I’m sure we’ve heard this slogan before: What Would Jesus Do? It became popular in the 1990’s as an evangelical slogan. Members of evangelical churches used it as a personal motto to remind themselves that they were called to act in ways which demonstrated the love of Jesus.
Eventually, as is the way with such things, it became a fashion statement. The slogan was emblazoned on bracelets, t–shirts, license plate holders, bumper stickers, and even shorts. If I remember correctly, I also saw it on the elastic band of boxers.
In some ways, WWJD harkens back to a book written in Latin by Thomas a Kempis between 1418–1427 called “De Imitatione Christi”—“The Imitation of Christ”. It has become a spiritual classic, offering spiritual teachings and instructions on how we might align ourselves with the love of Christ as we live in the world. A Kempis didn’t used the words of the slogan, but certainly the notion of imitating Christ is inherent in those words.
I was curious about where the actual wording came from. I had simply assumed that it arose about 20 years ago as a way for contemporary Christians to think about their faith. I had also assumed it first developed as an individualistic kind of sentiment. I was wrong.
The words “What Would Jesus Do?” were the subtitle of a novel written by Rev. Charles Sheldon in 1896. The novel “In His Steps” grew out of a series of sermons Sheldon delivered in his Congregationalist Church in Topeka, Kansas. The book has sold more than 30 million copies.
The novel opens with Rev. Henry Maxwell struggling to finish writing his sermon for next Sunday. A homeless man, Jack Manning, comes to his front door, asking for work. No one in the town helps him, including Rev Maxwell and his wife.
Jack interrupts Maxwell during his sermon and accuses the people of the congregation for their apathy. They don’t care about those who are not so well off. He confronts the good people of the congregation about their lack of compassion for the unemployed, the homeless, and those who are struggling. As he finishes accusing the congregation, he collapses. A few days later, he dies.
Rev. Maxwell is deeply moved by these events, and by Jack’s death. He starts questioning his own actions, whether he acted appropriately. The next Sunday, he challenges his congregation. “For the next year, do not do anything without first asking, ‘What would Jesus do?’”
That challenge is at the heart of the novel, and is the driving force behind the plot. The rest of the novel focusses on characters around town as they try to live up to the challenge. As they do so, the lives of the people in the town are radically transformed.
Unlike most of contemporary evangelical theology or practice, Sheldon’s novel and theology was shaped by a commitment to Christian socialism. This movement sees capitalism as idolatrous because it is rooted in greed and competition. Proponents of Christian socialism argued that Jesus’ teachings are best lived out as we care for one another first.
Christian socialism came to the forefront in a movement in the early 20th century known as the Social Gospel. Followers of the social gospel applied Christian ethics to social problems: economic inequality, homelessness, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, child labour, inadequate wages, and so forth. Those conditions sound very much like the early 21st century in which we live.
Sheldon and Social Gospellers would suggest to us that we need to be open to the spirit as we look at the social conditions around us.
What Would Jesus Do?
Would Jesus buy a new car, or help the homeless?
Would Jesus surround himself with luxuries, or devote much of his income and time to help the poor?
Would Jesus ignore the bum standing on the street corner, or would he reach out and treat that person as someone with dignity?
Would Jesus waste time on facebook or snapchat or Instagram or twitter, or would he use the time to help other people?
The list of questions can go on, almost to infinity.
Peter Gomes, professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School, suggests that rather than asking WWJD, it might be more productive to ask, “What would Jesus have me do?”
Asking the question that way helps us think through the way the gospel presents Jesus, and then choose how we might live out the Great Commandment in our own context: to love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.
My hope would be that as we do so, our world might also be transformed.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
There’s a story at the end of the Gospel of John, just after Jesus is raised. He appears to the disciples, but Thomas isn’t there. When the others tell him about Jesus’ appearance, Thomas utters the words for which he has become famous, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20: 25) It’s why he’s known as “doubting Thomas”—a phrase which has entered everyday language for us.
Now what would you expect Jesus to do with a man like Tom? Will Jesus tell him that he needs to have more faith? Will Jesus scold him for not trusting the other disciples? Will Jesus admonish for not understanding what Jesus has been telling them all along?
