The Blessing: A Sermon for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost

Photo Credit: Oboakpeyrenyehavwo on Unsplash

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.

 

Continuing with Jacob’s story, a lot has happened since last week’s fiasco. Jacob is homeward bound after 20 years in Paddan-aram. During his two-decade sojourn in Haran, he has become exceedingly rich and the father of 12 sons who will become the namesakes for the 12 tribes of Israel. Despite the trickery and manipulation that we have experience from Jacob, God seems to have been with him at every turn, working continually for his good and ensuring Jacob’s success in every endeavor.

 

But now, Jacob faces danger all around. Going back over the events that have transpired during the chapters of Genesis since last week, Jacob has made promises never to go north again (Genesis 31:43-53). Forced south, he learns that his brother Esau – whom Jacob treated horribly in the past, as you remember (25:29-34; 27:1-45) – approaches with 400 men. Jacob divides his camp into two, accepting the reality that Esau may easily strike down one of them (32:7-8). He prays a desperate prayer to God, begging to be delivered from the hand of his brother (32:9-12). He lines up gifts to alleviate Esau’s anger (32:13-21). Then, at the outset of today’s passage, under the cover of darkness, he sends his family and belongings across the Jabbok River (32:22-23). We’re not given a reason why Jacob is off standing alone, why he didn’t go with his family, but while he is alone, out of nowhere, someone wrestles with him. The text doesn’t tell us who the assailant is, making us wonder if Esau is finally getting his long-sought revenge.

 

It is a curious incident. An unidentified man wrestles with Jacob until dawn. There’s no information about who this man is, or where he came from, or why he attacked Jacob. When this strange man realizes he isn’t going to win the fight, he hits Jacob in the hip, injuring him. The man begs Jacob to let him go, which he does, on one condition. Jacob asks for a blessing. What an interesting thing to request of a man who wrestles you in the dead of night for no obvious reason. Why would Jacob request a blessing from his assailant?

 

When we think of a blessing, we think of receiving the blessing of God. It’s something good and wholesome. Something to be cherished. It brings us comfort. However, to bless each other is to lay aside all hostilities and affirm the goodness in the other person. Good things often accompany blessings, like generous gifts. When God blesses someone, it means that their needs are met. They’re made whole and surrounded by peace. When Jacob requests a blessing, he is asking for the wrestling to stop and that there be peace between the two men.

 

Ultimately, this odd stranger gives Jacob a blessing, and renames him “Israel”, while refusing to provide Jacob with his own name. Then he disappears as mysteriously as he came. But who was this man? The name Jacob gives to the place, Peniel, let us know that his assailant was God. In Hebrew, Peniel (or Penuel) means “the face of God”.

 

We often shy away from this story because Jacob’s wrestling with God is not always seen in a good light. It’s more likely be to read as Jacob’s lack of faith in God. And a lack of faith, in many circles, is deemed a crisis. However, if we don’t wrestle or struggle with God, our faith remains at a basic level, untested and unexamined. We sometimes feel like we need to be at peace with God before entering a church or other sacred spaces. But the Bible welcomes those struggling with the divine – seeing this struggle as central to Israel’s identity. In fact, even the name Israel proves this statement. In Hebrew, there are several translations for “Israel”, including “God is righteous”, “God is exalted”, “God shines”, and “God rules”. Israel can also be translated as “wrestles with God”.

 

God doesn’t expect us, or our faith, to be perfect. Jacob’s blessing from God doesn’t come when he’s achieved superstar status as a saint. It comes when he’s made a mess of his life, feels trapped, is all alone, and has nowhere to go. He’s in the middle of a wrestling match. But there, amid darkness and confusion, God gives him goodness. We too, amid our struggles, can be assured that God still has good things in store for us.

 

This is the story of Jacob, and of God’s people Israel, who will grow from his 12 sons. Jacob’s refusal to let go of God is what raw, honest faith looks like. Faith is not just passively submitting to God; it is grappling, contending, tenacious, and persistent. Faith is a wrestling match. It’s grabbing hold of God and refusing to let go, despite the struggle, the time, the risks, the injury. Because, in the end, the blessing is worth it. This is the story of Jacob, and of Israel. And it is our story too.

