I was looking at the readings for the week and wondering how I was going to approach the Beatitudes this time. I happened to glance at the opening lines of Working Preacher WorkingPreacher.org and the comment that the blessings are not a prescription of what we need to do to be blessed, but rather descriptions of people who are already blessed.
We are already blessed. What a concept! We don't need to add "hunger and thirst after righteousness" to our calendars after all. The point that Jesus is making is that we are blessed in our lives right now. We don't need to add anything more to attract God's loving grace. It is here and now.
From people who mourn to people who are persecuted, probably even including people whose calendars are too full, all of us can experience God by just looking around for a moment. The blessings are there.
All that is left to us is to be grateful for God's blessings to us. That lead us to the next interesting truth. Gratitude makes us happier. The more we give thanks the happier we are about our lives. We don't need more stuff, we don't need better lives, we just need to be grateful for the gifts we have in our lives and we will find joy.
We're blessed. Really.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The sins of the world
The John reading this week has John the Baptist looking out over the crowd and seeing Jesus. "Look there," he says, "there is the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world."
For those who favour the idea that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb whose blood sponges away the blot of our sin, there isn't much more to say. We sin. Jesus dies. We're forgiven. Repeat as necessary. I don't mean to make light of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, but there has to be more to it than that.
It seems to me that the sins of the world are not retreating in the face of the cross. In fact, all too often, people's attachment to the cross just adds to the burden. The more we claim exclusive rights to heaven, where finally only the good people like us will be allowed in, the more damage we do to the Dominion of God here on earth. Our sin is that we would rather wait until we die and go to be with God to be reconciled to our brothers and sisters. In doing so we waste our living.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He forgave people on the spot. There was no quiz to find out if they were truly repentant. Sometimes he didn't even ask; he just forgave them. His harshest words were reserved for the people who insisted that the world continue to be divided into sinner and non sinner. One of the many reasons for Jesus' death was that he challenged the understood categories that separated people.
Sin is what separates us. Sin isn't the stuff we do, it is why we do the stuff we do. Taking away the sin will take away the things that divide us. The funny thing is that Jesus left us here to continue his work. We are to be Jesus in the world. Somehow we got it turned around and began separating the people into good and bad, our kind of people and the other kind, us and them.
We need to be taking away the sin of the world. We need to be forgiving people, even before they ask, even before they know they need it.
We need to start with ourselves.
For those who favour the idea that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb whose blood sponges away the blot of our sin, there isn't much more to say. We sin. Jesus dies. We're forgiven. Repeat as necessary. I don't mean to make light of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, but there has to be more to it than that.
It seems to me that the sins of the world are not retreating in the face of the cross. In fact, all too often, people's attachment to the cross just adds to the burden. The more we claim exclusive rights to heaven, where finally only the good people like us will be allowed in, the more damage we do to the Dominion of God here on earth. Our sin is that we would rather wait until we die and go to be with God to be reconciled to our brothers and sisters. In doing so we waste our living.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He forgave people on the spot. There was no quiz to find out if they were truly repentant. Sometimes he didn't even ask; he just forgave them. His harshest words were reserved for the people who insisted that the world continue to be divided into sinner and non sinner. One of the many reasons for Jesus' death was that he challenged the understood categories that separated people.
Sin is what separates us. Sin isn't the stuff we do, it is why we do the stuff we do. Taking away the sin will take away the things that divide us. The funny thing is that Jesus left us here to continue his work. We are to be Jesus in the world. Somehow we got it turned around and began separating the people into good and bad, our kind of people and the other kind, us and them.
We need to be taking away the sin of the world. We need to be forgiving people, even before they ask, even before they know they need it.
We need to start with ourselves.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Merry Un-Christmas
In Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the math behind the un-Birthday. We only have one Birthday, but 364 possible un-Birthdays. Statistically you will do much better with the un-Birthdays.
The same math will hold true for Christmas. There are a lot more days that aren't Christmas than are. I'm not advocating that we should decorate the house, eat turkey (or our feast of choice) and exchange gifts every day, but the bedrock essentials of Christmas are there for the celebrating every day that we wake up.
Christmas highlights what God wants to give us each and every day; Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. Why wait until December 25th to enjoy these gifts? Why not bask in love on March 23, or live in joy on July 2?
When the last turkey sandwich is consumed, the tree relegated to its box and the decorations packed away for another year, the most important stuff will stay with us. God came to us, so that we could return to God. Today, tomorrow and tomorrow.
Have a blessed Christmas, and a very merry un-Christmas.