But Jesus does none of that. What happens is that a week later, Jesus returns and offers himself to Thomas: “See me; touch me; do not doubt but believe.” At the very end of the story, Jesus blesses “those who have not seen and yet still believe.”
Now if I’m being really honest, that’s a blessing I would rather do without. Given the choice I would rather “see” than “believe.”
Simply put, I wish I didn’t have faith.
I don’t mean I wish I didn’t believe in God or in following Jesus or anything like that. That’s not what I mean at all. In fact, I mean just the opposite.
I wish I had knowledge. I wish I had certainty. I wish I had proof.
I wish I could have been there with Jesus and the others. I wish I could have heard him with my own ears and seen him with my own eyes. I wish I could have seen the empty tomb, or been there to touch the risen Lord with my own hands.
It’s so much easier, we think, to be able to see or touch or feel or hear. Trusting is so much more difficult.
Except for this … for those who did see and touch and hear and smell Jesus, for those who were in Jesus’ company, for those who walked this earth with him, the evidence of their senses wasn’t enough. During his lifetime, Jesus accumulated hundreds of followers. But the majority of people in Jesus’ day didn’t join The Way. They saw just him as yet another in a long line of charismatic teachers and would–be messiahs.
For myself, I suspect that if I had been there, it wouldn’t have been enough for me either, or for most of us. But there are days when I crave that kind of certainty, that kind of knowledge and assurance.
But it is not to be. And I suspect I’m not alone. We don’t like to talk about this sort of thing much, but I’m willing to bet that there are many Christians who feel the same way. They have been taught that doubt is the opposite of faith, and so they struggle with their wonderings. They are afraid to talk about it, because they think they’ll be scorned.
But I don’t believe that doubt is the opposite of faith. In fact, I believe that faith embraces our deepest doubts, faces them head on and chooses to trust that God’s goodness is alive in the universe. We have faith precisely because we do doubt. If we didn’t doubt, we wouldn’t have faith. We would have knowledge.
One of my favourite spiritual writers, Frederick Buechner, describes doubt as “the ants in the pants of faith. It keeps it awake and moving.” Faith is a living relationship, in which we choose to trust. Faith is not simply a head trip. It’s an ongoing, living relationship with God. It’s about giving our heart and soul in trust, and walking in the way of Jesus, trusting that God’s purposes are being born in our lives and in the universe.
That’s not a passive believing that everything is going to work out for the best. Christianity is not a foolish, Pollyanna–esque way of living. Rather, living in that kind of relationship with God involves us in a partnership to work with God for the healing of the world.
Throughout Scripture, and throughout the history of the world, God’s people have faced doubt, and continued to live in trust anyway. For many of God’s people who have faced even the deepest of doubts, those doubts have been the very catalyst for their faith. Why? Because the more they doubted, the more they were forced to rely on God to see them through the trials that gave rise to their doubts.
I am a person of faith, not because I’m absolutely certain that God’s life is at work in the world. I am a person of faith because I choose to live in the trust and the hope that it is so. I choose, on the basis of this trust, to live as if it were so.
Some would call me a fool. That’s ok. I’ve been called worse.
But it is precisely this kind of foolishness that gives my life the goodness that keeps me working for healing and compassion to stay alive in the world.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
After steadfastly resisting for many years, I joined facebook a few weeks ago. We wanted to set up a facebook group for our church, and in order to be one of the moderators of the group, I had to set up a facebook account.
All I can say is “Wow!”
Not in a good way.
These last few weeks have convinced me even more that so much of social media is a complete and unadulterated waste of time.
I learned very quickly to ignore most of what I read. Much of it is inane. Much of it asks me to post more about myself than I’m comfortable doing. Some of it is people passing on “news feeds” which even the least amount of research will show that much of it is false. Other people post memes in a failed attempt at some kind of public discourse. And then there are the ads.
I’ve discovered that only about 1% of the stuff is worth reading, or liking, or sharing.
