From Epiphany to Lent

Today is Transfiguration Sunday.
So what?
It’s hard to know what to do with Transfiguration Sunday. It’s not as if it’s a common word in our everyday speech. What does it even mean?
The Greek root behind “transfiguration” is the word “metamorphosis”. For a moment, Jesus is changed. Here on the mountaintop, we catch a glimpse of Jesus in all his glory.
And because we are dealing with holy glory, we are dealing with mystery. God’s holiness comes crashing into a broken and hurting world.
Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain—which is a symbol of God’s presence; you’re closer to heaven at the top. At the top, Jesus changes. He shines with a light so bright they can barely stand it. Jesus is dazzling, shining with the radiance of God.
Suddenly Moses and Elijah appear, talking with Jesus. These two holy men of the Old Testament reveal that in Jesus, the Law and the Prophets have come together. Jesus inaugurates a new creation. God is doing something new.
Peter wants to hold on to the moment, to build a shrine. He wants to stay on the mountaintop, in the presence of this glory. Who can blame him?
A bright cloud envelopes the three holy men. The cloud is another symbol of God. A voice speaks, echoing the words we first heard when Jesus was baptized: “This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love. Listen to him.”
The disciples fall to the ground, scared out of their wits. But Jesus touches them, and whispers words we hear over and over again in the Bible: “Don’t be afraid.” They open their eyes and see only Jesus.
At the very end of this mysterious episode, Jesus tells them: “Don’t tell anyone about this. After the Son of Man has been raised from the dead, then you can tell everyone. Get up.” These words only deepen the mystery.
They come down from the mountain. They begin the journey which leads to Jerusalem, which leads to the cross.
I want to focus on two things.
First of all, this story is a turning point in the gospel. Just before this, Jesus has told his disciples that they must go to Jerusalem, where he will suffer and be executed. Jesus tells his disciples in every age that if we want to follow, we will have to take up our crosses and follow.
Immediately following this scene, Jesus and the disciples begin their journey to Jerusalem. Jesus’ teaching becomes more pointed and there is increasing conflict with the authorities.
So, what happens in this scene is that the story stops for a moment. Just before the conflict escalates, just before Jesus begins his journey to the cross, we catch a glimpse of God’s glory.
Transfiguration Sunday functions the same way in the Church Year. Today is a hinge between Epiphany and Lent.
Epiphany is a season to reflect together about who Jesus is. We received the wondrous gift of God’s presence at Christmas, and we spend the season of Epiphany unwrapping that gift and discovering the wonder of God’s love in it.
We were there when Jesus was baptized. We heard this same voice telling us, “This is my boy. I delight in him.” Then, week by week, we listened as Jesus taught us what it means to live as citizens of the kingdom of God. Paul taught us that if we want to see who Jesus is, we need to look to the cross. God comes to us not in our own strength, but precisely in our weakness. God comes to us in our brokenness so that we might reach out to love and heal.
This Wednesday, we will enter Lent. We will reflect together on what it means to us to be followers of this Jesus. What does it mean to be Christian? How important is it to us to be known as followers of Jesus? How do we live that out in our daily lives?
Transfiguration is the hinge between those two seasons. We end up on the mountaintop, and like Peter, we would just as soon stay there. But we can’t.
Jesus leads us off the mountain into our neighbourhoods. He leads us into a broken world, because that’s where so many of our sisters and brothers live. We find our ministry at the bottom of the mountain, in the cities, in the valleys, in our neighbourhoods. We go down the mountain to work in partnership with God for the healing of the world.
And that’s where our transfiguration happens. God’s glory shines in us as we work with those who are broken. God’s radiance shines through us as we reach out in love and compassion. God’s hope blazes through us as our lives reflect the love of God in everything we do.
On Transfiguration Sunday, we move from Epiphany to Lent. We journey from learning who Christ is to reflecting on who we are as followers of Jesus.
That’s one thing.
The other thing I want to reflect on is a thought I gleaned from Alfred North Whitehead, who remarked that the aim of the universe, the aim of God, is to produce beauty.
For me, that’s an awe–inspiring thought. God’s purpose is to produce beauty.
For Whitehead, beauty is not just a nice feeling or a pretty landscape. Beauty is a deeply religious emotion that issues in ethical action. Beauty moves us to do the work of healing and compassion and grace and hope.
To be moral, therefore, is to produce beauty, is to make the world more beautiful.
Let me give you an example. Last night, I volunteered with the Coldest Night of the Year walk, raising funds for the Homeless Coalition. I was a the Hot Shots Café … not in the café, understand, but outside it, guiding people in or on to the next leg of the walk. It was cold, and the wind was bitter. About an hour in, I started to grumble to myself. What are you doing here? Why are you standing out in the cold like this? Why don’t you go home and get warm?
Then a little girl came around the corner. She saw me, and ran to me, calling my name—“Yyyyyyymmmeeeeeee.” She wrapped her hands around my legs and looked up at me, grinning from ear to ear, and said, “Isn’t this funnnnnnnnnn?”
Something shifted in me. Beauty was created in me. I was doing something valuable, something worthwhile, something critically important for our city. In that moment, in that little girl, I saw God, and God created something beautiful in me. The gospel came alive.
I think that’s what Whitehead is talking about. At the heart of this transfiguration story, for just a brief shining moment, we catch a glimpse of beauty. For a heartbeat, we lose ourselves in a moment of ecstasy. Our eyes are opened, and we see deep into the beautiful heart of creation as God intends it to be.
It seems as if our lives are often too busy for beauty. Some have suggested that we have lost our capacity for wonder. We are oblivious to wonder and beauty as we try to satisfy our hunger to consume. We lose ourselves in tweeting, and we miss the wonder of life as it passes by us. We don’t have time to marvel at a baby’s birth, a child’s laugh, photos of new planets, a whale breeching, a bird in flight. We use life instead of marveling at it. We use the earth as if it exists for our benefit alone; and Pope Francis reminds us that we have ended up making the earth a garbage dump.
One preacher tells a story about his oldest son. “My seven–year–old is a science guy. My wife and I, not so much. One day my wife and our two sons were fishing in a little pond. The sun was setting and the western sky was full of colors; red, purple, orange. Our four–year–old asked, ‘What makes the sky so pretty?’ Mom answered something about God creating natural beauty for our enjoyment and to remind us of the presence of the holy in the world around us. The seven–year–old says, ‘Well, Mom, actually it’s just the sun reflecting off dust particles and moisture in the atmosphere.’
There’s nothing wrong with being a science guy. But have we lost our capacity to wonder? Celtic Christians talk about “thin places” where God is juuusssttt there … we can almost reach out and touch. Have we lost any sense of that place, that moment, where heaven and earth almost meet?
Alfred North Whitehead affirms that God’s purposes move towards producing beauty. In transfiguration, heaven and earth come together. God’s grandeur shines. We move into Lent with this moment of wonder, this moment of beauty to sustain us.
The English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says, “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
So are we. We are charged with the grandeur of God. God’s beauty moves in us, and through us, and we are transfigured with grace and compassion as we move into Lent.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
February 26, 2017
Last Sunday after Epiphany (Sunday of the Transfiguration)
Matthew 17: 1–9
2 Peter 1: 16–21
Exodus 24: 12–18

