foisted into one’s life

then the only thing to do is to live well.

And if it is winter, even then live so well.

Though there is more than work

to survive the cold

for in the basics of life,

like staying warm

one easily can pay attention

and meet the challenges well:

Wood heat, portable, and lots of left over insulated tarps, even some that have something in them, and recycling everything one can, until

Even on a night when the propane furnace does not work, because the propane is gelled,

and the generator will not start, because the oil is thick to sledgy, or just too cold,

and the propane heater will not work without warming up the propane in the tank,

and when it starts it is too hot so that it’ll melt a hole in the insulated tarp around the generator,

but a 6 foot 2×6, construction junk, serves well enough to keep the tarp raised high enough from the heater,

to get the generator to finally pop, and then fire and run.

And then to have to scramble, arms flailing against the tarp draped all about, out from under the tarp fast filling with CO! And plug in those cords.

Which means the fans can blow the wood heat into the living quarters,

and the block heater can be plugged in

with the battery charger set to charge,

while one has hot coffee from the wood stove boiled water through a french press, with milk and cereal with blueberries,

and then when starting, to 55 amp start mode,

and the vehicle, against it’s better computer programming jumps to life the third try.

Left to warm up as everything is packed away and padlocked safe,

It’s off to meet the day’s requirements.

And between necessary appointments, errands and refueling, take the time to write what must be written and filed soon: more truth in the face of biased error based on obvious lies, but the truth is too inconvenient to allow.

As if to hide that the earth revolves around the sun by a simple sentence of silence.

Fools are made of powerful people at every turn; the emperor may seem, but is not, dressed.

And many scurry to try to lay the tracks of deceit deeper yet, pretending, pretending, pretending, when it is God, from whom nothing is hidden, who judges and rules without deceit or corruption, but with promise and yesterdays that give grounded hope and trust.

And in this rampart run mobile through one’s 3^rd act, there is great humour, and opportunity to look, down, up, noticing the light, and seeing the big picture; as Jupiter resounds and reverberates off the windows, before the Athem and then it’s closing time. Ring the bells, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.

Then it’s once for the Devil and once for Christ, as all hell breaks loose

the

nightmares

set

again

until

even

in such a distant universe

brought close by the folds of time-space in light.

And it is

holding the beloved

in one’s heart, mind and strength,

with great clarity

and thankfulness for great kindness,

and forgiving the darkness and all it’s dark horses

that come charging still through the light touch of chilly, hope-giving and grace-filled dancing

disrupted only by the power of lies.

Live winter well:

dance, and let deceit melt with the ice on the wood turning into heat, as we dance away;

embrace the chilly light, if that is all there is, it still points to something that otherwise one would miss,

and work as if nothing else will save you from the bitter cold, and the bitterness foisted on your path, but know that Christ walks in the bitter cold, and crosses every path with redemption and grace … until one arrives home.

It may be closing time, but the light and dance of peace and joy, and the promise of hope-giving tomorrows

even also for eternity,

have not disappeared,

So breathe in warmly, and visit the

Cold

sharp clear

biting cold that claws momentarily

until one returns to the result of deep hard work, deep in the forest, yet warm.

And one marvels at the heat of red

hot

coals.

…

That is living well in the bitter cold:

to be prepared in heart, mind, and body;

And not to forget to dance a glorious step for those who cannot or will not.

Baptism of Our LOrd

Sermon notes? outline? sketch? yes that’s it, a sketch.

For the best read, take in the next blog post first, then this one.

Quick sermon outline for Baptism of Our Lord 13 Jan 2019

John is wild and calls for the chaff to be burned up.

Jesus will come to judge, and purify.

We need all that.

But Christ comes and graciously gives us life.

Where’s the hellfire and brimstone in that?!

Well…

Given free choice so that we can love

we can also choose ( and continually do) to hate, or to be deceptive and dishonest, disloyal, or even just plain BAD. Call that EVIL.

If we have choice, we will somehow, sometime still choose against love, against God, against living well.

God wants us to love, so we all get to put up with Evil, and suffer it too.

But

When

Jesus

comes

and

judges us!

Well then all that which brings us to sin and turn from God, to turn from loving our neighbour as ourselves and our enemies , and our God with all our heart mind and soul, then and only then Jesus will remove that from us …

But

not

going

feeling good.

That’s having the dross burned right out of ya.

And it is like having the chaff burned up in one big hot fire.

It will not be fun,

But it is what we most need, and we are going to get it!

To we are baptized, in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always trinitarian, or it is not a complete baptism.

The water drowns out the sinfulness, and yet it remains as potential, inevitable potential, so that we can choose love.

The oil prepares us for God’s presence in us.

The sign of the Cross prepares us for sacrifice, even of our lives, so that others will know Grace upon Grace and God’s love, Christ’s forgiveness and the Holy Spirit’s wild ride down the white water of life with wind, flame, breath, and beauty all everywhere.

Then for the rest of our lives we anticipate the life eternal, in the resurrection with Christ.

There

Freedom promised comes to be, after the dross is burned right out of us, so that we can enter Christ’s freedom in eternity.

This we look forward to.

But we do it, well … we do everything we do, as one of a crowd of witnesses, a crowd of saints, all in light,

specular light, diffused and reflected into beautiful images of God, as we are made.

It may be cold out there in that cruel world of dishonesty, deception and scapegoating,

but in here, where the natural fuels are burned,

the fuel of urgency until in God’s time there is patience,

the fuel of hurt (could become anger) until forgiveness flows freely like milk with ginger snap cookies,

the fuel of pride (that discounts others) until gratefulness abounds at each breath though one has nothing left,

These fuels are burned and burned well, until

in this mind, heart and soul

its as toasty comfortably warm as a great wood stove on a cold winter’s day.

Which it is that, too.

Stepping Out Not Alone

Sometimes it is easy to feel one is left alone, bracing oneself for what will come, expecting (as the past had provided) nothing good.

One leans as far as one can into the wind, treacherously close to losing one’s footing and disappearing into the abyss.

If we could only get a truer perspective, that we are hardly alone. Of course we’ve known that all along, but we’ve wanted to step out and do something more than just hide in the crowd.

That’s so boring.

It makes one a little green

in the middle

of a lot of other green.

and never quite enough green to be completely independent. **

One is like all the rest of the world, only able to thrive and live well if one realizes that one is interdependent; one of many living in concert or at war, but living with many others and connected in too many ways.

There is much to encounter out there. Best to take it on, along with your own kind.

At least one can be kind.

For reference: kind is the best thing to be as a spouse, if one cannot be God.*

Independence is a myth, as destructive for people to pursue as dependence.

Interdependence is life; good or bad, we are interdependent.

So be at least kind.

* of course no one can be God. The original sin was to think and act as if one could. It is now the common sin, and not so original any more.

Quick Sermon Outline fits with this: see next Blog [above].

[** a few Canadians have missed: to Unitedstatesians green is the colour of money, as well the colour of trees, life, growth … all that intended.]