 

So, what is your “Peniel” moment? When have you wrestled with God? When have you seen God’s face? What are the battle scars that have been imprinted on your life and faith? The blessing on offer to us from Genesis 32 is that even in the midst of real struggle, in the darkest of nights, if we refuse to let go, yes, we may come away injured, marked, limping – as did Jacob. But if we just hold on, we might also come away with a blessing and having caught a glimpse of the very face of God. We will wrestle with our faith at times in our lives, and sometimes faith itself feels like wrestling. And we won’t come out of the match unscathed, but we will emerge blessed and changed.

 

As Glinda and Elphaba say, “Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”

 

Amen.

Resources:

workingpreacher.org

"New Collegeville Bible Commentary: Old Testament" edited by Daniel Durken

Stay the Week: A Sermon for the 9th Sunday After Pentecost

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.

 

Over the last few weeks, we have been hearing the story of Jacob. So far, we have known Jacob as a trickster, a manipulator, and a self-serving, lying for his own gain type of person who is more concerned with personal security and preservation than giving a hoot about family traditions and cultural values.

 

He used Esau to be pulled out his mother’s womb. He then bamboozled his brother out of his firstborn birthright by trading it for a bowl of "red stuff," as Esau names the soup. Finally, with the careful connivance of his mother Rebekah, Jacob tricks his dying blind father, Isaac, out of the patriarchal blessing, first given to Abram so long before. So, with birthright and blessing in hand, Jacob runs for his life from the justifiable rage of his brother.

 

In today’s reading, he is out to find himself a wife from the family of his crafty Uncle Laban, his mother’s brother. But before we talk about that, I want to give you a brief overview of what happened in the first half of Genesis 29, which we didn’t have the luxury of hearing but is an important piece to today’s story.

 

Spurred on by his "ladder dream," Jacob makes his way through the desert. Exhausted, hot, thirsty, and surely near the end of his rope, he comes upon a well. There are three flocks of sheep lying around the well; and on the top of it, there was a large stone. The custom of the people of the area was that when all the flocks from the area got to the well, the shepherds would roll away the stone from the top of the well, they would water their sheep, and then they would put the stone back on the top of the well. This would all be done as a team. After speaking with the shepherds, Jacob discovers that he has arrived in Haran and he is excited! Haran is the land of his mother’s family!

 

Jacob begins to ask the shepherds about his uncle and family, but in the middle of the conversation, Laban's daughter, Rachel appears in on the horizon and with her is a huge flock of sheep. A huge flock of sheep means Uncle Laban is rich! And since Jacob’s modus operandi is security, he quickly hatches a plan to be alone with Rachel.  He figures charm the daughter and get an easy "in" with Uncle Laban.

 

As Rachel gets closer, however, Jacob's sole motivation to connect with Uncle Laban fades. Rachel is so beautiful that Jacob is knocked over. Rachel isn't just a rich girl, she's a pretty rich girl, and that’s about all Jacob needed to know.  It’s love at first sight!

 

Jacob shows off to Rachel by lifting the stone from the well – you know that one that usually takes all the shepherds to move – and waters Rachel’s sheep. And then, like a gallant knight in shining armor, he takes Rachel’s hand and gently kisses it.

 

Laban is soon told of the appearance of his nephew, and he runs out to meet Jacob. Over the next while, Jacob tells his Uncle Laban the whole story, even how he swindled his brother out of his birthright for soup, and how he tricked his old Dad Isaac with the goatskin to get a blessing! Laban, the king of manipulators himself, slaps his nephew on the back shouts a telling phrase: "You are surely my bone and my flesh!" He means more than they are just related; they are in fact two peas in a tricky pod, one trying to best the other the very minute they meet!

 

Laban invites Jacob to stay for a month in his house. At the end of that month, he asks Jacob, “Tell me what you’re doing here, what do you really want?” And so, Jacob tells him that he wants Rachel as his wife. And now we get back to today’s reading where the trickery awaits.

 

Laban tells Jacob that just because he’s family doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be paid for his work with the flocks and herds. Jacob offers 7 years of employment in exchange for Rachel’s hand in marriage. Laban agrees to exchange Rachel for 7 years of labour. When the 7 years are up, Jacob goes to collect his pay. A great marriage feast is arranged at the end of which a veiled woman is thrust into Jacob’s tent.