To Be Church

It’s tough to be the church these days. Financially, most churches are living on the edge. Attendance is shrinking, and those that do show up mostly have either gray hair … or no hair.
And what happens is that people start to worry—Will my church still be here in 10 years? How long have we got until we close the doors? What can we do to turn it around? How can we attract new people? How can we attract younger people? What do we have to do to start growing?
As a result, churches try all kinds of gimmicks. Let’s get a worship band. Let’s make our worship services more attractive, more glitzy, more entertaining. Let’s make people feel good in worship. Our preaching should help people improve their lives. Skip the negative, and accentuate the positive. Let’s develop lots of programs and groups so that there will be something for everyone in our church. Let’s put in a coffee bar.
One of my favourite cartoons is “Doonesbury”. In one cartoon, Mike, the central character, is looking for a church. He interviews a pastor, “How did you get your church started?” The pastor says, “I took a survey in the community; they all wanted aerobics, so we started an aerobics class. Then they wanted basket weaving, so we started basket weaving. Then they wanted jogging, and we started jogging. And the next thing we knew, we had a church. It’s getting so big now that we have a whole denomination.” In the last frame, Mike, who knows nothing about the Gospel, scratches his head and said, “So that’s how religion is spread.”
It should come as no surprise by now that Paul disagrees with this.
Throughout his ministry, Paul was criticized by his opponents. Some said he was too easy on the Gentiles; they should become Jews before they could become followers of Jesus. Others said that he was a lousy speaker. Others said that he had no sense of presence, nothing that would attract people to the gospel.
Paul insists again and again that the only foundation for anything in the church is Jesus Christ. He says he was a skilled master builder, a wise builder who built on the only foundation that is possible for the church. “No one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.”
Now there’s nothing wrong with programs. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to appeal to different kinds of people. If it all points to Jesus Christ, then it’s a good thing. But if we do it just so we can grow, then we have a problem.
The church is being built by God for one purpose, and one purpose only—to point to Jesus in all that we do. To live with the grace and compassion of Jesus. To reach out in love to heal a broken and hurting world. That’s what it means to be church.
We are followers of Jesus Christ. As disciples, we are called to shine with the love of God in everything we do.
That’s partly what our Vision Statement captures when we say that “Christ Church … follows Jesus compassionately and faithfully.”
Here we are, like the church in Corinth. Let me use some of Paul’s language. Not many of us are wise. Not many of us are powerful. Not many of us are noble. But God chose us. God chose what is foolish … God chose what is weak … God chose us—retirees and widows and students and workers—to live as people who have experienced God’s love and who want above all else to share that love with the world. God chose us to share God’s love with our families, our neighbours, our co–workers, our friends.
God chose us …
As we live out the ministry God has given to us, I believe we are living out that difficult saying of Jesus at the end of our gospel reading this morning: “be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”
We read that and think, “We’re not perfect! How can we be perfect?” But the Greek word telos (τέλος) doesn’t mean moral perfection. It means to live out the purpose for which God created us. It means to be what God created us to be.
For example, to use Thomas Merton’s wonderful lines, “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God intends it to be, it is obeying God.”
Or again, the telos of an arrow is to hit the target. The telos of a car is to get me safely from here to there.
Jesus’ words, then, are not a ridiculous command we could never achieve. Instead, they are God’s promise to us. You can be the person God created you to be, just as God is the One whom God is supposed to be. Or even better, since it is plural, you can be the community God created you to be, just as God is the One whom God is supposed to be.
Paul and Jesus urge the church in Corinth—and the church in Cranbrook—to be the church God created us to be. God uses us to tell the world about the incredible love of God. God invites us to work in partnership with God for the healing of creation. God invites us to work with Jesus to help create a different kind of world —
• a world where we refuse to build walls;
• a world where violence doesn’t always kindle more violence and hate doesn’t always kindle more hate;
• a world where we live in the light to chase the darkness away;
• a world where we love our enemies;
• a world where we embrace the outcast and welcome the stranger;
• a world where we stand up to leaders who appeal to the lowest in us and in which we show the potential when we become the people God has created us to be.
God has chosen us to be the church. We are built on the foundation of Jesus.
Now we can be about our job—which is to live like we really believe Jesus is actually bringing in God’s kingdom. Now we can be about our job—to live like we really believe God has chosen us to practice living in this kind of world.
Jesus calls us to be more than we ever thought we could be. This is who we are: God’s chosen and beloved people. This is our work: to live in the world as people who belong to God.
Our Vision Statement captures that, I think: “Christ Church Anglican, a progressive, inclusive and vibrant community, follows Jesus compassionately and faithfully. All are welcome!”
Now all we have to do is practice living it out day by day. Now all we have to do is practice our telos as God practices telos.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
February 19, 2017
7th Sunday after Epiphany (Proper 7)
1 Corinthians 3: 10–11, 16–23
Matthew 5: 38–48

The Good Life

Judith Viorst is an American writer and journalist. In her book How Did I Get to be Forty and Other Atrocities, she writes the following poem:
I’ve finished six pillows in Needlepoint,
And I’m reading Jane Austen and Kant,
And I’m up to the pork with black beans in Advanced Chinese Cooking.
I don’t have to struggle to find myself
For I already know what I want.
I want to be healthy and wise and extremely good–looking.

