Sermon from Sunday, February 15, 2015

Scripture:  Mark 9:2-9

 

Does anyone today see the glory of God as the three disciples did – when they followed Jesus up a mountain and saw him radiant with heavenly light, shining with the wisdom of the Law and the prophets – and where a voice from heaven overwhelmed and silenced their stuttering attempt at worship with the command to listen and to follow his way to Jerusalem, to a confrontation with the powers of the day, and to the cross? 

Does anyone today see the glory of God as Moses did – when in the wilderness on the way to the promised land he alone dared to go up Mt Sinai into the cloud and the fire, to be in the presence of God, where his own face took on a heavenly shining that the people could not bear to look at, and where he was given the Ten Commandments to give to the people gathered below to guide them and help then live as God’s people against the ways of other people and other gods around them? 

Does anyone today see the glory of God in that way, and with that effect? 

A month ago much of the world joined the States in observing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to celebrate a man who followed a call of Christ to confront the powers and the mindset of our day, and a call of God to come up to a mountain to see what he needed to see to guide his people rightly.  In a speech in Memphis on April 3, 1968, he said: 

I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days

ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been

to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind. 

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.  Longevity has its place. 

But I'm not concerned about that now.  I just want to do God's will. 

And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.   

And I've looked over.  And I've seen the Promised Land.  

I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight,

that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!  

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!! 

The next day he was shot and killed.  But as he said, he just wanted to do God’s will, and he knew God’s will for himself and his people in our time because many times in his life he was up on that mountain witnessing the glory of God and God’s good will, being given what was needed to guide the people who waited down below. 

I don’t think I want to see the glory of God as he did.  It’s pretty costly and once you’ve seen it can you ever turn back?  Maybe there’s a reason why God invited only Moses to go up into the cloud and fire of Mt Sinai, and why Jesus took only three of his disciples up the mountain with him. 

I like my epiphanies and theophanies more tame.   The glory of God in a sunset or sunrise is something I can handle, and brings me deep peace and reassurance.  The light of God in a child’s or a partner’s or a friend’s face is warm and inviting; it helps me embrace and be embraced by the goodness of life.  The beauty of God in an iris or a monarch butterfly or a flock of geese flying overhead moves me to praise and wonder, and to a freshened commitment to care for the Earth God has called into such wonderful being.  For me, the truth of God in communion and in heartfelt worship is close enough to heaven for now. 

And maybe for most of us, that’s enough – maybe all we can handle of the fullness of God’s glory without being totally overwhelmed and undone.  And at the same time, maybe also all that we need to stay on track, open enough to God and God’s way to be freed enough from the allure of lesser, more selfish ways of living. 

The people of Israel received two things from Moses’ time on the mountaintop: a glimpse of how scary it can be to be face-to-face with God, and the Ten Commandments as a reasonable and realistic way of living in right relation as the people of this awesome God.  And what the other disciples of Jesus received from the three who went up with him was a second-hand account of the encounter, told to them after his death and resurrection, to help them through that rough time and be open to whatever slighter and more manageable epiphanies God might have for them along the way. 

And maybe that’s one of the purposes of an amazing story like this – to help us be open to the smaller, maybe less amazing, but no less holy epiphanies that are part of all our lives, that help strengthen us for the challenge of faithful witness and holy living against the powers and mindset of our day. 

Early this week I was in the car in the parking lot of a bank in Dundas, waiting while Japhia was doing some business inside.  On the radio I heard a story about Mister Rogers explaining how he could remain so hopeful and gentle in the world as it is, and honestly talk so often about it being a good day in the neighbourhood.  He said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ ”  

At that point the announcer led into a song called “Good Souls” by Starsailor.  And I was led into an overwhelming awareness and understanding that yes, that is the kingdom of God – the reign of God on Earth, in and through the helpers on the edge of every bad thing that happens.  Almost immediately I was then led to the searing and humbling memory (how can any real epiphany not be humbling?) of three specific times in my life when I failed – when I did not have the courage, or maybe the love or the faith, to take the risk of being a helper to someone in a time of sudden crisis.  And after that, all I felt was a simple prayer of confession (and how awareness of God's reign not involve confession?), asking for help in growing into a new way of being. 

The details and the specific content and direction of that moment are mine.  But I don’t know – was it an epiphany, different in scale but not in meaning to the mountain-top epiphanies and theophanies of God’s special servants?   

