Now More Than Ever

Every year, we hear the same story on the second Sunday of Easter.

Every year, the same story. Not even different versions of it, because it only appears in one gospel: John.

Every year, we hear the story of Thomas, the one who wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared alive after the crucifixion. And when all the other disciples tell him they’ve seen Jesus, he refuses to believe. And then, the next time Jesus appears, he’s there to see for himself. It’s the origin of the expression “Doubting Thomas” to refer to someone who, well, doubts.

Every year, I try to say that I think that’s unfair because I don’t think Thomas doubts what’s truly important. I think he already knows that, though he sees that Jesus is physically dead, he’s very much alive in the hearts and minds of those who love and live as he taught. That’s why he’s not there. No, it doesn’t say that in the story: the gospel writer doesn’t give any reason why he’s not there. But, in my heart, I know that Thomas is the most certain of all the disciples and I think he wasn’t there because he’s out sharing Jesus with everyone he can. He’s not afraid. Nor is he afraid to question the other disciples on what they have seen.

Every year, I say that the real gift of this story is that Thomas believed that Jesus was alive in himself. He already believed without being able to see what the disciples did. And when Jesus says “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29), I think Jesus doesn’t mean to criticize Thomas’s doubt, but to honour his belief and the belief of all who will come after, even you and me.

Every year, I say that questions affirm and inspire our faith, doubt is essential so that we ask those questions and it’s not the certainty of finding answers, but the journey with the questions that’s important.

Every year, I try to find new and different ways to say that. Every year.

This year’s different.

Perhaps there’s no need to find a new way to say it. The world’s different. Our view is different. Maybe, in this instance, we don’t need something new.

Maybe we just need to be reminded that questions are okay. That doubt’s okay. Maybe now is when we most need to remember that true faith embraces questions and doesn’t look for certainty, but rather company. When we share our doubts and questions, we might find others on a similar journey willing to share their own doubts and questions. And thoughts. Not to tell us what or how to think, but to help us find some fulfillment or, at least, contentment for ourselves.

Maybe right now is when we need to remember that true faith isn’t about finding answers, it’s about finding hope.

The Hope of Easter

There’s a pretty great joke going around right now. I’m not sure who started it, but it goes something like this. No wonder some world leaders are thinking that the virus will be over and done by Easter and we’ll all be out living our normal lives. Seems appropriate, after all: Jesus didn’t stay inside.

Haha. Hmm.

Okay, that’s cute and we could sure use a little humour, right? Except. Let’s be clear.

The hope of Easter isn’t that you get to go outside. It’s that you go and live. And not just live, but live new, not just one day, but every day. It’s the hope that comes with the dawn. Not just because there’s light, but because there’s a new day. It’s the hope that comes with spring. Not just because it’s warmer and there’s flowers, but because there’s new life. Everywhere.

The hope of Easter isn’t only that you have new life outside, but new life everywhere, inside and out. Inside and out of your home and you. It’s the hope that comes with creation. Not just because you’re part of something bigger, but because you’re part of the creating, making creation an expression of you. It’s the hope that comes with sharing yourself with others. Not just because you have company, but because you have community.

The hope of Easter is that Jesus is alive. Everything that is Jesus - love, kindness, grace, compassion, care, justice and peace and all that is good - lives in you and around you. So take what you’ve learned and share it, whether you can leave your house yet or not. Bring love to moments of hate. Bring understanding to moments of struggle. Bring kindness to moments of need and grace to moments of hurt. Bring compassion to brokenness and comfort to grief. Bring justice with respect for every person and part of creation. Bring curiosity and engagement to opportunities to learn and bring nurture to opportunities to grow.

Maybe this is a moment to see that the Easter story is happening in the world right now. As we struggle to see it, new life is waiting to happen. Try new ways to engage the world and when you do, bring trust that in the heart of all living things is the image of a God who loves and brings new life.

I Wonder

Sometimes, I find myself challenged by how we do Easter. I mean as a church. Feel free to also celebrate the bunny and chocolate and spring (if it ever gets here). We could use a little celebration right now - observing isolation, social distancing and all the necessary protocols, of course.

I’ve often found myself with questions as much as anything else as we navigate the traditional story of Easter. And maybe that’s a good place to start: the “traditional” story. The Last Supper, Good Friday and Easter Day have stories we know so well because we tell them every year. We know how the story goes (mostly) and we have specific rituals and songs and words to remind us. But sometimes, that’s as far as we go.  It’s a story. And we know how the story ends and that influences how we experience it and even what the story is supposed to mean to us. Jesus lives, alleluia.

