A Year-Long Journey Through the Sermon on the Mount: Week 7

Chapter 7 – The Meek

 

“Meekness is teachability.” (42) I had never thought of it this way. Whenever I hear the word meek, I connect it with weak and quiet. In today’s society, where the weak are trampled and the strong are victorious, it’s hard to comprehend the beatitude, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matt 5:5) If one equates meekness to weakness, then how could such a person possibly inherit the earth?

 

However, if we consider Elisabeth Elliot’s words “meekness is teachability”, well now that’s a whole different ball game! If by declaring that the meek will inherit the earth, Jesus is talking about people who are willing to listen and learn from each other, and work together for the betterment of the community, well then of course the meek will inherit the earth!

 

Elliot goes on to say that meekness is “the readiness to be shown, which includes the readiness to lay down my fixed notions, my objections and my ‘what ifs’ or ‘but what abouts’, my certainties about the rightness of what I have always done or thought or said.” (42) Considering this statement, perhaps meekness is the willingness to accept new ways of thinking, or new ways of doing things. Which, if you think about it, makes meek equal to strength. Being open to change is not easy, as I’m sure we can all attest to. Having the strength, the courage, and the ability to consider that your way of thinking and your way of doing things isn’t necessarily the right way or the only way is an important life skill. If you insist on resisting change, then you will be left behind.

 

Admitting that you might be wrong, or that there is more than one way to do things, or that change is necessary to keep society moving is not weakness…it’s meekness. The very characteristic that Jesus calls us to exhibit.

A Year-Long Journey Through the Sermon on the Mount: Week 6

Chapter 6 – Mourning

 

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4) This is the beatitude that we’re examining this week, and my question is how can you feel blessed while grieving?

 

Grief is a difficult emotion. You can experience grief over anything from the discontinuation of your favorite chocolate bar to the death of a loved one and everything in between. To grieve is difficult but it’s also natural. It is only human to be sad when something changes in your life that you didn’t want to change. The difficulty with grief is that you don’t know how it’s going to affect you. Will it be a single tear? Will it be uncontrollable sobbing? Will it be deafeningly silent? The other hard part of grief is that you never know when it will hit. You could feel it immediately, or in a few hours, or a few days. Maybe you thought you finished grieving and then a picture, a smell, or a song comes along and punches you right in the gut and slams you back to the beginning of the grief process. Grief is a difficult emotion that throw you for loops your entire life. So how could you possibly feel blessed while you’re grieving?

 

There are many reasons why people grieve, why they mourn. It could be a small thing, or it could be a big thing, and the size perspective is personal. But no matter what they are mourning, or why they are grieving, there is still a blessing to be had. And that is the blessing of the ever-loving presence of God. Even in the times we feel nothing will ever make us happy again, God is there for us. Even in the darkest of valleys, God will be there for us. It makes me think of Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” As well, the Poem Footprints in the Sand says, “I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints. … ‘My precious child, I love you and will never leave you. Never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you.’”

 

To mourn means that your heart has been broken. The blessing is that God will be your comforter through it all.

Resurrection, Not Resuscitation: A Sermon for the 6th Sunday After Epiphany

Photo by Luan Rezende on pexels.com

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, for you are our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

 

The resurrection of Jesus is kind of a big deal. It’s the crux of our faith. It the center of our Gospel. Without the resurrection, who would we be as Christians? The resurrection of Jesus is kind of a big deal, but how much do we really and truly understand it? It’s one of the great mysteries of our faith. The folks in Corinth were certainly struggling with it, questioning the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and wrote to Pastor Paul to try and get some answers.

 

Paul, in his response back to the church in Corinth, writes of the absolute necessity of the resurrection, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” The Corinthians are struggling with the image of the resurrection of the dead, imagining corpses of their loved ones being brought back to life. I’m sure most of us would have an issue with this as well. But does Jesus physically rise from the dead and is wandering around the world? Is that what happens to us after we die? Does resurrection mean the raising of the physical body of the dead?

 

For Paul, everything stands and falls on the resurrection. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised from the dead, which means we have not defeated death, and the faith of the church is empty and without meaning. To claim there is no resurrection is not only to deny the victory of life over death and love over fear but also denies the culminating Kingdom of God initiated by Christ’s resurrection. If Christ was not raised, then the Kingdom is not at hand. To deny the bodily resurrection is to deny the resurrection of Jesus, which is to deny the Good News.