What particularly strikes me is reading through some posts and then clicking on the comments. The current pipeline debate is a good case in point. Person A posts a meme about how safe (or how dangerous) the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline will be, and urges everyone to support the efforts to build (or deny) the pipeline. Then the comments start. Much of the “debate” (I put it in air quotes because much of what is written in the comments can’t really be called a debate) is not about the merits of the pipeline, but about the character of the person who posted the original post.
In Latin, this is called an ad hominem attack. It’s a strategy which is used to avoid genuine engagement with the topic at hand; instead you attack the character, motive or other attribute of the person making the argument. We often see ad hominem attacks used by people opposed to religion; instead of debating the merits of faith, they attack people of faith as being weak–willed or weak–minded, or simply unable to deal with the reality of life and therefore seek a false consolation in their faith.
We’ve seen Donald Trump use this kind of attack as he tweets to vilify those who disagree with him.
Why do we do this kind of thing? Why use this kind of strategy?
Here’s where mimetic theory becomes useful. Mimetic theory was developed by Rene Girard (1923–2015). A French historian, anthropologist, literary critic, and philosopher of social science, Girard’s genius lay in noticing something vitally important and seemingly obvious but which had never before been recognized as important.
Girard developed what he called “mimetic theory” after the Greek word mimesis, which means “imitative” or “mimicy”. The theory is based on what the observable human tendency to either imitate others or to want what others have. Girard observed this across many different cultures.
Human beings naturally imitate the desires of other people. Have you noticed that? Obvious, isn’t it? We are all of us mimetic creatures, people who imitate others or want what they have.
One of the most obvious areas in which we can see this is in the advertising industry which works to activate our mimetic desire, with demonstrated success.
We also see mimetic desire operate in the use of violence. Certainly in physical violence—if you hit me, I’ll hit you back. The same thing with verbal violence—if you attack me, I’ll counter–attack. If you say something negative about me, I will naturally respond by saying something negative about you or your family or your faith or your …. well, you fill in the blank. “Oh yeah? So’s your momma!”
And so the cycle continues. It happens at an individual level. It also happens at provincial or national levels. Just witness the verbal battles between John Horgan and Rachel Notley about the pipeline. Or the comments section on facebook.
And so it continues.
Until someone stops the cycle.
Until someone apologizes.
Until someone does something to make it right.
Donald Trump (and tons of other politicians) claim to follow Jesus. But their words and actions betray them. They don’t seem very Christ–like to me. You know, like the Donald who says “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe that.” Because surely you remember that passage in the gospels where Jesus says, “If someone slaps you on the cheek, slap that clown on the other cheek even harder!”
Well not really. The Jesus I (imperfectly) try to follow teaches us to turn the other cheek … to walk the second mile … to love our enemies.
Here’s the value of mimetic theory. It claims that we will always imitate someone. That’s why Jesus says, “Follow me.” He knew that we need a model.
I understand that it’s hard not to fall into the cycle of violence. When you back down, they’ll just come after you harder. They’ll rub it in your face.
Maybe so.
But, if we keep doing that, the cycle never stops. Violence escalates.
The way of Jesus stops the cycle in its tracks.
And I know that’s the way I want to try and live.
So I’m not going to get sucked in by the facebook feuds. I’ll just shut off all my notifications.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
A wonderful image came across my facebook feed last week, showing 21 African children sitting in a circle on a grassy field. They sat side by side, their feet touching as they pointed into the centre, the soles of their feet forming an almost perfect circle.
That circle was what caught my eye almost immediately. It’s an arresting image.
Underneath the picture was this text: “An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told them that whoever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he gave them the signal to run, they all took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat in a circle enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they chose to run as a group when they could have had more fruit individually, one child spoke up and said, ‘Ubuntu! How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?’
“Ubuntu in the Xhosa culture means, ‘I am because we are.’”
I suspect that this concept is foreign to most of us. In fact, I believe most of us simply cannot understand this kind of behavior, this kind of community solidarity.
We are defined in this culture, mostly, by competition. All around us, we are influenced to get ahead no matter the cost. Our society prizes Achievement, Appearance and Affluence above all else. If we are successful, if we are good–looking, if we are wealthy, then we’ve got the good life. We’ve made it!
