This week, I want to take three random thoughts, and weave them together as we enter Holy Week.
The first thought is about what happens to us when we love.
Let me ask you a couple of questions with obvious answers. Sometimes it’s good to become more deeply aware of something that may be obvious.
How many of you have people in your life whom you love?
It is an obvious question … we all do, don’t we? And it’s good to bring them to mind, to remember those whom we love.
Next question — how many of you have been touched or marked in some way by those people in your life whom you love?
Again, it seems an obvious question. But again, it’s a good thing to know that love touches us in some pretty deep ways. Love always marks us in some way. Sometimes it’s a hurt. Sometimes it’s a blessing. Sometimes it’s having to learn to be patient. Sometimes it’s having to learn to shut your mouth. Sometimes it’s a hug. Sometimes it’s a sleepless night.
In every case, love always leaves a mark. We are marked by love.
Now hold on to that thought.
Here’s a second thought. Throughout Lent, we’ve been thinking together about the Marks of Mission. I have quoted Christopher Duraisingh each week: “A church that is not a church in mission is not the church.”
This is the very heart of our identity as God’s people. God invites us to reach out to the world. God invites us to Tell, to Teach, to Tend, to Transform, to Treasure. We are a mission–shaped people. If we are not doing mission, we are not the church.
Then Duraisingh goes on to define what mission is. “Mission is a matter of love. Mission is God’s love affair with the world. The church’s part is to get involved in a love affair with other human beings with whom God has already fallen in love.”
Don’t you just love that? Mission is about getting involved in God’s love affair with the world. And if he is right — and I think he is — then just as love marks us, so mission will mark us.
Understood this way, the “Marks” of Mission are not just signposts as to how well we are living out our identity as God’s mission–shaped people. Mission “marks” us just as surely as love marks us.
So we consider our lives to see how we have been marked by mission.
Some of you have been telling me that these sermons have been challenging. They have taken you out of your comfort zone. That’s been true for me as well. Lent this year has been a challenging time for me as I think about how I am involved in God’s mission, as I think about how I share in God’s great love affair with the world.
As I have thought about it, as I have acted on it, I also have been taken out of my comfort zone. I have been marked by God’s love affair with the world.
And one of the things that I am discovering through all of this is that the Marks of Mission are the Marks of Love. God is marked by how deeply God loves the world. We can wound God’s heart by our actions. We can make God’s heart glad by our devotion. We can get in God’s way. We can work faithfully with God as we involve ourselves in God’s love affair with the world.
We Tell the world about the good news of God’s love as a way of getting involved in God’s love affair with the world. We Learn the story of God’s love affair so that we can Teach it. We Tend other people, because that’s what love does, even when it costs you something. We work to Transform the unjust structures of the world because some people are being hurt by the way this world works, and when we love others, it will mark us, it’s going to change us. We Treasure this earth, because God loves the cosmos with a deep and abiding love — not just human beings, but all creatures, the very soil and air and water itself. We are family with Father God, Mother Earth, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Fire, Sister Water, and also Sister Death.
The second thought … mission and love are two equal parts of the same action.
And then, here’s a third thought.
We are at the beginning of the drama of Holy Week. Luke invites us into the drama of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. It is the drama of our own lives, for we are so much like these early disciples. We praise God one moment … and deny God in the next. Like these early followers, our devotion dissipates when things don’t go our way. When we suffer, we wonder if God is really with us, and when things are going well, we scarcely have time to think about God.
Here’s how the holy drama of this holy week plays out. We begin by following a man who rides on a borrowed donkey. This man who loves deeply ends this week bearing the marks of that profound love. He is beaten, bloodied, executed …
… and we follow him. We follow him.
Holy Week is our story. And just as surely as the story of love we enact this week marked Jesus, it marks us.
As we accept God’s invitation to live out the mission which God gives us, we embody God’s love for the world.
If we want to see God’s love in the world, then we must be the ones who live it out, we must be the ones who are willing to be marked by love, we must be the ones who enact in every moment the heart of the gospel, which is to love.
You see, we’re not just spectators in this story. This story is about us. This is our story. Palm Sunday is not just a nice little parade we do with the kids. It is a life–defining moment for us. We follow this man. We follow this man riding on a borrowed donkey. We follow this man who is riding to his death.
Or we don’t.
We follow this man who rides a borrowed donkey into Jerusalem to challenge the powers–that–be. He declares with his very life that the power of the universe is not found in whoever happens to be the ruler of the day. The power of the universe is found in God’s love for the whole of creation. He will be marked by that love. As we get involved in that love affair, we also will be marked by love.
We shout “Hosanna”. It’s not a way of telling God “We adore you” or “You rock!” Hosanna is a demanding cry to God, “Save now!”
Make the story of your love affair in the world real now!
Begin with us.
We participate in a revolution of love.
We demand that hope be made real. We cry out for the hope of something really new in the world. We demand that God’s reign become reality in the world, that God’s reign begins to become a reality in our own lives. We call out for a world of justice and righteousness which includes all of God’s people.
This Lent, those three random thoughts have come together for me. We are marked by love. God’s mission is a love affair with the world. We follow someone who rides a borrowed donkey, who will be executed as a threat to the state, someone who began a revolution of love.
And that love will mark us. And that mission will mark us.
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
April 14, 2019 (Palm Sunday)
Isaiah 50: 4–9a
Philippians 2: 5–11
Luke 19: 28–40
By now you will know that we’re using the 5 Marks of Mission to guide our Lenten journey this year. They help the church live out our identity as God’s mission–shaped people.
We begin with our weekly Lenten test—
The 1st Mark of Mission is…? (To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God. We Tell)
And the 2nd? (To teach, baptise and nurture new believers. We Teach.)
And the 3rd? (To respond to human need by loving service. We Tend.)
And the 4th? (To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation. We Transform.)
Tell. Teach. Tend. Transform. These are some of the ways in which we work with God for the healing of the world.
Today it’s the 5th Mark of Mission: To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. We Treasure.
We haven’t done particularly well with this one. We don’t take good care of the earth. In fact, we take lousy care of the earth. And it’s not just the last 100 years of so. Listen to a prayer written by St. Basil the Great, who lived from 330–379:
“O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals [and all creatures] to whom thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of humans with ruthless cruelty; so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to Thee in song, has been a groan of travail. May we realize that all creatures live not for us alone but for themselves and for Thee, and that they love the sweetness of life.”
At the end of the 19th century, Russian novelist Anton Chekhov wrote, “We were endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that we can add to what we’ve been given. But up to now we haven’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.”
It leads me to wonder if we really care. It’s a disheartening thought.
Scientists have been warning us for decades. The science is very clear. But we don’t pay attention. We don’t want to change the way we live.
In 2015, I wrote a column about Keurig coffee pods. The inventor regrets ever inventing the system. In 2014, there were enough discarded K–cups to circle the globe 10½ times—the garbage just keeps piling up. If you line up all those K–cups, the line would be 420,000 km long!
Someone talked to me about the column. He told me he just liked the convenience too much; he wasn’t going to quit. And I wondered, “What’s the point?” I entitled that column, “Killing the World for the Sake of Convenience”.
That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we treasure.
Greta Thunberg is a 16–year–old Swedish girl. Last year, she began a “school strike for climate change”. She sat outside the Swedish Parliament building with a hand–painted sign. At first, she was there all alone, and she was an object of scorn and pity.
