Transfiguration Sunday (2007): "Shining on the World’s Limits"

Transfiguration Sunday (2007): "Shining on the World’s Limits"
Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36, (37-43)
Preached by Jane Barter Moulaison, February 18, 2007

Every Saturday afternoon kids and I scramble to find the Magic Eye in the weekend Free Press comics. How many of you look at the Magic Eye? How many of you can figure it out fairly quickly?I like looking at it, because I have just recently learned how to do it. I used to be like Elaine Bennis’ boss on Seinfeld, agonizing for hours too see what everyone else did.“Look through the picture,” Mr. Pitt. For years, the fun of Magic Eye was lost on me. But once I got the hang of it, I was able to find the hidden picture immediately.

This morning, I would like to think of the gospel reading, and in particular Peter’s experience, as a bit like that experience of seeing things clearly, and more than seeing something new, Peter was directed to a dimension of reality that he did not think possible. For, although Peter was able to see Jesus, he was not able until the transfiguration to see the full depth of his significance for himself, for the world, for time, until, Christ was transfigured, until Jesus his glory fully. And once this is done, nothing for Peter, or for us, for that matter, could ever look the same. Nothing could be surveyed as merely two dimensional, as flat, as without a greater, fuller meaning, because Peter, in a way like me, has been trained in the gift of seeing Christ as the centre and focal point for all things.

Now obviously, my analogy breaks down in several places. Knowing Jesus is not a trick we cajole our eyes into performing through simply looking at things the right way. But more than this, my analogy breaks down too when one considers that the focus of the transfiguration story is not chiefly Peter, James or John, the onlookers. Rather it is Christ himself who is the centre of dramatic revelation. The focal point is him and what occurs to him.

The particular significance of Jesus as displayed in this morning’s readings can be understood in light of both “mountaintop” readings. The story from Exodus is an important background to the revelation that occurs in the transfiguration narrative. In this reading, we are drawn into the moment after the Israelites’ first transgression against the law given to Moses. Moses had broken the tablets containing the ten commandments, in anguish over the Israelites idolatry of the golden calf. God was angry that the people had broken the commandment against creating idols, but nevertheless forgives his people, and tells Moses to return to the mountain to receive a replacement set of tablets. When Moses goes back down to his people, his face was glowing, because he had just encountered God’s glory. Moses’ radiance was so great, it was difficult for the Israelites to look at him, and so Moses places a veil upon his face.

Why does Moses veil his face? Why must he shield this residue of radiance from his people? Why can they not look directly at him?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian, speaks of the veil of shame that we all wear as a result of our transgressions. Just after the fall in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve clothe themselves because they are ashamed, the ancient Israelites find that the holiness of God is so great that it threatens to consume them in their impoverished state. This wound of shame is something that we all have experienced from time to time. It is what keeps us from being fully vulnerable to the other. It’s that part of us that becomes self-protective, suspicious, that erects boundaries and walls that shield us from others.

For the Israelites, as perhaps for us, their transgressions weigh heavily on their conscience, and God’s graciousness, the return of the Law, was more than they could take. So the Israelites could behold God’s glory, but only through a veil. Think about this as we consider the view from the perspective of the disciples, and of Jesus’ followers.

***

In the second mountaintop story, Peter and James and John accompany Jesus to pray. And as the disciples prayed alongside Christ, suddenly, Christ is transfigured. His clothes become dazzling white, and Moses and Elijah, the Law Giver and the Prophet, are at his side. The fullness of time hangs heavy like fruit upon the tree and Jesus appears at the centre, revealed here as the fulfillment of the great traditions of Israel. Whatever the disciples thought they knew about their own faith and about God, was entirely reoriented as Christ appears as the world’s centre.

Rowan Williams, commenting on the transfiguration, puts it this way:

The whole history of God’s dealings with his people is involved in this: Moses and Elijah are also driven toward us by the same energy. But Jesus alone stands in the very heart of it; it flows through him and in him and from him. It is the light that comes from him and that is reflected on the robes of his companions.
They lived hundreds of years before him, but what makes them radiant, what makes them agents of God, is the light coming from Jesus. …

And the disciples are stunned. They do not know what to do—they do not sleep, although they are tired, but they also cannot run away. They behold the glory of God, through Moses, through Elijah, and consummately, through Christ, and they are not consumed, but remain awake. Peter, like Moses, would construct a veil of sorts, by pitching a tent, wants to hold on to this special time; he wants to honour these most incredible guests. Anything, so that he might contain this experience, and anything so that he might flee it; and no sooner does he utter his disoriented speech, then God swallows them in a great cloud, speaks to them, commands them to listen to Christ. When they return to their ordinary view, of one another and of Christ, they find they do not need a veil on their faces, although the have touched God’s glory directly. In Christ, they have heard and they have seen God , yet and they continue to live. The veil between them and God has been lifted, and from through him, their past, present and future are given their proper orientation.

And so what do they do? Jesus and his disciples return to their ministry. The experience of the mountaintop has not changed their pattern of their lives together, but it changes the ways in which they understood the pattern. No longer can they see their past, their present with Jesus, or the future that leads them ever closer to Jerusalem in the same way, as a simple and straightforward progression. The shame, the fear of vulnerability, the need to protect themselves, all those can recede into the background, for Christ’s true nature has leapt out for them, and thus the world can never be the same again.