The same math will hold true for Christmas. There are a lot more days that aren't Christmas than are. I'm not advocating that we should decorate the house, eat turkey (or our feast of choice) and exchange gifts every day, but the bedrock essentials of Christmas are there for the celebrating every day that we wake up.
Christmas highlights what God wants to give us each and every day; Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. Why wait until December 25th to enjoy these gifts? Why not bask in love on March 23, or live in joy on July 2?
When the last turkey sandwich is consumed, the tree relegated to its box and the decorations packed away for another year, the most important stuff will stay with us. God came to us, so that we could return to God. Today, tomorrow and tomorrow.
Have a blessed Christmas, and a very merry un-Christmas.
Friday, December 3, 2010
This whole Christmas thing
Every year about this time as the stores begin their onslaught of Christmas sales and people make their sacrifices to the gods of consumerism. Each year it becomes easier too. Once we had to actually go to the bank and take out money. Now we can simply swipe a card and, if the stress hasn't made us forget the PIN, we're done. Laden down with our bounty of stuff we head home to wrap the gifts, decorate the house and snarl at anybody with the temerity to disturb our celebration of peace and joy.
At the same time the "Put Christ back in Christmas" people come out in all their forms urging the world to remember that this whole thing is about a baby born in a manger whose name is Jesus. They are right. It is Jesus' birth we are celebrating. Without him we wouldn't have Christmas.
We would, however, probably still have some huge consumerist binge, but it would be called Solstice or Saturnalia, or some other catchy phrase. It's just that since the empire took over Christianity we have had a hard time separating ourselves as Christians from ourselves as inhabitants of a world that really doesn't believe the same things that we do.
I'm all for putting Christ back into Christmas, in my own personal life and in the life of the church which I serve. But can I really expect the Wal-mart employee who is not Christian to put Christ into their Christmas? While it is absolutely essential for people of faith to celebrate with faith, it is also necessary to recognize that we no longer rule the world. We are a minority.
I am not going to stop wishing people a Merry Christmas, because that would mean that people of other faiths and other celebrations would also have to stop. I will not stop reading the Christmas story in church and in my home, but I am not going to demand that Frosty and Rudolph be replace by the Little Drummer Boy and the Littlest Angel as specials on TV.
I truly believe that Christians were never meant to be the majority. We are supposed to the people on the edges who call out for justice and peace. If we become too strident about things that don't directly effect the Gospel, then we won't be listened to when it is really important.
So go ahead, put Christ back in Christmas, but put him back in Valentine's and St. Patrick's Easter and Canada Day or July 4. In fact put him back into every day you live - and that peace and joy we celebrate at Christmas may just last through the entire year.
Even through Christmas.
At the same time the "Put Christ back in Christmas" people come out in all their forms urging the world to remember that this whole thing is about a baby born in a manger whose name is Jesus. They are right. It is Jesus' birth we are celebrating. Without him we wouldn't have Christmas.
We would, however, probably still have some huge consumerist binge, but it would be called Solstice or Saturnalia, or some other catchy phrase. It's just that since the empire took over Christianity we have had a hard time separating ourselves as Christians from ourselves as inhabitants of a world that really doesn't believe the same things that we do.
I'm all for putting Christ back into Christmas, in my own personal life and in the life of the church which I serve. But can I really expect the Wal-mart employee who is not Christian to put Christ into their Christmas? While it is absolutely essential for people of faith to celebrate with faith, it is also necessary to recognize that we no longer rule the world. We are a minority.
I am not going to stop wishing people a Merry Christmas, because that would mean that people of other faiths and other celebrations would also have to stop. I will not stop reading the Christmas story in church and in my home, but I am not going to demand that Frosty and Rudolph be replace by the Little Drummer Boy and the Littlest Angel as specials on TV.
I truly believe that Christians were never meant to be the majority. We are supposed to the people on the edges who call out for justice and peace. If we become too strident about things that don't directly effect the Gospel, then we won't be listened to when it is really important.
So go ahead, put Christ back in Christmas, but put him back in Valentine's and St. Patrick's Easter and Canada Day or July 4. In fact put him back into every day you live - and that peace and joy we celebrate at Christmas may just last through the entire year.
Even through Christmas.
Friday, November 12, 2010
The end of the world as we know it.
Jesus is with his disciples in the temple and they admire the beauty of the temple. Jesus responds with the apocalyptic vision of the temple's destruction and the overturning of the world.