 

Maybe he was drunk, maybe she was heavily veiled, maybe it was really dark, but somehow Jacob didn’t realize until the next morning that he had in fact married the wrong woman. He went storming off to Laban to demand an answer. It was then that Laban revealed the custom of the eldest marrying first which is why Jacob found Leah in his bed. How ironic that birthright is the reason for the switch. By the way, the custom of taking the older daughter before the younger was the same for Jacob's people, but we know that honoring tradition was not at the top of Jacob’s priority list.

 

Crafty Uncle Laban doesn’t stop there. He provides yet another deal to the younger, less sophisticated manipulator. “Stay with Leah through the week and then you get Rachel at the end. And I can do this for the low, low price of another seven years of labour.” Because his love for Rachel was so strong, Jacob felt he had no choice but to agree or he would have had to give her up forever.

 

It’s hard to find a moral to this story. Laban’s trickery won out, unloading both daughters onto Jacob and getting 14 years of free labour out of it. A tough topic considering women’s rights and equality, and Jacob as the victim of “what goes around comes around” karma.

 

But if we look deeper into Jacob’s part in this story, there is a glimmer of a silver lining. Jacob gets swept away when he sees something he wants and he works hard for it. But after working so hard, he didn’t get quite what he was expecting. Isn’t that the way sometimes? We get our hopes up for something and in the end, the grass only appeared greener on the other side?

 

But maybe we need to follow Laban’s advice – “wait a week, and you’ll get Rachel too”. In other words, stick around for a while longer, trust that it was God who has led you here, trust that God knows what God is doing, be faithful to where God has led you, to what you have been called to do. Sometimes in the process of facing the morning after, you realize that “Rachel', or the ideal, comes as a result of working things through and not leaving the table when you get disappointed, or when things aren't turning out as you expected. It takes patience and trust that the struggles, the disappointments, and all the ugly are part of God’s plan for your life and that sticking with it will eventually put you exactly where you are meant to be.

 

The parables found in Matthew today have a similar lesson of living through the tricky and the ugly before finding the beauty of God’s Kingdom. These parables do not describe the kingdom in any specific way, but show us a series of snapshots taken from different perspectives. No single picture is definitive, but each provides a glimpse that adds to our understanding.

 

In the first of the parables, the kingdom of heaven is compared to a mustard seed that, when sown, grows into a tree in whose branches birds come to nest. The image of the mustard seed highlights initially its smallness and its invisibility when it is sown. Then the image expands to include its inevitable growth and flourishing, its resultant large size that contrasts with its small beginning, and its hospitable environment that sustains nesting birds.

 

In the second parable, Jesus is telling the story of a woman who was busy making bread. Bread made simply from water and flour is dry and very hard. That is why we mix it with leaven. When you put the dough in a warm place, at the right temperature, the leaven changes the quality of the bread and through the process of fermentation, the whole dough is filled with air, and it becomes very soft. Three measures of flour are enough to bake bread for 100-150 people. The point is that even a tiny quantity of leaven has power to affect a large quantity of flour.

 

The usual interpretation of these parables is that big things have small beginnings, which makes sense as each parable talks about something small blossoming into something quite grander. Until you realize, however, that neither mustard seed nor yeast was viewed positively in Jesus’ world. Mustard was a weed, dreaded by farmers the way today’s gardeners dread English Ivy or Scotch Broom. It starts out small, but before long has taken over your field. Similarly, yeast was a contaminant and almost always represents the wicked nature of sin when mentioned in the Bible.

 

Why, then, compare the kingdom of God to a weed and a pollutant? Because both mustard seed and yeast have this way of spreading beyond anything you’d imagined, infiltrating a system and taking over a host. The Gospel of God’s coming kingdom is threatening before it is comforting, ugly before it is beautiful. It invades our whole world and taints the reality we’ve grown to accept, challenges the views we’ve lived by, and calls into question assumptions that have guided much of our lives in the world.

 

God’s new reality is closer than you think, already seeping into your life even though you can’t always feel it. No matter what it may look like, God’s kingdom will prevail. And so, in the face of war, we claim God’s peace. When confronted with illness, we look to God’s eternal healing. When faced with hate, we proclaim love. Why? Because the kingdom is coming and, before you know it, will transform everything.