I’m learning new glazes in Pottery Class,
And I’m playing new chords in Guitar,
And in Yoga I’m starting to master the lotus position.
I don’t have to ponder priorities
For I already know what they are:
To be good–looking, healthy and wise.
And adored in addition.

I’m improving my serve with a tennis pro,
And I’m practicing verb forms in Greek,
And in Primal Scream Therapy all my frustrations are vented.
I don’t have to ask what I’m searching for
Since I already know that I seek
To be good–looking, healthy, and wise.
And adored.
And contented.

I’ve bloomed in Organic Gardening.
And in Dance I have tightened my thighs,
And in Consciousness Raising there’s no one around
who can top me.
And I’m working all day and I’m working all night
To be good–looking, healthy, and wise.
And adored.
And contented.
And brave.
And well–read.
And a marvelous hostess,
And bilingual,
Athletic,
Artistic…
Won’t someone please stop me?

It’s funny stuff. But there’s a hint of truth behind the laughter. We are all looking for “the good life”.
When I was on vacation this summer, I saw a day spa in Osoyoos called “The Good Life”. A sign in the window told us that “the good life is a manicure, a pedicure, gel nails, teeth whitening, and waxing services.”
Really?
Our society says that the good life is about Achievement, Appearance and Affluence—make lots of money, get lots of toys, and look good doing it … and don’t forget to get your five minutes of fame.
So what constitutes the good life for you?
It’s an important question. It’s worth thinking about.
And it’s not a once–for–all kind of exercise. We keep working at figuring it out for ourselves, because the answer changes with the changing seasons of our lives.
I answered that question much differently in my 20’s than I do now. Back then, the good life was about making a difference in the world. It was about showing people my stuff, and growing in my career, and becoming someone important in the church and in the world.
Today, there’s still some of the stuff left in my life. But … these days it’s more about making a difference in people’s lives and seeking to live as faithfully and honestly as I can. The good life has to do with being grateful for what I’ve been given, and being grateful for opportunities to serve. I have time to be alone so I can reflect and I have time to be with people I love. I try to manage my desires. I seek to live with compassion and hope.
It’s important to say that I’m on a journey. I haven’t reached my destination. I often make mistakes … you know me well enough to know how often I screw up. But it’s important to me to know that this is what I strive to do. This is who I strive to be. It’s important to have some sense of where God is leading me.
What constitutes the good life for you?
Paul writes to this little church in Corinth that he taught them about the fullness of life they can know in God through Christ; but they have exchanged the good life for their own petty bickering. They were breaking apart into groups and claiming to follow certain spiritual gurus. They were grabbing for what made them feel good or what made them look important, and ignoring the health of the community they were trying to build.
Paul is completely frustrated by their unspiritual way of living, and he calls them back to the cross of Christ. He tells them they are only “infants in Christ”, spiritual babies; they need to grow up. Stop fighting with each other. Stop being such babies, and grow up in the gospel.
When we lose sight of the cross, we lose sight of the gospel.
Contemporary spiritual writer Thomas Moore sees the same thing happening in our society. He writes that “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)
This is the wisdom of the cross which Paul has been talking about the last couple of weeks. The wisdom of the cross is completely counter–cultural. It goes against everything we learn in our society.
Our world teaches us to look like we’ve got it all together. Put on a good front. Focus on what you can achieve. Be positive. Delight in your successes, and sweep your failures under the rug. Get what you can while you can.
But the gospel tells us something different—that we discern God at work in our brokenness, in our weakness, in our foolishness. The good life which we seek finds its centre in service to God and service to the world which God loves with an undying passion.
In our reading from Deuteronomy today, Moses reminds the people of Israel — and us — that we have a choice to make. The way of life and the way of death are set before us.
The way of life is to follow God, and to live by God’s gospel purposes.
The way of death is to do our own thing and take care of ourselves first.
Which will you choose?
Moses implores us, “Choose life. Choose life so that you may live truly and deeply and abundantly. Choose life so that your heart may be filled with the exuberance of God’s love. Choose life so that you may discern the presence of God in all you do. Choose life, so that the wisdom of the cross is made plain in all that you do. Choose life, so that God’s life may blossom in you and the world may be healed.”
At one level, it is a choice put before us.
At another level, we can imagine that this choice is God’s gift to us. God implores us to lift up our empty hands and receive the gift. As we receive God’s gift, we discover that we become who we truly are, our deepest and best selves. As we receive God’s gift of the good life, we will live joyfully, deeply, and abundantly. We will discover again the depth of God’s exuberant love for us.
We are “in Christ” says Paul. We live in a new reality which is being created by God. The cross of Christ is the moment when God’s ultimate victory was assured. Even though the crucifixion seemed to be the world at its darkest moment, it was in truth the moment when the world turned the corner from darkness to light.
So, when we choose life, when we choose what is truly the good life, we are in fact simply opening our empty hands and our empty hearts and our empty souls to be filled with the wondrous gift of God’s great love for us and for all the world.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
1 Corinthians 3: 1–9
Deuteronomy 30: 15–20
Matthew 5: 21–37
6th Sunday after Epiphany
​Proper 6

