Blessed and Blessing

How are you?

I think I know what’s going through your mind.  First, you might be wondering why I’m asking.  Then you might think, hey, this is a minister’s column so it might be a trick question of some kind.

“Fine,” you’ll say, because anything more might be too much trouble.

Do you feel blessed?

Now I bet you’re really worried.  That’s definitely a trick question.  I better say yes, you might think.  That’ll stop him asking more.

Neither of them is a trick question.  And they are related.

I’ve often found myself saying “hi, how are you?” as a greeting.  I usually get “fine” as a response, though people are sometimes more creative.  But basically, the response is short, generic and ideally suited to a passing greeting.  That’s not a bad thing, because sometimes I’m on the way somewhere - or they are - and there just isn’t time for a more full response.  That’s too bad, so I’ve got to stop that.  There should always be time for a real answer.

I’ve often thought that it would be a great thing if people always answered honestly when you ask how they are, but you might not agree.  Especially if things aren’t “fine.”  Maybe you don’t want to share how things really are, and that’s fair enough.  But sometimes I wish that people might take a moment before answering to wonder about it.  Maybe you’re having a really great day.  Maybe things are going very well and you’re very happy.  Maybe they’re not.

Fine.  Maybe you really are fine, but maybe you just don’t want to say or, more significantly, maybe you just don’t know.  Take a minute.  I’ll wait.

Asking if you feel blessed is maybe a little similar.  I’m sure that we do feel blessed sometimes, when we stop to think about it.  I don’t doubt that.  But I suspect that there are lots of people who aren’t feeling blessed.  They’re feeling down, maybe, gray like the weather.  Maybe they’re grieving.  Maybe they’ve been sick.  Maybe they’re disappointed about a job or lack of one or worried about the political situation.  Maybe they feel put upon or uncared for or maybe they’re lonely.

So bless them.  Bless them with a little bit of your time to listen or help out.  Bless them with a thought or a prayer.  Show them what is, that they don’t see or know: that they are blessed.  It can be so hard to know that.

In Matthew 5:3-12, Jesus shares what we know as The Beatitudes, blessings on those we might have considered to be not blessed at all.  These are the vulnerable and the hurting, the weak and the overwhelmed.  But Jesus says they are blessed and reinterprets their vulnerability as strength in that blessing.

It seems so easy for us to hear these blessings as being outside of us.  That’s not me, but perhaps, if it were, I would feel blessed.

No, you wouldn’t and that’s just the point.  Jesus isn’t suggesting that if only you would be this way, you too would be blessed.  I don’t think that this moment is a call to vulnerability, it’s recognition of it.  Jesus looked around and saw that he was surrounded by the vulnerable and offered words of assurance and encouragement.  It’s not teaching how we should be, but recognizing how we are.  It’s also recognizing how hard it is for us to see that we are blessed when we feel vulnerable.  We need to hear it and see it.  And that’s hard.

So is offering support to those in need.  Maybe it doesn’t feel like we can be any help, that we’re not making things better and we’re not the “blessing” they need.  Yes, you are.  If you are offering love, empathy and compassion, you are.  That’s another moment of vulnerability, too, that maybe we can’t “make it all better.”  But the blessing there is you, your presence and your love, just as Jesus proclaims in these beatitudes.  Every blessing is about being in the presence of God, in our hearts and in heaven.

Rejoice and be glad.  Blessed are you.

What's in a name?

At the end of last summer, Lori brought home a new puppy.  I talk about him lots and I’ve written about him before.  He’s a super cute merle coloured chihuahua we named Yoda.  I’ve said, more than once, that we named him Yoda because we hoped he would be a wise little man with big ears, just like Yoda in Star Wars.

He’s nine months old now and still hasn’t really grown into his name.  Not at all, in fact.  Wisdom still eludes him.  But he’s sure cute and he’s got time.  We’ll see.

Sometimes I wonder if he’s aware of his name and our expectations for him.

In 1939, T.S. Eliot published a book of fanciful poems about cats called “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”  It became the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Cats,” one of the longest running shows in Broadway history.  The first poem, The Naming of Cats, explains that cats have three names: a sensible, everyday name that’s common; a more dignified and particular name for fancy occasions; and the name that only the cat knows, a singularly meaningful name that no one else will know.  The same might go for dogs, I think.  And Yoda might well be just his first name.

I wonder if the same might be said of people.

You’ve got an everyday name others might know you by.  It might be sensible or a little fancier, but it’s the name were given.  Sometimes names are chosen because they mean something or they’re a family name or parents just liked the sound of it.  But it’s the name on your driver’s license and your tax return and it’s how you’re known.