We are a people who aren't fond of the apocalyptic, leaving aside zombie movies. We like to think of our world continuing into the future much the same as it always has. This is why we have so much trouble with the idea of global warming. We hear the science and even see some of the effects, but it is so hard to think of giving up the second car, or no buying the tomatoes from the other side of the world, because it is what we are used to. We don't have the committment to act out of our intelectual knowledge of change.
On the other hand there are the people who say "Why bother?" If the world is going to end soon anyways, in 2012 or maybe 2013, or maybe it was last year and we slept through it. Why change? Why not continue to use plastic everything even if it is destroying the world we live in? Why not burn gas as fast as we can afford it? After all we don't really need the Gulf of Mexico, or the Arctic, or any part of Alberta outside the cities or ski resorts. Not if we don't live there.
But I figure it's like this: God gave us responsibility for this world. I expect we are going to be held to that. At some point we will need to answer for the fact that at the same time we are poisoning great swathes of creation, we are also concentrating wealth in ever bigger piles while people in the rest of the world starve, drown or die of preventable diseases. Those that aren't being killed in wars because they happen to live in countries that have something the insatiable appetite of the rich desires.
Poverty isn't going to be defeated by sending miniscule amounts of our wealth to other places to buy us some time free of guilt. It will be defeated by people who are willing to make major sytemic change in their own lives and in their communities.
So what does this have to do with the end of the world? If God is going to come and create a new heaven and a new earth, she is going to want to make sure that took proper care of the old one. Like a parent who lets their teen drive their old car. Destroying the car, either in a catastrophic wreck or by slowly accumulating dings, scratches and ignoring the warning lights will not convince your father that you should be allowed to drive the Rolls.
So whether we expect the world to end or not, whether we expect God to step in or not, we live in this world now and we'd better start taking care of it. After all that is where Jesus ends up in his talk with his disciples.
We are a people who aren't fond of the apocalyptic, leaving aside zombie movies. We like to think of our world continuing into the future much the same as it always has. This is why we have so much trouble with the idea of global warming. We hear the science and even see some of the effects, but it is so hard to think of giving up the second car, or no buying the tomatoes from the other side of the world, because it is what we are used to. We don't have the committment to act out of our intelectual knowledge of change.
On the other hand there are the people who say "Why bother?" If the world is going to end soon anyways, in 2012 or maybe 2013, or maybe it was last year and we slept through it. Why change? Why not continue to use plastic everything even if it is destroying the world we live in? Why not burn gas as fast as we can afford it? After all we don't really need the Gulf of Mexico, or the Arctic, or any part of Alberta outside the cities or ski resorts. Not if we don't live there.
But I figure it's like this: God gave us responsibility for this world. I expect we are going to be held to that. At some point we will need to answer for the fact that at the same time we are poisoning great swathes of creation, we are also concentrating wealth in ever bigger piles while people in the rest of the world starve, drown or die of preventable diseases. Those that aren't being killed in wars because they happen to live in countries that have something the insatiable appetite of the rich desires.
Poverty isn't going to be defeated by sending miniscule amounts of our wealth to other places to buy us some time free of guilt. It will be defeated by people who are willing to make major sytemic change in their own lives and in their communities.
So what does this have to do with the end of the world? If God is going to come and create a new heaven and a new earth, she is going to want to make sure that took proper care of the old one. Like a parent who lets their teen drive their old car. Destroying the car, either in a catastrophic wreck or by slowly accumulating dings, scratches and ignoring the warning lights will not convince your father that you should be allowed to drive the Rolls.
So whether we expect the world to end or not, whether we expect God to step in or not, we live in this world now and we'd better start taking care of it. After all that is where Jesus ends up in his talk with his disciples.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Between Memory and Hope
This Sunday is the one before Rememberance Day. While trying to make sense of readings that talk about the end of the world, we stop and remember the wars that mar our history and the people who fought because they felt they were called to defend the world from evil.
It is all too easy to look back and apply the complexity of Afghanistan and Iraq to the World Wars; to let our desire for peace outweigh our need to remember and thank those who served. The sad fact is that there was barely a pause after the "War to end all wars". We human beings, poor foolish mortals that we are, seem destined to claw and tear at ourselves while we justify ourselves with the rhetoric of necessity.
The people of Israel had been carried away into captivity, but now they were back. They were a pitiful remnant of themselves, trying to rebuild a temple for God, while their own people mocked their efforts. They were the defeated, the losers. They had been sent home, not in victory, but in pity. Where was God?
God saves that she is there, waiting. God doesn't demand victory, power, glory, but rather humility, patience, trust.
