(the cross given to me in Jerusalem by a Coptic Monk at the Church of the Holy Sepluchre)
Readings for this week:
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22 (Part 3
& 4) (VU pg. 746)
I John 4:7-21
John
15:1-8
Hymns for this week:
Open My Eyes That I May See
God of the Sparrow
Blessed Be the Tie that Binds
In Loving Partnership
Joyful, Joyful
-----------------------------
Our readings this
week take us on an interesting journey from last week’s readings about the Good
Shepherd.
In The Gospel, Jesus
is speaking of being the one true vine, while in the Book of Acts the
emboldened disciples are beginning to go out into the world and evangelize the
Gospel with Phillip sharing the Good News with an Ethiopian official and our
Epistle reading speaks of God’s unconditional love for all … it’s a collection
of heady and yeasty reading that challenge us to look beyond the moment and
dare to dream and envision something more. They are reading that challenge us
to respond to the world in a faithful way …
The Epistle reading
speaks of love … God’s love for us and for ALL of humanity being unconditional
and without limit … yet, so often our ability and willingness to live,
celebrate, and most importantly, share that love is hindered by ourselves.
As I read this week’s
reading from I John, I thought of a conversation I had this past winter with
David Northcott, the executive Director of Winnipeg Harvest, one of Canada’s
largest and oldest food banks. David was sharing an experience he had speaking
to a United Church in Manitoba about the work they do in Winnipeg Harvest and
the profound and increasing needs they are facing. During his presentation
David offered the idea that caring for the vulnerable and the poor was a
requirement of our faith as Christians. He shared the minister snorted in
derision at the suggestion … as David described the dismissal and patronizing
response he received from this particular United Church congregation he
reflected by saying – “Why is this do hard? People are hungry – feed them …
it’s not difficult …”
We are to love one
another as God loves us … we are to care for the vulnerable, the needy, the
poor, the hungry – the widows and orphans … why is this do hard??
It is hard, because
we have chosen to make it harder for ourselves by rendering complex and
difficult an issue that really is straightforward and simple … we are called to
go out into the world and SPREAD the good news about Jesus and his ministry and
message.
But we chose to put
up barriers and conditions and dogmas … we chose to be restrictive and
selective … we chose to be more concerned about membership and appearance then
about sharing the transformative power of the Gospel … one of my experiences of
seeing and feeling this active chose came several years ago at a meeting of
Conference in Manitoba.
The theme for the
gathering was Gardening and tending to the garden … over and over we heard
about tending the gardens and harvesting the fruits and vegetables and
savouring the sights and smells and sounds that go along with the garden … we
celebrated getting our hands dirty turning the soil and carefully tending the
plants … the imagery was selective though … there was no talk of pruning and
removing dead wood … there was no talk of creating compost and nurturing the
gardens with compost or manure … there was no talk of cleaning up the fallen
leaves and plants and reusing them through composting or burning …
I asked the executive
secretary of Conference, a retired clergy that I still have nothing but respect
for why we consistently and constantly skip over those aspects of gardening
when we use these metaphors in the church … why don’t we speak of pruning our
plants and overgrown gardens and taking away the runners, the suckers and the
dead wood and burning it? Why don’t we talk about taking the leaves and growth
that is excessive and chopping it up and composting it to nourish the other
plants later? Why don’t we ever talk about taking rich sweet manure and
spreading it around the roots of our plants and working it in and helping them
grow?
He laughed and said –
“I had never really thought of that …” and we went on to explore the weakening
of our theology and our experience as a Church that comes from using selective
metaphors when we speak of who we are and what we are about …
We CHOSE to make our
experiences of faith difficult by only focusing on the nice and the clean and
the neat and the tidy and the easy … we don’t want to be disturbed by the
shadowy places and the difficult aspects of being Church … the poor are kept at
arms’ length … the needy are served through charities we support by our cheque
books … and the hungry and the yearning and the searching can come, but don’t
ask to change things, and don’t make things uncomfortable for us … we like it
just the way it is …
We chose to be selective
…
And then Phillip, the
star of the early Church breaks on to the scene and shares the Gospel with
everyone he meets … he is walking down the road and like a good hitchhiker
catches a ride with an Ethiopian official on his way home … they get talking
and Phillip begins to share with this man the astounding things Jesus had done,
and how Jesus was the fulfilment of the promises God had made over the
centuries … Philip shares the Good News and opens the door to the founding of
one of Christendom’s oldest Churches – the Ethiopian Church … I’ve had two
direct encounters with the Ethiopian Church – one as a student in Israel when
at the back of the Tomb of Jesus in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I was
invited to kneel and pray in a tiny little booth manned by an Ethiopian Coptic
Monk who then took my hand and allowed it to rest on the cold stone of the tomb
as he nodded and smiled, then gave me a tiny wooden crucifix, that I in turn
gave to my mom on my return, and that I found 20 years later this past Easter
as I was looking through some of her possessions …
My other experience
with the Ethiopian Church was when I was preparing for my ordination in 1993 at
London Conference when two members of the Ethiopian Church came to Canada to
speak about their Church and their country and the struggles they were going
through. They stood before the packed hall in Windsor and shared the history
and heritage of their tradition and the splendour of their ancient Church.