But you might also be known by what you do.  Robin the Minister, for example, so-and-so the farmer or the baker or the doctor.  It’s one of the first questions we ask when we want to get to know someone, isn’t it?  What do you do?

But knowing a person’s name and occupation won’t really tell us who they truly are.  We’d need to get to know them by that third name, that one that no one but you yourself know because it so clearly describes the real you.  Well, no one, maybe, but you and God.

When I wonder about how we come from God and return to God, I wonder also if there isn’t a “name” that God knows us by, one that’s the truest form of who we are.  Maybe that’s what’s happening when Jesus meets Simon for the first time.

In John’s gospel, Jesus meets his first disciples when John the Baptist tells a couple of his own disciples that Jesus is the one he’s been talking about (John 1:29-42).  They go and meet Jesus and follow him around to see what he’s doing.  One, Andrew, brings his brother Simon.  When Jesus meets him for the first time, he tells him he won’t be called Simon, but Peter, which means “rock.”  No explanation, just hi, you’re Peter.

I don’t know for sure, but I doubt Peter looked like Dwayne Johnson.  I doubt he was “stone-faced” when he met Jesus.  Maybe he was unattractive, but that certainly wouldn’t be worth a mention.  No, maybe Jesus already knew who he was talking to and could see the potential and possibility in him.  Peter’s journey was a rocky road, as it were, but he’s ultimately revealed to be worthy of Jesus’ faith in him.  Simon, the Fisherman, Peter.

Ever wonder what your third name might be?  That one that describes the truest you, the depth of your spirit and the heart of your soul.  It’s worth some thought.  Who are you, really?

Bigger Than You Could Possibly Imagine

Most everyone probably has their Christmas decorations down and packed away for next year.  Even if you’re someone who believes Christmas is every day of the year - it is - sooner or later the the tree has to come down and the decorations go away.

And then there’s the 12 Days of Christmas Rule: there’s twelve days of Christmas, just like in the song, but it’s bad luck to leave decorations up past that.

So we took down all the decorations we put up at the church.  Except one.  We put up some fabric with lights behind it to look like a night sky and, in one corner, three large stars, one larger than the others.  This will stay up for awhile because the 12 Days of Christmas end with Epiphany, the day we celebrate the arrival of the magi who followed the star to Jesus.  Like I’ve said before, the story’s much bigger than one night or twelve days or even the four weeks of Advent.  The season of Epiphany can be four to nine weeks, depending on when Easter is, because it extends to the beginning of Lent.

Epiphany means to “make aware” or a revealing or manifestation of something in a way that brings the awareness of it’s truth.  The stories we hear about Jesus during Epiphany reveal who Jesus is, beginning with the magi following the star and revealing that the little child of poor Jewish parents in Roman-occupied Judea is the king that was promised.  Epiphany includes stories revealing who Jesus is as an adult, his baptism, the calling of the first disciples and his early teaching and miracles.  In the darkest days of January and February, it’s a season of enlightenment.

But it’s bigger than that.  We might want to remember that every part of the Christmas story has a moment of revealing.

I like to think that when the angel revealed God’s plans to Mary, Mary might have said something like “wow, this is a big deal.”  And the angel might have said “bigger than you can possibly imagine.”

When the angel went to Joseph in a dream and revealed that what Mary says is true, I wonder of Joseph woke up thinking “this is a big deal,” and the angel just said “bigger than you can possibly imagine.”

When the shepherds heard the news in spectacular fashion, they said “hey, let’s go to Bethlehem and see the baby, this is big news.”  And, as they left, the angels probably said “bigger than you can possibly imagine.”

When the magi saw the star and followed it with gifts “fit for a king,” they don’t seem to have turned away when the the king revealed to them was not what they expected.  They probably thought, “wow, this is so different than what we expected, it must be bigger than we thought.”  Then angel who sent them home, away from Herod, probably said “bigger than you can possibly imagine.”

And when they’d gone, the angels, the shepherds and the magi, and all the fuss had died down, I bet the people around Mary and Joseph might have said to them, “wow, your kid must be a big deal.”  And they would have said, “bigger than you can possibly imagine.”

For me, that’s the thing Epiphany most reveals: it’s bigger than we can possibly imagine.  More than the characters and a charming story, love is bigger than we can possibly imagine.  Love is what it’s about, and it’s bigger than we can possibly imagine.

Look at the magi for a moment.  We might take away from the story that their appearance reveals Jesus as the promised king.  But it reveals so much more.