The gospel of Luke is often called the gospel of the poor or the gospel of women, the latter being some of the poorest and most marginalized of Jesus time, and so it is no surprise that Jesus and his disciples do not linger at the foot of the mountain, but immediately move into service and healing. Jesus’ transfiguration does not carry the disciples away from their work and witness, but it refers them back to the very things that the did before, but the things they did before can never have the same significance for them.

***

So what does this story from long ago mean for us? We are told, in effect that our commonplace assumptions about reality and about time are not quite accurate. We live our lives thinking of time as an uninterrupted sequence of events, some more interesting than others to be sure, but generally as a line of progression, where we grow incrementally toward maturity. The transfiguration teaches us to look at life and our time very differently. The centre of our time, our existence is not what we think it is. The two-dimensionality of our existence, in which we are constrained by our sense of boundary, of convention, of propriety, all of those are reoriented in light of Christ’s coming. We can no longer say that Jesus was a man who lived two thousand years ago, but rather that, according to scripture, Jesus is the one who is the centre of all time, and whose presence with us still continues to redeem our ordinary time. What we do as we participate in the eucharist together, as we hear the scriptures, as we care for those who are in distress, all those things are best understood as shot through with the glory of Christ. It is for this reason we can never say with ultimate certainty that the meanings of our lives are transparent to us. It is for this reason, we can never pretend that we can fully apprehend the mission of our church, for Christ has entered into our midst, and works through the ordinary stuff of our lives to transfigure us. As Williams writes:

We thus begin to understand how our lives, like those of Moses and Elijah, may have meanings we can’t know in this present moment: the real depth and significance of what we say or do know won’t appear until more of the light of Christ has been seen. And so what we may think is crucially important may not be so; what we think insignificant may be what really changes us for good or evil. Christ’s light alone will make the final pattern coherent, for each one of as for all human history. And that light shines on the far side of the world’s limits…

Perhaps one of the difficulties of our present situation in the church is that we have lost the knack of looking at our lives as that which is only understood through the lens of Jesus Christ. We have lost the confidence that Christ’s light still shines forth, illuminating, us even here and even now. And so we place veils over our eyes, or we pitch tents in order to shield ourselves from the great mission that we have been given, or perhaps we are afraid, because we know that to look upon Christ as the centre of our lives will involve great risk, great vulnerability, that it will lead to the cross. Or perhaps we feel ourselves to be unworthy of a God who is willing to show himself to us, because we think that we will dissolve in our sinfulness and in our shame before him. I was once with a woman as she was dying, and she was thinking about her own transgressions. She had been an alcoholic all her life, and could not face the fact that she would have no more time to try to repair the damage she had done to her family. And she kept saying, “I just can’t get clean; I need to feel clean.” I prayed for her and with her, but I do not know if she ever received and accepted the grace and peace that God offered her. I pray she did. Christ’s transfiguration means that there is no place so dark, there is no limit to the light which radiates from him. The ancient Israelites, no sooner than receiving the Law, break it. And yet God radiates upon them through Moses and the Law he restores. The boy with a demon, who once was thrown to the ground in his pain, is granted peace. The once-terrified disciples become healers. And as for us, there is not one of us for whom the possibilities of our lives are closed. Our lives take on new meaning and new possibility because Christ is at work in its very centre. Let us keep in mind this possibility and this promise as we journey in the weeks ahead toward Christ’s cross.

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "The Community of the Crucified"

6th Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "The Community of the Crucified"
Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1;
 I Corinthians 15:12-20;
 Luke 6:17-26
Preached on February 11th, by the Rev. Preston Parsons

When Jesus descends from the mountain and gives his sermon on the plain, he looks to his disciples and tells them of a great reversal.

Jesus preaches: "You who are poor will inherit the Kingdom of God; you who are hungry will be filled; you who weep will laugh; those of you who are hated, reviled, and defamed – you will rejoice and leap for joy."

But the reversal that Jesus describes doesn't work only one way.

Jesus also preaches: "You who are rich, you will one day be without consolation; you who are full, one day you will be hungry; those of you who are laughing: you're gonna mourn and weep."

I was in a good mood, and enjoying a good meal, when I read this on Tuesday.

None of us are easily let off the hook of this one. Luke, in his rendering of Jesus' sermon, puts us as hearers of the sermon, into one of three groups of people: we might be in the overhearing crowd, the sons and daughters of the ones who persecuted the true prophets, who spoke well of the false prophets; this is not such a good group to be in, but it could certainly be worse. We could be the disciples who are rich, full, and laughing, but whose luck will be overturned for the worse; the good fortune enjoyed by these disciples is going to run out. Jesus calls down to these, “woe to you, woe to you." Or, we can be the disciples who are poor, hungry, weeping, and persecuted, whose fortunes will be overturned for the better; these disciples are the ones who rely on hope. To the ones who rely on hope, Jesus calls out "blessed, blessed."

For this third group, the poor, hungry, weeping, and persecuted disciples, of these Dietrich Boenhoeffer writes that

there is only one place for them, namely, the place where the poorest, the most tempted, the meekest of all may be found, at the cross on Golgotha. The faith-community of the blessed is the community of the Crucified. With him they lost everything, and with him they found everything. Now the word comes down from the cross: blessed, blessed.