Today, she is the inspiration for a worldwide movement of young people calling our generation to account for what we have done to mess this planet up. She told world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”
But we don’t. The leaders we elect don’t have the will; they know that we don’t care enough. We complain about the carbon tax, even though it is an effective and proven way of changing behaviour. We refuse to end our wasteful and damaging habits.
We foul the air with smokestacks which spew poison into the air. We ruin the waters with our effluent and our plastics in the oceans. We pave over the earth and the land can no longer breathe. We have wiped out whole species of animals in our greed. We level mountains to dig out the coal and ruined ecosystems to move oil to our cities so that our cars can spew more carbon dioxide into the air. We destroy forests, and the land is denuded.
And just this week, a climate change report was issued which says that it’s worse than we thought. Canada is warming up twice as quickly as the rest of the earth, and the Canadian north is warming three times as quickly.
We are failing to take care of the earth. This “fragile earth, our island home” is dying. Because of us.
At the heart of it, I think, is that we treat our planet as if it were a commodity, something we can buy and sell. As if the land, water, and air were ours to sell.
But it’s not. We are God’s people. We belong to the Creator. We trust that “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for God has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.” (Psalm 24)
We can’t treat creation as a commodity. It doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God, and God gives creation into our care.
But we haven’t cared. We don’t take care. We are not wise stewards. We don’t nurtured life. Instead, we destroy.
Here’s something we can learn from indigenous people.
Last week, I briefly mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in my sermon. Someone asked me afterwards, “This TRC thing? What’s in it for us?”
I was so disheartened. I answered that there’s nothing in it for us, except the opportunity to live as God’s people. God gives us the ministry of reconciliation.
But as I was falling asleep one night this week, it occurred to me that here is one thing “that’s in it for us”—indigenous people can teach us once again that the land is sacred. Creation is not a commodity. It’s not something we can buy and sell. It’s not my land; it’s not your land.
The land is sacred. It is given to us as a gift, to share with all creatures, and if we don’t treasure it, we will die.
That’s part of the reason we have started to acknowledge that we worship on the traditional unceded territory of the Ktunaxa people. Partly, we acknowledge that we live on land which the Ktunaxa have inhabited for over 10,000 years. But it’s also a way for us to understand that none of us own the land. It’s a new way of thinking. The land is not ours to do with as we please. It’s a shared gift from the Creator. It’s sacred stuff … and how we handle it says something really important about who we are.
Isaiah promises this morning that God is about to do something new. God intends to restore the life of God’s people.
It’s a promise to hold on to. But here’s a reality check. We can stand in God’s way. God won’t force us. God depends on our willingness to work with God, and if we are unwilling, then the earth won’t be remade. The earth will die because we don’t care.
St. Francis of Assisi reminded us that this amazing gift of creation is our family — Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Mother Earth. To take it a step further, as we do this to our family, we it to the Christ who is found in the least of our brothers and sisters.
How we treasure the earth … is how we treasure God.
I hate preaching this sermon. I sound so angry. I sound so despairing. I sound so hopeless. I feel like a finger–wagging school marm.
Am I?
I don’t know. I met with a young person last week who is going through an existential crisis because of the state the world is in. He isn’t sure that it’s worth doing anything anymore because no one seems to care that the world is dying, and he can’t envision a future for himself and his generation.
Is this the legacy we want to leave for our children?
Is this a measure of how we treasure the earth?
Is this how we care for creation and all of God’s good gifts?
We need to change. As the woman in today’s gospel anointed Jesus with costly perfume, we need to anoint the world with our love and our care. That’s what treasuring creation will look like. We stop thinking about our convenience, and we do whatever we can to reverse our damaging ways. We anoint creation with our tears and the perfume of our faithfulness to God.
Do we treasure this world? This Mark of Mission calls us to repent, to change the way we live. One of the ways we can do it is to elect leaders who have the political guts to do what needs to be done. We stop electing politicians who pander to us in order to say in power, who appeal to the worst instincts in us for their own gain. We get involved.
There are other things we can do—stop using plastics as much as possible; throw your Keurigs out; buy more fuel efficient cars; use cloth bags for your groceries, and so on … but first, we must get serious enough to want to act. First, we must get serious enough to be willing to bear the cost of healing our world. First, we must get serious enough to acknowledge how poorly we have exercised our stewardship of God’s sacred gift.
Let me repeat Greta Thunberg’s words. “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”
For God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for the world’s sake, I pray it is not too late.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
April 7, 2019 (5th Sunday in Lent)
Isaiah 43: 16–21
John 12: 1-8
Philippians 3: 4–14
By now you will know that we’re using the 5 Marks of Mission to guide our Lenten journey this year. Developed about 20 years ago by the Anglican Communion, they are a tool to help the church live out God’s mission.
Lent is a good time to think about the mission God gives us. Mission is our identity. We are God’s mission people. That’s the only reason the church exists. In Christopher Duraisingh’s words, “A church which is not in mission is not the church.”
So here comes the weekly Lenten test—
The 1st Mark of Mission is…? (To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God. We Tell) Let me ask … Are you telling anyone?
And the 2nd? (To teach, baptise and nurture new believers. We Teach.) Are you nurturing anyone?
And the 3rd? (To respond to human need by loving service. We Tend.) Are you tending anyone?
Telling. Teaching. Tending. These are some of the ways in which we work with God for the healing of the world.
The 4th Mark of Mission is: “To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.” We Transform.
Transformation is at the very heart of the gospel. God transforms us in love. God makes us new, not just once, but day by day. God renews us each day so that we might live as God’s gracious, faithful and compassionate people in the world.
Paul writes to the church in Corinth that “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
But we’re not just transformed to be new people ourselves. Paul links our transformation with the ministry of reconciliation. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself … and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ…”
The church exists for mission. We are being transformed so we can be agents of reconciliation. In a world where might, violence and revenge are so prevalent, God invites us to be people of peace and reconciliation, of love and compassion.
Paul concludes, “We are ambassadors for Christ.” We are God’s mission–shaped people. We are made new — so that we might work with God to make the world new.
But holy cow! What a huge task! How can we possibly transform the unjust structures of society? We have no power. We have no influence. What can we do?
Well … I’m glad you asked!
Here are some ideas and some stories of people just like us who are doing just this. These are stories about people who have harnessed a passion and who are making a difference. Some of them are Christian, some are not. Even so, all are transforming the unjust structures of the world.
Let those who have eyes see, and those who have ears hear.
Have you heard about Greta Thunberg? She’s a 16–year–old Swedish girl with Asperger’s syndrome, which is part of the Autism Spectrum. She has just been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Why? She began a “school strike for climate change,” and has inspired young people around the globe to take action on climate change.
Greta is transforming the unjust structures of society. I’ll have more to say about her next week, when we think together about the 5th Mark of Mission.
Have you heard about Malala Yousafzai? Seven years ago, when she was 14, she was shot by a Taliban gunman because she dared to say that girls should be able to attend school. She received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 16 for her work and sparked a worldwide dialogue about education for children and girls. She launched the Malala Fund to champion every girl’s right to receive free, safe, quality education.
Malala is transforming the unjust structures of society. She’s challenging violence. She’s seeking peace and reconciliation.
Have you heard about Pink Shirt Day? It’s an anti–bullying campaign which was started by a group of Grade 9 students in Nova Scotia who wore pink to stand in solidarity with a boy who was bullied for wearing a pink shirt. The movement has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon.