Like that Jesus is for everyone.  It wasn’t pharisees or rabbis, seers or wise advisors to the Judean king that saw the star, it was foreigners.  They weren’t Jews, they weren’t local, they were from the mystical “east.”  Maybe that’s because Jesus is for everyone.

Yet, Herod and his “chief priests and scribes,” didn’t see the star, though they knew the prophecy well enough to know where the magi should go.  And they didn’t go with the magi.  They didn’t go to Jesus.  Maybe they were afraid that it was something bigger than them.

And what about Mary and Joseph?  They’d had quite an experience with this miracle birth, a lowly place for having it, in a place far from home and visits from shepherds with strange stories and now this: strange people from far away knock at the door.  If you were them, would you hide like Herod or open the door and embrace the possibility of something bigger?  Perhaps something bigger than you could possibly imagine?

Children of God

As we make our way round the Advent wreath, we come to the fourth candle: love.

I thought I had something pretty profound to say about love needing to be all consuming, in the sense that life needs to be full of love in order to be fully lived.  Much like the very principle of a candle where the flame is light, heat and energy for the world around it through the fuel which is the candle’s wax.  And I’m sure there’s something in that.

But then I got this message from Brook’s mom about something she’d written.  It went like this: “I know it's beautiful around the world.  I love the beauty in the world.  I love to see the world.  I love to go places.  I love the warm fires the hot chocolate.  I love the love in the world.  That is my favourite of all!”  Brook’s 6 years old.  The spelling’s a little more creative in the original.

I love what she wrote.

I love that there’s probably lots of parents who could say that their little child wrote or said something similar.  I hear about the conversations they have with their little ones and I hope you do, too.  We all need to, especially at Christmas.  Because it is that simple.

We’ll hear the stories of Jesus teaching us about love, the healing, the miracles, the parables, the grace, the living of a life full of love that leads to that one simple command to love as Jesus showed us.  All the complexities of a life will be lived out in a far too short lifetime on the way to the cross.  And we’ll examine it in detail and ponder it and think about it, as we should.  There is much to learn.

But perhaps, when we light the candle for love, we might think less about all there is to learn and more about the simplicity of a child-like love, one that’s open, innocent, unconditional, honest, fearless and true.  It’s easy to dismiss that with “children don’t know any better, they’ll learn from experience.”  But what if it were the opposite?  What if, when it comes to love - and hope, peace and joy, for that matter - what if they do know better because they have no inclination not to?

Remember that story of the very grown up Jesus telling the disciples that we need to be like children in order to come to the kingdom of heaven?  (Matthew 18:3 and 19:14.)  Child-like, not childish.  That can be a battle if you’ve got a lifetime of experience that encourages you to be fearful and protect yourself.  No wonder the disciples found it hard.  Of course, if we lived a lifetime into that childlike openness and loved others fearlessly, they might live that way, too, and others who experience their love would, too, and so on, and the world could be changed.

I know, maybe that’s a little simplistic.  Like a child, even.

Christmas is all about a child, though, and we take this time in Advent to prepare ourselves to come to this child, to come to the manger and marvel at the story and wonder at how God comes to us in the simplest way.

And that’s just it.  Maybe Jesus’ words are the wisdom of experience.  In this story of a child born in a stable is God loving us, loving like a child, fully, completely, unconditionally, all encompassing and all embracing.  God knows it's beautiful around the world.  God loves the beauty in the world.  God loves to see the world.  God loves to go places.  God loves the warm fires and the hot chocolate.  God loves the love in the world.  And I bet that’s God’s favourite part of all.

Joy to the world

The third candle on the Advent wreath is joy.  It’s often a pink candle, which is a nice tradition, though I can’t help wondering why we wouldn’t then let the other candles have there own colour rather than a seasonal colour with one anomaly.  What colour would you make hope?  Or peace or love?  It kind of makes joy stand out a bit, though, and I think I’m okay with that.

I know I’ve said previously that these Advent themes may well be all words that mean something different in the context of Jesus than when we might use them on a day to day basis, but I wonder if joy isn’t so much different as more.  And I don’t think it’s just semantics.  We might say happy or blissful, jovial or cheery, gleeful, merry, jubilant, the list is long for ways to describe how we’re feeling in a moment or about something.  But, to me, joy is the all-encompassing way to describe all those things at once, all those things in the context of something bigger than a moment, bigger than a feeling or a sense.

I think that’s because joy isn’t just about emotion or behaviour, it’s about spirit.  Sure, it’s all part of it, the warm fuzzies, the laughter, a smile, being “merry and bright” and all, but it’s more than that.  True joy, that's something that goes to the very core of who we are, the very deepest corner of our hearts, the very darkest place, and brings light.