Are visions and glimpses like these of God’s reign on Earth part of all our lives?   

And if so, how do we remain open to both the reassurance and the challenge, both the comfort and the call they bring to us?

Sermon from Sunday, February 8, 2015

Scripture:  Isaiah 40:21-31 and Mark 1:29-39

Sermon:  Rise and shine!  Daylight in the swamp!

 

Rise and shine!  Daylight in the swamp! 

As kids these words rose up to our bedrooms every Saturday morning in our father’s voice if we were not up and out of bed and ready to join the day by 8:00.   

It wasn’t any grand plan he was asking us to get up for.  It was just normal stuff of weekly chores, keeping up with things in the house and yard, and then whatever play and fun things might come after that.  Our dad wasn't into major home make-overs; he just cared -- but cared deeply, about things being maintained, and things working the way they are meant to work.  And given our dad’s refugee childhood, and his several experiences of displacement and dispossession over his life, to him it was the best thing in the world to have a home of your own to wake up in, and a house and a yard of your own to take care of.  And he did a good job of it for his sake and even more for ours.  He helped make and keep the part of the world where he was, good. 

Looking back on this now, I admire him for his faithfulness, persistence and creativity.  I also appreciate his invitation and desire for us to join him in caring for what we had and were given.  I remember how good it felt on the Saturdays when I actually managed to get out of bed quick enough to be able to join him at the kitchen table for breakfast before starting what needed to be done that day, rather than come down late, eat breakfast by myself and then have to catch up to him.  I miss that, and I miss his Saturday morning call. 

"Rise and shine!  Daylight in the swamp!"

These words – and the same desire to join in the work of making and keeping the world good come to us from God as well.  Right from the start, God has never intended to take care of the world alone.  All the way through God invites us get up, rise up from the ooze, and be part of the good work.  And our salvation is, at least in part, our being set free from whatever keeps us down or holds us back from joining God in the work. 

In the Gospel reading, Jesus is beginning his work of unveiling the kingdom of God on Earth, and in a few brief encounters he sets the tone for the rest.  After being baptized in the Jordan, spending 40 days in the wilderness sorting things out and then starting to gather disciples, he goes to Capernaum where one sabbath day he teaches in the synagogue and heals a man there of an unclean spirit.  Teaching and setting-free are the way, and from the synagogue he goes to the home of two of his disciples where, in the words of the Gospel, 

Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever … [so Jesus] ³¹came

and took her by the hand and lifted her up.  Then the fever left her,

and she began to serve them.

Now on one hand we may say how typically patriarchal this is: that no sooner is the poor fevered woman healed than she gets up from her sick bed to serve her guests.  Is that why Jesus healed her, and what he healed her for?

 

And the answer is – in a larger sense, yes.  In this story Simon’s mother-in-law is a model of what we all are called to.  All of us suffer a variety of limitations, inhibitions, weaknesses, sin, selfishness, secular attachments, fear and sicknesses that keep us from really participating in the work of making and keeping the world good – from joining God in the daily delight and eternal joy of taking care of Earth’s goodness.  And it’s to help deliver us from all these things that Jesus comes – that the Word of God is spoken to us and en-fleshed for us.  “Rise and shine!  Daylight in the swamp!” is what Jesus is about, and our salvation, at least in part, is about our being set free from whatever keeps us from joining God in the good work to be done. 

 

Sometimes, though, it’s not just our own diseases and demons and distractions that keep us in bed and out of the picture.  Sometimes it’s the way the world works, and the way things are structured – the powers of the day, that seem to be in the way of living out God’s reign on Earth.

The people of Israel were in that situation in the time of Isaiah 40.  At the time of this prophecy the people have been in exile a long time.  Because of their unfaithfulness to God’s way enemy armies over-ran their kingdom, foreign powers took them captive, and they have lived for some time in the belly of somebody else’s empire.   

Like my father several times in his life, they have been displaced and dispossessed.  The world is in the hands of others who do not want their input or their interruption in the way things are made to go.  They are pawns in someone else’s game, and they fear they will never again have a hand or a say or a role to play – just as we feel and as we fear today.  Also, the gods of the rulers of the day do not have the same concern for the goodness of Earth as God has, and the people fear for the goodness of life on Earth – just as fear as well.