As a result, writes spiritual writer Thomas Moore, “the great malady of our time … is ‘loss of soul’. When we neglect our soul … it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning…” He continues, “We yearn for entertainment, power, intimacy, sexual fulfillment, and material things, and we think we can find these things if we discover the right relationship or the right job, the right church or the right therapy. But without soul, whatever we find will be unsatisfying, for what we truly long for is the soul…” (Care of the Soul)
Soul has to do with how we make community with other people.
I remember some 25 years ago I was talking to a church worker who lived and worked among the poor people in Nicaragua. Joe told me about a man named Enrique who had made friends with a wealthy American. When the American died, he left Enrique $10,000 in his will.
It was a crisis for Enrique. In his eyes as a poor peasant, it was a fortune. He could be free to do whatever he wanted to do. But he also realized that to accept this bequest would isolate him from his community. Other people in the village would no longer relate to him as a neighbour. He would be “the rich man”. He would become the patrón. The result of that would be a loss of his community.
That’s why Enrique refused the bequest.
When Joe told that story in a group, the people were confused. How could Enrique give up what for him was a fortune? A windfall like that would have allowed him to better his life.
We just don’t get it. We don’t understand that sense of community. We don’t get Ubuntu. Desmond Tutu, former Archbishop of Capetown, describes it this way: “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. We say, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’”
We have lost that deep sense of community. We hold up the rugged, solitary individual as a model for how to live.
As a result, there are many people who think that the key question about Christian faith is, “Do you know where you will end up after you die?” As if that is the central question in Scripture and the primary concern of the Creator. It is not.
Part of the difficulty in correcting this skewed perception is the English language itself. When we read the word “you”, our default is to read it in the singular. You, a person, an individual. But the word “you” is also plural. It means you all. Y’all. All y’all. “You” refers to a group of people, a community.
In Greek (the language of the New Testament), there are different forms for the singular and the plural form of the pronoun “you.” The vast majority of Biblical references are in the plural. The Bible is a library of books about community. It is about a people living together, sharing the wealth of the universe, living with hope and compassion and grace. Together.
But our default in the West is to read it as singular. As a result, we miss out on life lived in community.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
Some ancient Christian imagery shows the risen Christ confronting the devil and laughing at him. Part of the lore of Easter is that God played a joke on Satan by raising Jesus from the dead. This old Christian custom celebrated the day after Easter as Bright Monday, a day to laugh and frolic and delight in the good news of resurrection life, a day of joy and laughter. Risus paschalis (the Easter laugh), the early theologians called it.
We’re not completely sure about the origins of the custom, but it may be inspired by a sermon from 4th century Greek preacher John Chrysostom, who envisioned the resurrected Christ laughing at the devil. An old adage has it that the devil can’t stand the sound of laughter and slinks away from it. G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.”
In the spirit of Bright Monday (not to mention Easter falling on April 1 this year) I offer the following again. It’s a delightfully light–hearted take on the Bible, filled with mistakes and leading to some good belly laughs. Enjoy!
In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says, “The Lord thy God is one, but I think He must be a lot older than that.”
Anyway, God said, “Give me a light!” and someone did. Then God made the world.
He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren’t embarrassed because mirrors hadn’t been invented yet.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden. I’m not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn’t have cars.
Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel.
Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something.
One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check.
After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat.
Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh’s people. These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.
God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don’t lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbour’s stuff.
Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother.
One of Moses’ best helpers was Joshua who was the first Bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town.
After Joshua came David. e got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me.
After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed up on the shore.
There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don’t have to worry about them.
After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, ‘Close the door! Were you born in a barn?’ It would be nice to say, ‘As a matter of fact, I was.’)
During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Democrats.
Jesus also had twelve opossums.
The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.
Jesus was a great man. He heled many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.
But the Democrats and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn’t stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.
Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.
May you delight in the risus paschalis. Happy Easter.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
If you’ve ever read a story to a child, you will know the truth of this. A child doesn’t ask, “Is it true?” Nor does she say, “Prove it.” Neither will he respond, “I can’t see it, so I don’t believe it.”