 

But first we must have patience and trust. God’s disruptive, life changing, and ultimately life-giving kingdom is coming. It will take some patience, trust, and perseverance to await it, and when it comes it will likely not be what we expect and perhaps not what we even wanted. But to those who recognize there is something more out there than the world has offered, to those who are willing to acknowledge the deep ache in their hearts for a sense of true if also illusive joy, then it will come as more than we could have imagined and will invade, take over, and transform our lives.

 

Jacob’s story teaches us that while we may not always get what is expected, we should trust that this place that we are in right now could be exactly where God wants us or has been leading us all along; trust that God is working right here, to bring about things we don’t even know about that are yet to come!

 

The parables give us a chance to make the kingdom life and reality Jesus preaches a tad more concrete by pointing us to those whose actions are perhaps inexplicable according to the logic of the world but in tune with the promises of the kingdom.

 

Church is the place where we remind each other of God’s promises and point to places in our lives and the world where we catch glimpses of its presence.

 

Perseverance, patience, and trust. Get through the morning after. Stay the week. Put in the work. You’ll get there in the end.

 

Amen.

What's Your Call Story? A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday After Pentecost

I come to you this morning in the name of Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.

 

How did you end up here? What’s your call story?

 

During the process of seeking ordination, you spend a lot of time think about these questions. It’s a very important step on the path to ministry. As Christians, we may not think about it in those terms necessarily, but the call remains one of Christianity’s identifying features. Why are you following Jesus Christ? How did Christ call you? Why do you continue to be a disciple of Christ? Why do you have faith in God?

 

God calls us in the most unusual, unexpected, and exciting ways. This morning, we heard about two guys receiving their call.

 

First, we have Abram, a 75-year-old man, married to Sarai, and who have unfortunately been childless. Abram receives a divine commission to leave his family and go where God sends him. Abram is not a young man, and journeying off across the desert probably wasn’t high on his bucket list. But, as far as we can tell from the text, Abram and Sarai pack themselves up, grab Lot, and head off. Abram’s faith in God was so strong, that he simply trusted God knew what God was asking of them. Abram heard God’s call, listened to it, and followed it.

 

There is a bit of a snag, though. God’s call to Abram was to “make of you a great nation.” How is a nomadic man of advanced years with a barren wife supposed to create a great nation? Seems like an odd calling, don’t you think? Well, I’m sure God knows what’s best. Let’s check out the other calling being made this morning.

 

In the Gospel, we have Jesus, walking along down the street, minding his own business, when he sees a man sitting at a tax-collecting station. By all appearances this was a “chance encounter.” Jesus had just finished delivering a message to a large crowd that had followed him to the lakeside, so he was probably trying to steal some time alone in quiet contemplation. Or maybe he was on his way to his next preaching stop. All the scriptures tell us is that Jesus was walking and he saw this man. Doesn’t seem to be anything special about Matthew. Just a junior clerk in the Roman equivalent of Canada Customs, going about his daily business of collecting taxes from those who were transporting goods along the road that Jesus happened to be travelling.

 

Jesus simply says, “follow me” and up Matthew got and followed him. Just like that. Matthew gets up, leaves behind his tax collector status, and becomes a disciple of Christ. His response is immediate and total. No questions asked, as far as we can tell. And, really Jesus? A tax collector? Seems like an odd calling, don’t you think?

 

If you were to go through the bible and find all the passages that tell us about people called by God and Jesus, none of them are people you would expect to be called, and, while some of them fight it in the beginning, many of them answer the call without question. Just drop their whole lives and walk away.

 

Matthew’s story is an excellent example of the unexpected person being called into discipleship. A tax collector was ostracized, socially despised, and corrupt. They were considered to be collaborating with the Romans to make their fellow Jews even more submissive to the Empire than they already were. And they had a reputation of being dishonest, as they tended to charge more than required and would keep the difference for themselves. So being a tax collector, Matthew doesn’t seem like the kind of guy we picture Jesus calling to spread the good news of the kingdom.

 

However, the healthy and wealthy were, and are, not the ones at the centre of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus tells us that healthy people aren’t the ones in need of a doctor, the sick ones are. These are the people with whom Jesus dined that night, and invited Matthew to join him at the table. Given his background, Matthew would have blended in nicely with the rest of the social and moral outcasts. And maybe that’s what Jesus saw in Matthew – someone who could bridge the gap between the marginalized and the Saviour. Perhaps Matthew was called to spread the gospel because those at the bottom may be more likely to listen to someone sitting at the bottom with them. The divine kingdom welcomes social outcasts like Matthew, and he was chosen to be a public example of that inclusivity.