 

Without the resurrection, everything collapses – our proclamation is in vain thus we are false witnesses of God; our faith is in vain and futile; we are still bound by our sins; and those who have died in Christ are lost forever. In other words, if there is no resurrection, then death wins, and love dies. All of this is at the center of our Christian faith – we are connected to each other through the resurrection of Christ. But does resurrection mean the resuscitation of a dead body? That is what the Corinthians are asking of Paul. In our short piece today, it’s not totally clear what Paul’s answer is about the physical aspects of the resurrection, only that believing in bodily resurrection isn’t optional. But, as you read further into the chapter, Paul tells us that our bodies of flesh and blood will not inherit the Kingdom of God, but that when we die, we will be changed. When our mortal bodies put on immortality, then we will be reunited with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

 

When we’re talking about resurrection and the defeat of death, we’re not talking about the Walking Dead. We’re not talking about zombies wandering about the Earth. Paul clarifies that the resurrection bodies he has in mind are spiritual bodies resulting from a radical transformation. When you consider Jesus’ story, his body is not the same after death as it is before death. Jesus’ body changes – he can disappear and reappear at will; he can walk through walls and doors; he can appear all bright and shiny; and he can appear in disguise if he doesn’t yet want to be known. This doesn’t sound like the same body of the Nazarene carpenter, does it?

 

Paul’s experience of seeing the resurrected Christ changed his perspective on what God was doing for God’s creation. God’s life-giving power had invaded the cosmos and conquered death by resurrecting Jesus. With this act, God declared sure and certain victory over death. Paul’s gospel promises abundant life through resurrection. How can there be a promise of abundant life if God is not stronger than death? If God has not raised Jesus from the dead, then there is no hope that God will raise anyone else.

 

The resurrection of the body stands at the core of being Christian. Belief in the resurrection of the body is what moves Christianity from an ethical code of conduct to pursuing a transformed life. Being Christian is more than just being good. Without the resurrection, Christian faith is reduced to little more than a moral code to guide us on how to live a good life. It is in light of the resurrection that we can understand what it means to give one’s life up for another. It is in light of the resurrection that we can understand what it means to stand with the oppressed and neglected. It is in light of the resurrection that we can join Christ in caring and seeking justice for the vulnerable people in our society.

 

Belief in the resurrection joins us all in a deeply personal response to the love of God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a love that is incarnate and eternal, embodied in our world today just as much as it was 2000 years ago. It gives birth to faithful mission and grace-filled pastoral care. At the core of the gospel is a God who refuses to abandon creation to the corrupting powers of sin and death. At the core of the gospel is a God of life and love. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are all connected in and through God’s love. And that is good news indeed.

 

Amen.

Resources

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

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

"This is Our Faith" by Ian Stuchbery

pulpitfiction.com

workingpreacher.org

episcopalchurch.org

A Year-Long Journey Through the Sermon on the Mount: Week 5

Chapter 5 – Poverty of Spirit

 

Two of the authors of this chapter talk about being poor, poverty, and scarcity. Philip Yancey wonders “why God would single out the poor for special attention over any other group?” (28) He quotes from another writer the supposed advantages of being poor and contrasts them to the disadvantages of being rich. For example, “the poor know they are in urgent need of redemption” whereas “the rich do not know they are in urgent need of redemption.” (28-29) His point was that the poor know better the grace of God than those who are rich and his focus was on the reasoning behind why many clergy, monks, and saints take a vow of poverty. Dorothy Day also focuses on the vow of poverty taken by saints of the past with her point being that the joyful acceptance of hardship lead to a thriving community.

 

Reading Eberhard Arnold’s portion of this chapter, he speaks about the powerlessness of man, about how we can do nothing without God. To feel the full effect of God’s grace, one must dismantle our own power. To feel the power of the kingdom of God, we must relinquish our own power. In doing so, “we declare our dependence on grace.” (32)

 

I have always understood the beatitude of “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” to be going beyond being financially poor, therefore I lean more into Arnold’s take on the poverty of spirit. Letting go of power and putting all trust in God is not easy. Especially when you look around at what’s happening today. How can one possibly feel blessed when the world is crumbling around them? How can a person feel blessed when they are being told they are less than human, when an entire gender is being erased from history, when human rights are disappearing faster than you can blink? Where is the kingdom of God in all of this?