 

Which makes what the prophet says all the more relevant to us as much as to them, when he says, “Rise and shine!  Daylight in the swamp!" 

The powers that be, he says, are not nearly so fixed or unending as the people fear they will be.  It is God who created the heavens and Earth who is eternal, and the powers of this world all come and go.  Empires, kingdoms and nations all rise and fall – no exceptions.  Princes, kings and rulers of all kinds have their day and all at some point also come to their end of their rope – no exceptions.  In the words of the prophet, in relation to God who sees and ultimately oversees all, we all – from prince to pauper, from power-broker to pawn, are all mere grasshoppers. 

And the good news – the wake-up call, the invitation and encouragement to rise-and-shine is that it’s the grasshoppers who know this about themselves and about God, who don’t put all their eggs in their own little power basket, who wait for the Lord instead, who wait to know and to commit to God’s way of making and keeping the world good, who will be the ones to rise up and lead the way for the rest. 

It takes faith, as well as openness of heart and mind and life, to live that way.  It means being set free of whatever inside us and out in the world holds us back or keeps us out of the picture. 

But have you noticed what happens for those who are set free, and who do claim a role in the work?  For those who get up in time to join God at the table, and start together with God on the new day’s work of making and keeping the world good?   For those who give themselves time to hear the call of God to the work of the day every day of their lives? 

Does it seem to you that they more than others, in the words of the prophet, really do

…renew their strength,

…mount up with wings like eagles,

…run and not be weary,

…walk and not faint?

It seems to me this is not so much promise as observation, not just optimism and hope but the lived experience of those who do take the time to listen for God’s invitation each day to Rise and Shine, because in doing that they let themselves be reminded that there really is daylight in the swamp, and they are happily called to be part of it.  

It’s these people who more often than not get up not with the all-too-common groan, “Oh God, it’s morning already…” but with a gratitude that says, “Thank you, God, that it’s morning again!”  And not because they’re better people.  I can only believe it’s because they take the time to listen for the voice that calls up the stairs to them.

 

So So I wonder, which is more true of us?  The groan that says, “Oh God, morning again…”?  Or the gratitude that says, “Oh God, thank you.  Morning again!" 

Towards Sunday, February 8, 2015

Scripture:  Isaiah 40:21-31 and Mark 1:29-39
Sermon:  Rise and shine! Daylight in the swamp!

He brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of earth as nothing...but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.  (Isaiah 40)

 

This passage comforts us in times of personal distress and trial, reminding us of God's promise to see us through and give us new strength.

 

In its biblical setting the promise is political and spoken to the people as a whole.  Israel is in exile, victims of their unfaithfulness to God.  Overwhelmed by foreign princes and the powers of the day, the people feel abandoned by God and without purpose any more -- consigned to the dustbin of history. 

 

But the prophet reminds them that princes and powers come and go, and as weak as God's kind of power seems at times, God is the abiding power over all.  All princes come to the end of their rope at some point, and it's the people who wait for God's day to come 'round who then rise up, run with vigour, and lead the way.

 

Q:   What powers, patterns and princes of oppression and death do we lament today as being so powerful that they cannot be resisted?  Can we imagine their fall from power?  What makes us part of the people who help lead in God's new way of being in the world? 

 



 

In the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus said, "Let us go on to the neighbouring villages so I may proclaim the message there as well, for that is what I came out to do."  (Mark 1)

 

Timing is everything in this story.  The day before was the Sabbath, and it was a remarkable sabbath of teaching and healing in the synagogue and in a private home.  The power of God to heal and renew life is clearly afoot in the world in a new way.

 

So come sundown -- the end of the sabbath and the beginning of the first day of the new week, all the village comes to the house where Jesus is, to share in the gift of healed life.  Then near dawn, Jesus starts moving out to heal the world. 

 

It is, after all, the first day of the week.  God made the world in the first week; now in this new week it is time to re-make and heal the world God made.

 

Q: What is my spirit's song on Monday morning?  A groan about having to start a new week?  Or gratitude for the chance to start a new week?  

 

 

 

 

Sermon from February1, 2015

Scripture:  Deuteronomy 18:15-20 and Mark 1:21-28
Sermon:  Finding the Way Together

So is it good news or bad for the people of Israel when God promises to send them another prophet like Moses?  And is it good news or bad for the people of Capernaum when Jesus chooses their synagogue as the starting point for his work of revealing the reign of God in the life of the world? 