I know what it’s like to be bullied. In school, I was 2 years younger than other students, because I’d skipped a grade. I never fit in. I was never accepted. I was scorned and mocked and bullied. It hurt.
It has gotten worse these days with cyber–bullying and texting. We’ve heard about the kids who were bullied until they couldn’t stand it anymore and they chose suicide over that kind of life.
When we stand up against bullying, we challenge violence.
We Transform.
Have you heard about our own Alternative Giving program here every Advent to raise money to help others? We’ve given money for goats in Rwanda … water purifiers and mosquito nets in Malawi … the homeless shelter … Street Angels … PWRDF ministries around the world … helping to feed children in Haiti, and other worthy causes.
This program begun by our Sunday School children actually meets two Marks of Mission. We are tending the world, which is the 3rd Mark of Mission. We are also challenging those structures which keep people in poverty. We are doing something in the name of God to make life more whole, more just, more compassionate. We participate with God to transform the world we live in.
We Transform.
Helder Camara was the Roman Catholic Archbishop in Brazil in the 1990’s. He was called “the Bishop of the slums” because he advocated tirelessly on behalf of the poor. He stood on their side. He challenged his church to stand with the poor and to oppose any person or organization which exploited the poor to line their own pockets. As a result, the Brazilian government declared him a ‘non–person’. If he had simply provided spiritual support for those who were suffering, everything would have been fine. But as he said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. But when I ask why so many people are poor, they call me a communist.”
For me, one of the most important tasks before us as the church in Canada is to engage in the work of reconciliation with Indigenous people.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued 94 Calls to Action to help us begin the hard work of reconciliation. Senator Murray Sinclair, chair of the Commission, says, “We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you the path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing.”
So it’s important for us to acknowledge that we gather for worship on the traditional unceded territory of the Ktunaxa People. We live and work and play on land which was stolen. We may not have stolen it ourselves … but it was taken from the Ktunaxa people. They did not cede their right to the land in a treaty. We are grateful for the opportunity to work and worship in this territory.
This work is part of the 4th Mark of Mission, in which we seek to live together in justice and peace with our aboriginal neighbours who were in this land long before we ever came here.
I don’t know if you noticed this or not, but when we engage in this 4th Mark, it gets political. I don’t mean party politics. I mean political in the original sense of the word which has to do with how we live together.
Christian faith is never just a private affair. It’s not about “me and God”. The great commandment teaches us to love God and love our neighbour … and that’s what politics is about. It’s about how we live together in peace and justice. It’s about living together with mercy and generosity.
We Transform.
Finally, let me tell you about Robby Novak. This 8–year–old kid has put together a series of videos on the internet in which he calls himself “Kid President”. He’s cuter than fuzzy bunnies. He dresses in a navy suit, white shirt, red tie, and starts, “I think we all need a pep–talk.”
He quotes the Robert Frost poem, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by …” He pulls a face and says, “And it hurt man! Really bad … Rocks … Thorns … and Glass. Not cool, Robert Frost!”
He continues, “But if there really are two paths, I want to be on the path that leads to AWESOME! What will you create that will make the world awesome? Nothing if you keep sitting there! This is your time. This is my time. This is our time. We can make every day better for each other.
“We have work to do. We were made to be awesome. So let’s get out there and do it. Create something that will make the world awesome.”
The first time I saw it, I thought to myself, “Way to go Robbie. I hope others follow the example you set.” Then I learned that Kid President has a condition known as osteogenesis imperfecta. It causes extremely fragile bones. As Robbie puts it, “I break easy.”
But instead of being discouraged by his multiple breaks (over 70 so far), Robbie decided to make these videos for fun and to cheer others up. More importantly, these videos spread a dream and inspire people to make the world better.
We Transform.
We work with God for the healing of the world.
We challenge violence in every form.
We pursue peace and reconciliation.
How will you live? How will you make the world more awesome?
We Tell. We Teach. We Tend. We Transform.
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
March 31, 2019 (4th Sunday in Lent)
2 Corinthians 5: 16–21
Luke 15: 1–3, 11–32
Joshua 5: 9–12
This year, we’re using the 5 Marks of Mission to guide our Lenten journey. They were developed about 20 years ago by the Anglican Communion to help the church live out our identity as people who embody and live out God’s mission.
Mission—God’s mission—is our identity. We are God’s mission people. That’s why the church exists. In Christopher Duraisingh’s words, “A church which is not in mission is not the church.”
Here comes the test—do you remember the first 2 Marks of Mission? The 1st is …? (To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God. We Tell)
And the 2nd? (To teach, baptise and nurture new believers. We Teach.)
The important thing is that mission is a verb. Mission is something we do. We don’t just talk about it, or think about it on a Sunday morning. We live our mission out every day.
“Mission” comes from the Latin missio, which means “to send”. God sends us into the world to live as gospel people. We are God’s missives to the world. We follow Jesus into the world as God’s good news people, telling the good news story of God’s love, learning our faith, sharing our faith.
Now some people think this is kinda scary—living out of our identity as God’s people, telling about God’s love in our lives, showing God’s gospel values in our everyday, ordinary acts.
It is where the rubber hits the road in our faith, and it does take us out of our comfort zone.
But let me suggest that really it’s not so scary at all. This kind of mission behavior actually comes quite naturally to us. Here are a few examples.
A few years after I moved here, someone told me about Rotary. He had a passion for it; it has become his life. And he said to me, “Yme, you should try this. Why don’t you join me?”
Someone else is an artist. When I came here almost 15 years ago, she said, “Come see my art.”
Someone else in town keeps inviting me to try out for plays she is directing.
Other people talk about their passions all the time, and suggest we should try it here … whether it be fair trade or medical assistance in dying or doing more social events.
People invite me to sit on boards or committees, or to get involved with a community event. Someone even kept inviting me to go to Ice games.
Now if that’s not mission behavior, I don’t know what is. It is quite natural behavior. It happens all the time. We tell each other about what we love. We invite others to join us.
In every case, I could have said “No thanks, I’m not interested in Rotary.” I could have said, “No, I don’t like looking at paintings,” or “I don’t have the time to sit on that board.”
I did say, “I don’t enjoy hockey!”, but that didn’t stop her from inviting me … over and over again!
But even thought I could have said no, that didn’t stop these people from making the invitation.
It is quite a natural thing to do.
All I’m saying is let’s do the same thing with our faith. We can tell. We can invite. We can share what’s important in our lives. That’s mission.
Today—the 3rd Mark of Mission: To respond to human need by loving service. We Tend.
This is probably the one we do most easily. It’s been part of the church’s life from the very beginning.
Near the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable and ends it this way: “what you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me.” As we offer food to those who are hungry, as we visit those who are lonely, as we reach out to take care of one another, as we tend one another, we are tending Jesus.
Around the year 200, Tertullian described that outsiders of his day would look at Christians and say, “Look how they love one another … and how they are ready to die for each other.” (Apology, ch 39)
The early church was known as a place of hope and help for the homeless and the poor. In cities of the Roman Empire which were filled with newcomers and strangers, the church was a place of community. In cities filled with orphans and widows, the church provided a new and expanded sense of family. In a time when society was rigidly stratified, the church welcomed everyone—the poor, the different, the lowly. In cities which had to deal with epidemics, fires and earthquakes, the church offered effective nursing services.
The church was attractive because they engaged in concrete actions to give honour and dignity to every person. They acted as Jesus would act, embracing the outcasts and lifting up the poor and the powerless. They tended the world they lived in.