Our Weakness, God’s Strength

Last week, we thought together about the theology of the cross. For Paul, the cross captures everything we need to know about who Jesus is, and how God works in the world.
In 1972, Henri Nouwen tapped into this theology of the cross when he wrote a book entitled “The Wounded Healer”, which has become a spiritual classic.
Nouwen suggests that our ministry begins as we identify those places in our lives where we are broken. We acknowledge our brokenness and then we open ourselves to other people who have the same wounds, who share the same fears, who live with the same hurts and anxieties. We identify the suffering in our hearts, and know that we are not alone. This is what it means to be human—we are broken, and as we open ourselves up to one another, we receive God’s healing love together. We become, in other words, wounded healers.
That has become painfully clear to me this week as we mourn the dreadful shooting at the mosque in Quebec. We are broken together. We will heal together.
One thing that struck me in the midst of all this is the incredible grace of the members of the mosque who were interviewed. There was no sense of revenge, no sense of striking back. There was profound sadness, to be sure; but there was an incredible openness as they reached out, so that in our common pain we might begin to discern a new way forward, marked by healing and compassion.
Here we see what Paul calls the theology of the cross.
God heals through our brokenness. God strengthens us in our weakness. God’s wisdom becomes more clear as we dare, foolishly, to trust this God.
It is such a different way of living, such a different way of being. Our natural impulse is to make ourselves appear great. We put on a wonderful front that everything is just hunky dory. Even when our lives are in a turmoil, we smile and nod as if everything were ok. We focus on what we achieve; we delight in our successes; we hunger for affluence; we make sure everything appears to be just fine, thank you very much.
This is the world we live in. Our culture is marked by this kind of positive thinking. We ignore the bad. We keep negative stuff far away from us. We try to make ourselves as secure as we can so that we don’t have to deal with difficulties. We try to insulate ourselves against sadness or brokenness. We don’t talk about our pain.
We like stories about people who go from rags to riches, people who conquer the sadness and brokenness in their lives. We like stories that end in triumph … like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart, or almost any movie you can name.
But that’s not the way of the gospel. The gospel begins with crucifixion. The gospel laments. The gospel confronts the reality of evil and calls it to account. The gospel knows that we are broken, and that God comes to us in our brokenness to heal the world.
Jesus and the prophets tell us again and again that God’s ways are not our ways. God comes into the world and throws all our expectations into disarray.
We build walls. God tears them down.
We stock our cupboards with food. God flings the doors of our cupboards and homes wide open so that we share our bread with the hungry and we bring the homeless into our homes.
We tend to put people in boxes and hang out with those who are like us. God is radically inclusive and welcomes absolutely everyone. In fact, Jesus was accused of hanging out with the wrong kind of people, of eating and drinking with sinners.
The gospel points to the beginning of God’s new creation. In God’s new creation, all of our old ways count for nothing. It no longer matters whether we are male or female, strong or weak, wise or foolish, long–time resident or recent immigrant, gay or straight or queer. None of the old distinctions have any force in God’s new creation. It has all passed away.
So let me ask you.
Where in your brokenness has God been present to heal others?
One of the times it happened for me was 16 years ago in my depression. Before I was diagnosed, I thought that it was all up to me. I had to do it, I had to do it all, and I had to do it perfectly. But my depression taught me that I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.
And I learned that in my brokenness, in my weakness, in my foolishness, God is somehow present.
It was a tough lesson to learn. And I haven’t learned it all yet. I have to learn it over and over again.
I am a broken human being. I am wounded. Yet through my brokenness, God works for the healing of the world. Through my weakness, the strength of God’s love shines brightly. Through my foolishness, the wisdom of God’s way comes to life.
In the same way, Christ Church is a small vessel. Yet through the ministry God has given us, people are finding life. In the joy of our gathering, people are being renewed. Through our faltering prayers, people are being touched with grace and compassion and healing.
Paul tells the people in Corinth that he didn’t come with fancy words, or with slick, high–tech gimmicks and glossy images. He told them only about Jesus. He simply talked about the scandal of Christ crucified. He simply invited people to let God work through them, to be aware that God’s light shines in us, that God’s wisdom speaks through us, that God’s healing flows through us into the world.
The same thing is true for us. We hold our empty hands up to receive God’s goodness. We expose our broken lives so that God’s healing love may surround us. We hold up our hurts so that the light of God’s grace may ease our pain. We lift our broken hearts so that God’s loving power may mend us.
And then we go out into our community, our neighbourhoods, to reach out with love and grace.
God invites us to include those whom the world overlooks.
God whispers to our souls so that we pray for our friends and family and neighbours, for those whom we don’t know and even for those whom we don’t like.
God calls us to shine in our neighbourhoods and groups and clubs with the light of Christ.
God wraps us within the embrace of grace, and whispers, “Now, you go out and wrap others within that same embrace.”
And we do. We go out in the confidence that God is at work within us and through us.
Jesus tells us “you are salt; you are light”. There’s nothing spectacular in this. You just need a pinch of salt, a tiny bit, to flavor the world. You only need a flickering flame to chase the darkness away.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t say to us, “You should be salt; you should be light.” No. Jesus says, “This is who you are. You are salt. You are light.”
Nothing spectacular … but when we live with the sure sense of God’s love flowing through us, then nothing can stop that love from shining brightly in the world.
In our brokenness, God heals. In our weakness, the strength of God’s love embraces all. In our foolishness, the wisdom of God’s spirit binds us into the beloved community.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt​
1 Corinthians 2: 1–12
Matthew 5: 13–20
Isaiah 58: 1–9a
5th Sunday after Epiphany
​Proper 5