I wish that I could make this one easier, to tell you today how we might be able to reconcile wealth with discipleship, but Jesus doesn't leave me with many options. There are the disciples who share the sufferings of Christ, and these disciples, the community of the crucified, receive the blessing. And if there is such a thing as a disciple that doesn't suffer for their faith and commitment to Christ, these, the rich ones who have no need for the community of the crucified, they have already received their reward.

Sounds a lot like bad news for rich Christians! And maybe it is. It might not be a bad idea for us to come to terms with the fact that our wealth won't last. In fact it's probably a good idea for us to come to terms with the fact that our hope ought not to be placed in the things we buy, or even in the good things people say about us. We should probably come to terms with the fact that even our happiness, so long as it is not grounded in Christ, and him crucified, even our happiness won't last. Weep we will, so long as we base our hope in that which will fade and pass, so long as our hope is found apart from the community of the crucified.

Boenhoeffer, as well as so many others who have suffered for their faith, point out that our hope is with the crucified one. Christian fellowship begins not with what we do apart from the crucified one, or even what we do for the crucified one, but in what the crucified one has done for us. Discipleship begins with what the crucified one has done for us, and continues with the suffering we experience in our belonging to this body of Christ, the body of Christ crucified.

What haunts me as I read these kinds of texts is that it might very well be, that if we are not suffering for our faith, then we do not properly know what faith is.

I wish I could say that suffering with illness, or suffering at the hand of some tyrant for something other than Christ, was the kind of suffering meant here. I know I'd get a few points for struggling through sickness, others might find points for other suffering, if this was true. This kind of suffering, like that of sickness and loneliness, might help us understand, or bring us closer to the suffering Christ. But this is not the kind of suffering meant by Jesus in this sermon. Jesus is talking about the suffering experienced on account of him, and he's pretty straightforward about this.

For many of us, including me, reading this gospel in a good mood over a good meal,
being rich and belly-full, we are confronted with the truth: it will take a powerful turn of events for us to make it through this one alive.

But thank God that he is merciful, even to the selfish and the ungrateful, as Jesus will say later in this same sermon. We can be thankful that it is God's property to always have mercy.

Our confession is not simply of Christ crucified, even though this is integral to understanding discipleship; but as Paul remind us in our passage from Corinthians, Christian proclamation hinges on the resurrection. Paul writes that "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins," and that if we have hoped falsely, "we are of all people most to be pitied." "But," Paul continues, "in fact Christ has been raised from the dead." We are not left in our sin.

By Christ's resurrection, and our belief in him as the one vindicated by God and the one able to lift us out of our addiction to wealth, to prosperity, to good words, all the things that keep us from the radical commitment asked of us, it is this Christ who lifts us out of the dust, the one who lifts us out of our infatuation with ourselves and our wealth.

It takes a J. Alfred Smith, Sr., one of the great black preachers and teachers of this present generation, preaching to his flock in Oakland, to tell us what this means: he says that

God continuously retrofits the foundations of our faith conversion. Conversion is not a once-and-for-all experience in our salvation history. Conversion is the act of sanctification, where God continues to call us from corruption to a clear lifestyle of thinking and living. God continuously retrofits the foundations of resurrected faith with a commission. God commissions cowardly disciples

(all of us)

with a history of denying Jesus

(all of us)

into becoming courageous witnesses of the power of Christ's resurrection and the richness of the fellowship of Christ's suffering.

As we begin to think about Lent, a season of preparation for the great drama of Holy Week, this may very well be a good place for us to begin: by confronting what keeps us from this life,the life of the fellowship of Christ's suffering and the community of the Crucified; and to begin to ask and pray, asking for God's strength, so that we begin to heed God's commission to become courageous witnesses of the power of Christ's resurrection.

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "Truly Dangerous Christianity"

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "Truly Dangerous Christianity"
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
Preached on January 28th, 2007, by the Rev. Preston Parsons

Preaching can be pretty dangerous business!

In our gospel reading from last week, Jesus was preaching in the synagogue, and proclaiming that he was the Messiah.

This passage that I just read to you immediately follows that story, and Jesus is still in the same synagogue, and still with the same congregants. But the mood of that same bunch of congregants that sat with their eyes intently on Jesus, their mood has changed a lot. They aren't listening anymore, their amazement has turned to anger, and by the end of our reading they are trying to throw Jesus over a cliff.

Like I said, preaching is pretty dangerous business!

I think it's tempting for a lot of faithful Christians, to take this story far too seriously. A lot of us, not just preachers, like to think of ourselves as prophets like Jeremiah, or Messiahs like Jesus.

This is far more dangerous: to be self-appointed prophets, or would-be messiahs.

***

I wonder how many of us can relate to those folks from the synagogue that day. This was the synagogue of Jesus's hometown, and the people of Nazareth had been hearing stories about him, their home-town boy. We still hear these kinds of stories, don't we – the "local boy" or "local girl makes good" story? Just pick up the Free Press, or even a diocesan newspaper, and you can find these kinds of stories.

My American friends used to make fun of me for this. Some theologian, actor, or musician would come up in conversation, and I was hasten to add: "He's a Canadian,
you know", and sometimes, "She's a Winnipegger, right?"

My friends would make fun of me because it was like I was somehow better just for being from the same place as some famous person.

They were right, actually, I'm a proud Canadian, a proud Winnipegger, and when someone does something special, and they’re from where I'm from, I feel proud. I imagine that you feel the same way.