The other readings talk about the end of the world or life after death, but they too suggest that God's priorities are not ours. The end won't be anything like we expect it to be
I received a pamphlet from a group prophecying a great new revival of the church. This would be a church that would get it right this time, that really would follow God's will. I found it a little sad that they were able to brush off the efforts of all who've gone before. But they are living in the hope of God's pouring out of his Spirit. I imagine that they feel a great deal like the Israelites struggling to build a temple that they knew would be nothing like the old temple of their glory days.
On Remembranc Day we need to balance ourselves between our memory of the wounds of the past, and yes, the imagined glory of our victory in the World Wars, and the hope of a peace that will extend past the bounds of nationality to take in the entire world.
It is all too easy to look back and apply the complexity of Afghanistan and Iraq to the World Wars; to let our desire for peace outweigh our need to remember and thank those who served. The sad fact is that there was barely a pause after the "War to end all wars". We human beings, poor foolish mortals that we are, seem destined to claw and tear at ourselves while we justify ourselves with the rhetoric of necessity.
The people of Israel had been carried away into captivity, but now they were back. They were a pitiful remnant of themselves, trying to rebuild a temple for God, while their own people mocked their efforts. They were the defeated, the losers. They had been sent home, not in victory, but in pity. Where was God?
God saves that she is there, waiting. God doesn't demand victory, power, glory, but rather humility, patience, trust.
The other readings talk about the end of the world or life after death, but they too suggest that God's priorities are not ours. The end won't be anything like we expect it to be
I received a pamphlet from a group prophecying a great new revival of the church. This would be a church that would get it right this time, that really would follow God's will. I found it a little sad that they were able to brush off the efforts of all who've gone before. But they are living in the hope of God's pouring out of his Spirit. I imagine that they feel a great deal like the Israelites struggling to build a temple that they knew would be nothing like the old temple of their glory days.
On Remembranc Day we need to balance ourselves between our memory of the wounds of the past, and yes, the imagined glory of our victory in the World Wars, and the hope of a peace that will extend past the bounds of nationality to take in the entire world.
Friday, October 22, 2010
It's hard to be humble
Remember that old song "It's hard to be humble"? It's true, though not for the reasons the song had. The truth is that humility comes from standing on a razor's edge of self-consciousness and selflessness.
In the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector from this week's lectionary Jesus introduces us to two people through their prayers. The Pharisee's prayer is a congratulating God on doing such a good job of creating him. It is hardly a prayer of humility! On the other hand, the tax collector simply asks for mercy. Both prayers arise from the person's conscious view of themselves. The one as the epitome of righteousness, the other as a sinner.
This is where self-consciousness is important. Just how good are we? We may put on a good show, but do we really live as God would have us? How often do we compare ourselves somewhat smugly with those who don't, in our eyes, do as well as we do? When we are truthful with ourselves we are more like the tax collector than the pharisee.
Yet oddly, we can, if we stay in that place, form a perverse pride in how bad we are. We look around and are sure that no one is as great a sinner as we are. While it is true that we are hopeless sinners, so is everyone else!
This is where the selflessness comes in. After we confess our sin we are to turn away from ourselves and focus on God. Repentance doesn't do us much good if we turn in a full circle to end up facing the same old direction. Focusing on God instead of our self means that we are facing a new way and our feet are on a new road. As long as we focus on God and not on ourselves we keep our way straight.
Inevitably we look up one day and congratulate ourselves on being so good and the whole cycle starts again.
It really is hard to be humble.
In the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector from this week's lectionary Jesus introduces us to two people through their prayers. The Pharisee's prayer is a congratulating God on doing such a good job of creating him. It is hardly a prayer of humility! On the other hand, the tax collector simply asks for mercy. Both prayers arise from the person's conscious view of themselves. The one as the epitome of righteousness, the other as a sinner.
This is where self-consciousness is important. Just how good are we? We may put on a good show, but do we really live as God would have us? How often do we compare ourselves somewhat smugly with those who don't, in our eyes, do as well as we do? When we are truthful with ourselves we are more like the tax collector than the pharisee.
Yet oddly, we can, if we stay in that place, form a perverse pride in how bad we are. We look around and are sure that no one is as great a sinner as we are. While it is true that we are hopeless sinners, so is everyone else!
This is where the selflessness comes in. After we confess our sin we are to turn away from ourselves and focus on God. Repentance doesn't do us much good if we turn in a full circle to end up facing the same old direction. Focusing on God instead of our self means that we are facing a new way and our feet are on a new road. As long as we focus on God and not on ourselves we keep our way straight.
Inevitably we look up one day and congratulate ourselves on being so good and the whole cycle starts again.
It really is hard to be humble.
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