The Upside Down Gospel

Today is one of those days when all the readings coalesce around a single message. And it fits right in with Paul says to this divided little church in Corinth.
The single message from these readings can be simply stated this way:
• the stuff we believe seems like nonsense;
• the stuff that we trust to give us life in all its abundance seems like absolute folly.
Let’s listen to each of these three in turn.
Micah presents God and Israel locked in a court case. In this part of the book, God stands in the dock and asks, “What have I done to you that you should ignore me? How have I offended you that you should turn away from me. Why do you think I need your offerings?”
Then Micah preaches that God requires only this: do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with God.
The trouble with living like that is that it gets in our way. That’s no way to get rich, or to be popular, or to be successful. That’s not how to build up your retirement portfolio.
Do justice. The kind of justice which eliminates the increasing gap between rich and poor so that everyone shares equally in the wealth of the universe. The kind of justice where everyone has access to quality education, affordable housing, good childcare. The kind of justice where some of us must cap our income and our leisure and our self–indulgence so that every single person may live well.
Love kindness, be steadfastly loving. The kind of love in which we stick with each other, where there are no more haves and have–nots because we are bound to each other as people of God.
Walk humbly with God. The kind of humility in which we work together diligently and faithfully with God for the healing of our divisions in the world, for the healing of our creation which is dying because of pollution, for the healing of our relationship with our aboriginal brothers and sisters.
Justice. Kindness or steadfast love. Humility. If we live God’s way, it will lead us to serve. It leads to loving others first. It leads to reaching out with compassion and hope and joy so that all people are included. All of it for the healing of creation.
Then along comes Jesus with his crazy talk: blessed are the poor; blessed are the meek; blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the peacemakers.
Say what? Poor people in our world aren’t blessed; the rich are the ones who think they’ve been blessed. And the meek—well they tend to get knocked to the ground so that everyone can walk all over them. The merciful just get taken advantage of. And the pure in heart? Come on, you’ve got to get a little dirty so that you can make it in this world.
But Jesus tells us it ain’t so. God’s kingdom is a reversal of the way things work here in our world. God blesses those who above all else seek God—for they will be filled, they will see God, they will be called children of God, and to them God gives the kingdom of heaven.
It sounds nuts, doesn’t it? Who wants that kind of life of service? Who wants to always be giving ourselves away?
Yet above all else, this is what we are called to do. This is who we are called to be. God calls us to live faithfully, to reach out to the world with the good news that God’s power is shown in love; with the good news of God’s compassion, not God’s judgment; with the good news of God’s grace, not God’s might.
Paul tells the people in Corinth that this is how God works in the world—so stop thinking you do this on your own. It’s not about you. It’s about God’s grace being made real in the world. It’s about what God is doing through you. God chooses the foolish, not the wise—that’s why we have been chosen. God chooses the weak, not the strong. God chooses the lowly and the despised in the world so that the whole world may know once again that God’s love envelops us all.
This is how God works. And yeah, it sounds absolutely nuts to us. Paul agrees: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
That’s what the cross is all about. These days, we have lost any sense of what crucifixion meant in the Roman world. We wear crosses these days as jewelry. We display crosses proudly in our churches. We make the sign of the cross with great ease.
Back then, the cross was offensive; it was simply not mentioned in polite society. It was brutal, disgusting, abhorrent. The cross was a tool to punish the very worst of criminals. To worship a crucified Christ—it just didn’t make any sense at all.
This is the one thing that makes Christianity different from any other religion. Other religions have gods who were raised from death; other religions have founders who taught and healed people; other religions have gods who promise blessings.
Christianity is the only faith that has a crucified God at the centre of it all—and as Paul reminds us, it just sounds crazy. What kind of religion is this?
It is folly. It is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to us, who trust God, it is the power of God.
At the heart of what we trust is that God reaches out to and works with the weak, the little ones, the ones easily overlooked. The thing is that those who think they are great also think they don’t need God. They can do it all on their own.
Our faith asserts again and again that God always comes where we least expect God to show up. God comes in our brokenness to make the world whole. God comes in our weakness to bless what the world refuses to bless. God comes in our struggles to love what the world calls unlovable. God comes into the dirt of human existence to redeem what the world doesn’t think is worth saving.
This is the theology of the cross. It starts with our brokenness and our weakness and trusts deeply that God reverses all our natural human values. What the world counts as folly is in fact God’s power at work. Mary sings the same thing in the Magnificat: God raises up the lowly from the dust and reduces the powerful to nothing.
That’s tough. It seems nuts at times. It’s upside–down thinking.
If you’re like me, we’d rather boast in our home, our children, our achievements, our prosperity, our wisdom, our success.
The cross calls us to boast in this crazy God who overturns everything we think is right. We boast in this crazy God who fills our paltry vision of life with the reality of a life lived in service which becomes a life of abundance and grace and hope and joy.
And this—this is what Jesus calls blessed. We live in the shadow of the cross and we come closer to God.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt​
1 Corinthians 1: 18–31
Matthew 5: 1–12
Micah 6: 1–8
4th Sunday after Epiphany
​Proper 4​

Singing the Unity of the Gospel

Last week, we began a journey with the ancient church in Corinth for a few weeks. As I mentioned, Corinth was a commercial hub—a prosperous, thriving, bustling manufacturing and trade centre between east and west. The church reflected the culture of the city.
Paul had established a church, and then left for another city to do the same. A couple of years later, Paul heard some disturbing reports, and wrote them a letter. The church was being torn apart by divisions. It was contaminated by pride and self–interest. Different groups were busy promoting their own agenda with no regard for the church as a whole. Some people were also engaging in some questionable moral practices.
Paul is quite angry with these folks. “You’ve turned your back on the gospel,” he says. “Come back and lead lives worthy of the gospel I taught you while I was with you.”
Paul begins his letter with a brief thanksgiving to God for giving these people everything they need to live faithfully. Then comes his first complaint (from The Message):
“I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another and to cultivate a life in common.
“I bring this up because some people from Chloe’s family brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves! I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, ‘I’m on Paul’s side,’ or ‘I’m for Apollos,’ or ‘Peter is my man,’ or ‘I’m in the Messiah group.’
“I ask you, ‘Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul’s name?’ I was not involved with any of your baptisms, and on getting this report, I’m sure glad I wasn’t …
“God didn’t send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn’t send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.”
This very small church—maybe a couple dozen—are fighting with each other. For Paul, this is at the heart of what’s wrong. So Paul calls them to unity.
Now anyone who has spent any time at all in churchland knows that there are always going to be people in any church who get on your nerves. That’s just a part of living with other people. You’re not going to like everyone. It’s just not possible. And even those people you like sometimes get on your nerves. Sometimes even the priest gets on people’s nerves. Imagine that!
But that’s not what Paul is talking about. The people in Corinth have forgotten that in Christ, we have more in common with one another than there are things that divide us. We—all of us—belong to God. Even if we don’t like one another, the gospel calls us to work together for the healing of creation. The gospel calls us to unity.
Now I need you to know that Christ Church is the healthiest church I’ve ever had the joy of serving. There are very few conflicts here, and I can’t begin to tell you how glad that makes my heart.
But that wasn’t the case in Corinth. Paul tells them to shape up. Stop picking sides. Some of them were saying “I’m on the priest’s side”; or “I’m on the secretary’s side”; or “I’m with the musician.” And some of them thought they were super spiritual—“I’m on Jesus’s side.”
Stop it! You act as if Jesus has been split up, as if the Messiah has been apportioned to different people.
Stop it! Work together. We were all baptized into Christ, and baptism changes everything. You don’t belong to yourselves any longer. You all belong to God. So start living like that.
Baptism changes everything. It changes the way we define ourselves. When we are baptized, Paul says, we move from the old way to the new way, to God’s way of doing things. In Galatians 3, Paul reminds us that “in Christ, we are no longer divided into Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. In Christ we are all one, we are all equal.”
Since we have been baptized, we share a connection with the one who was crucified. We are baptized into the cross of Christ, and if you are fighting with each other, you deny the power of the cross. You are denying your own baptism.
We are in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity right now. Paul’s word to the Corinthians speaks to us today. We all have been baptized into Christ—Christ Church, First Baptist, Cranbrook United, Christ the Servant, St Mary’s, Cranbrook Alliance Church, Foursquare Gospel Church—we all have been baptized into Christ. Whatever our disagreements may be—and they are many—we are nevertheless called to work together so that God’s gospel purposes may be known in the world.
I’ve worked hard with the Ministerial the whole time I’ve been here. I’ve said over and over again that despite all our disagreements, we can still work together. Many pastors disagreed with me. But the thing is that the ones most opposed to me have moved; things have begun to change in the last couple of years. We are actually starting to do some things together. I didn’t think I’d ever see the day, but my heart is glad.
In the world, we identify ourselves according to the tribe we belong to. We identify our race, our economic circumstances, our education, our social status, our age and those kinds of things.
When we are in Christ, Paul says, none of those things count. We are one. We are equal. We are God’s people, called to serve the world.
Later in his letter, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they are the body of Christ. A body has to work together. You can no more separate yourselves from each other than the eye can tell the kidney to take a hike. Everyone is a valuable and necessary member of the body.
Then Paul writes his magnificent hymn to love. Most often these days, we read it as if it were a nice, sentimental reading for weddings. But that’s not Paul’s intention.
The hymn to love tells us that whatever we do must be done with love. If we don’t do it with love, it is worthless. We can sing the most beautiful solo, but if we don’t sing with love, it’s just noise. We can preach the best sermon, but if there isn’t any love, it’s just a waste of time. We can give the most money, but if we don’t give with love, who cares? No matter what we do, it must be done with love, always working to strengthen the body of which we are a part.
To use a musical metaphor, a very early church father named Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “In your concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung.”
We sing together in the glorious choir which God puts together in creation. Sometimes the harmony is complex. Sometimes there is dissonance, but we always return home to concord. Sometimes we lose the line of the music, but it always winds its way back home.
More to the point, to sing together in this way requires practice and discipline. A choir prepares to sing. It warms up. When it sings with an orchestra, the orchestra tunes up so they’re all in the same key. We interpret the notes on the page written by the composer … and it only becomes music as we join the creative process. We watch the conductor, follow the time she beats.
And in all of this, we learn perfect freedom as we work and sing and make music together. If everyone does their own thing, it is a cacophony. It’s only as we do our part in the script that the music becomes glorious and beautiful.
That’s how it is to be for us. We sing the unity of the gospel. We work hard at it, and in our singing God’s healing love is made known in the world. We hear Jesus call us, “Come, follow me,” and as we do so, we discover that God has given us everything we need to sing beautifully, so that we live out God’s gospel purposes.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt​
1 Corinthians 1: 10–18
Matthew 4: 12–23
Isaiah 9: 1–4
3rd Sunday after Epiphany
​Proper 3