But this year’s different. I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but in facing this pandemic, we have an opportunity to learn. A lot. Oh, so much. Here’s one little corner. Because we can’t gather for our big communal celebrations, maybe this is an opportunity to look at the story a little more personally, maybe wondering about some of those questions we’ve had that we’ve not asked because, well, tradition. And not necessarily tradition that’s the “we still do it because it’s relevant and meaningful,” but the tradition that’s “we’ve always done it that way.”

I have questions. Maybe you do, too. I’ll just share a few of those and, just to be clear, I mean questions, not challenges, questions.

Like “The Last Supper.”  We can call it that – in retrospect – but the disciples didn’t know that, did they?  They thought that they were celebrating the Passover meal with Jesus (a ritual meal itself which reminded Hebrews of God freeing them from slavery in Egypt). So the story from which we have built the central ritual of communion, was dinner. A family dinner, for that matter, because that’s what the Passover meal was about, families remembering their heritage with God. Do we remember God at our family meal? Do we remember that we are one family when we celebrate communion?

That’s a really good question this year because we can’t gather in person with our church family. Our church will be sharing communion online through a live streamed service this Easter, because the intention is communion in heart and spirit. As Richard Bott, the Moderator of The United Church has said, “when we share communion where the presider is in one space, and the elements and participants are in many, it is still true the bread that is broken and the juice that is shared continue to be real. Virtual space – real communion.”

On Good Friday, we might spend some time at the foot of the cross. But is our cross Jesus’ cross? In our world, particularly in our country, can we truly understand the horror and pain of the crucifixion? A tool of torture, intimidation and death is the symbol of our faith? I know we’re supposed to see that it’s redeemed by Jesus and all, but I’m still struggling with saying “God loves you” and showing someone a cross.

And if you were there, as the spiritual says, if you could put yourself right there in the story, imagine yourself at the hillside where Jesus was crucified, what would you be feeling?  It would be nice to think that we would be horrified, that we would try to help Jesus. But would we? If that was our world, or day, we might just think, oh, it’s another crucifixion – that’s probably ten this week, at least.  Maybe we would recognize that this was something different, but what if you were there: what would you think?  Or feel? “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

Maybe our Good Friday is tempered a bit by the fact that we know how this part of the story ends: resurrection on Easter Day. Yay, Easter Day! But what if you were there, what if you were Mary Magdalene or Peter or the other disciple that went with him?  What do you think Mary felt when she arrived at the tomb that morning, having watched Jesus die, and found it empty? Surprise? Anger? Was her first thought that someone had stolen the body? It wasn’t until she saw Jesus that she knew he was alive. So, Mary was surprised by the resurrection?

I guess that’s my biggest question: are we surprised anymore? Are we so comfortable that we know how the story goes, that we no longer wonder at it, that we are no longer moved by its power, challenged by its meaning. Do you wonder?

One on One

I can’t imagine that there is anyone or anything that hasn’t been affected in some way by the virus that’s enveloping the world right now. However you’re experiencing it, isolation is a unifying part of that and we’re just not built for it. We need connection, we need to gather and touch and share in some way. We’re built for community.

And communities are responding, people reaching out, supporting each other, finding ways to be encouraging and connect as best we can, on the phone, online, waving from the street and singing from balconies - you don’t always need technology. We can find new ways, too.

It will be particularly challenging right now because it’s spring and Easter’s this week. Whether you strictly observe the story of Holy Week, day by day, or celebrate the resurrection or just enjoy the big meal and chocolate eggs that come with the big bunny, the fact is it’s a time to gather and celebrate as a family, home family, church family, community family, every kind of family.

It’s going to be different.

We’ve been trying to come up with ways that we can help people engage the Easter story and celebrate the most important day on the church calendar as a church family. And it’s not just in the connecting-people-with-technology, it’s about the story itself. Maybe you’ve noticed this when trying to come up with more creative ways to work, learn or play: the more you look for different ways to tell a story, the more you notice about the story that you hadn’t perhaps seen before. Context is certainly a big part of that, too. Even a story that’s been told thousands of times speaks differently to a different situation.

So maybe, for example, the story becomes more personal. The Holy Week story is full of crowds: the Palm Sunday crowd that welcomes Jesus, the crowd that he throws out of the temple, the crowd who hears him teach, even the upper room crowded with the disciples for the passover meal, the garden crowded with soldiers and certainly the crowd that demanded his death. And what seems a moment of loneliness Friday, on a hill outside Jerusalem. Another in a tomb.

But the irony is that all those crowds also demonstrated just how fickle a crowd can be. And on Friday and Saturday, Jesus wasn’t alone. Mary and the other women were there, watching over Jesus, unable perhaps to save him from pain but present with him in his suffering it. Those same women come back the next day to find the tomb empty and are the first to see Jesus alive (Matthew 27-28).