This is what happened to Jesus that day. Jesus's fellow Nazarenes were proud that this healer was from the same place as them. The word was out, Joseph's son was doing miracles in other parts of the countryside. Jesus had even done miracles in Capernaum. So the people of Nazareth were saying to him: "Step up! Do your thing! You're our guy! Do something for us! You did miracles out there in Brandon! Do something for us Winnipeggers!"

**

Faithful Christians can be like this, I think. We can cry out to God, we can cry out to Jesus, saying, "I'm a Christian! I believe in you! I even worship you! Jesus, you're one of us! So now I'm going to ask you for something, and you better deliver! I deserve it! Because you're my guy in the sky!"

Sound familiar?

It does to me, I know that I can pray sometimes like Jesus owes me something special.

I'm a Christian, and I can act as though this gives me special standing as far as my requests go.

But we all know that God doesn't work that way, and our prayers aren't always answered the way we expect, any more than Jesus did exactly what the people of Nazareth wanted him to do that day. Don’t get me wrong, here. I want you all to pray, and to pray fervently. But God may not always answer your prayers the way you want Him to.

Jesus's actions actually tell us something quite different about God’s action in the world; Jesus's actions tell us that God acts contrary to our expectations sometimes. Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth that there is more to God's purposes than paying back tribute. Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth, and us as we read the story, that Elijah was sent to do a miracle to a poor widow; and then that Elisha did a miracle for Naaman the Syrian. The miracles that Jesus refers to were works that God was doing outside the inner circle, for poor widows, not pious priests; miracles were done for foreign military commanders, not the local observing Jew. Jesus points out that God's work is often done for the outsiders rather than for the insiders.

The people of Nazareth did not take this news, the news of Jesus's sovereignty and freedom, as good news. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that because of God's freedom and sovereignty He will not always act the way we expect or want Him to.

As it turns out, Jesus's sovereignty and absolute freedom make for pretty dangerous preaching. And it ticked off the people of Nazareth enough that they did everything that they could to throw this particular preacher off the brow of a cliff.

***

Our danger, though, is different than Jesus’s danger that day. Our danger is that we cast ourselves as prophets or as messiahs because to cast ourselves as prophets or messiahs is to misunderstand how authority works.

The self-made prophet or would-be messiah who presses buttons, ticks people off, and fulfills some kind of persecution fantasy misunderstands what it means to stand under the authority of the prophets and under the authority of the Messiah. We aren't God; rather, we stand under the authority of God.

We aren't Christians in order to gain some special favour from God, nor are we Christians in order to tick off the world. We are Christians because of our of fidelity to Jesus.

We are Christians because we are faithful to Christ; we know that this Christ - the one who is nearly thrown off the brow of the cliff - is the one who saves us, and only the one who can truly save us is the one worthy of our faithfulness.

This faith in the one who saves doesn't mean we are suddenly able to tell God how to go about His business.

However, our confession of Christ's lordship just might tick people off, and it may very well mean that we are persecuted.

But this will arise because we have entered under the authority of Christ, not because we have put ourselves in the place of Christ.

***

So the question arises: what might it mean if we were to follow this Jesus? What might it mean if we were faithful to the Messiah, that we read about in this story, the God free to do miracles, and free not to do miracles?

What might it mean to follow the God who is placing his priority with those who are outsiders, with the widows and foreigners, rather than the insiders, the people of Nazareth who feel like they can tell Jesus what to do?

What might this mean for us?

It means that we will be less attentive to what we think we deserve, and less apt to order our community vision according to what we perceive to be our own immediate needs.

If we were to take direction from this story and followed Jesus, we would see that our faithfulness to Jesus would lead us to be far more attentive to those who remain outside of our walls.

It would challenge us to turn away from pious entitlement. It would challenge us to be evangelists, a people working to bring those who are outside our community into the saving power of the crucified one, the one present in a church living out what it means to be followers of God, the God who is absolutely free and acts in ways we sometimes don't understand.

Jesus is already visiting people outside our walls, there are all sorts of people wondering about this Jesus guy, they are waiting just outside our door trying to find their way in, trying to find a way to be a part of a community who worships this unpredictable God, a God who is asking great things of us.

Jesus, in this story, is asking us to be better than the people of Nazareth: we are asked us to recognize that we need more than a wonder worker, we need a saviour; we need more than an idol to do our bidding, we need the unpredictable and living God.

And if we need a saviour free to act in unexpected ways, if we need a God free to be God rather than just a miracle-man doing our bidding, how much more will we recognize that this Jesus, this saving God, is not the possession the people of the pew. This saving God is already the possession of the outsider.

The living God - God in Christ, the Messiah - will walk safely through the crowd of his persecutors, whether they be us or the people of Nazareth.

The living God - the crucified one, the resurrected one - his work is among the outsiders.

It is a work of reconciliation, a reconciliation he does for all of us, a reconciliation offered through the church, and through the invitation of the outsider in.

And we invite people into the church, into a reconciling community, not just for the sake of the outsider, nor simply for the sake of the insider. It is for the sake of the God who is free, the God who is sovereign, the God who will change us and transform us: the one God who is alone worthy of our faithfulness.

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "Truly Dangerous Christianity"

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (2007): "Truly Dangerous Christianity"
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
Preached on January 28th, 2007, by the Rev. Preston Parsons

Preaching can be pretty dangerous business!

In our gospel reading from last week, Jesus was preaching in the synagogue, and proclaiming that he was the Messiah.