 

As Arnold states, “Let us use this day to give glory to God.” (32) The Holy Spirit is awakening the power of the ally. People are waking up to what’s happening and are starting to fight back. Blessed are the poor in spirit because they have relinquished their power to the Triune God, and they will have the strength of the entire Kingdom of God behind them. And when that happens, nothing will be able to stop them.

I Am What I Am: A Sermon for the 5th Week After Epiphany

Photo by fauxels on pexels.com

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, for you are our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

 

Today’s reading from Corinthians feels like we’ve shot forward to Easter. Paul talks about the death and resurrection of Jesus and plenty of preachers will lean that way this morning. It makes sense. As Christians, the Easter message of Christ’s death and resurrection is the biggest piece of good news that we have! It’s our Gospel! Why wouldn’t we talk about it every chance that we get? We could and we should!

 

But there is a little nugget in verse 10 from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that appears to have been glossed over, overshadowed by Christianity’s most important event. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.” Just before this line, Paul shows his doubts and expresses his unworthiness to stand in the presence of a God of such great mercy and grace. When Paul refers to himself as “one untimely born,” he uses harsh language to contrast his own worth in the presence of the wondrous gift of the God’s resurrection of Christ. But still, he recognizes that by God’s grace he is able to stand with confidence in God’s presence. “I am what I am”, he says.

 

I am what I am. It’s quite the statement. It can have some negative connotations to it, as in “I am what I am and there’s nothing you or I can do about it.” I am what I am so just live with it. Sounds pretty negative when said a certain way. But “I am what I am” can also be a statement of courage in oneself. A lot of people struggle to accept themselves. Perhaps they have been bullied, or abused, or fall outside societal norms, or know they are different but can’t or won’t name it, or have experienced rejection from friend, family, or church. To say to yourself “I am what I am” is one of the hardest things to do. And even if you can say it to yourself, can you say it to everyone else? Can you push aside how you are treated by the public so that you can live the life that you love, to be the person that you are? Many, I might even throw out the word most, people struggle with this on a daily basis. Instead of being themselves, they push it down (whatever “it” might be) and try to live how their friends, family, society, want them to be. Deciding to live by the phrase “I am what I am” will determine the state of your relationships.

 

In the case of the verse in question, Paul is putting his trust in God’s grace and that he knows that relationship has not been in vain. I am what I am, and God loves me anyway. Living as yourself strengthens your relationship with God, even if it weakens it with others. I can tell you that many people in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, especially the transgender community, especially now, struggle with this question. Being told they are an abomination, they go against nature, they go against God…eventually it becomes easier to hide than to take the bullying and negativity. But one can only hide for so long before it eats away at you. When you hear “no” enough times, you begin to believe it.

 

For queer Christians, for transgender Christians, for non-binary Christians, there is a battle raging on whether or not they will be accepted by church peers, and more importantly by God. But verse 10 here can be used to reassure us all that God does indeed love us and accepts us, just the way we are. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.”

 

I came out as transgender near the end of my ordination process and wondering if I would be accepted by other Christians was constantly on my mind. Most especially as I went into one of my final meetings with Bishop Don as he had the power to halt the process and turn me away. I kept hearing Paul’s words, “I am what I am”, but I also took Isaiah to heart, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” In my heart, I just kept saying those words, “Here am I, send me!” God gives us strength when we accept our call. In the midst of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, God is with us. God was with me that day in the bishop’s office and I knew that God’s grace towards me had not been in vain.

 

So, in the midst of the fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that is exploding around us, here I am, still standing before you. I am what I am. God’s grace exists for me just as much as it does for you. I am what I am by the grace of God in a private capacity and upon a level with other Christians. I am a chosen vessel of salvation, not by works, nor on account of faith, or any holiness on my part, but by the grace of God. I am regenerated, called, sanctified, justified, pardoned, and adopted by God’s grace. I am a believer in Christ through faith, as a gift of God's grace, and have the hope of eternal life. I am what I am – a minister of the Gospel, a disciple – and I am in this office purely by the grace of God. I did nothing to earn God’s grace and love except to be who I am – a child of God in the perfect way that God made me. I pray that you can say the same for yourself and to yourself, with strength and with courage, knowing that God will never turn you away.