On one hand, Moses was a great prophet and the people owe everything they have to his leadership.  They are free of bondage and entanglements to the Egyptian empire.  They have a land of their own they are about to live in.  They have God’s law to guide them in their life together.  They are a special people in the world, who know what it is to live in relationship with God and to live life on Earth the way it’s meant to be. 

But on the other hand, Moses really was a fearsome person.  He was capable of murder, and had committed it.  He was not afraid of being an outsider.  He lived beyond boundaries himself, and insisted the people do too.  He led them into a terrible wilderness and for forty years led them through very trying times.  Through it all he demanded they have faith in a God of great power to save them, but beyond human understanding and control. 

Now that they are about to enter the promised land and hopefully settle down and start raising families, do they really want another prophet like Moses? 

And what about the people of Capernaum?   

On one hand, it’s quite a feather in their cap that Jesus chooses their synagogue for his coming-out sermon, and the starting point of his great ministry of revealing the reign of God at work in the world.  He gives them a place in history and in the story of God and God’s people.  He inspires them with his powerful message and blesses them with his healing presence.  Unclean, damaged spirits are healed and holy light enters every dark corner of their gathering.   

But on the other hand, this means they must change.  Over the years, like all synagogues and communities of faith, they have made their compromises with imperfect ways of being together and with the unclean spirits at work in their midst.  They have come to tolerate certain characters among them, and certain characteristics – not always the best, that are true of them all.  There is a lot they have agreed to just cover up and not really talk about. 

And when Jesus shows up and starts preaching God’s truth with a directness and power they are not used to, the equilibrium they have achieved is disturbed.  Jesus challenges their compromises with sinfulness and dysfunction.  The lid is taken off and suddenly just because the Word of God has become clearer to them than before, they are clearly not just the nice little synagogue with happy members that they seemed to be.   

And are we any different?  The places we come to for a sense of goodness and peace in the world – whether church or home or family, don’t they sometimes turn out at times to be just as troubled as the rest of the world?   Like the synagogue in Capernaum, do we sometimes tolerate dysfunction and make compromises with unclean spirits among us and with less-than-a-gospel-way-of-being, and just agree not to talk about it?  And are we always ready to listen to and to follow the prophets God sends today – prophets of justice, peace, and the healing of all the world, or like the people of Israel do we sometimes want God to send good managers instead so we can settle down and just be content for a while in our part of the promised land? 

It takes courage to come to a place like this where we are today and really be open to God – to come into the Light, to stand under and to stand up against the Word of God, to be in a place where we let the Spirit of God stir within us and speak to our own heart from within. 

But maybe that’s why we come – why we come to worship, why we come for fellowship with other believers, why we listen and sing and pray as we do, why we bring our children to be baptized, why we risk being together in silence before a God beyond understanding and human control, but whom we trust – not always know, but trust to be full of love and only love.  There is something within us that is courageous, that wants to know God’s truth in the midst of our confusion and our culture’s misdirection, that wants to be enlightened and reminded of how life on Earth is supposed to be when we forget and even though we can’t commit entirely to it, that wants healing for the brokenness and dysfunction and dividedness we so often feel in the world and within ourselves, don’t know what to do about, and try to hide from others. 

And when we think about being here today – baptizing these little ones, Jacobson, Kay-Lee and Maeva – and the responsibility we have accepted to help nurture them in Christian faith, hope and love, maybe the best way we can do this, and the truest thing we can ever try to teach them or pass on to them, is not to pretend we know all the answers or let them imagine we are always good and perfect, but to tell them and show them where we go to hear the truth when we feel confused or misdirected, whose prophetic voice and leadership today helps us to see God’s way of life for the world even though we don’t follow it perfectly, and where and to whom we go when we need healing for our broken and divided lives.   

The reason I emphasize this is that when I was first a father, I thought my job was to know everything, to have all the answers for my son, and to be able to teach him everything he needs to know.  But that was a pretty heavy burden for me to bear.  It was a heavy burden for Aaron to bear.  And it was a heavy burden – too heavy a burden, for our relationship to bear. 

Now, though, I am learning that the better thing for me to be able to do is to be able to tell him where I go to hear the truth when I am confused, whose prophetic voice and leadership helps remind me of how life on Earth is meant to be lived today even though I don’t commit entirely to it, and where and to whom I go for healing when I need it. 