This passage that I just read to you immediately follows that story, and Jesus is still in the same synagogue, and still with the same congregants. But the mood of that same bunch of congregants that sat with their eyes intently on Jesus, their mood has changed a lot. They aren't listening anymore, their amazement has turned to anger, and by the end of our reading they are trying to throw Jesus over a cliff.

Like I said, preaching is pretty dangerous business!

I think it's tempting for a lot of faithful Christians, to take this story far too seriously. A lot of us, not just preachers, like to think of ourselves as prophets like Jeremiah, or Messiahs like Jesus.

This is far more dangerous: to be self-appointed prophets, or would-be messiahs.

***

I wonder how many of us can relate to those folks from the synagogue that day. This was the synagogue of Jesus's hometown, and the people of Nazareth had been hearing stories about him, their home-town boy. We still hear these kinds of stories, don't we – the "local boy" or "local girl makes good" story? Just pick up the Free Press, or even a diocesan newspaper, and you can find these kinds of stories.

My American friends used to make fun of me for this. Some theologian, actor, or musician would come up in conversation, and I was hasten to add: "He's a Canadian,
you know", and sometimes, "She's a Winnipegger, right?"

My friends would make fun of me because it was like I was somehow better just for being from the same place as some famous person.

They were right, actually, I'm a proud Canadian, a proud Winnipegger, and when someone does something special, and they’re from where I'm from, I feel proud. I imagine that you feel the same way.

This is what happened to Jesus that day. Jesus's fellow Nazarenes were proud that this healer was from the same place as them. The word was out, Joseph's son was doing miracles in other parts of the countryside. Jesus had even done miracles in Capernaum. So the people of Nazareth were saying to him: "Step up! Do your thing! You're our guy! Do something for us! You did miracles out there in Brandon! Do something for us Winnipeggers!"

**

Faithful Christians can be like this, I think. We can cry out to God, we can cry out to Jesus, saying, "I'm a Christian! I believe in you! I even worship you! Jesus, you're one of us! So now I'm going to ask you for something, and you better deliver! I deserve it! Because you're my guy in the sky!"

Sound familiar?

It does to me, I know that I can pray sometimes like Jesus owes me something special.

I'm a Christian, and I can act as though this gives me special standing as far as my requests go.

But we all know that God doesn't work that way, and our prayers aren't always answered the way we expect, any more than Jesus did exactly what the people of Nazareth wanted him to do that day. Don’t get me wrong, here. I want you all to pray, and to pray fervently. But God may not always answer your prayers the way you want Him to.

Jesus's actions actually tell us something quite different about God’s action in the world; Jesus's actions tell us that God acts contrary to our expectations sometimes. Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth that there is more to God's purposes than paying back tribute. Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth, and us as we read the story, that Elijah was sent to do a miracle to a poor widow; and then that Elisha did a miracle for Naaman the Syrian. The miracles that Jesus refers to were works that God was doing outside the inner circle, for poor widows, not pious priests; miracles were done for foreign military commanders, not the local observing Jew. Jesus points out that God's work is often done for the outsiders rather than for the insiders.

The people of Nazareth did not take this news, the news of Jesus's sovereignty and freedom, as good news. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that because of God's freedom and sovereignty He will not always act the way we expect or want Him to.

As it turns out, Jesus's sovereignty and absolute freedom make for pretty dangerous preaching. And it ticked off the people of Nazareth enough that they did everything that they could to throw this particular preacher off the brow of a cliff.

***

Our danger, though, is different than Jesus’s danger that day. Our danger is that we cast ourselves as prophets or as messiahs because to cast ourselves as prophets or messiahs is to misunderstand how authority works.

The self-made prophet or would-be messiah who presses buttons, ticks people off, and fulfills some kind of persecution fantasy misunderstands what it means to stand under the authority of the prophets and under the authority of the Messiah. We aren't God; rather, we stand under the authority of God.

We aren't Christians in order to gain some special favour from God, nor are we Christians in order to tick off the world. We are Christians because of our of fidelity to Jesus.

We are Christians because we are faithful to Christ; we know that this Christ - the one who is nearly thrown off the brow of the cliff - is the one who saves us, and only the one who can truly save us is the one worthy of our faithfulness.

This faith in the one who saves doesn't mean we are suddenly able to tell God how to go about His business.

However, our confession of Christ's lordship just might tick people off, and it may very well mean that we are persecuted.

But this will arise because we have entered under the authority of Christ, not because we have put ourselves in the place of Christ.

***

So the question arises: what might it mean if we were to follow this Jesus? What might it mean if we were faithful to the Messiah, that we read about in this story, the God free to do miracles, and free not to do miracles?

What might it mean to follow the God who is placing his priority with those who are outsiders, with the widows and foreigners, rather than the insiders, the people of Nazareth who feel like they can tell Jesus what to do?

What might this mean for us?

It means that we will be less attentive to what we think we deserve, and less apt to order our community vision according to what we perceive to be our own immediate needs.

If we were to take direction from this story and followed Jesus, we would see that our faithfulness to Jesus would lead us to be far more attentive to those who remain outside of our walls.

It would challenge us to turn away from pious entitlement. It would challenge us to be evangelists, a people working to bring those who are outside our community into the saving power of the crucified one, the one present in a church living out what it means to be followers of God, the God who is absolutely free and acts in ways we sometimes don't understand.