I think our Anglican churches live this 3rd Mark of Mission quite well. We do it here at Christ Church. How?
Some of us do it through our work—as care–givers, teachers, paramedics, fire–fighters, aid workers, counsellors, people who work with kids, or who work with the handicapped, as public servants, police officers, fire fighters.
Mission isn’t just what we do here in church. Mission is how we live in our everyday lives. We engage in mission every day. I think it makes a difference to see our work as part of the mission of God.
For some of us, it shows up in the care they exercise in their free time in their communities—as good neighbours, as volunteers, as people who work at suicide hotlines, mental health charities, delivering meals for students, canvassing for donations, working with hospice, mentoring teenagers, and so on.
For many, living this way is just part of who they are. They seem to know when someone needs a listening ear, or a gentle word, or a hug. They naturally call someone up to see how they’re doing. They are tending the people around them.
When the church exercises pastoral care in times of need or crisis or just through the changing phases of life, we live this Mark of Mission. We give a helping hand. We offer food and care for people who need it. We all participate in that through our offerings, through our desire to reach out to the city we live in.
We also tend the world, responding to human need by loving service, through our Prayer Chain and the Prayers of the People. We are blessed that Deb helps us live out our mission of visiting people who need that kind of loving care.
We do this for strangers as we participate in the work of the PWRDF, as we donate to Street Angels or projects to help the homeless. Witness the outpouring of compassion and love in the wake of the shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, or how we all respond to natural disasters such as the cyclone in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi this past week. This kind of mission actually comes quite naturally to us.
We tend.
And when we do it for the least of these, we do it for Jesus. This is our mission. This is what we are sent into the world to do. This is who we are sent into the world to be. The world needs our care, our tending, our love.
I love this word “tend”. It comes from the foot “attend”, which means “to stretch toward”. We stretch toward others. We reach out with our arms, our hands, our hearts.
We tend.
We become tender.
And when we do that, we reflect the character of God. We participate in God’s mission in the world. We work with God to tend the world.
Let me end with a prayer from Mother Teresa and used by the Sisters of Charity as they care for the sick: “Dearest Lord, may I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and whilst nursing them, minister unto you. Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say: ‘Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.’”
We tell. We proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom.
We teach. We teach, baptize, and nurture new believers.
We tend. We respond to human need by loving service.
Today, I have no homework for you, since we are working at this well … except to offer thanksgiving to God for all the opportunities placed in front of us to serve in love, all the chances to tend, all the moments given in which we can say, “Jesus, my love, how sweet it is to serve you.”
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
March 24, 2019 (3rd Sunday in Lent)
Isaiah 55: 1–9
1 Corinthians 10: 1–13
Luke 13: 1–9
Ok, let’s start with a test: who remembers the 1st Mark of Mission from last week? (To proclaim the Good News of God’s Kingdom. We Tell.)
This year, we’re using the 5 Marks of Mission to guide our Lenten journey. They were developed about 20 years ago by the Anglican Communion to help the church live out our identity as people who embody and live out God’s mission.
We are God’s mission people. That’s why the church exists. That’s our whole raison d’être. The church is called to live out the mission given to us by God. Christopher Duraisingh puts it very simply, “A church which is not in mission is not the church.” We are the church for the sake of the world.
And this First Mark of Mission is the heart of our mission. In all that we do and say, we proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom. We Tell the good news of God’s love.
Today, we move on to the 2nd Mark of Mission: To teach, baptize and nurture new believers. We Teach.
To be honest, I find this mark of mission one of the hardest ones to talk about. Part of the reason is that many of us no longer know our faith. We have stopped learning. We are largely Biblically illiterate. We have forgotten our story, and the danger is that we will lose our identity. We are shaped more profoundly these days by advertisers than we are by the gospel.
If that is true, if we have forgotten, how can we teach? If we no longer remember, how can we nurture new believers?
So let me suggest this. In order for the church to teach, we who are the church must make a fresh commitment to becoming learners once again. If we are to teach, we must learn.
Let me ask you a question. If I were to ask you what the gospel was about, how would you answer? If a friend or neighbour were to ask you about what the heart of the gospel is for you, how would you answer?
That’s your homework for this week. Take this task of learning seriously. Take some time to reflect for yourself on the faith you hold. Try to sum it up in a couple of sentences or paragraphs. What is the heart of the faith for you?
Let me tell you my answer.
For me, it begins and ends with the love of Jesus. If our words and actions don’t meet the test of love … it’s not the gospel. If we exclude someone … it doesn’t meet the test of love and it’s not the gospel. If we fail to reach out to help someone in the name of love … it doesn’t meet the test of love and it’s not the gospel. If we don’t love our neighbours as we love ourselves … it doesn’t meet the test of love and it’s not the gospel. If we fail to be agents of God’s loving grace in the world … it doesn’t meet the test of love and it’s not the gospel.
In the 1st century bce, a gentile came up to the great Jewish sage Hillel, who died when Jesus was a teenager. The gentile wanted to convert to Judaism, but would do so only if the rabbi could teach him the whole Torah while standing on one foot.
Hillel accepted the challenge, and said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary—go and study it!”
That’s what this 2nd Mark of Mission points to. Know the heart of the gospel, and then learn how to live it out. Go and study it.
Twenty years later, Jesus said much the same thing in the great commandment. Love God with all that you are; love your neighbour as yourself.
It’s easy to say, and it takes a lifetime of learning to live it out. I’ve included an insert in your bulletin (included at the end here). It’s part of a song by Ken Medema, and I’ve found it to be a helpful way of thinking about living out the great commandment. Keep it where you can see it.
We love God with all that we are. We commit ourselves whole–heartedly to God. Our whole being, heart, mind, soul and spirit is oriented towards God. The first question we ask as we seek to make a decision is, “How will this please God? How will this choice honour God?”
Imagine it … God at the very centre of our lives. God the deciding factor in the decisions we make. Not our bank balance. Not our convenience or comfort. Not our wants. Not our retirement fund. Not our own desires. Not our political beliefs. Not our desire to have life meet our needs first and then give what’s left over to God and to others.
God is the determining factor of our life. Imagine it.
And the second and equally important part of this one great commandment is to love your neighbour. Seek what is best for your neighbour. Reach out to your neighbour with love and compassion and grace. To love our neighbour is to help meet the needs of our neighbour in the same way as we meet our own needs.
If we don’t love God with all that we are and if we fail to love our neighbour as we love ourselves … it doesn’t meet the test of love and it’s not the gospel.
We take it a step further. For Christians, Jesus is the best image we have of what God is like. Throughout his life, Jesus was inviting people to follow him, to live as he lived. And to be a follower of Jesus means that we are called to learn and grow in our faith.
Now notice that Jesus doesn’t say “Come be a warden. Come be a member of the choir. Come take a set of envelopes. Come take a turn on the Church Committee.” Jesus doesn’t even say, “Come be a member of the church.”
What Jesus says to us is, “Come be a disciple. Come, follow me.”
Jesus says, “Follow me. Do what I do. Live as I live. Trust as I trust. Reach out as I reach out. Love as I love. Show compassion as I show compassion, and especially to outsiders, to the people on the margins, to those whom society scorns and leaves on the side of the road. Love God. Love your neighbour.”
That’s the church’s work: we are called to work with God to serve and heal the world. We come together for the sake of the world. We gather here on behalf of those who are not here.
For me, that’s the heart of our faith. We are not primarily called to be members of the church. We are called to be disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus.