I believe that true joy is found in the moment in which we find God present in our lives in a way which brings wholeness to our spirit.  There may be happiness and cheerfulness, there may be a smile or a belly laugh, but there may also be pain relieved, a moment of support that turns uncertainty to confidence, an awareness that our struggles are shared, that we are safe and secure and that we are not alone.  There will be comfort and contentment, a sense of rightness and a sense of certainty that life is good, in the true sense of the word.

There’s God’s presence, again, just like the wreath itself, connecting hope and peace and joy and love.  And just like those other “lights,” joy can’t remain just within us, but demands to be lived out.

I’m privileged to play the piano for Bashaw Community Theatre and they just did a show in our church.  Sister Act is lively and entertaining and the full house at each performance really enjoyed the shows.  And they were good shows (they’re always good shows).  I think people in the audience left each show with some joy.  Sure, the shows were good - as one of the characters might say, they looked good, they moved good, they sounded good.  But there was more.  There was spirit and warmth and connection that people on stage shared that was shared with the audience.  That brought them joy.

I know there were times when it was hard work, times when people came to rehearsal with their own issues and problems and tough days, times when they weren’t sure they could sing or dance or (most especially) do it on stage in front of people.  But I also know there was a space created where people felt safe, supported and loved, with friends that cared, where their company was enjoyed, playing and working together, and where they belonged.  There were friends and families, sisters and brothers, young and old, experienced performers and first timers.  There was people from this town and other communities, there was three generations of one family, an engaged couple, a very pregnant nun and buddies from school.  What there was, was a family, very much the kind of family that our churches and communities should be: loving, hopeful and filled with joy.  That’s life giving.

And that’s just the point of joy.  Not every moment of Christmas will be merry.  For some, it will be hard to find any moment that’s merry.  But there may be joy.  The way to joy can take us through pain and grief, struggle and disappointment, even loneliness.   But in sharing those with each other, in caring for each other, in loving each other, our spirits are made more whole and given life.  Maybe joy does deserve a candle of a different colour.

There was a child, born to a poor couple who probably feared the questions people would ask about his parentage as much as they feared being able to afford to feed him.  The baby was born with little help in a dirty stable.  Angels didn't tell the wealthy or the wise first, they told poor, struggling shepherds that nobody really appreciated or respected.  The magi who came with gold, frankincense and myrrh had to work hard to follow the star and when they found the baby, they barely escaped with their lives.  Lots of children didn't, thanks to Herod's fear.

There's lots in the Christmas story that's about struggle and pain and fear.  But at it's heart is a new life.  Joy to the world, love is come.

Towards a real world Peaceable Kingdom

The second candle we’ll light on the Advent wreath is for peace.

Like hope, the first candle, we could say that this is another term that means something different in the context of Jesus than how we might use it “in the real world.”  (There’s a reason for those quotation marks, and I’ll come back to that.)

The peace of Jesus is something different, alright.  In the Gospel of John, we even hear Jesus say “peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives” (John 14:27).  Truly.  This peace isn’t just about an absence of conflict, chaos or trouble, it’s about the presence of God.  It’s the next link on the Advent wreath: when we live into the hope of God’s presence in our lives, we can also find the peace of God within us, that peace which is then lived out in the love that Jesus teaches us to share.

Jesus didn’t offer the disciples just a sense of inner peace, but the realization that inner peace lived out creates peace - and shares peace - with the world around us.  Loving our neighbour as ourselves and loving the world around us as Jesus teaches us to love, brings the prospect of peace without as well as within. 

Let’s go back to Isaiah for a minute.  I’ve mentioned before, I think, how much the followers of Jesus love Isaiah.  Isaiah’s the most frequently quoted Hebrew scripture prophet in Christian scripture and for good reason: Isaiah’s hope-filled prophecies of a messiah are heard as being fulfilled in Jesus.  Isaiah 11:1-10, for example, describes the shoot that will come from the root of Jesse - that the messiah will be from the house of David - and how “the spirit of the Lord shall rest on him.”  He will have all the traditional God-given attributes of a great king, but also “he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.”  I don’t hear an army in that or force, in fact, for me, the breath that can “kill the wicked” conjures up the image of the breath of the spirit, of Jesus sharing peace and the spirit with the disciples.

And that’s the thing about “the peaceable kingdom” that Isaiah then describes as the result of the messiah’s reign.  “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.”  This isn’t a negotiated truce or an enforced cessation of violence, this is predators and prey living together and children, innocent and unknowing, kept safe from harm.  This is a fundamental shift in the relationships of all living things: “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.” 

