Here be saints

October 31 is a pretty important day, especially this year. Yes, you know what I mean. It’s Reformation Sunday, our annual recognition of the beginning of the movement that began Protestantism. It’s an important historical moment for anyone, but especially so if you’re part of that tradition.

And I mean no disrespect to it when I acknowledge that wasn’t your first thought when I mentioned October 31st. It’s Halloween. As much as I’d love to see some kids at the door trick-or-treating as Martin Luther or John Calvin, it’s not likely we’ll see much crossover there. But both deserve your attention and both have origin stories that are interesting and influential. Please learn more.

Thing is, they’re both part of an interesting little bundle of days on the church calendar and it’s the one that comes next to which I’d like to draw your attention for a minute. Both those days are the eve of All Saints Day or All Hallows (that’s what gives us “Halloween”), a day to remember and reconnect with saints.

Who those people are may depend on your faith tradition, but we’ve tended to think of them as the historic figures that we look to as great examples of The Faith. These are the people we most readily point to as people in whom we have seen the teachings of Jesus lived out, the Spirit alive, the light of God shining through. These are the superheroes of faith we can only aspire to be like.

And, unfortunately, that's where we stop. Somehow those saints have become distant from us, and not just in the past. Somehow, they've become something we, with our faults and frailties could never be, something we put in stained glass or a statue on a pedestal. Somehow those saints have all become not just superheroes, but superhuman. And they're not. They're us.

Jesus didn't choose twelve perfect examples of his teaching. He chose twelve ordinary, everyday people who learned and experienced something special and, despite their very real flaws, became not something different, but even more of themselves. And not just those twelve, but the many who have responded to the example of love and grace that reconnects us to God and to the creative, life-giving power of the spirit.

That's where Jesus takes us, teaching us to be more of who we truly are, both the divine and human. Love God, love your neighbour as yourself, he says. The capacity to love and the desire for relationship, these are within us. Jesus calls us to live them out, to overcome the obstacles we place in our own way and the obstacles others put in theirs.

You may know people from history that are examples of that, whether they have St. in front of their name or not. The church has many examples and perhaps equally as many examples of the opposite, just like the world. You may know people in your life right now who are inspiring examples of good that are meaningful to you. You may be that to others.

The point is, look for the good. Look for the kindness, the generosity of spirit, the love and the grace. It’s not only in statues and stained glass. It may be hiding in plain sight.

Asking a Personal Question

“Who do you say that I am?” 

I wonder who Jesus was looking at when he asked his disciples this question. He’d already asked the easy one, what are the crowds saying. But now, he wanted their own view, their personal understanding of what he was all about. I imagine there was some shuffling feet, the sound of a few cleared throats and a few eyes staring at the ground.

But then, Peter has an answer. “You are the messiah.”

And communities of faith ever since have spent many long hours coming up with studies, statements and creeds that have tried to qualify what that means - as a community. And that’s helpful, but only if we understand that a community is a living thing that’s made up of individuals, each of whom is seeking a relationship with God.

So, who do you say that Jesus is?

If you were to ask me that question, I’d say that my answer has two parts.

First, today - and I say today because I’m alive, like Jesus, and I may grow - today, I say that, for me, Jesus is “God with us,” Emmanuel. I understand that, not in a way that shows us something new or a power that’s remote and unattainable, but in a way that shows us who we truly are and brings us back to our very beginning: we are created in the image of God and of the earth. We, too, are divine and human. Jesus shows us how to live into our divinity and humanity so that we may be wholely, fully, who we truly are.

Jesus reconnects us with God by showing us how God - the life and love of creation - is in each of our hearts. God isn’t just “out there,” but within each of us and we, too, can live that into the world.

I have so much more to say and, more importantly, do to answer that question, but I’m trying to be as succinct as Peter. The fact is, we answer the question in our living as much as in our words, and that can take a lifetime.

Second, I’d say “please tell me who you say Jesus is.” Speak to me from your heart about how you know God, with whatever language is meaningful for you. Show me how you know Jesus, ask questions and share with me a dialogue that allows us to travel together, though we walk our own journeys. Because God is with us and all are made one, not with sameness or uniformity, but in the respect of our diversity and the sharing of it.

So, please, answer the question for yourself, too and, just as good teachers always ask: show your work.

Practicing Faith

We are often so much like Jesus' first disciples in the early days.

They followed Jesus around, from place to place, listening to his teaching, seeing what he was doing, and doing their best to understand. And we, like them, it seems, often don't.

If only we had more faith.

That's what the disciples said to Jesus, "O Lord, increase our faith!" (Luke 17:5).

Somehow, they seem to think, we're just not getting it. But if you can make us more faithful, we're sure we can be the godly people you want us to be. Just make us more faithful.

You can just imagine Jesus slapping his palm to his forehead and sighing.