So I wonder where do you go to hear the truth when you feel confused?   

Whose prophetic voice and leadership today helps you see at least a bit of God’s way of life for the world?   

Where and to whom do you go when you need healing for what’s broken and divided in your life? 

I encourage you to think about these things.  Your children and grand-children and others who look up to you, need to know.

 

 

Sermon from Sunday, January 25, 2015

Scripture:  Jonah 3:1-5, 10 and Mark 1:14-20
Sermon:  The reign of God in daily life is infectious; are we contagious?

It doesn’t take much to make a difference and to help change the world.  Maybe you’ve seen these ads. 

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It doesn’t take much to change the world and help save it from its sin.  Call it the butterfly effect.  Dorothy Day uses the image of throwing our pebble into the pond.  Jesus talks about sowing seed.  Maybe we can call it the infectiousness of good life, and the contagion of converted thinking. 

However we picture the joy of changing the world, we all have a place in it.  We all have a part to play in the holy work of turning the world from sin to more godly ways of being, and this is something the Gospel story makes us think about. 

In Jesus’ time – as today, there is no shortage of religious teachers and leaders and social and cultural authorities.  In the holy city, there are the priests – both high and low, who serve in the Temple and in the royal court.  There are the scribes who study and know the old laws and writings.  There are the Pharisees who know the Law of Moses and all the different ways it has been interpreted over the centuries.  There are the Sadducees – the religious side of the conservative upper crust, who usually see the Pharisees as too liberal.  There are the Essenes, who live in community in the wild on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, for the sake of a separate holiness.  And in every village there is the rabbi, or rabbis, and local elders that everyone turns to for advice and direction. 

There is no shortage of religious teachers and authorities to do God’s work and reveal God’s word for the time.  But in the Gospel when Jesus begins gathering followers to make a difference and help save the world from its sin he turns to fishermen.  He turns to common ordinary labourers, people of the sea and of the street, people in the midst of everyday life with nothing but willing hands and hearts and voices and spirits to offer – the basic things God has given to us all. 

This point is emphasized in the old King James and un-corrected version we read today, about “fishermen” being called to become “fishers of men.”  Yes, there is good reason to change this description of the first disciples by saying they are called from being fishermen to start “fishing for people,” but the old unredeemed translation makes the point even more clearly and poetically – that really it’s in the midst of our daily life, whatever it is, that we’re called into Christian discipleship through only a little change in how we see and describe ourselves – a little change that makes all the difference in the world. 

Parker Palmer, for instance, has written a book called Courage to Teach in which he encourages and helps teachers to understand themselves not just as transmitters and testers of information, but as educators and nurturers of other human beings.  In the same vein a caretaker in a school can be just a worker doing a job and nothing more, or can be a model and a mentor to others.  Last year I met a Roman Catholic priest who grew up without a father, and for whom the caretaker in the one-room school he attended was the man who took him under his wing, gave him and taught him responsibility around the school, and helped him believe in himself.  Anyone who’s been in a hospital knows the difference between a doctor or nurse who really cares for the patients in their care, and those who only care about and treat their symptoms.  And the list could go on.  If Jesus were to appear today and gather disciples, it would be the ordinary and common people of the world he would go to first – as he actually does. 

Discipleship – following Jesus in such a way that we help to change the world, is something we all are called into in our baptism, and are meant to be trained and equipped for in our membership and participation in church.  Maybe one thing to remember is that among the first disciples of Jesus, it was only a few who left their daily lives for good to become church leaders and missionaries and teachers.  Most went back to their day jobs and homes and families and friends and where they came from in the first place, and it’s from there in the midst of the everyday stuff of life that they started to make the difference that really changes the world and helps save it over and over again from its sin. 

The kingdom of God – the reign of God in daily life, comes from the bottom up, not top down.  It comes from where we are and in the midst of everyday life.  It comes as ordinary people agree to see themselves as servants of God and bearers of a new way of life, as people who help spread the contagion of converted thinking and living. 

One other thing that’s necessary, though, in addition to how we are willing to see ourselves, is how we are willing to see other people.  This is Jonah’s issue, and the fact that the fable of Jonah has been saved by the people of Israel and included in their Scriptures, shows that they understand it as an issue for all of us. 