Edward Hicks: Peaceable Kingdom (1826)

This messiah will lead the world to be so fully aware of God that we will return to that Eden-like paradise of all things being in right relationship with each other, that we will know we are all children of God, that love and grace will rule all hearts and lives and that we won’t hurt each other.

Wait, though.  That’s certainly not our world, is it?  So does that mean Jesus failed or that Jesus isn’t the messiah?  Or does it mean that Jesus, alive in us, calls us to live into that peace and strive for that world in this life, even as we know we’ll return to God?

Hence my quotations, “in the real world.”  The peace of God isn’t a concept to talk about for an hour in musty old churches or even in hip cool churches, it has real world application.  It did with John the Baptist, too, remember?  He called people to repent because the kingdom of heaven was near.  To repent means to turn, literally, away from sin, to make a fundamental change to a new way of living, of living into a relationship right with God and with each other.

If we want to make peace happen, it starts within us and is lived out with others.  It starts with the light of hope to guide us and the presence of God’s peace on the journey.  Jesus teaches us to do, to love and care and build our own peaceable kingdom.

God of the Living

I would usually write about the lectionary readings for the Sunday coming up, but I went off lectionary for our final service in Mirror last week.  So this week’s post reflects the passages from Luke for last week and this week.  Besides ... it seems appropriate.

“He is God not of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38).

It’s usually about this time of year that I get two or three letters telling me that the end of the world is imminent and I’m going to burn in the very fires of hell.

I should clarify that a bit: the letters - they’re often pamphlets really - aren’t addressed to me personally, although the “you” they address feels pretty personal.  They also tell me that my safety during the coming armageddon and protection from the subsequent judgement can be easily assured by me supporting their very important ministry with a donation.

Sometimes I read them just to see what new and novel ways indicate that the end is near: the writer had a vision of a great beast devouring the earth; nature is fighting back and trying to destroy us; terrorists could get their hands on advanced weapons of mass destruction; the various conflicts around the world are getting progressively out of hand; the right is killing the country, or the left, take your pick; the Oilers are winning, for real this time.  All signs of the impending end of the world.

Okay, I’m making light of something that’s pretty serious.  In fact, some of those scenarios are very current and very real.  But are they signs of “the end?”  Or are they being used to make you afraid so you’ll believe in something?  Fear is a pretty powerful motivator.

Jesus talks about there being an “end time,” as do prophets in the Bible, and there’s the whole book of Revelation.  But Jesus also has a warning, that we should be wary of false prophets and those that would use fear to control and hurt the world.  Jesus has another message, too.

Don’t panic.

Really.  Don’t panic.  Don’t be afraid, first of all, because God is with us in this life and in the next: the end of this life is the beginning of a new life with God.  Secondly, God calls us to living in this life, to love boldly, to engage this life with all the enthusiasm, creativity and wisdom we possess - to use our capacity to make change happen.  Fear is death, not life.  Love is life.  Fear doesn’t empower us to learn and grow and change.  Love does that.  Fear holds us back from living boldly into the next moment.    Love moves us to embrace the world and step fearlessly forward.  And Jesus reminds us that our God “is God not of the dead, but of the living,” in living out this life and living into the next.

I suspect that the reason we see more of this kind of “literature” at this time of year, and hear bible stories about it, is because we’re coming to some endings.  The church calendar begins with Advent, so the end of the church year is this coming week.  The calendar year ends soon, too.  Oh, and it’s often election time.  How’d that go recently?

But those endings are also beginnings of something new, aren’t they?  They’re signs that something is coming, Christmas for one thing.  That, too, is a beginning.  The birth of Jesus shouldn’t be something that we acknowledge every year just because it’s marked on the calendar from last year.  We celebrate it because it reminds us of new life, shows us the wonder of our selves and our relationships with each other and God, and inspires us to live better in those relationships.

Even when it seems like the new beginning brings an even greater struggle, a setback or a defeat, Jesus reminds us that God goes with us and love is still the heart of life.  Choose to love.  With all due respect to George R.R. Martin, it’s not winter that’s coming, it’s summer.

And by the way, what made me think of this wasn’t elections or conflicts or change and upheaval, it was that I didn’t get any of those “letters” this year.  Not one.  Maybe that’s a good sign.

So don’t panic, Jesus says.  Stuff happens and, with God, we’ll live into those challenges as they come.  I certainly don’t want to be worried that the Oilers have started winning again.  For now.