Therefore we do what Jesus did. And it’s going to cost us something, just as it cost Jesus.
To put it slightly differently, Christian faith is not about information. It’s not about learning certain facts and doctrines and such things. Christian faith is about formation. It’s about being formed in the image of Christ.
I quoted Christopher Duraisingh earlier. “A church that is not a church in mission is not the church. Mission is a matter of love. Mission is God’s love affair with the world. The church’s part is to get involved in a love affair with other human beings with whom God has already fallen in love.”
We dare to believe that God is having a love affair with the world. We trust that God’s love is deeply and profoundly real. That’s the good news which we proclaim. That’s the 1st Mark.
Then to meet the 2nd Mark, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we follow the one who beckons us to live more faithfully. In order to teach, baptize and nurture new believers, we must make a new commitment to become students, learners, followers. We begin by learning.
Here’s your homework for this week, as we receive this gift of Lent as a time to reflect more deeply on our faith: Take some time to reflect on the faith you hold. Write it down in a couple of sentences or paragraphs. What is the heart of the faith for you? How are you growing?
We have good news to proclaim. We teach, baptize and nurture new believers. The first 2 Marks of Mission invite us to grow on our life–long journey of faith.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams puts it this way: “Jesus doesn’t seem to talk about making members of the church or recruiting people to sign up: Jesus wants disciples. He wants members of his body who share in the action of the body — a disciple is a learner. Go and make learners; encourage people to embark on the journey of discovering what the gift of God is.”
The 2nd Mark of Mission: “To teach, baptize and nurture new believers.” We Teach.
Thanks be to God.
The following was included as an insert in the bulletin
“Monday eyes see practical necessity, building the economy,
the killing of the enemy, the guarding of our ethnic purity,
protecting the Great Society, giving the world democracy
even if it means killing and torturing to do so.
“Monday morning minds create the policies of sovereign states,
talk of good and thrive on hate,
and God help you if you deviate for fear that you might create
confusion which we cannot tolerate.
“Sunday eyes can see the world in a whole new light:
making real the weakness that the strong despise,
and the wisdom which confounds the wise.
“Sunday light exposes lies,
cuts the monsters of our Monday world down to size,
sees the tears which the suffering cry
and shuns the power which money buys.
“Sunday morning minds are free to love the enemy,
dream a new community, see a new reality.
“Monday morning can see the things they think are good for me and
Monday morning eyes go rushing headlong across the way,
across the road, not caring who they trample on and
“Sunday morning eyes can view the man who stands beside the road,
the lonely woman, the frightened child,
the hopeless one who has no one to tend him or her.
“Sunday morning eyes will not let me go on
until something I have done will make a difference.
“Monday morning eyes will see
that things must be done efficiently, and if it is not quickly done,
then Monday morning eyes will soon be gone.
“Sunday morning eyes will take time to search the road,
and find the hopeless one,
restore the rhyme and reason of life
no matter how much time it takes, for heaven’s sake.”
—Ken Medema
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
March 17, 2019 (2nd Sunday in Lent)
Philippians 3: 17–4:1
Luke 13: 31–35
Genesis 15: 1–12, 17–18
We are on the journey of Lent again, a journey to the heart of our faith. This season of Lent is a season of discipline. Discipline is not a popular concept these days because it reeks of punishment and correction. But the word discipline actually comes from the Latin root discipulus, which means “pupil”. Discipline has to do with learning and growing.
In this season, we engage in the discipline of growing in our relationship with God. We do that every day, every week, every moment, but Lent is a gift of grace in which we reflect more intentionally on how we can centre our lives more fully and more firmly in God. We make time to reflect on our baptismal covenant with God. We make time to take stock of our life in faith. We make time to become more open to God’s grace working in our lives.
This year we will use the Marks of Mission as our guide for reflection. The Five Marks of Mission were developed by the Anglican Communion about 20 years ago. They seek to help us understand that the life of the church is rooted in God’s mission.
Let’s be clear that it is God’s mission. It is not our mission. It is not Christ Church’s mission. It is not Yme’s mission. The mission belongs to and is initiated by God, who is at work in the world and invites us to participate in God’s work of healing and reconciling the world.
We can refuse to do so, of course. But then God will turn to someone else. And we will have failed to be the church.
I’ve said it before—we are not the church for our own sake. We are the church for the sake of the world. We have to make a difference in the world. We are called to live out God’s mission in all that we do. We are invited to live as agents of God’s healing, compassionate, and loving grace in the world. We are called to be people of reconciliation.
The Marks of Mission will help us reflect more clearly on the mission and ministry given to us as God’s people. We open ourselves to God’s grace so that we might live out God’s gospel purposes in the world more faithfully.
So this season, rather than giving something up for Lent, let’s add something. The whole purpose of this season is to make space for God’s spirit to work in our lives. So as we add something for Lent, we open ourselves up to the work of grace so that we walk more consciously in the way of Jesus.
I know I need help with that. I think we all do. So thank God for Lent.
We begin. The First Mark of Mission is To Proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom. Think of it this way: “We Tell”.
We have good news to tell the world. You all know that this broken world needs some good news. There are scandals wherever you look. There is hatred and prejudice all around. People are being bullied and hurt and ignored and oppressed. Creation itself has become a victim of our greed.
And that’s not just on a macro level. It’s true of our friends, our families, our neighbours. We all know people who need to hear that they are loved, that they have value, that they have hope.
We have good news to tell.
Many Anglicans are afraid of this. They think of hearing people on street corners talking about God. Or they think of going door to door—as I had with the Jehovah’s Witnesses yesterday.
But that’s not what this is. This is simply about sharing good news which makes our lives whole with other people.
We tell others about God’s place in our lives. We tell others why we find comfort in God’s presence in our lives. We tell others how our trust in God has strengthened us.
Let me give an example. We’ve all heard about “doing random acts of kindness”. Both atheists and Christians can perform random acts of kindness and in both cases these acts have the same wonderful effect.
But the difference is that for us who follow Jesus, doing random acts of kindness is part of our ministry as God’s people. When we perform these random acts of kindness, it makes us feel good, and we enjoy doing it, and we know it’s a good thing. But we remember also that we are participating in God’s ministry in the world. When that begins a conscious thing for us, it begins to make a difference in our lives. We are learning to see that our acts are a way of living out God’s gospel values.
And when that becomes a conscious thing for us, we are living out this first mark of mission. We tell. We proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom.
We tell good news in acts of kindness, in words of grace, as we reach out with grace and compassion.
And here’s the wonderful piece of this … we do this kind of stuff all the time. It comes naturally to us. We tell our friends about what’s important to us all the time. “Telling” is such a natural thing for us to do … We go out with our friends and talk about what’s going on in our lives. We go for a coffee and a chat. We walk around the block with a neighbour. We go out for a snack or a drink after the Kootenay Ice game.
And we tell. We talk … about what makes us happy … sometimes the struggles we’re facing … about the things we like to do, our hobbies, our frustrations. We talk about our lives. We tell what’s important to us.
The first Mark of Mission challenges us to remember that God is part of our lives … that the gospel is part of our lives … that we are people of God who walk in the way of Jesus. You don’t have to beat your friends over the head with your faith … but do they know how important it is in your life? Do your friends understand the hope you find in your relationship with God? Do your neighbours know the peace that fills your heart? Do they know how, in times of difficulty, that it is your faith that has given you the strength to face it?