I don't make you faithful, he says, you make you faithful. There is faith in you already, like a little seed, but it is only grown by living it out. You can learn much, you can perform rituals and follow laws, but it's only when you live them out in your daily lives that you truly practice your faith. And that practice grows faith. (Luke 17:5-10)

I play the piano a bit now and then. Even if I don't play for awhile, I remember the mechanics I learned (some of them, anyway) and how to read the notes on the page, but that's not music. Music happens when all the mechanics and reading happen automatically, almost without having to think about it, because I've used them often enough. Music happens when you can step away from the techniques and skills and focus on the creation and experience of something more: the music. And that only comes with practice. 

We can go to church and bible study, learn and perform our rituals, just like the disciples, but faith is truly only lived when it becomes part of our daily living, like the air we breathe, the water we drink and the bread we eat. Faith is not a complex power that must be acquired, but rather a simple gift that must be put into action.

Embrace Thanks Giving

It’s Thanksgiving this week. I mean the holiday, of course, not “thanks giving,” which we should want to do everyday. Even if we’re particularly focused on harvest thanksgiving, I hope we’d want to be grateful to farmers and the earth more than just one day a year. Oh, and the truck drivers, rail employees, processors and grocery stores. Wait, don’t forget the manufacturers of farm equipment, scientists (especially agronomists) and weather forecasters. And all the businesses and governments that employ people who purchase food they need. And the Food Banks and community groups that support folks who can’t. And the health care community that does just that, cares for our health. I’m sure there’s more - and sorry if I left you out - but I think you get the point. It’s all connected.

And isn’t that the point, also, of a holiday, a special “holy-day?” It’s the single day that reminds us of something we should live everyday. Thanks for life. Thanks to God.

Yes, God. Because, however you know God, God’s at the heart of all this. You might even use a different word to describe it, but God’s the energy, the spirit, the life that powers us and connects us. We want to be thankful for that.

For many, those may be difficult words to hear right now. Lots of people are struggling to find something for which to be thankful today. Many won’t succeed. Worn down by the pandemic and all its trials, frustration and anger are more common than satisfaction and joy. And the world seems to continue to spiral through one catastrophe after another. We can’t just ignore all that and try to be thankful that we’re alive, can we?

No. But we can embrace it and be thankful.

Look for goodness, look for kindness and love, look for things which bring pleasure and joy, but don’t be afraid to engage everything that comes with it. We find wholeness in embracing the whole, not in excluding things from it.

This is how Jesus showed us to live. Jesus, who was also fond of reminding people to not be afraid because God’s with them. Because God’s in all things.

Long before Jesus, the prophet Joel had the same words for the earth itself. After suffering great devastation, Joel proclaims hope: Don’t be afraid, O land, be glad because God is with you. (Joel 2:21-27) The source of life, energy of creation is there. Embrace it.

Be thankful for the interconnectedness of creation. Be thankful for the whole, with all its flaws and weaknesses, its grief and hurts, its struggles and satisfactions, its joys and happiness. Be thankful for its fullness of divine spirit and human heart. That’s the fullness of life.

Spoken and Heard

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how important story is in our lives. We live in story, we learn in it, we grieve in it and find joy in it, we love in it and we die in it.

I could probably have stopped at “we live in it,” as life pretty much covers everything. But specifics can be pretty important when sharing a story, and there are moments in life when sharing a story means sharing an experience that is profound and deeply personal. That may, in fact, be the point of sharing the story: to make a connection, to create and build on a relationship.

It’s why we share stories about God and about Jesus: we’re building a relationship with God, however we know God, and with each other in a way that engages what God’s about: love and living well.

So, a few weeks ago, I was encouraging us all to share our story, to share who we are with others. I said that our own context, our own experience, our own thoughts and perceptions are forever framing our story, and that may resonate with others when we share it.

There’s another side to that, of course. Listening. We shouldn’t only share our story so that it becomes the story, the only story and the only way. I want to say we don’t do that, but we do and we shouldn’t. Much like the Bible, our world isn’t one book, but a library of diverse and unique experiences from which we can learn and grow. It shouldn’t be about getting our way, but about being able to hear the voices we can engage with. We need to listen for the stories of others and ensure that they’re heard, especially the voices of those that are vulnerable or marginalized.

Also much like the Bible, we tend to tell the stories of Jesus as Jesus did this or that and emphasize the action and authority of Jesus. Rarely do we hear that Jesus listened.

It would be easy to suggest, of course, that Jesus, being divine, already knew what needed to happen. Even so, the very human Jesus would also know that our humanity requires our own part in our restoration. Not just that we believe we are healed because he said so, but that we know it in our hearts and go forward living it in our lives. That’s how we are made whole.

No, I think Jesus took the time to listen and affirm people. Those short miracle stories often seem so eager to get to the power of Jesus in action that they miss the real power: that Jesus listened first. I think that knowing people’s stories, especially the marginalized and vulnerable, was key to how Jesus acted.