At the end of their
presentation the floor was opened to questions and the first question came from
a woman who stood up and asked why they had spoken of male priests and male
leaders and male monks – where are the women? She asked, Why are there no women
in leadership role? Why are there no women priests?
One monk look
confused and glanced at the other who shrugged and then said, “We’re orthodox,
it’s what we do …”
The hall gasped in
horror …
Next came a question
from a man who talked about the millions of dollars of aid we had ‘just’ sent
to Ethiopia and the fundraising music videos and concerts to help the country
with its famine. He then noted that the monks had spoken of thousands of
priests and monks and hundreds of churches and monasteries … what do they do to
justify their existence? He asked.
Again the two
gentleman looked confused and bewildered and one of them offered and answer –
“they pray” he said … only to be met with a bigger gasp of horror from the
floor … I don’t know what other questions were asked because I left the hall at
that point and headed elsewhere with some colleagues who were shaking their
head in sad disappointment at a Church that fails to know its own history and
heritage and that fails to see the value in prayer and devotion …
We chose to make
things harder then they need to be …
We are called to
evangelize – but what is it that we are to evangelize? Too often we CHOSE to
focus our message of evangelism on a narrow understanding and interpretation of
the Gospel. We want people to know Jesus and to ‘get right’ with Jesus, but we
fail to share the fullness of the Gospel with them, with each other, and with
ourselves …
The Gospel is MORE
than just uttering the right words of faith. The Gospel is about reorienting
our lives to something more. To living God’s LOVE.
Theologian Walter
Bruggeman suggests that the heart of the Gospel is the social ethic that is
contained in the ancient Exodus-Sinai narrative that drives and supports the
Judeo-Christian tradition.
Bruggemann observes
of this narrative that it calls us to seven distinct, faithful and obligatory
actions:
-
To canel the debts of
the poor once every seven years
-
To charge no interest
to members of the community
-
To embody a permanent
hospitality to strangers
-
To ask for no
collateral from the poor for loans
-
To not garnish wages
or withhold wages from the poor
-
To show no injustice
to anyone, particularly the resident alien or foreigner among us
-
And the economy is to
make provision for the poor, needy and hungry by leaving enough grain and
produce in the fields for them to gather for their needs
Chapters 23 and 24 of
the Book of Deuteronomy lay out the expectations for living the Covenant with
God offered through the Exodus-Sinai experience … and Bruggemann points out
that this narrative understanding is what motivated and undergirded Jesus in
his ministry.
Jesus understood the
abundance of God. He actively CHOSE to celebrate the abundance rather than
dwelling on protecting and restricting it. And that for Bruggemann is most
obvious in the very act of communion:
Jesus TOOK bread,
Jesus GAVE thanks for it, Jesus BROKE bread and then GAVE it to his disciples …
A simple loaf of
bread – a symbol to some of how precious the Gospel is – how valuable it is –
something to be protected lest it be squashed or ruined … a simple loaf of
bread that Jesus took and after giving thanks BROKE IT and gave it out to his
disciples …
Jesus CHOSE to share.
Jesus CHOSE to break the bread and GIVE it out to others because it was a sign
of ABUNDANCE and WELCOME and LOVE! Broken, it is there for ALL to share …
Broken, it is a reminder that we can chose to be safe and secure and tidy, or
we can trust in God and tear open the doors, let the crumbs and the bread
scatter to be shared with all, and broken we are made WHOLE in God’s gift of
Grace.
Jesus is the true
vine … it is a powerful metaphor of faith when used in its fullness rather than
in a narrow way … it is a reminder that in the face of a modern world that has
lost its way, we are called to so much more … we are to go into the world and
be evangelists sharing the good news and living our faith …
We are to go into the
world and CHOSE to share the Gospel …
May it be so – thanks
be to God … Let us pray …
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