Last week, I gave you some homework, just as I do with the two guys in Confirmation class. Do something this week just because you are a follower of Jesus.
For this week, let me invite you to tell someone about the God who loves us, who inspires us, who longs for us, who heals us. I’m not suggesting you force your belief on someone else. I’m just inviting you to tell someone you know about the place of God in your life.
And then imagine it … God’s love spreading through your words, your actions. Imagine it. All of us, working with God, to make the world more whole.
Someone in this congregation did that this last week. She reached out to a stranger in the hospital who was feeling alone and anxious. She reached out to her just because of her faith in Jesus. You should have seen the joy on her face as she told me about it. You should have heard how the woman she talked with felt so much better as someone reached out to her. And wouldn’t you love to be the person who can’t wait to tell me how it went? Wouldn’t you love to see a whole line of people sharing their good news stories?
We have good news to tell.
The First Mark of Mission: We proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God. We tell.
Will you do that this week? Can you?
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
March 10, 2019 (1st Sunday In Lent)
Deuteronomy 26: 1–11
Romans 10: 8b–13
Luke 4: 1–13
Once again, we begin our 40–day journey through Lent. 40 days of disciplined reflection on our Christian life. 40 days of seeking to listen to God. 40 days of sensing the God within us. 40 days of reaching out with God’s love.
We do it every year. But it’s not the same journey. This is not last year. We are different today than we were a year ago. Things have happened in our lives and in the world, for better and for worse. We have all experienced changes in our lives.
Here we are, a year later, and once more God’s spirit is leading us into Lent.
We tend to think of Lent as a heavy season. We’ve grown up with the idea of Lent as a season of discipline, and we don’t much like that idea. It reeks of punishment, or being corrected.
But discipline actually comes from the Latin word discipulus, which means “pupil”. Discipline has to do with learning, with growing.
I think that’s a more helpful way to view Lent. We receive this season as a gift of learning and growth. This season is a gift of grace which allows us to reflect on how we can more firmly and more fully centre our lives in God.
Listen again to the very first words in our Ash Wednesday worship. We enter the season of Lent with this prayer: “Almighty and everlasting God, you despise nothing you have made.”
The very first words we hear in Lent is that we are beloved. We are not alone. God who made us … holds us, and loves us now and eternally.
Only then do we hear these words, “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts …”
We have to get that order right. The foundation of our lives and of our faith is that we are God’s beloved. And then, as God’s precious people, we are able to enter into the discipline of Lent.
That’s the whole point of “giving something up for Lent”. It’s not just to give something up for the sake of giving something up. Rather, we give something up and make space for God in our lives. We give something up and make space for the work of grace to become effective in our lives. We give something up and make space for Spirit to work in us.
We give something up to clear the clutter, and then we can turn our focus more clearly on the work of grace in our lives. It’s the daily work of learning, of begin formed more clearly in the image of Christ.
I love the prayer written by 13th century bishop Richard of Chichester (you may remember it from Godspell): “Day by day, dear Lord, three things I pray: to see thee more clearly; to love thee more dearly; to follow thee more nearly.”
That’s the discipline of Lent which we enter today. That’s the gift of Lent which we receive toady. We take time … we make time … we are given time … to think about our relationship with God, with others, and with the world. We enter into a gifted season where we are called to devote ourselves in love to God, to each other, and to the world
We mark the gift of this season with the sign of ashes. We are the beloved people of God; we also know that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return.”
We are beloved, and we are mortal. We acknowledge our limitations. We are not immortal; we are not infallible; we are not divine. We are not in control.
Rather, we receive this life which is given to us as a mysterious, miraculous gift. Our lives are a miracle. We forget that so easily, and that’s why we need this gift of Lent.
Each moment brings with it the capacity for holiness and grace. In each day, we will find both beauty and pain. Life has an incredible, infinite capacity to touch us with hope and joy, and all of it comes to us as a gift.
So this dust, these ashes … they remind us that life is made holy because God is present. God holds us in all of life. In our mortality, in our limited selves, we are the beloved people of God.
Christian faith is intensely material that way. At its best, Christian faith doesn’t divide life into sacred and secular. All of life is holy. Both the spiritual and the material are shot through with holiness and grace.
Dirt reminds us of heaven. The people around us are a sign of God’s presence in our lives. We smudge our foreheads with ashes, and we wear it proudly as a sign of our lifelong commitment to live as the people of God. In ordinary bread and wine and water, Christ is present.
“Day by day, dear Lord, three things I pray: to see thee more clearly; to love thee more dearly; to follow thee more nearly.”
All of it … signs of grace.
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
March 6, 2019 (Ash Wednesday)
Matthew 6: 1–6, 16–21
Joel 2: 1–2, 12–17
2 Corinthians 5: 20–6:10
On Monday afternoon, I came to the church for Confirmation class. The ACW quilting group was here, and we started to banter, as we so often do. In the middle of it, one of the women said to me, “You must get so frustrated with us sometimes.” I asked, “How do you mean?” She said, “You keep preaching and we don’t do it!”
And I said, “Well yes, sometimes I do get frustrated. And then I remember myself … that I’m not as faithful as I’d like to be. I mess up just as much as you do … but I keep trying. So overall, no, I’m not frustrated with you. That would be like preparing to pray and telling God that I’d like to confess my neighbour’s sins.”
And she said, “Well you should be!”
Now, at the same time as I was participating in this conversation, I was also thinking about the gospel reading for today. It has three sections, all of which relate to that conversation.
Section 1 — Jesus teaches us that we ought to be careful about noticing the speck in another person’s eye when we have a huge log in our own eye. It’s about judging other people.
Section 2 — Jesus teaches us that living faithfully has to do with bearing good fruit as followers of Jesus.
Section 3 — Jesus teaches us to build our lives on a solid foundation.
And that conversation with the quilting group has something to do with today’s gospel reading.
Section 1 … the speck and the log. I already mentioned that sometimes I do get frustrated. I wonder why we just don’t get it. I wonder why we don’t change our lives as I think we ought to, so that we more closely resemble the gospel.
And then I think to myself, “Who am I to talk?” My life is also messed up. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t live as faithfully as I would like. And some weeks, even I don’t listen to my sermons. And I wish my life more closely resembled the way Jesus lived, with that deep, daily trust in God. So I’m not going to notice the speck in your eye and ignore the log in my own.
Then last week, after the sermon, someone said, “What a great sermon … except for the part where I have to do something.”
But the gospel is always calling us to become more than we are. The gospel is always inviting us to be a conduit for God’s grace. The gospel is always calling us to be open so that God’s grace might flow through us. The gospel is always leading us to change so that we might not block the movement of God’s spirit. The gospel is always inviting us to participate in the work of grace.
And when we accept that invitation, it’s going to change us, and we resist that kind of transformation because it’s scary. We’ve built a pretty comfortable life, for the most part, and we’re generally not thrilled about changing it all up.
But even though we might be afraid of change, nevertheless the gospel calls us over and over again to follow Jesus faithfully, to be transformed, to be God’s people, to be partners with God.
And so I try to live that way. And I am going to trust that you try to live that way. And I mess up. And I know that you mess up.
And when I mess up, I remember our 2nd baptismal promise … “whenever we fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord.” Whenever we screw up, we promise to stop and begin again.
That’s why I keep doing this. I will keep preaching the gospel call to be transformed. I will do so in the powerful hope that just as I am trying to live faithfully, so we all are trying to live faithfully. We will make mistakes and we will repent; and we will make more mistakes and we will repent again; and then we will make more mistakes … and so it goes.