Jesus is already visiting people outside our walls, there are all sorts of people wondering about this Jesus guy, they are waiting just outside our door trying to find their way in, trying to find a way to be a part of a community who worships this unpredictable God, a God who is asking great things of us.

Jesus, in this story, is asking us to be better than the people of Nazareth: we are asked us to recognize that we need more than a wonder worker, we need a saviour; we need more than an idol to do our bidding, we need the unpredictable and living God.

And if we need a saviour free to act in unexpected ways, if we need a God free to be God rather than just a miracle-man doing our bidding, how much more will we recognize that this Jesus, this saving God, is not the possession the people of the pew. This saving God is already the possession of the outsider.

The living God - God in Christ, the Messiah - will walk safely through the crowd of his persecutors, whether they be us or the people of Nazareth.

The living God - the crucified one, the resurrected one - his work is among the outsiders.

It is a work of reconciliation, a reconciliation he does for all of us, a reconciliation offered through the church, and through the invitation of the outsider in.

And we invite people into the church, into a reconciling community, not just for the sake of the outsider, nor simply for the sake of the insider. It is for the sake of the God who is free, the God who is sovereign, the God who will change us and transform us: the one God who is alone worthy of our faithfulness.

Third Sunday After the Epiphany (2007): "The Habit of Vision"

Third Sunday After the Epiphany (2007): "The Habit of Vision"
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10;
Psalm 19;
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a;
Luke 4:14-21
Preached on January 21st,2007, by the Rev. Preston Parsons

Last week I spoke briefly about a vision, a vision where a young monk meets his spiritual father at the Wedding at Cana.

Vision is a particularly good topic for us, and I will continue speaking about vision today.

Last week, that young monk's vision changed him so profoundly that he awoke from it with a new resolve, and a new strength. That's what vision can do for a person, and it's what vision can do for a community. A vision can give us new strength.

***

In our Old Testament reading, Ezra and Nehemiah are reviving the religious and cultural life of Jerusalem, and describing a vision where the past and the future flow together. Ezra the priest and Nehemiah the governor were rebuilding Jerusalem after it had been mostly destroyed.

But led by Ezra and Nehemiah, much of the culture and religious identity of the Israelites was being revived. The Jews were looking at a glorious future, a future that was governed by the past. The vision that Nehemiah presented to the people was of a rebuilt Jerusalem, where newly built walls stand upon the foundations of old walls; and the vision that Ezra brought before the people was of the religion of the old ways, the religion of the law of Moses, a religion once followed and now being revived and practiced again. The past and future flowed together in one moment, a moment when the ancient laws were being read anew to a people who thirsted for them, a moment when a homeless people stood by a re-built gate in their own Jerusalem.

It was a glorious time in the religious history of Jerusalem! Finally, what had been waited for, was coming true.

But a curious thing happened: the people wept. Why in the world would you weep at a glorious cultural and religious revival!

Perhaps even this new and glorious future meant a transformation, and in any transformation something is lost. The historian Jaroslav Pelikan describes this kind of change. He might say that the people were giving up their traditionalism; they were giving up the dead faith of the living. They were giving up this dead faith of the living in favour of their larger, and greater tradition; they were giving up the dead faith of the living in favour of the living faith of the dead.

Even if the Jews were giving up the dead faith of the living, in order to revive the living faith of the dead, it still meant that they wanted to weep. Because even what is good can be hard.

This is made more curious because Ezra and Nehemiah were not kings. One was a priest, the other a governor. It was the people who were reviving their religion; it was the people who were rebuilding the walls. The people were weeping for their tradionalism, even though they were the ones who wanted the great Tradition to be revived. Even the carriers and seers of a vision can mourn the passing of what they themselves wanted to see pass away.

Nevertheless, by the strength of their vision and by the grace of God, they rebuilt the cultural and religious life of Jerusalem, to the great benefit of the people they passed that life along to.

***

Our passage from Corinthians underlines something else about vision, that if we don't have a vision about what we could be we get very stuck in what we are. If we can't see what we ought to be, we will not have the ability to see what we could be doing far better.

When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he is writing to a group of Christians who were in deep and significant division. They were a people who couldn't see past their own individual interests.

Now the church in Corinth was a very gifted community, and Paul tells them so- among the Corinthians there are prophets, and teachers; people were doing deeds of power, healing, leading, and speaking in tongues. It's awesome! But the Corinthians needed to hear something from Paul. They needed to hear that was there was a greater good, a greater vision for what the Corinthian church could be. The Corinthian church could be a body.

This vision of what this bunch of loveless losers could be, was that they could be a body where each worked with each other for the greater good, and for the gospel of love.

Without vision, the Corinthian community was going to perish. And the vision that Paul offered them was not of what they were already, because what they were already was a bunch of loveless losers who couldn't get along. Paul had to give them something to grow into, Paul had to tell them what they weren't, Paul had to give them something to grow into for the sake of the gospel.

***

There's a lot in our passage from Luke, and I hate to short-change it. It's important to say that the text is primarily about who Jesus is in the history of salvation. Luke recounts a story about Jesus reading a text from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." When Jesus sits down and says that this text from Isaiahis about himself, an important claim is being made. The claim is that Jesus is the Messiah, the one Israel was waiting for. Jesus is the one who will save us. I don’t want us to lose sight of this claim.