 

Jesus calls these outcasts to have a meal with him; he invites them to the table, to the intimate relationship of sharing food. While others question Jesus’ choice in dinner company and discipleship, Jesus knows exactly what he’s doing. Jesus knows exactly who he is here for. He is not here for those who use scripture and the law to secure righteousness for themselves, but for those who admit that they don’t know where to even begin or if they should begin at all. Jesus is not waiting for us to become worthy, well-studied, and perfectly religious. Jesus meets us where we are, just as we are. In mercy God invites us all to trust that we are not called because we are ready but because, in Jesus, God’s salvation comes near.

 

Like Mathew, we can choose to follow Christ. Like Abraham, we can live into the promise of God in faith. Each day we make decisions about our life. And we always have the choice to follow Christ, live a life of love, and trust that God is in full control of the situation when the unexpected people are called into discipleship.

 

And there is no one definitive way to answer God’s call, no one way to follow Christ, because there is no one call for everyone, but one unique call for each of us. God knows us better than we know ourselves, knows our potential, knows our gifts, and knows our weaknesses. Though we may not know what we might have to offer, God has unwavering faith in us, and all we need to do is answer the call, doing nothing more than bringing what we have.

 

So open your hearts and minds and ponder the questions once more – How did you get here? What is your story? At coffee time, I invite you to share your story with someone or ask other people to describe their story to you. While you are sharing stories, remember these words – God loves you, each and every one, exactly as you are, without reservation, more than you can ask or begin to imagine.

 

And that is good news indeed.

 

Amen.

Resources

fccucc.org

episcopalchurch.org

"New Collegeville Bible Commentary: Old Testament" edited by Daniel Durken

"New Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament" edited by Daniel Durken

"Feasting on the Word" edited by David L Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor

Bishop Michael Pryse

God is Not Binary: A Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday

I come to you in the name of Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.

 

While some places have already started their celebrations, June is officially Pride Month. Pride started as a protest movement, born in the Stonewall riots of 1969. These riots were a series of violent confrontations that began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, between police and gay rights activists outside the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. As the riots progressed, an international gay rights movement was born.

 

This season has, historically, been a time of advocacy and protest for basic human rights to be shared with sexual and gender minorities. And I would love to say that things have gotten better but considering things like the anti-2SLGBTQIA+ laws continuing in the US and around the world (especially anti-trans laws), the high rate of murders against the community, and the heightened debate around the rights of transgender people, this unfortunately is a topic that needs to remain in the forefront.

 

It feels appropriate that the reading for today, as we kick off Pride Month, is the first chapter of Genesis, one of the stories of creation, a story frequently used against queer people to say that we shouldn’t exist, both from a sexuality perspective and also from a gender perspective. This creation story is a story filled with apparent binaries.

 

A lot can be said in celebration of the binary. It’s an ancient system of organization, dividing reality into complementary or contradictory halves. Binary thinking is said to be a trait of Enlightenment thinking as modernity desired to classify and categorize, and with that to control. Binaries give easy handles. Pairs. Opposites. They’re definitive, comprehensive, and universal.

 

Binaries come in handy when trying to explain and teach. Think true/false tests and yes/no answers. Male-female. Right-wrong. Conservative-liberal. First world-third world. Capitalist-socialist. Civilized-uncivilized. White-black. Rational-irrational. Human-beast. Spiritual-material. Friend-enemy. Clean-unclean. Either-or. Good-bad.

 

Arranging reality in black-and-white terms can make it as interconnected as swirls of yin and yang or as conflicted as two armies squared off on a battlefield. Dualisms are appealing but often fail to tell the whole story. The story from Genesis and all the binaries found within is a perfect example of this.

 

“God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (1:5) Light and dark, day and night. These are two distinct and opposite binaries. But is there only light and dark, day and night? What about gray, dusk, and dawn?

 

“And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’… God called the dome Sky… Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’… God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas.” (1:6, 8, 9, 10) People used to believe that the sky was heaven and the only way to get there was to die.