 

God’s grace works in and through us, shaping our lives so that we, too, can mirror the love and redemption that Christ demonstrated, living with purpose according to his word. I am what I am. You are what you are. We are what we are. And God loves us anyway, today and forever more.

 

Amen.

A Review of the Book "The Wake" by Linden MacIntyre

Title: The Wake

Author: Linden MacIntyre

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Year: 2019

336 pages

From the Back: On November 18, 1929, a tsunami struck Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula. Giant waves, up to three storeys high, hit the coast at a hundred kilometers per hour, flooding dozens of communities and washing entire houses out to sea. The most destructive earthquake-related event in Newfoundland's history, the disaster killed 28 people and left hundreds more homeless or destitute. It took days for the outside world to find out about the death and damage caused by the tsunami, which forever changed the lives of many in habitants of the fishing outports along the Burin Peninsula.

Personal Thoughts: This book was not what I was expecting at all. Perhaps I didn't read the cover properly, but I thought The Wake was going to be about the 1929 tsunami. That storm took up perhaps a dozen pages of the entire book. The rest of the pages were filled with the decades of aftermath that followed. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that; it just wasn't what I was expecting. The title was misleading because although none of the subsequent events would likely have happened without the tsunami, the narrative was almost solely about the mining that happened in Newfoundland. So perhaps a better title would have been The Mines.

    Because I was disappointed in how the book was turning out, I found it difficult to read. Not that the writing was bad, but it felt slow and repetitive as it jumped from one person's story to the next. It probably could have been half the length and still gotten the point across. Again, that could have been because of my unmet expectations.

    In the end, it was an interesting piece of history to have learned, especially as it appears to be a very little known piece of our Canadian history. It is always sad to learn about how poorly we can treat our fellow humans.

A Year-Long Journey Through the Sermon on the Mount: Week 4

 Chapter 4 – Blessedness

 

The pursuit of happiness. Isn’t that what life is all about? The constant pursuit of that one thing, that one item, that one activity, that one person, that one event that will bring us the happiness that we long for. The search for the next best thing that will bring us perfect happiness. Social media is the perfect medium to show us all of the ways we should be happy, and all of the reasons we’re not. We envy what others have and the perfect life you see in their pictures and their posts, and we do everything we can to emulate those supposed perfect lives. But what we see on social media are the edited and filtered images of strangers and acquaintances that we know nothing about. Just because you see someone smiling on their latest Facebook or Instagram post, do you know if they are truly happy? To bring it back inward, consider how many times you may have posted a smiling picture of yourself, but you weren’t really feeling like smiling? Or how many times you’ve bought, chased, or pursued something you though would make you happy, but in the end, that one item, that one activity, that one person, that one event didn’t bring you the happiness you were expecting?

 

Jesus’ beatitudes are sometimes considered a happiness checklist. If you just did the things on Jesus’ list, you would find happiness. But, according to one of this week’s authors, James Howell, “to be ‘blessed’ isn’t catchy advice on how to go and be happy; ‘blessed’ is being swept up in God’s decisive movement in the world.” (23-24) Being blessed means to accept the gifts God has given you, even if they aren’t the gifts you expected. You might feel blessed to have a lot of money or plenty of material possessions, but they won’t necessarily bring you happiness. However, you could feel blessed to be alive, to have a roof over your head, or to have friends and family in your life, and those things might bring you all the happiness in the world.

 

The beatitudes are meant to help us build our relationships, not our happiness. Although, doing so will almost certainly raise our level of happiness. The beatitudes are meant to show us how to treat our fellow human beings and to remind us that even when we are feeling at our lowest, we know that God calls us blessed. As Saint Francis of Assisi states, “be unassuming in speech, be grave in your manner, and grateful for the favors and benefits you may receive. The kingdom of God, which is eternal, will be your reward.” (27)