But Luke continues, writing that when Jesus sits down "the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him." Luke starts by quoting Isaiah, a passage about how the messiah would come and give "recovery of sight to the blind," only to say that the whole synagogue turns around to stare at him.

Luke is saying something profound here, alongside that Jesus is the Christ - Luke is saying that the one on whom we fix our gaze, this Messiah, Jesus the Christ, is the one who will cure our blindness. It is Jesus who will give us our vision.

For us to proceed without Christ, is to walk in blindness, it is to proceed without vision. And we are to fix our eyes on Christ, to ask for for the recovery of our sight from the one who has the power to give it.

If we are to have a past, a present, and a future, as a Christian church and as the parish of St. Mary Magdalene, it will be by fixing our vision upon the one in whom we believe, the one spoken by the prophets, the one spoken by the church through the centuries.

To have a vision is to know the great Tradition, because in the great Tradition we will discover what traditionalisms will either be vindicated by it, or to be set aside. To know the great Tradition is to know where we have come from, and to know where we have come from is to know where we are going. To know where we have come from is to have a vision of the future.

Without this vision of what we can be, of what kind of a people we can be, we will only remain who we are, and what we are is never the fullness of who God is calling us to be.

And to have a vision, an idea of who God is calling us to be, is to stop reacting and to begin seeing, seeing the greatness of the church, and who, and what, our very own parish of St. Mary Magdalene can become. We are beginning our own season of visioning, where we will be developing the habit of vision.

And we will come into this habitual vision by looking first to Christ, the one who has come from God, who is fully God, the one who has made us and who is already remaking us by the power of the Spirit, inviting us into the fullness of the life of the Holy Trinity.

Second Sunday After Epiphany (2007): "The Water and the Wine; the Crucifixion and the Resurrection"

Second Sunday After Epiphany (2007): "The Water and the Wine; the Crucifixion and the Resurrection"
Isaiah 62:1-5;
Psalm 36:5-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11;
John 2:1-11
Preached on January 14th, 2007.

You would think that when Jesus calls his disciples, disciples that were going to go out into the whole world in all its strangeness, you would think that Jesus would take his disciples aside, and teach them to do something. After all, these disciples were about to embark on a dangerous, strenuous, and very difficult project. They were about to travel to the ends of the earth bearing the good news. So you would think that Jesus would offer them some kind of training.

You would think that Jesus would bring them to a school where they could learn what to do, and how they might work to bring the good news to the world. Or maybe Jesus ought to take his disciples on a retreat, and give them some kind of spiritual experience, maybe the kind the disciples could teach to others.

But where does Jesus bring his disciples? Within a matter of days of calling his disciples, Jesus doesn’t bring them to school, and he doesn’t take them on retreat. Jesus doesn’t seem to take the time to teach the disciples what they can do, nor about their part in bringing the good news to the world. The first thing that Jesus does with his disciples is go to a wedding.

It sounds like a pretty good party, actually, at least up to a point. A wedding without wine, at that time, was a pretty boring event, not because the party needs alcohol to be fun, but because the end of the wine means the end of the celebration. And Jesus brings his disciples to a party where the wine runs out way before the party really should be over.

***

Jean Vanier tells a story about a l’Arche community (where people with significant disabilities live along people without disabilities) that was founded in Kerala, India.

“Ramesh, a young Hindu man with intellectual and psychological difficulties, was one of the first men welcomed,” writes Vanier. Ramesh went to his brother’s place for a couple of days. “When [Ramesh] left his brother’s house, he said to [his brother], and to the neighbour’s and friends: “Today is my wedding day. Come!”

People just smiled at him.

[Ramesh] got on the bus and when he arrived back in the community, he told the community leader: “Today is my wedding day!”

[Ramesh] went to the workshop for awhile, but was feeling a little bit tired. He went to his bedroom to lie down, had a heart attack and died.”

Ramesh’s wedding day was the day of his death.

I think Ramesh knew something about what his death was; Ramesh knew that to die is not just an end, but it is a lot like being at the wedding feast at Cana. In Ramesh’s death, his wine ran out; but Ramesh knew, somehow, that the wine runs out at the beginning of the real party, not at the end.

***

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky makes the connections between the wedding at Cana, death, and new life.

In the story Dostoyevsky tells, when Father Zossima dies, the story of the wedding at Cana is read over his body. During the reading, Zossima’s young disciple, Aloysha, falls into a reverie where he finds himself at the wedding at Cana, and where he meets the dead Zossima among the rejoicing guests. Zossima, the dead monk, is there at the wedding, his eyes are bright and very much alive. When Aloysha awakens from his dream, he goes out into the night and has a sudden ecstasy. Aloysha experiences, in a passing moment, the unity of heaven and earth.

Dostoyevsky sees the wedding at Cana as the bridge from one life to another, of death as the time when the wine runs out, and life as the time when the new wine arrives.

***

I would like for us to take very seriously this particular moment: the moment when the wine runs out. I think many of us know what it is like for the wine to run out. Despite our greatest efforts, sometimes our marriages can fall apart. Despite how hard we try, we fail in our most significant relationships. And no matter how hard we try, there is nothing that we will be able to do about our eventual death. Eventually the wine runs out, and it feels like the party is over.

I think we are at this moment in the church. Mainline denominations, like ours, are dying. Some have even said that we are already dead, that the wine has run out, and the party that once was the Anglican Church is over.