What if we could find a way to be in those stories, not just as part of the safety of a crowd, but one on one with Jesus. How would the shout of “hosanna” on Palm Sunday feel if we remembered it wasn’t a cheer but a cry: it means “save us.” Would you shout “save me” to Jesus? How would we feel on Monday when Jesus drives people out of the temple if Jesus looked directly in our eyes and asked “how do you respect God?” Or when he’s teaching in the temple if he were to ask each of us, personally, “do you really want to learn how to live well?” At the last supper, when Jesus says “one of you will betray me,” will we honestly be able to say it’s not me? And on Friday, will you be able to stay and be present with Jesus rather than wander by with the rest of the crowd?

We all want to crowd around the empty tomb on Easter morning, but that’s exactly where he isn’t. Where he is, is with you. Wherever you are.

The Long and Winding Road

“How long’s this gonna last?”

You’re probably already tired of hearing that. I know I am, and that’s mostly from the number of times I ask it in my own head. The other day, one of the late night talk show hosts, broadcasting from his home with his kids around, joked “it’s day eighty-three of isolation,” only to be corrected by his wife: “six. It’s day six.”

Thing is, that’s a very real feeling. Whether you’re staying home observing physical distancing, you’re in isolation or working the front lines of health care or the myriad of essential services for which we are so grateful, we just don’t know, for sure, how long it will last. We just can do our best, day to day.

It’s still Lent and I’ve been talking about the wilderness for a few weeks now. (You might even be thinking “when’s that gonna end?”) I didn’t really intend for the wilderness theme to be so, well, what we’re living, but I wanted to explore some of the many ways that we have a wilderness experience in our lives, intentional and not, positive and negative, lost and found, timed and open-ended. Even as a body of people, because sometimes it’s not just individual. Right now, I think we’re experiencing a sense of wilderness globally, as nations of people, as communities and households. And wondering when we’re going to come out of it.

The story of the Hebrew people in the wilderness is pretty much what the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are all about. I say all of them because it’s not just about the story, it’s about the laws and instructions and practices, too.

You might know some of the highlights: the escape from slavery in Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, God providing manna to feed them and water from the rock, the Ten Commandments, of course, the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, the laws of Leviticus (that folks seem to like to quote …), well, there’s a lot there, and it’s an interesting, complex narrative. But look at the big picture for a minute. Historical fact (and there’s no real evidence that it is) or a teaching myth, it’s the story of people who knew nothing but the oppression of slavery, suddenly finding themselves free and wandering into the desert, not knowing how to live together. Their very long and round about way of getting to “the promised land” is their journey to be a people, a nation and a community.

They were hungry and thirsty and their needs were met. Not extravagantly, but enough. They had no geographical home, and yet their home was with each other. They needed to learn how to live with each other and so there were guidelines, principles, rules and laws to help them do that. Chief of those were what we call the Ten Commandments. Except they weren’t commandments, that term didn’t appear until the Geneva Bible in the 16th century, the King James Bible and everything in english since. The Hebrews knew it as the Decalogue or ten sayings, the beginning of a framework for positive and meaningful relationship with God and each other. Even the dietary rules and the many, many laws were meant to create and build a structure in which to live, not a means to control. In the end, even faith in where they were going became part of understanding who they were, how they were and how they were connected to God and the creation in which they lived. They weren’t wandering, they were becoming.

Are we so different? Suddenly “freed” from our regular daily routines, but not the anxiety of “how will I live now?” (in fact, that increased exponentially for some), we need to find a new way, new practices, a new understanding of how to connect and be “community.” Kindness, compassion and grace are still there. Wisdom and common sense, too, we hope. We’re finding new ways to share our living. Love is still the thing that connects us and binds us together. Today we’re looking for new ways to live into that connection, to share in that relationship. One day, we’ll leave this wilderness behind and we’ll have been transformed.

Finding a way home

It’s a difficult time. However you’re coping with the world today, anxiety is not far away. Whether you’re isolated at home or at work and social distancing, you’d best be comfortable with your own company, at least for awhile. That can be challenging at the best of times; we’re not always good at remembering that “love your neighbour as yourself” only works if you love yourself first. And there can be a host of reasons why that’s a challenge.

But here we are, maybe feeling like we’re lost in a wilderness of what’s happening next, will everything be okay and will I be alright? It’s a wilderness of not knowing, of uncertainty and doubt. It almost seems ironic that we’re in the season of wilderness, self-examination and doubt.