And in the midst of that process, I believe that, as the prophet Isaiah reminds us, God’s word is not empty, but is hard at work within us to do what God intends. God’s Spirit works in us, and slowly, moment by moment, we listen and participate in the transformation which allows us to become more fully the kind of people God has created us to be.
The God in me will reach out to the God in you, and together we keep participating with the work of grace, together we keep loving, together we keep partnering with God.
That’s the whole point of the gospel. God keeps inviting us to become more than we are. God keeps inviting us to live more faithfully. God keeps inviting us to grow in our trust. God keeps inviting us to become more open, more welcoming, more inclusive, more just, more faithful, more gospel–centred people. God keeps inviting us to participate in the work of grace in the world.
And sometimes … every once in a blessed moment … we get it right.
Then in Section 2 of this gospel, Jesus says, “A good tree doesn’t bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its fruit.” Eugene Peterson translates it this way in The Message, “You don’t get wormy apples off a healthy tree, nor good apples off a diseased tree. The health of the apple tells the health of the tree.”
How healthy is your life? How does your life show the faith you hold? How are we living as the people of God? How do our lives show the presence and love and activity of God?
And then comes Section 3: “When you call me ‘Lord’ and don’t do what I say, it’s like building a house on the sand; when the storms come, it’s going to fall down. But when you act on my words, it’s like building a house with a solid foundation on the bedrock of God’s love.” When you just pay lip service to the gospel, you’re like a dumb carpenter who doesn’t put a foundation under the house.
So here’s a thought.
One of the things I’ve been doing in Confirmation class is to give the two wonderful young guys some homework—Do two things every week just because you are a follower of Jesus. And they do.
They are trying to live out their faith. They look for opportunities to help other people because of their faith. They are learning to see others as God’s precious people. They are looking for opportunities to be gentle … to be kind … to stand up for what is right. And when we talk about that, you can see on their faces how good they feel about doing that.
So let me give you the same homework.
As we get ready to enter Lent, do something every week … every day if you can … just because you are a follower of Jesus. That’s what “giving something up for Lent” is really all about. We give something up so that we can make space for God in our lives. We give something up so that can make space for the work of grace to become effective in our lives.
Is there a neighbour you can help? Is there someone you need to forgive? Is there a lonely person you can visit? Do you know someone who needs a hug? Can you buy someone a cup of coffee and give her some of your time? Is there a group you can volunteer with? Can you stand up for someone or some cause? Can you reach out in love? Can you stand with someone who is being bullied or abused? Can you do your work in the spirit of Jesus?
And as we do that, we’re not just being nice people or good neighbours or great volunteers. We are doing the work of ministry. When we serve breakfast, we’re doing ministry. When we sing at seniors’ homes and care homes, we’re doing ministry. When we help a neighbour, we’re doing ministry. When we help someone out, we’re doing ministry. When we serve with a group to make life better for others, we’re doing ministry.
Do I get frustrated with you? Sometimes. But I get just as frustrated with myself as with you.
And then … I turn around (which is what it means to repent), and I start over, trying to live as faithfully as I can.
Making a change in life can be pretty scary. But there’s something even more scary than change … regret. I don’t want to end my days regretting something I didn’t do, or a choice I made.
So I’m going to try to live my life as a disciple of Jesus as faithfully as I can, with no regret. I want to participate with God in the work of grace, with no regret.
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
March 3, 2019 (Last Sunday after Epiphany, using the readings for Proper 8)
Luke 6: 39–49
Isaiah 55: 10–13
1 Corinthians 15: 51–58
“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We call it the Golden Rule, and I would guess that most of us think it’s quite a wonderful thing. A nice piece of advice for our kids, and for how we can live in peace.
It’s not just a teaching by Jesus. By the time Jesus walked the earth, it was already an ancient piece of spiritual wisdom. The Golden Rule is held in common by all of the world’s major religions. We can find a version of these words in Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Native spirituality, Sikhism, Taoism. They all point to a spiritual wisdom about the interconnectedness of life.
Treat all other creatures as you wish to be treated.
And if it were just a general rule for life, it would be a good teaching for us.
But Jesus does something different with it. It’s not just about living well with others. It’s not just about being nice to other people. Christian faith is not about being nice people.
In the context of the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, the Golden Rule becomes quite a radical thing. It’s about living with others as God lives with us. It’s about imitating God. It’s about becoming God’s kingdom people.
Listen to Jesus again.
“Love your enemies.
“Do good to those who hate you.
“Bless those who curse you.
“Pray for those who abuse you.
“Offer the other cheek to those who smack you.
“Give your shirt to someone who steals your coat.
“Give to everyone who begs.
“Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and you will receive.”
And in all of this, says Jesus, “Do good and expect nothing in return.”
Now that’s a little different than being nice. It is a radical way of living. And in Jesus’ day, it was even more radical.
In Jesus’ day, it was widely accepted that relationships were reciprocal. When a person acted generously towards you, you were expected to return the generosity. That’s what Jesus means when he says that “even sinners do that”. It was part of the common way of being in a relationship.
It’s still part of the way we live. You get a dinner invitation … and we expect that we should return the invitation. You get a gift, and you expect yourself to give a gift in return some time in the future.
And if you live that way, says Jesus, if you relate to other people based on reciprocity, then you’re only living out the qualities of life in the old age. Anyone can do that, says Jesus.
But if you want to live in the new age of God … if you want to live as the people of God … then you’ll live by different standards, with different ways of being, with new ways of relating to one another. God’s people live in different ways. Kingdom people live by different priorities—love endlessly; give generously; welcome all; don’t repay violence with violence but live by the law of love; help and give without expecting a return.
When we live in the new age of God, we will “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” When we live as kingdom people, we will imitate God, who loves without limits, and expects nothing in return from us.
This is the God to whom Jesus pointed with his whole life. We pray it in our Eucharistic Prayer, “Betrayed and forsaken, he did not strike back but overcame hatred with love.”
In Jesus’ teaching, the Golden Rule isn’t just a nice piece of advice. It becomes the basis for a radical new way of living. If we are the people of God, if we are kingdom people, if we truly are Christian people … our lives have to show it. We have to live like one.
And living as a follower of Jesus is different than living in that kind of reciprocal way, that tit–for–tat kind of way.
Our deepest and truest identity is that we are created for goodness, and we live out that identity as we live as God’s kingdom people.
Now let’s be clear. Jesus isn’t saying that if you are being abused to just take it. Jesus isn’t saying that if you’re bullied, you are to take it. In those instances, bullies and abusers take our choice away from us. This is not counsel to be beat up.
Rather, this teaching, this spiritual wisdom, calls us to live in a different way.
This is what Gandhi meant when he said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
If we claim to be followers of Jesus, then — to put it as simply as I can — we have to follow Jesus. We have to do what Jesus did. We have to live as Jesus lived. We have to trust God as Jesus trusted God. We have to embrace as Jesus embraced. We have to include as Jesus included.
And sadly … the church does not. And I imagine how deeply God weeps over the behavior of the church.
I know it’s hard to live this way. I get it when people say you can’t turn the other cheek. It goes against everything we have been taught. It’s unrealistic in the kind of world we live in. You can’t really take Jesus’ sayings literally.
But the thing is that when we meet violence with violence, we only increase violence.
Yes it’s tough. I know. I struggle with it every day. But have we tried it? G.K. Chesterton once said that “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried.”