The hallmark of a good story is if the child says enthusiastically, “Tell me the story again.” With glee and abandon, a child loves to hear the same story again and again. I remember when my own children were younger that from time to time, just to see if they were paying attention, I would change the story up. Without fail, they would say, “No Dad, that’s not how it goes.” And then they’d go on to tell the story, almost word for word, from memory.
When we grow up, we never really outgrow our love of a good story, well–told. There is a part of each of us that wants to cheer, and to ask, “Oh, tell it again.”
That’s part of the attraction with good television dramas or good movies. We can watch them again and again, and even though we know the story, and we know how the story will end, we watch, and our hearts swell.
A Christmas Carol. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jesus Christ Superstar. Gone with the Wind. It’s a Wonderful Life. To Kill a Mockingbird. We each have our favourites.
A good story sticks with us.
A few years ago, the Swedish writer suggested that instead of calling ourselves “homo sapiens” (which is Latin for “wise or rational human being”), a better way of naming ourselves would be “homo narrans” (“storytelling person”). His point was not that we are not thinking creatures; rather, we are also or primarily storytelling creatures.
We make sense of the world and our place in it through story. Storytelling is how we create meaning, how we interpret reality, and how we come to know who we are and why we are.
This is why the church tells stories. This is why we read the Bible. It’s not an instruction manual. It’s a book of stories. It contains the memories of our ancestors in the faith. These stories are how they made sense of their world, and the place of God in that world.
They told these stories in ways that made sense in their world. We retell the stories in ways that make sense for us.
I belong to a church, a tradition, in which the climax of Holy Week, the climax of the whole church year, is found on the Saturday evening before Easter which we call the Easter Vigil. In this service, we tell the story of God’s commitment to the world, from the creation of the world to the resurrection of Jesus. We tell these stories to remind us who we are, whose we are, and how we have come to be. Each story tells a part of our identity. Each reading is a testament to the enduring and faithful love of God.
As we tell the stories which make up the larger story, we remember once again that we are adding our own chapters to this story. The heart of the story is God’s love for God’s people. This was how ancient Israel told the story of God’s presence in their lives. This was how the ancient church told the story as well. It is the story of our past, a past which possesses us and draws us into the story again.
We wrestle with our past. We struggle with some of these stories. We wrestle with the violence of God’s people. We struggle sometimes with the inscrutable ways of God. Some of the stories our ancestors told horrify us in the 21st century, and we discern that we could never tell the story quite this way. Some of the stories are no longer relevant for us, and so we quietly excise them from our consciousness.
We continue to tell the story. We tell it in our own way. This story isn’t just about our past. It is also a story in which we see signs of our future. So we tell these stories in ways which open the grand story up, so that we might imagine all the different ways in which we can add our own chapters in new contexts and with new understandings of how God is at work in our lives.
The resurrection of Jesus, thus, is not the end of the story. It is an invitation to a new beginning in our lives, a new beginning in the life of the world.
We see that particularly at the end of the gospel of Mark. Originally, Mark’s story ended with verse 8, which reads “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
The women who came to the tomb told no one.
And yet, someone must have said something. The story was told. And it continues to be told, because this is a story of life and hope and wonder, and this story has the power to transform the life of every human being.
Oh, tell the story again!
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
I love to find out about words. Where do they come from? What do the roots of words mean in the original languages?
While there are some people who say things like “They’re only words,” I believe that words are so very important. It matters how we say things, how we name things, how we identify what is important to us. Words are precious that way.
The saying, “They’re only words”, points out just how important it is to ensure that our words remain consistent with our actions. That’s also the sentiment behind the old proverb, “Actions speak louder than words.” And that’s true … but it doesn’t decrease the important of words. It serves to increase the importance of actions.
In terms of words, I speak and write English fluently. I have a rough working knowledge of Greek, which is the language of the New Testament. It’s helpful to be able to figure out what the Greek words behind English translations of the Bible really mean. I don’t know much of the other language of the Bible, which is Hebrew. However, I do have some tools which help me work out what the words in the original language of the Old Testament mean and where they come from.
A few years ago, I learned about the Hebrew root of the word “compassion”. As you might imagine, compassion is a very important word in the grammar of faith. I believe it’s at the heart of Christian faith. It describes God’s relation with the world, and it describes how we can learn to live together in that are whole and healthy for all people. It is an essential trait for us if we wish to live in ways that are truly human.