For Lent this year, I’ve been talking about biblical characters who had wilderness experiences in their lives. I began with Jesus, of course, the story that inspired Lent, and next week we’ll look at the Hebrews who wandered in the desert for forty years, learning how to be a “people.” But I wanted to also wonder about some stories that weren’t typical, or even desired, wilderness experiences. So we looked at Adam and Eve and Noah. Their wildernesses were  anything but desert.

And now, back to the desert, let’s look at Moses. No, not the Moses who leads the Hebrews out of Egypt, who gives them the law, feeds them, finds them water and leads them to the promised land. No, let’s talk about the Moses who was Hebrew, raised as an Egyptian in the palace of the pharaoh, who kills an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew slave and then has to flee Egypt, across the Wilderness of Sin (not, literally, a wilderness of sin, but a desert in the Sinai region) and the Red Sea to Midian.

I can’t imagine how lost Moses must have felt when he finally arrived in Midian. Who am I, really? I’m not Egyptian, but not really Hebrew either. Who’re my real parents? The family I thought I had, wasn’t. What do I do now? If I am one of God’s people, where was God as all this happened? Where is God for the Hebrew people? Why is this happening?

But, of course, Moses sees the burning bush, talks to God personally, finds out what he’s all about and off he goes. Except, no. That’s not his story. Moses meets God in a different way long before the famous burning bush (Ex.3). 

Struggling on his own, Moses finds himself in Midian where he stops by a well. He sees some shepherds keeping some women with sheep away from the water and goes to their aid. As a result he meets the daughters of Reuel, who welcomes Moses to dinner and then to stay with them. Moses marries Zipporah, one of the daughters, and settles down to be a shepherd with his family, something he’s not wanting to give up when God calls to him.

Much like Jesus, I think Moses needed to find himself and where he belonged before he was ready for what God had planned. And for Moses, finding where he belonged wasn’t just a people or a place, it was family and it was community. It was people who welcomed him and loved him as he was, lost and wandering, and helped him to know who he is. When we feel lost, wondering and alone, God is in the hands and voices that welcome us and affirm us, just as we are, that reach out to support and care for us. 

Even when isolated or social distancing, a caring community gives life, regardless of circumstance or nationality or gender. Moses wasn’t turned away because he was Egyptian or because he had nothing or because of what he had done. He found a community of people that knew themselves well, loved themselves well and didn’t fear to love others, even as they cared for themselves. God’s love is for all.

Don't be afraid. Be Jesus.

“Don’t be afraid.”

That’s the one thing most frequently said by Jesus in the Bible. It’s not “love God” or “love your neighbour,” “be kind,” “don’t sin” or “go to church” (that one’s just silly). No. It’s “don’t be afraid.”

And I’m pretty sure we don’t hear them all. I bet Jesus said “don’t be afraid” to many more people, many more times than is recorded in all the stories we have. Much like the stories of Jesus sharing a meal with others, I think the gospel authors just got tired of repeating yet another “don’t be afraid” moment. And for the same reason: there are so many that they just become an ordinary, everyday occurrence. You’d expect that with the food stories. Everyone has to eat and that’s why Jesus shared that common ground so often. But it shouldn’t be surprising, then, that he’d need to encourage people to not be afraid. In Jesus’ world, so many lived in fear.

This is Jesus’ world, too. We still have fears. There’s still the oppressive use of power, from the ruthless brutality of dictators to the more subtle ways that power is exercised in the “free” parts of the world. There’s still poverty and hunger, there’s mental and physical health issues. There’s a whole host of things that the complexity of today’s world has added with technology and how we communicate and travel and simply interact with each other. It just seems like there’s lots to be afraid of. Sometimes it feels like we’re lost in a wilderness of fear. We didn’t choose it, but here we are and we can’t seem to escape it, to get back to a world where we feel we belong, where we feel comfortable and at home.

I feel like Jesus would still be saying “don’t be afraid.” Not as a command to change your behaviour or as if you could flick a switch and just suddenly feel different. We are, ultimately, free to be who we are.

I think Jesus means to remind us that we are loved and we are love and that fear disconnects us when we most need to know that. I know that sounds like one of those things pastors say to try and be comforting, but think about it. It’s when we’re afraid that we most need to remain calm and grounded, literally, connected to the earth. It’s when we’re afraid that we’re most likely to disconnect from compassion and grace, to think less about understanding and awareness and simply react. It’s when we’re afraid that we forget heart and mind are connected, that what’s truest is when heart and mind work together. It’s when we’re afraid that we become centred on ourselves and lose contact with the people we need the most, especially the interactive connection that reminds us that the world is a “we,” not an “I.” That’s where the strength is. That’s where God is.

Don’t be afraid. And wash your hands.