The truth is that those who have actually dared to take Jesus at his word have found that it does work.
Think Gandhi, with his way of nonviolent resistance.
Think Martin Luther King, Jr., who found in Gandhi a source of hope and a way of acting. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Think Nelson Mandela, who after he was released from 27 years of brutal arrest said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Think Mother Teresa, who even in the darkest night of the soul continued to help those who needed to be helped.
The words of Jesus seem impossible. The reality of our world, however, shows that we have to find another way.
The way of the gospel is always to try and get us to move in the direction of love.
All Souls Episcopal Church in Washington DC has a sign outside their church building: “Love your neighbour//who doesn’t look like you//think like you//speak like you//pray like you//vote like you//Love your neighbour//No exceptions.”
The gospel in a nutshell.
The movement of God’s Spirit is always … always … toward openness, welcome, inclusion, acceptance, affirmation, and love.
It’s a hard way, I know. Some people are almost impossible to love. Some people will have offended us. Some people will have hurt us. Some people will have alienated us. Some people will have stolen from us. Some people will have taken advantage of us. Some people will have cursed us and destroyed our reputation.
And Jesus says, “It doesn’t matter.”
If you’re a Christian, if you’re a follower of Jesus, then Jesus calls us to: “Do to others as you would have them do to you. Be compassionate as our loving God is compassionate with us. Do it all without expecting anything back.”
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
February 24, 2019 (7th Sunday after Epiphany, Proper 7)
Luke 6: 27–38
Genesis 45: 3–11, 15
1 Corinthians 15: 35–38, 42–50
Someone asked me last week, “How much should I give to the church?”
It’s a great question, and particularly apt for the day we’re holding our AGM. So I’m going to ignore today’s readings and talk about the question of giving instead.
Here’s the short answer: I can’t tell you how much you should give. That’s a decision each of us has to make for ourselves.
The longer answer is that I can share some principles which I and other people have found helpful in our lives to help us make the decision of how much we want to give.
And just so you know … full disclosure … I love talking about money. A mentor of mine once said, “I can easily tell you what’s important in your life. Show me your calendar and your chequebook!” How we spend our money says something about what we think is important.
That’s why Jesus has more to say about money in the gospels than any other single subject. “Where you treasure is, there your heart will be.” Notice the order of that sentence. What we treasure will determine where our heart is, where we invest our time and energy.
So that starting point for me is to ask, “What do I treasure?” To put it another way, “How important is my faith to me? How much is my relationship with God worth?”
Notice this … I didn’t say a word about the church’s needs. I didn’t say that the church needs money to operate … to keep the lights on, to heat the building, or to pay my salary.
Yes, Christ Church needs money to operate — about $170,000 for 2019. But that’s not the main point. It’s not primarily about the church. It’s mostly about our relationship with God, and our human need to give.
How do I decide how much I give? I use five principles in my own life. I call them the RRPPR’s.
The first principle: We give in Response. We don’t give to earn God’s love or God’s blessings. We have already received blessing upon blessing—food, shelter and clothing; generally pretty good health and health care; our friendships with other people; the love we receive from others. All this comes to us as a gift.
We didn’t earn it. We don’t necessarily deserve it. Our lives are pretty cozy and comfortable. We could so easily have been born in a poor nation or in a drought–stricken place or in a place torn apart by violence. But here we are, in a wealthy country, with mostly good government, in a place where we have enough for our needs and even some left over for our wants.
We worship a God of unconditional love … and we respond by blessing others as we have been blessed, by loving as we have been loved, by giving as we have received. We give in Response, a mark of our gratitude for all God’s blessings. We build a culture of gratitude, of thanksgiving, in our lives and in our church.
Response.
The second principle: We give Regularly. We want to show our gratitude on a regular basis. It can’t be hit or miss, once in a while, just when we feel like it. Gratitude becomes one of the habits of our lives.
I give weekly. Every week, I place my offering envelope on the plate when it comes forward. Some of you give monthly. Others give through pre–authorized debit. It doesn’t matter when you give, but the point is that giving becomes a habit, part of the fabric of our lives.
Every Saturday, I do my finances for the week. I write a cheque for the church, and as I do so, I think about the love and joy I receive here most of the time and I smile at how being part of Christ Church has enriched my life.
Response. Regularly.
The third principle: We make giving a Priority. If the heart of the matter is our relationship with God, then it becomes a priority in our lives. God doesn’t take second place to groceries or car payments or the mortgage. Yes, those other things are all important, but we need to keep them in their proper place … and their proper place is secondary. Other things are primary in our lives —our relationships with other people, our relationship with God. That’s what the Great Commandment is all about—to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves.
And if we love God with all that we are, then our faith and our giving become a priority in our lives.
Response. Regularly. Priority.
The fourth principle: We give Proportionally. In practical terms, this is probably the most important principle all to help us determine how much we can give.
Simply put, proportionality means this: how big a proportion of my income is my faith worth to me?
Not all of us can give the same amount. We don’t all have the same income, we don’t have the same expenses or obligations. Some of us have received more, some less.
The principle of proportional giving suggests that we strive to give the same proportion. That’s the Biblical concept of the tithe. We are invited to give 10% of our income for God’s mission in the world.
My own practice in this is that for every dollar I receive, I give 10¢ to the church … and then I also give above that to other worthwhile causes. For me, the church is first because we have made a commitment to working with God in God’s mission in the world. My baptismal covenant is my commitment to serving God in and through the church.
Furthermore, for me personally, the tithe is a beginning point. I actually try to be even more generous than that. As I gather my papers for income tax season this year, I’m delighted to say that I gave almost 17% of my income away last year.
And four things happen:
- I feel good about myself. I have done some good in the world, and I feel good about being able to do that.
- In my own small way, I contribute to the goodness in the world. In my giving, I make the world a better place.
- The Canadian government helps me to give. I get 46% of my giving back through tax deductions … which means I am able to give even more, thanks to Justin and his gang. What a deal!
- I live better on 84% of my income because I am in control of my spending. I live in abundance, because I know how blessed I am.
Let me challenge you to think about your giving in this way. What proportion of your income are you giving now? What proportion would you like to give?
Response. Regularly. Priority. Proportionality.
The fifth principle: We dare to Risk. It feels risky to give. We’d rather keep. But we believe God is calling us into a future marked by grace and love. We believe that God continues to bless us. We believe that God is trustworthy and faithful.
So we move into God’s future. We don’t know what the future will bring, but we do know that God is present in that future. The life of faith is not a life of being settled and secure. We move into God’s future with a sense of trust.
We follow God faithfully, as Abraham and Sarah did, as Moses and Miriam did, as Jesus did, as countless followers of Jesus have done ever since.
Generosity and giving are a part of that future, and risk is a part of that. As God’s people, we walk boldly into God’s new future, which God is creating in every moment.
Response. Regularly. Priority. Proportionality. Risk. The RRPPR’s.
Our faith, our relationship with God, our trust in God, is a matter of the heart. We believe from the heart. We give from the heart.“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.”
As I said at the very beginning, Jesus says more about money in the gospels than any other single subject — more than love, more than faith, more than hope, more than joy, certainly more than sex or sexual orientation.
What about us? Where is our treasure?
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Dr. Yme Woensdregt
Luke 6: 17–26
1 Corinthians 15: 12–20
Jeremiah 17: 5–10
February 17, 2019 (6th Sunday after Epiphany, Proper 6)