The English word “compassion” comes from two Latin words, “com” which means “with” and “passio” which means “to suffer”. So the Latin root of compassion means to suffer with someone, to be there for and with the other.
I am a strong proponent of living with that kind of compassion, in which we try to walk in the other’s shoes. But that doesn’t mean that we take on the burdens of another. Compassion can’t be a way in which we shelter people from the consequences of their actions. Rather, we walk with another person as he or she seeks to figure out their own path in life.
Here’s where the Hebrew word for compassion becomes very helpful. The Hebrew word is “rechemet”, which comes from the root “rechem” which literally means “womb”.
This word brings to mind a beautiful image of healthy motherhood and all the amazing and miraculous things that happen in a womb. The womb protects the unborn child; it nourishes, cradles and prepares the fœtus for life. The fœtus stays in that warm and nourishing place just the right amount of time before birth. If it stays too long, unhealthy things happen to both baby and mother. It becomes toxic, and dangerous to both, and sometimes emergency surgery must be performed to rescue both baby and mother.
If the baby doesn’t stay long enough, there is the other danger that he or she may not yet be fully formed, and therefore unable to survive in the world, as well as being highly susceptible to disease.
This helps enrich my understanding of compassion. We show compassion in the same way as a womb is necessary. We carry a person who is hurting or needy in the womb of our compassion. We can build the person up, nourish and encourage and strengthen him or her.
But too long, and it turns toxic. There comes a time when a person must be released from the womb of compassion and begin to mature on his or her own.
The other thing about this is that it enriches our image of God, who loves the world with a deep and abiding compassion. God’s love for the world is expressed in this feminine image of nurture and gentle caring. It’s one image among many which we need to recapture and emphasize if we are to return to a more wholistic image of God.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
On Good Friday again this year, Christians from different churches in Cranbrook will join together for our fourteenth Good Friday CrossWalk. We make a spiritual pilgrimage through the streets of downtown Cranbrook. This is worship in the streets! We pray for our city, its leaders and all who live here. We pray for our nation and for the world.
The CrossWalk begins at 10 am on Good Friday at the Clock Tower. From there, we will carry a large cross through the downtown core of the city and stop at several locations. At each stop, we read a passage from Scripture and we pray together.
Our prayers will embrace the city and its people, leaders and governments around the world, our legal system, our health care system, caregivers of all sorts and those who need to be surrounded with prayer and compassion and grace. We pray for the victims and perpetrators of war and hatred. We pray for all whose lives need to be held up in the light of God’s love. We end with prayers for the churches and other faith groups, all who seek to live with peace and compassion in the world. We pray that we might learn to live and work together with compassion for the good of all people.
Why do we do this?
We do it as a faithful witness to the grace and compassion of God. We hold up our city in prayer so that God’s love might surround and embrace us all with healing grace. We journey together, bearing witness to Jesus who comes to our world with a different vision of what a whole and healthy life looks like. God’s vision for the world is of a world bound together in grace and compassion. God has a vision of a world in which we serve each other, care for each other, pray for each other, and give ourselves away in love. God has a dream of a world where all share in the wealth of the universe, where all may live whole and healthy lives, where all people are embraced, healed, and restores. God’s vision is of a world of justice and peace.
For faithful Christians, the cross is about that alternative vision of what life could be like. Jesus didn’t die on the cross primarily so that we could get to heaven. Rather, he was executed by the state because his vision of life was so radically different that he was seen as a threat. The powers that be executed him.
Today, 2000 years later, we no longer remember those powers that be, except as actors in the story whose central character was Jesus of Nazareth. The cross, for us, shows the depth of Jesus’ passion for a world based on a radical equality among all people. We see the power of God’s love, which holds us up even in the midst of the most painful suffering.
In our CrossWalk, in our prayers, we give voice to that vision. We don’t ask God to come crashing into our world to set everything right. Rather, as we pray, we make a fresh commitment to live by the gospel values of compassion, peace, justice and wholeness. We make a public act of witness that we walk with Jesus, that we share that same vision of a life made whole and new.
Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall talks about prayer as “learning to see the world through God’s eyes.” As we pray, we learn to view the world with compassion and grace. We learn to seek justice for all people. We seek to live on this earth as responsible and faithful people who care for one another and who care for the earth as well.
CrossWalking is one way in which we renew our commitment to walk in the way of Jesus. It is a way that leads to a cross, since walking this path faithfully will bring us into conflict with the world and its values.
God invites us to be partners in what John Dominic Crossan calls “God’s great cleanup of the world”. We work in partnership with God, so that the gospel values of love and compassion and justice might triumph in our own lives and in the world.
God has a deep, abiding and profound love for the world. Our prayers for the city and all its people, for peace and justice, for hope and healing, reflects our longing to participate in God’s passionate love affair with the world.
As we journey through the city, we feel the burden of the cross we carry. At the same time, we experience the reality of its liberating power. We renew our commitment to the crucified and risen Christ as we commit ourselves to serve Cranbrook in love.
Join us on Good Friday, March 30. We begin at the Clock Tower at 10 am, and end with fellowship and refreshments at Christ Church. I invite you to journey with us. Come pray with us. Come show your love for Cranbrook. Come carry the cross with us. Come and give witness to an alternative vision of what life could be like.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
All around us, we are urged to “be our best”, to “be the best you can be”. The spirit of our age tells us that in everything, we ought to pursue excellence, or even worse, perfection.
Let me push back against this impulse. I don’t want to try and convince you that we can’t be perfect. We all know that. Rather, I want to suggest that it’s ok to settle for being good enough rather than always striving to be excellent.
Why would I suggest that? Because I think the pursuit of excellence is fueled by a fear–driven lie.
The root of this lie lies in our assumption that we can excel in everything we try. From there, it’s a short step to thinking that we are not finite creatures with finite resources of time and energy.
Now a lot depends upon how we define excellence. So let me be clear that when I use the term, I am pointing to the impulse in our culture where being satisfied with being “average” or “normal” or “good enough” is somehow an admission of defeat or failure. I am pointing to the neurotic driven–ness that demands constant improvement, that this year has to be better than last year.
But it seems clear to me that this is impossible. You can’t get better and better and better. We are not gods with infinite resources. We are finite, limited creatures. We have a top, a limit. Past a certain point, you can’t get better.
A good example of this impulse is how it drives athletes to use performance–enhancing drugs in order to be faster, stronger, better. This kind of drive says it’s ok to bend the rules to get ahead.
The other argument I would make is that when we are pushed to always be better, we are being asked to make sacrifices that just aren’t worth it.
When we pursue excellence at work, we are robbing time and energy from our family. We spend longer hours at work—which means we have fewer hours to spend in taking care of ourselves and being with friends. We don’t have an infinitely deep reservoir of time and energy.
This is why I think the notion of “excellence” is a great lie and a powerful idolatry. I’ve often said that there is one acceptable way to be addicted to something in our society: it’s ok to be a workaholic.
I disagree. We simply can’t do it all. We are not infinite beings. We are human beings, limited and finite. As a result, we will have to accept that we are “good enough.” And that’s ok.
Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to do the best we can do. What I am saying is that there is a limit to our abilities, our energy, our time. We cannot participate in a system in which we are called to be better and better all the time. The costs of that kind of system are just too high.
Of course, I could always do “better” in various areas of my life. But what will I sacrifice in that quest? And is the sacrifice worth it?
It’s impossible to excel at everything. The only way I can be the best at work is by taking time away from family, friends or personal time for renewal. I could be a better worker, but I’d have to give up being a good friend, a good spouse, a good father. And frankly, that sacrifice is just not worth making.
Too many people in our world seem to be willing to make that kind of sacrifice. We buy into the illusion and the lie of excellence. We don’t want others to think that we are giving up. We don’t want to “settle” for being good enough, so we continue to run on the neurotic treadmill of excellence.
We experience being “good enough” as a sort of failure.
But that’s not true. It’s not about failure. It’s about recognizing that we are finite human beings. We have limits. Our resources, our energy, our time—none of this is inexhaustible. We can’t be gods. That’s a delusion.