History has given us airplanes to the sky and shuttles to space creating all the in-between spaces of the atmosphere. As for land and sea, who doesn’t like a good beach? If there were strictly land and sea, there would be no beaches, nor would there be swamps.

 

“And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’… And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’” (1:20, 24) Here come the fish, birds, insects, creepy crawlies, and every type of animal and creature you can imagine. According to the binary system, fish will swim and birds will fly. What about the fish that fly and the birds that swim? Insects that both crawl on the ground and fly in the air? Not so clear cut, is it?

 

Finally, after light and dark, after sky, sea, and land, after fish and birds, after insects and animals, God creates human beings. Here is the damning verse, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (1:27) When Christians think about gender, they return to this verse. If you grew up hearing these stories and living with people who seemed to fit inside these gender boxes, the existence of transgender people might seem to fly in the face of God’s created order. However, when we look just a little closer at each of the passages in the creation story, we find a much more complex and beautiful world. When God finally gets around to creating people, it’s after creating all of those other opposites. Humans, then, are also created in an opposite pair – male and female.

 

The text might set up these binaries, but God’s creation exists in spectrums. No one would argue that a penguin is an abomination for not fitting the categories of Genesis 1, or that a beach isn’t pleasing to God because it’s neither land nor sea. In the same way, God gives every human a self that is unique and may not always fit neatly into a box or binary.

 

I believe that many people understand Genesis 1 to be a story, a metaphor of how the world came into being, not a scientific paper. I think there has been enough scientific proof that the world was created over the millennia, not a week. But many Christians get stuck on the binaries listed within the text, especially with regards to gender. We don’t have to argue that dark and light mean only dark and light, or male and female mean only male and female. But they can also encompass all that falls between what is named.

 

Rather than writing Genesis 1 off as fiction that doesn’t match reality, affirming Christians recognize that the stories set down in this chapter were never meant to catalogue all of creation, but rather to point us towards God’s power and love. Not every microbe and constellation must be named in this chapter in order to have a purpose and a blessing. God’s creatures are all wondrous, strange, delightful, and surprising. All are necessary to the fullness of creation, from amoebas and spiders to buffalo and orangutans.

           

The story of creation lists many binaries, but does that mean God didn’t create everything in between? It’s as if God got bored creating binaries after a few days and began to have some fun. Despite the push to honour God’s binary creation, perhaps blurring that binary was always part of the plan. Days and nights enjoy fuzzy transitional moments we call dawn and dusk. Swamps are neither dry land nor lakes, necessitating the curious term wetland. The Genesis writer takes pains to describe the uniqueness of human beings who bear the divine image and they represent perhaps the greatest binary: not maleness and femaleness but rather the division between a species bearing God’s likeness and all the rest. As Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, once said, “Each of us is made in the image of God. That’s why we have the chance to encounter Christ in every person we meet – especially those on the margins.”

 

Binary pairs are useful for simplifying large amounts of information we are required to process. But binaries are limiting and inadequate. If binaries are part of a grand project to categorize and explain, and probably also control and restrict, it is amazing how small and limited to our time and circumstances many of our most cherished binaries actually are, especially when it comes to gender.

 

After hearing all of this, I hope we will recognize our responsibility to challenge traditional understandings of gender because of the danger they pose to some of God’s children. I want us to acknowledge our responsibility to rework our theology to remove the binary as a show of support and advocacy for transgender people. And I want you to know that your role in this is to accept all people as members of the family of God, and thus your siblings in Christ. You never know whose life you may save. Amen.           

Empowered by the Holy Spirit: A Sermon for the Day of Pentecost

Grant us your peace, we pray, as justice and love pour down upon the yearning earth. Amen.

 

I want everyone to sit tall in your seats, as you are able. Feet flat on the ground. Hands on your lap. Close your eyes, think about the readings you’ve heard today, and open your mind to any imagery that might show up.

 

Now, take a deep breath in….and let it out.

And again, deep breath in….and let it out.

Let’s do that one more time,

deep breath in….and out.

 

Excellent! How do you feel after that? What kind of images came to you?

 

Those deep breaths in and out? That’s what the church year is like. We spend six months of the year, hurrying about in high holiday mode as we muscle our way through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Eastertide, taking deep breaths and holding them in as we come into each holy season, praying that we get everything right. And then the other half of the year we get to sit in Ordinary time. And I don’t mean “humdrum” time. I mean a time to exhale, a time to reflect on all that happened in the other six months, a time to grow into the lessons we heard and learned.