I think they’re right. It’s as simple as looking at attendance numbers and at the average age of our worshippers. We are getting older and we are becoming fewer. We are just about as dead as Ramesh and Zossima. Our wine is running out.

It might very well be the best thing that happens to us, though we are presented with a choice, of sorts. Where do we turn at this point?

It is, in a sense, as simple as our mission statement: it is time to claim the power of Christ, to look to the one who is worthy of our faith. Because when the wine runs out, it is Christ who can take what is mundane, what is already available in abundance, something as commonly available to us as water is, and turn this water into the best wine you’ve ever tasted.

Because just as Ramesh knew, it is when the wine runes out that the part really gets started. It is when we encounter death as Aloysha did, and then see our dead friends with fire in their eyes at the wedding feast at Cana, that we begin to understand why the wine must run out: so that we can turn to the source of the real wine, so that we can look to the one who really kicks the party into gear.

The wine runs out so we can know where our strength comes from, so we can know that our strength comes from Christ.

***

Now I would do a major disservice to John, and to the gospel, if I left us here, because John isn’t all that fond of the faith that arises from signs. Sign faith is not the fullness of faith. And that’s what Jesus is getting at when he says in our passage that his hour has not yet come.

The sign of the water into wine is but a figure of the real sign, the sign that brings us into the fullness of faith. Just as we can see that we die in desperate times of our lives, and in the desperate times of our church, and even as we look towards our deaths, just as we see that the wine can run out, we see the figure and the shadow of the greatest of all signs: what Jesus points to is not the water, but his death; and as Jesus takes the water and turns that water into wine, he points not to the wine, but to his resurrection. This is the sign, not the minor miracles of new life in our daily lives, but the sign that we look to in the fullness of faith, the sign of the cross and the sign of the resurrection.

And if we are to be saved as a people, as a church, and as persons, it is by this Christ, it is by his power, the power of the one who turned water into wine, the power of the one who was raised from the dead, and the one who raises us to new life in him, the power of the crucified one, the risen one.

The Baptism of the Lord (2007): "The Christianity Behind the Counter"

The Baptism of the Lord (2007): "The Christianity Behind the Counter"
Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Preached on January 7th, 2007.

I haven’t had much culture shock since moving here from California. The big parts of my adjustment have been ok. The big move is behind us, and I'm getting used to, even enjoying the snow and the cold.

The hardest part of the change has been the little things. One of the hardest things about moving and adjusting to life in Winnipeg is about my coffee: the way I like my coffee, and where I like my coffee.

I miss my cappuccino at my old neighbourhood café.

I am beginning to make the adjustment. I'm turning the corner on this one. And I'm finding myself more and more often in the Tim Horton’s drive-through. Saying “single-single” or “double-double” to the voice behind the box at the drive-through is putting a smile on my face. It makes me feel Canadian again.

But in a bad moment I long for a sunny day, and a moment to sit at a table on the sidewalk with a book, enjoying my cappuccino the way I used to.

***

When I look back I realize that I soaked up a lot about cappuccino while I was away. I learned how to talk about cappuccino, and I learned how cappuccino is made. I guess you could say that I was fully welcomed into a particular culture, the culture of the café.

It’s a bit like going to Tim Horton's. At Tim Horton’s you don't usually say "two sugars two creams", you say "double-double." Café culture works that way. At my old neighborhood café coffee-makers didn’t make little strong coffee's. Instead, baristas pulled espresso.

And pulling espresso – making those strong little coffees – is not easy. The best baristas adjust the fineness of the grind; press, or tamp, the grounds just so; have the water at just the right temperature and pressure; and know the machine they are using well enough to have 7 ounces of espresso come through the machine in seven seconds.

On top of that, to make cappuccino, to make the right size tiny bubbles in the milk you need to have milk steamed at just the right temperature, and you need to have the right frothing technique; and then this frothed milk needs to be poured over the espresso in just the right way.

I would never have known any of this, either the language or the practice of making beautiful cappuccino, without being part of a small café culture.

***

I’d like for us to think about A’s baptism in similar terms as I've described coffee culture to you.

Baptism is not just about putting water on children. It's also like inviting them behind the counter at the café. New baristas need experience baristas to teach them the language of coffee, and how to pull espresso well. In the same way, for A to grow into the full stature of Christ, he needs some experienced Christians, a church that knows how to do a few things already: he needs a church that knows the language of our faith, and a church that knows the scriptures and the creeds like we know the bones of our own bodies. A needs a church that knows her own common language of God in Trinity. A needs a church that is practicing the faith, in the sacramental practice that happens at the font and the altar, because it is in a community of faith that A will become a reconciling presence himself.

It is a particular community, animated by the prior action of God in our lives, where our common creedal and scriptural language, along with our common community practice of reconciliation, will make a Christian out of A.

Christians don't need the church. It's more accurate to say that there are no Christians without the church: a people learning the language and the beauty of Christian doctrine, through humility; a people learning the practice of reconciliation that is known in baptism and the eucharist. Salvation doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in a place where we know God is already at work.

***

This is but a sliver of the life that we, as A's parent's, as his sponsors, and as his parish community, are about to commit ourselves to.

Let's give A the opportunity to love the church, but not so that A can love the church, but so that he can know the God that we are about to confess, so that he can love the God made known to us: the God that has already begun good work in us, and in A, the good work of God's salvation wrought in Christ and present to us in the Holy Spirit, the saving God that is known in Christ, and through us, the church.