It should be for us, too. I’m writing this on the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. We need to listen for the truth, acknowledge the stories that need to be shared, and honour those that aren’t here to share their story personally. Reconciliation can’t come until stories have been heard and listened to and learned.

What the world needs now

The other day, I was having a conversation with someone from a very different Christian denomination than my own. It wasn’t contradictory, confrontational or disagreeable. In fact, we were pretty much agreeing, though we described it more like “being on the same page.”

I think we’d also both agree that we don’t necessarily represent how people would traditionally know our denominations or, as we might say these days, our institutional brand. We talked a little bit about the institutions called “churches” and how much that’s just not Jesus. We come to God from very different traditions, but we come to one God. We embrace Jesus as part of the journey and travel very different journeys, but it’s the same Jesus, the same love. Neither of us would insist that ours is the only way, nor would we insist that the other is “wrong” in any way, nor would we insist that anyone else must travel our way. We each engage God in the way that’s meaningful for each of us, traditions, rituals, language and understanding. We are different in so many ways.

But that’s okay. That makes things richer, fuller, more lively. If only we could stop stumbling over some of those institutional things on our way to understanding each other. Those things that somehow cause us to see difference as wrong, as something to be feared, something that blocks us from learning or engaging or understanding. Or loving.

I mean, Jesus was a good Jew who went to the synagogue. But he also challenged many of the things that went with that label, reinforcing instead the laws and commandments that were at the heart of living in relationship with all creation because God is in all creation. He lived and taught love.

Jesus teaches us to love as he showed us in his life. In fact, the key part of Jesus' own demonstration of love in his life was in building relationships, coming to know people, who they are, how they are and why they are - experiencing them and engaging them with all his humanity. Jesus didn't say don't be angry, don't grieve, don't be emotional, don't be surprised, don't question.

He said “don’t be afraid.” He said that a lot. He said "don't hate." He doesn’t seem to have said that often enough.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matthew 5:43-45)

In fact, I think Jesus wants us to bring to every relationship all the spirit, emotion, knowledge and questioning intellect we can. But not hate. Loving as Jesus taught means the absence of hate. All that other stuff is there, but not hate. Instead, there could be wonder, patience, a desire for learning, a willingness to listen, an understanding that we are made better when we understand each other.

Hate makes the walls that constrain our love. When we break down those walls with love, we leave hate behind. We engage those things that stir that emotion within us, but we engage them seeking understanding. We bring compassion to our anger, empathy to our grief, and wonder to our fear. The world needs that. Now.

Everyone can learn

There’s a story in the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus is approached by a woman who asks him to heal her daughter who is possessed by an “unclean spirit” (Mark 7:24).  There’s a brief, but probably a little heated, exchange of words and Jesus tells the woman to go home where she will find her daughter asleep and the demon gone.

This story is often accepted as simply another “miracle” story. In fact, in the larger context of Mark’s gospel, it is part of a series of miracles performed by Jesus, one of a series that demonstrate his divine power: feeding the 5,000, healing people, walking on water.  It would be easy to leave it at that.

But something else is happening here, too. At this point in the gospel narrative, Jesus has been busy. He’s been healing and teaching and travelling and he’s tired. He has gone somewhere to get away from the crowds that have been following him. Then this desperate woman comes to beg him for another healing, this woman who is not a Jew. She is Syrophoenician, or Canaanite, – gentiles looked down on by the Jews of Jesus’ day. Jesus says to her, “let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27).

What? Did Jesus just tell this woman that God’s blessing (food) is for the Jews (the children) first and not for her? Yes, he did. Did he just say she was a “dog?” Yes, he did.

Jesus said that? Yes, he did. At least, that’s how the story’s told.

But here’s the best part: the woman responds that even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. And Jesus, hearing her wisdom, replies “for saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

As unnerving as it may be to hear Jesus say something so discriminatory and mean – especially the Jesus who proclaims the Good News for ALL people and teaches that we should love our neighbour, no matter who they are, even our enemy – as unnerving as it may be to hear that, the point is what came after: Jesus learned.

In this very human moment, when Jesus is so weakly and vulnerably human, the woman teaches Jesus, reminding him that the grace of God is for all.

Trying to picture this scene in my mind, I imagine an exhausted Jesus, perhaps a little short-tempered, grumpy even, looking to rest. And this woman standing up to him for her child. I wonder if Jesus might even have said something like “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was saying that for, you are right. And the strength of your conviction has made your child whole again. Thank you."

Jesus has spent so much time teaching others, here, perhaps, is a little miracle of teaching that reminds us of the humanity of Jesus. And it's important for us to recognize this side of Jesus. In our quest to follow Jesus’ example and live – and love – as Jesus taught, we, too, will have those very weak and vulnerable moments when we fail, moments when we are less than we can be. These are moments we must learn from, moments that may hold a life-changing learning.