 

Next week we will celebrate Trinity Sunday as the final day before we exhale and head into Ordinary time. But first, there is today, Pentecost, the fiftieth and the last day of Eastertide. You will hear some people call this the birthday of the church. But a friend of mine has a different take on it that I really like. Celebrating Pentecost as a birthday lead us to self-congratulatory reflections of “yay us!” causing us to turn inward. Pentecost is more than that. Pentecost is the “empowerment of the church. Recognizing this helps us reflect on what we are empowered for. We turn outward; we celebrate not our existence but our calling.” Which I think is an excellent way of looking at what’s going on around us, especially as we consider the baptisms we will be celebrating shortly.

 

Luke tells us that the community of disciples is gathered because of the Festival of Weeks. Jesus had promised the arrival of the Holy Spirit not long after his departure and sure enough, on the festival day itself, the Holy Spirit arrives. The scene is spectacular and chaotic: a violent, rushing sound like wind, evoking imagery of the creation in Genesis 1; and then “divided tongues, as of fire” – not a fire that destroys, but rather like the fire that Moses encountered at the burning bush, which was “blazing, yet it was not consumed” in Exodus 3.

 

You see in these verses wind (or spirit) and fire, and as each person was touched by these, we are reminded of the waters of baptism. Air, fire, water. Three of the four ancient elements. But where is earth? Well, we are earth! Human beings, the “adam”, the dust from which we are all created. We, as earth, are incomplete without the other three elements. God as Holy Spirit comes as fire, air, and water so that the dust can be moistened, the air breathed in, and the divine spark put into us so that we can become who we fully are – the messengers of God.

 

The Spirit’s immediate effect is linguistic: many are empowered “to speak in other languages,” and at the same time, each person hears each testimony in their native tongue. Think of a meeting at the United Nations, in which everyone hears the proceedings (through a headset) translated into their language.

 

The upshot of all of this is a sense of togetherness and unity: diverse as they are, everyone understands and can communicate. Accordingly, they’re dazzled, bewildered, and taken aback: “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:12).

 

As if to answer this question, Peter stands and speaks. He cites the prophet Joel, adapting those ancient words to illuminate the present: the final and decisive chapter of history has arrived, the dawn of God’s joyous Jubilee that Jesus declared early in his ministry, and now comes the long-promised “pouring out” of the Holy Spirit upon “all flesh”. Jesus both heralded and inaugurated this new era, and the Spirit will empower a community through whom the movement’s message of healing, liberation, and joy will go out to the ends of the earth.

 

In other words, the church is born and the people within it are empowered! The church is more than the building, more than a gathering in a specific location. The church is God’s empowered people. All of them. And the first act of God’s Spirit at Pentecost honors the diversity and individuality of the believers. God wants the Good News to be heard by all people and in all languages, especially in God’s mother tongue, which is love!

 

This radical new community about which Joel speaks and which Peter says is realized in the earliest Christian community is remarkably inclusive. It is gender inclusive: “your sons” and “your daughters” (2:17); “servants – both male and female” (2:18). It is age inclusive: “your young people” and “your old people” (2:17). And if we are to take seriously the opening (“all people”) of this citation, then this community is also destined to be ethnically inclusive. Diversity is a blessed feature of the Christian life.

 

And we have all been joined by our Baptism into communities of faith that look for – and expect! – the Holy Spirit to come along side us and shake things up, preparing and equipping each and all of us to share the disruptive, surprising, and life-giving words of grace of the God who will not rest until all people enjoy abundant life.

 

Breath means new life; new life means growth and change. The Spirit is breathed onto us to protect, to challenge, to provoke, to push, and to call us into action. The church is on a mission, God’s mission, to love and protect our neighbours as much as God loves and protects us. The church’s ministry begins with the gift of the spirit, not for the sake simply of the church, but for the whole world. The Spirit mobilizes us and opens up new horizons for ministry. The Spirit makes visible and tangible God’s promise to be present, to empower, and to compel testimony. We, as witnesses, testify about God who interjects God’s self into diverse cultures, languages, and life situations making God’s presence felt, heard, and seen, and compelling us to interpret, as best we can, what we have felt, heard, and seen. This is what we will spend “ordinary” time doing.