Called to be God’s

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be reading snippets from 1 Corinthians. I decided that we could spend some time with that ancient church until Lent.
We are reading a letter from Paul to the church in Corinth. A few years ago, Paul visited Corinth. He began telling the story of Jesus to anyone who would listen. A few folks were intrigued as they listened to Paul teach the gospel. They started meeting together with Paul. They began to form a church, a small community as they learned the heart of the gospel from him.
They would meet in the home of the one of the wealthier members of the group. It started very small; as the young Christians began to tell their friends about the story of Jesus, the group would grow.
Once Paul was satisfied that he had made a good beginning, he left and moved on to another city, where he began the process all over again.
Corinth was a port city. It was a prosperous, bustling manufacturing and trade centre between east and west. It thrived on competitiveness, self–achievement and self–promotion.
It should come as no surprise that the small church in Corinth had the same characteristics. The people in the church reflected their culture, in the same kind of way as we reflect our culture.
As we read Paul’s letter to this church, we will discover a church with all kinds of divisions, a self–indulgent church with different groups promoting their own agenda, a church contaminated by pride and self–interest, a church where there is a moral laxity.
Paul heard about it, and wrote them this letter, which has quite an angry tone. He writes to correct some of their abuses, and accuses them of turning their backs on the gospel. He urges them to lead lives worthy of the gospel.
So it comes as a bit of a surprise that Paul begins his letter giving thanks to God for this church. He calls the people “saints”.
Paul’s strategy is to remind the people of where their strength really comes from. While many of the folks in this small church thought that their spiritual strength came from their own efforts and abilities, Paul reminds them at the very beginning that everything they have comes as a gift from God.
“I give thanks to God because of the grace God has given you in Christ.” It is not a thanksgiving for what this church is up to. Paul gives thanks that God has given them everything they need to live faithfully.
It’s what I said last week. God gives us all that we need to live as God’s holy and beloved people. God strengthens us with holy Spirit. God gives us a community to support and encourage us, to hold us up in prayer and love. God fills us with grace so that we might reach out in grace to love and heal the world.
That’s what Paul tells the church in Corinth. It doesn’t come from you. It comes from God, who has given you everything you need. Therefore, live out your calling to be saints in the world. You have been set apart by God to live out God’s purposes in the world.
It is your calling. It is our calling.
That’s an important word for us. Too often, we think that only priests and ministers are called. But that’s not so. We all have a vocation.
Martin Luther spoke often about the vocation of the Christian. “The Christian shoemaker,” he said, “does his or her duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
Or again, “God’s people please God even in the least and most trifling matters. For God will be working all things through you; God will milk the cow through you and perform the most servile duties through you, and all the greatest and least duties alike will be pleasing to God.”
We are called to live as God’s people in the world. Some of us are called to be priests. Others are called to be nurses or plumbers or store clerks or teachers or auto mechanics. Some of us live out a new calling as we retire, or move into a different phase of life.
In all of our lives, no matter what we do, we are called to live as God’s people. We honour God with the work we do, and how we do that work. We honour God as we reach out with grace and in love to our neighbor in our work and in our daily lives. That is our vocation.
That’s what it means to be saints, to be holy—we are set apart to serve God by serving the creation around us. In Greek, those two words—“saint” and “holy”— are related. We are saints. We are God’s holy people.
As I’ve said many times before, you can call me St. Yme. And I will call you saints—not because we are especially virtuous, but because we are God’s people. We are called to live lives which honour God. We are called to live lives which show the world and all its people the depth of God’s love for creation and all its creatures.
A final thing to mention from this opening to Paul’s letter. We do all of this in community.
It’s hard to see in our English translation, but all the verbs and pronouns in this passage in the Greek are plural. Y’all are given God’s grace. Y’all are strengthened to be saints. Y’all are called to live out your sainthood in the world. Y’all are holy people.
Christian faith is not individualistic. It is profoundly communal. We are bound together with Christ; we are bound together with one another. We live out our vocation together. We live out our calling together, each one of us contributing the gifts God has given us so that the body of the church is strong and faithful.
Like Paul, I give thanks for the gifts which God has given to y’all. I give thanks for the life which God has given to Christ Church, and for the way we live out our calling in Cranbrook. I give thanks that God has enriched us in every way as we seek to honour God in our common life in this place and this time.
God has given us grace to live out God’s gospel purposes in every moment of our lives.
We are saints.
We are set apart.
We are grace–filled.
We are chosen and beloved.
God says to us, “You are mine. I will never let you go.”
Therefore, we can go out into our daily lives and invite others into this kind of life–giving relationship with God. We live out God’s mission in the world, which leads to life in all its abundance, which leads to healing, which leads to lives of grace and compassion.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt​
1 Corinthians 1: 1–9
John 1: 29–42
Isaiah 49: 1–7
2nd Sunday after Epiphany
​Proper 2