So let me say again, “good enough” is good enough. And part of becoming mature as a human being is to accept, even embrace, the limitations that mark us as human beings.
Again, I don’t mean that we shouldn’t try. All I’m saying is, when we do try, we ought to accept those limits, and be satisfied that at the end of the day, we have done what we can. It’s good enough.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt
We are about midway through Lent. It began with Ash Wednesday, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Lent is a season to take stock of our lives. It’s a time to reflect on our faith more intentionally. We take time during Lent to remember that we are a people who belong to God, people who have taken vows of loyalty to God, people who have been claimed by God. And because we don’t live it perfectly, part of our spiritual discipline in Lent is repentance.
As a result, Lent is a serious season in our lives. But … and this is important, since Lent has gotten a bad rap … Lent need not be a sombre season. The whole notion of repentance and reflection goes against the spirit of our age, which has more to do with instant gratification and getting whatever we want whenever we want it. As a result, Lent is understood by many to be a time of denial and pain.
Honestly, who wants to “give something up for Lent”? Oor, for that matter, any time?
Let me suggest a different way of living into Lent. I begin with the notion that we are a people who have been claimed by God.
What does it mean to belong to God? It means that we are not our own. We honour God’s values in our world: values of justice, peace, reconciliation and wholeness. As we have been blessed, so we bless others. As we have been healed, so we touch other lives as gently as we can. As we have been included by God’s grace in a community of hope and reconciliation, so we reach out across all the barriers which keep us apart. We are called to embody God’s gospel purposes in all of our lives, and as we manage to actually live that way, then we live as people who honour God’s claim on our lives.
But none of us live up to our highest hopes. We are human; we all make mistakes. I can guarantee that 100% of us will screw up.
That’s where repentance comes in. And therein lies the rub.
These days, to repent means “to feel remorse, contrition, or self–reproach for what one has done or failed to do”; or again, “to feel such regret for past conduct as to change one’s mind regarding it”. In other words, to repent means to feel really really sorry for what you’ve done.
But that’s not really what repentance means. It actually has more to do with changing our hearts. We don’t focus on the past. We focus on moving into our future with a new purpose, a new vision, a new hope.
Let me tell you my favourite story about repentance.
A professor from a large American university had been invited to speak at a military base one December. Ralph was sent to the airport to meet him. They introduced themselves, and headed toward the baggage claim. All the way down the long concourse, Ralph kept disappearing: once to help an older woman whose suitcase had fallen open; once to lift two toddlers up so they could see Santa Claus; again to give directions to someone who was lost. Each time, he came back with a big smile on his face, and picked up the conversation where he had left off. The professor couldn’t figure him out.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked Ralph when he came back for the third time.
“Do what?” Ralph said.
“Where did you learn to live like that?”
“Oh,” said Ralph, “during the war, I guess.” During the drive to the base, he told the professor about his tour of duty in Viet Nam. His job was to clear mine fields, and he watched one friend after another blow up before his eyes. “I learned to live between steps,” he said. “I never knew whether the next step would be my last, so I learned how to get everything I could out of the moment between when I picked up my foot, and when I put it down again. Every step I took, it was a whole new world, and I guess I’ve just been that way ever since.”
Repentance is about seeing life made new, and learning to treasure life. It’s about understanding the fragility of life. It’s about learning to live with grace and compassion. It’s about being mindful in every moment, and living as gospel people within a deep and profound community.
To repent means to live life in a whole new way. Life is shot through with the grace and compassion of God, and repentance is God’s grace at work in our lives, turning us around, transforming our vision, and renewing our living.
I love the way former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams puts it. “Repentance happens when you suddenly see the abundance of God’s love and generosity in someone else and you come to the realization that you must change. Not only must you change, you want to. You want this in your life.”
Repentance is the joyful work of finding and wanting the fullness of God in your own life. It’s a holy dissatisfaction with the way things are, and deciding to do something about it. It’s learning to see deeply what our holy, life–giving, compassionate God wants in our lives and in our world.
Seen that way, Lent is not a bummer. Lent is a gift in which we come home to our best and truest selves.
Rev. Yme Woensdregt