 

Amen.

Resources

The Reverend Kyle Norman

Hope Revealed: A Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter

Grace, peace, and mercy are yours from the Triune God. Amen.

 

Peter is probably the most celebrated of all Jesus’ disciples. He is always listed first among the twelve, he features prominently in many Gospel stories, and he becomes the cornerstone of the post-Easter church.

 

Peter was ultimately martyred in Rome under the emperor Nero. Nero was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. He is best known for his political murders and a passion for music that led to the rumor that Nero “fiddled” while Rome burned during the great fire of 64 CE. Nero was also a persecutor of Christians. When Peter wrote the words “always be ready with an answer”, it was a very dangerous time to be a Christian, as Nero liked to blame everything that went wrong in the Roman Empire on the followers of Christ.

 

Over the last few weeks, we have been reading from Peter’s first letter. Peter’s audience was Gentile Christians in Asia Minor (a geographic region located in the south-western part of Asia comprising most of present-day Turkey) who were suffering for their faith. The letter was meant to provide them encouragement from someone who knows a bit about suffering and who can testify to them about God’s grace. Peter pressed this community to remain steadfast in living honourably and ethically in spite of hostility from unbelievers.

 

Throughout the letter, Peter offers suggestions that might help make life for bearable for his readers. Specifically in today’s reading, Peter tells his readers that they should be ready to give a defense of the gospel that sustains them, that they must show that they are different in a positive way, that they should concentrate on conducting themselves honourably, so that those who ridicule them will see their honourable deeds and be put to shame, (or possibly converted).

 

Peter wanted his audience to remain faithful to Christ even in the face of pressures to conform to the larger world’s social and religious values. He asked his readers to have courage, to have compassion and gentleness and respect for their assailants, to live lives beyond reproach, to follow the teachings of Jesus, and to love their enemies to the point of death. Those oppressed by the empire were encouraged to respond to their persecution by imitating Christ. By saying “always be ready for an answer”, Peter was urging his readers to fearlessly defend hope, the hope given to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the hope given to us through the eternal love of God.

 

Peter knew that his people would be questioned about the way they were acting. He knew that they would be subject to interrogation about their unconventional lives. But shouldn’t our lives inspire others to ask questions? Christians are called to live just lives that are above reproach. How we live becomes our best defense against those are questioning us. Few among us live under the threat of death, but if we seek to live out our faith in the world, we may indeed encounter systems that oppose our witness. We may not be being persecuted as Peter’s readers were in 1^st century Rome, but there are likely those of us out there who have been questioned by friends, family, and maybe even strangers about why we believe in God, why we believe in Jesus, why we are Christian.

 

How do you respond when someone asks you about being a Christian? Do you become apologetic? Defensive? Do you run away from the conversation? We don’t need to have all the answers. But we need to be willing to talk about it. With each other, with friends and family, with anyone who asks us the question. Having the answer to every question doesn’t prove why we are Christian. Living our life the way Jesus taught us shows others why we are Christian.

 

Our confidence and trust in God’s absolute love for us is revealed through our actions toward others. If we work for justice, if we are doing what is right, we can be sure that our lives are in God’s hands, and that God will have the last word. Christ walks with us in our daily lives. He has already won the victory. Our task is to remain faithful and wait for God’s triumph to be revealed to the world. The author of 1^st Peter encourages his audience, and all of us, to maintain this faithfulness. No matter what trials we may endure we are not to be intimidated. We trust that Jesus lived and died for all of us.

 

We see this faithfulness also in John’s words of hope. Jesus comforts his disciples with words of promise. Once they no longer see Jesus in physical form, he will always be with his disciples through their faith. Jesus’ address in the original Greek is in the plural, meaning that he is encouraging his disciples of every age as a community, to know they will never be alone. Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit will be with them always. “You will know that I am in God, and you in me, and I in you.” This is a comfort to all of us who are challenged with the struggles in this world. For we have that divine presence in us as well. All who are willing to trust in Christ, even though he is not physically present, will be saved and embraced by the loving arms of God. Whatever struggles we face, our triune God is with us always. We who share faith and hope in Jesus Christ are assured of being welcomed into this continual ever flowing dance with the divine.

 

And that is good news indeed. Amen.