That Boy’s Gonna Need Some Help

Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus. In a moment, we’ll also renew our own baptismal vows. Jesus comes down to the Jordan river along with everyone else to be baptized by John.
John’s a wild man. He lives out in the wilderness, preaching God’s wrath. The people need to repent. They need to change their lives. Get in line with God … or else! Confess your sins and be baptized.
And Jesus steps into the muddy waters of the Jordan river to be baptized by John.
Which raises an interesting question. Why did Jesus need to be baptized? John is confused. He objects to baptizing Jesus. “I’m the one who needs to be baptized,” he says, “not you!”
But Jesus insists. “It is proper for us to do this. This is how we fulfill all righteousness.” Matthew is the only gospel who relates this vignette. “Righteousness” is an important word for Matthew. God’s righteousness reveals itself in a promise to love and hold us close.
John thinks of baptism as a remedy for sin. We wash the dirt off our souls. We get clean. We get right with God. Many people today think the same way about baptism.
But for Jesus, this is something else. For Jesus, this is not about his own righteousness. By being baptized, Jesus fulfills God’s righteousness. By being baptized, Jesus aligns himself with God’s purposes in the world.
Jesus’ whole life and ministry is about showing God’s faithful love in the world. By being baptized, Jesus fulfills God’s intention to heal and restore the world and all its creatures. By being baptized, Jesus engages in his ministry of living out God’s love in everything he says and does.
By being baptized, Jesus fulfills God’s work of putting things right in the world. By being baptized, Jesus stands in solidarity with all who struggle to experience God in their lives. By being baptized, Jesus is one with us as we seek to be transformed by God’s love.
And John baptizes Jesus.
And Jesus sees God’s Spirit, which looks like a dove, descending and landing on him. The voice of God speaks, “Oh, you’re my boy. You are the delight of my life. You are chosen and marked by my love now and forever.”
Let me suggest that John the Baptist was wrong. Baptism is not so much a remedy for sin. Baptism has a little to do with washing and being cleansed, but it is so much more than that.
Matthew helps us see that baptism marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. God embraces Jesus—and us—in love, transforms us and strengthens us to live out our ministry in the world.
Fred Craddock, one of the pre–eminent preachers of the past generation, tells about a time he was invited to preach at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. used to preach. He says,
“It came time for me to preach, so I got up and Joe Roberts, the pastor, sat down on the stage behind me. Just as I began to speak, he started singing. “Glory hallelujah, I feel so much better since I laid my burden down.” Then the associates started singing, and the musicians went to their instruments, the piano and the organ and the drums and the electric guitar, and the people started singing.
“And I’m standing up there with my Bible open, waiting.
“Then I suddenly realized, I’m the one up front, I’m the leader of this, so I started clapping my hands and singing. Everybody stood up and started clapping their hands and swinging and singing, and it was just marvelous. At a certain point, Joe put his hand out, it got quiet, they sat down and I started preaching. I could’ve preached all day.
“Afterwards I said to Joe, “Well, that kind of shocked me a little bit. You didn’t tell me you were going to do that.” He said, “Well, I didn’t plan it.” “Then why did you do it?” And he said, “Well, when you stood up there, one of my associates leaned over to me and said, ‘That boy’s gonna need some help.’”
“That boy’s gonna need some help.”
Let’s use our imaginations here a little bit. I can imagine God and the Spirit looking down from heaven, watching John the Baptist do his revival thing down by the Jordan. And here comes Jesus, determined to get started on his mission, full of vim, vigour and bright ideas. And the Spirit turns to God and says, “That boy’s gonna need some help.”
And God thinks about it a few minutes. God looks out over the horizon and into the future and sees the trials and tribulations, the sadness and sorrow, the great adulation mixed with frequent rejection and failure. And God nods sadly and says to the Spirit, “I believe you’re right. That boy is going to need some help.” And then a slow smile spread across God’s face. “Guess what, Spirit. You’re it!”
And what happened was that just as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens split open and God’s holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove and alit on Jesus’ shoulder. A mighty voice boomed, “There’s my boy. I delight in him. I’ll give him all the help he’s gonna need.”
And then the heavens closed and the bird flew off and only a few heard a faint voice whisper, “There; that oughta do it.”
“That boy’s gonna need some help.” Jesus needed all the help he could get to do what he was about to start.
He needed the help of his parents. Mary had to be willing to say “Yes” to God; Joseph had to be willing to raise him as his own child. He needed the help of his cousin John the Baptist, to “prepare the way”, to get people ready to hear about things like repentance and forgiveness and the coming kingdom of God.
On this day of his baptism, he needed the help that only God could give—the power of holy Spirit. He needed God’s sacred touch. He needed to hear the powerful, creative voice from heaven to name him and claim him. “That boy needed some help.” And God sent it.
He needed the help of his disciples, and the women whose names we have forgotten, as he lived out his ministry, preaching and teaching and healing.
We all need help as we seek to follow the Light of the World. We want to give ourselves completely to the mission of God in the world. We long to be faithful in all we do. And like Jesus, this boy’s gonna need some help, this girl’s gonna need some help.
God comes to help us. God fills us with holy Spirit. God claims us as chosen and beloved people. God gives us a community of supporters called the church who will bear with us and treat us like family even though we’re not. We all, every last one of us, have received the help we need to live as God’s faithful people in the world.
We are surrounded by a world full of people who need help. Some of them are our friends. Some of them may be outsiders. Some of them may be addicted—alcoholics, drug addicts, workaholics. Some of them may be pretending that everything is hunky–dory and that they’ve got it all together. Some of them may be wandering in confusion and despair.
God sends us out into that world. We are the church. We are the touch of God’s holy Spirit on the shoulder. We are God’s voice proclaiming love and acceptance and grace and compassion to all who need to hear a word of hope.
Thanks be to God.

Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt​
Matthew 3: 13–17
Acts 10: 34–43
Isaiah 42: 1–9
1st Sunday after Epiphany
​Baptism of the Lord

Follow the Light

Today is one of those days where different calendars come together.
Today is New Year’s Day. Traditionally, this is a day to look back and to look forward. We reflect on the year just ended, and we look forward to the year just beginning.
Today is also called the Naming of Jesus. We focus on a single verse in the Bible, which comes right after the shepherds left the manger and began telling everyone who would listen about the birth of Jesus. It reads, “When the eighth day arrived, the day of circumcision, the child was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived.”
We don’t have naming ceremonies anymore. But here’s an interesting thing—part of our tradition as Anglicans was that people coming to be confirmed were required to learn their catechism. It was a way to teach people the basics of the faith.
In the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the very first question in the catechism is, “What is your name?” Our name is important. Question 2 in the catechism is, “Who gave you this name?”
Today, we would answer, “My parents gave me this name.” But the catechism answers it this way: “My sponsors in baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.”
We are baptized in the name of God, and in baptism we receive our own name. This is our identity. We bear the name of God, and our own name is forever linked to the name of God. I am Yme, a child of God, marked in my baptism as Christ’s own forever.
This is who we are. Most fundamentally, most deeply, we are beloved children of God, members of Christ, and through him heirs of the life of grace and abundance. That’s our identity.
New Year’s Day. Naming of Jesus.
Today is also Epiphany Sunday. Epiphany is celebrated on January 6, and is the end of the season of Christmas. We can also celebrate Epiphany on the Sunday before January 6. On this day, we tell the story of the magi who come seeking the newborn king of the Jews. They’re astrologers. They’re foreigners. They follow a different religion.
And yet, here they are, right at the beginning of the story of our faith.
I could say all kinds of things about this story. It’s partly about how God includes everyone, no matter your race, no matter your gender, no matter your religion, no matter your sexual orientation, no matter your name. You are loved. You are welcomed. You are invited to come close.
This story is also partly about how this child is a threat to those who are in power. The magi visit Herod the king first. As a result of Herod’s paranoia, he ends up massacring all children under 2 years old in Bethlehem, just to make sure his throne remains secure. It sounds like a story ripped from today’s headlines … Aleppo; Boku Haran in Nigeria; child soldiers in the Congo; refugee children fleeing for their lives.
When confronted by the gospel, those who seek to hold on to power become afraid. Their brutality knows no bounds as they tighten their grip.
But I want to focus on the star in this story. The magi followed a star. It’s an image for the light. It’s about seeing something and having the courage to follow. The magi felt a stirring in their souls, and that stirring led them from their homes in the east to a small town in a tiny backwater country.
The American poet W.H. Auden wrote a long poem called For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. The poem includes three modern wise men—a scientist, a historian, and a social scientist. They try to explain why they have followed the star, and they say in turn,
“… to discover how to be truthful now …”
“… to discover how to be living now …”
“… to discover how to be loving now …”
Then, all together, at the end, they exclaim, “… to discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.”
To discover how to be human. I think that comes wondrously close to what this story invites us to do.
God invites us to follow the light of God and discover how to be human, fully human, fully alive, basking in the glory of a God who loves us and all of creation with a deep and abiding love.
We see the light … and then we muster the courage to follow the light. We feel the stirring in our heart, in our soul, in our gut … and then we give our whole selves to this journey, this pilgrimage.
While I was preparing this sermon, I stumbled across a video with Eric Whitacre. He’s an American composer, and is well known particularly for his choral music. It’s his 47th birthday tomorrow. He originated what he calls the virtual choir. People send video clips of themselves singing one of his works, and he blends them together in an online choir.
He was talking to a group of people about his introduction to music. He had no childhood training in music. He couldn’t read music. But one day he heard a song on the radio, and he thought, “I want to do that.”
So he enrolled at a university, hoping to learn how to be a pop musician. A professor encouraged him to join the choir, so he thought he’d try it out. He says,
“At my first choir rehearsal in my life, I sat with the other basses. We started with warmups. Then the conductor said, ‘Let’s turn to the Kyrie.’ I didn’t know what a kyrie was … but I peeked over at my neighbour and I found the right page. We were singing the Requiem by Mozart. Thirty basses around me launched into the opening fugue … ‘Kyrie eleison’.
“At first, I started to tremble. And then I started tearing up, and I realized in that moment that I was hearing not music, but my name, my true name. Not Eric Whitacre, but this name inside my body somewhere … and I left that room the world’s biggest choir geek, totally transformed after 50 minutes.
“In retrospect … for the first time I felt a part of something larger than myself.”
This ties it all together for me.
How important it is to learn our name, our true name, our deepest and most important identity.
How important it is to listen to that stirring in our heart, in our soul, in our gut.
How important it is to follow that light.
And as we do so, “we discover how to be human.”
That’s the reason we follow this one we call “the Light of the World”. That’s the reason we commit ourselves to following Jesus day by day, hour by hour. That’s the reason we are here week by week, to be strengthened and encouraged in our following.
We follow the light of God, and we learn how to be human again.
Thanks be to God.

Matthew 2: 1–12
Isaiah 60: 1–6
Ephesians 3: 1–12
Epiphany Sunday