The reason Jonah tries not to go to Nineveh – the capital city of Israel’s arch-enemy, Assyria, and live out the word of God to the people there, is not that he fears for his safety among them, that they will reject what he says and kill him.  Fear is not what he has to get over. 

What he has to get over and have changed inside himself is his lack of concern for their salvation.  What he fears in the job God gives him is that the people will listen, that they will actually repent of their sin and wickedness, that God will then forgive them, and that instead of being an enemy – an “other” against which Israel can comfortably define itself, he and his people will have to embrace these others as fellow recipients of God’s grace, equal to them as people of God’s love, fully part of what Israel claims to be in the world.  It’s easier – more comfortable, for Jonah to see them as “them” than for the line between “us” and “them” to be dissolved.  I wonder if maybe at some point he even would have been happier dying inside the whale, than being spit out to go help convert and save the Ninevites. 

And I wonder what the question is for us in all this.  If good ways of living – God’s ways of saving the world from its sin and making it good, are infectious, how contagious are we?  And how happy or unconcerned are we to help spread the infection to others – to the “them” around “us”?

Towards Sunday, January 18, 2015

Scripture:  I Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51
Sermon:  Willing and wise enough to be an Eli

What catches my attention in these two readings is the ministry of helping others listen to a new voice or word of God in times of transition in the religious landscape.   Both readings are about times of transition in the religious landscape, and people who are able to help others move into the new religious reality of their day.

In I Samuel, after living in the Promised Land for about 200 years as a loose collection of twelve tribes centrally led only by a family line of priests (a kind of "religious royalty" appointed by God to be leaders of the tribes), the time has come for radical change.  As happens with institutions over time, the priesthood has grown corrupt -- so corrupt that old Eli alone remains as a half-worthy, half-blind priest (kind of like Graham Greene's "whiskey priest"?), with his two sons destined to die in their extreme sinfulness, and no one left to carry on the priestly leadership.  The people as a whole suffer because of this "vacuum" at the heart of their life together, and things have to change.

In this situation the young boy Samuel is entrusted to Eli's care, and in this reading Eli teaches Samuel to listen to a voice of God that Eli himself is not able to hear, even though it inspires young Samuel to help create a new style of leadership for the people (a king!) and bring to an end the institution that Eli himself has been part of, and has tried to serve well.

Are we in a time of transition today?  Can we be as faithful and effective as Eli in helping others (like our children and grandchildren) to listen to a voice of God that maybe we can't hear ourselves?  And even if it may mean the end of things we have loved, and given our lives to?

In the Gospel, the evangelist John emphasizes more than the other Gospels, that some of Jesus's first disciples were first of all disciples of John the Baptizer, and that when Jesus appeared they shifted their allegiance to him because they saw in him the "something" that John, for all his spiritual power and charisma, did not have.  It could not have been easy to make the change, but seeking more than anything to be faithful to God they helped one another do it.

Can we be as good in helping one another embrace the work of God in new ways and places in the world today?  Can we be as open and honest as Philip in helping our brothers and sisters know that we have changed our minds and commitments in light of a new understanding of how God is at work in our midst?

From Sunday, January 11, 2015

Scripture:  Acts 19:1-7 and Mark 1:4-11
Sermon:  Going beyond the A-B-C's and even D's of being a nice church; living into the E, F, G and H of Christian community

Have you ever been to, or been part of a church that just didn’t seem to “have it”?  Where everyone was nice, everything was good, and they did the right things, but something was missing – where some spark or passion, some flow of deeper vitality just wasn’t there? 

A number of years ago – maybe fifteen, I was guest preacher one Sunday at a local church while their minister was on vacation.  I looked forward to it because it was one of the larger and historically more prestigious churches in the Presbytery.  

The day I was there, though, I still remember as one of the darkest and most depressing experiences of church worship I have ever had.  The sanctuary was large and beautiful.  The liturgy was well-thought-out, the lay leadership skilled and experienced, the music well-chosen and potentially inspiring.  The people who were there were nice; more than that, they were good, moral people involved in all kinds of good things in the world. 

But all through the hour of worship I felt something was missing.  In the absence of whatever it was, the sanctuary seemed more dark than light , the people more depressed and tired than joyful, their gathering more yearning and anxious than vital and hopeful. 

That happens in churches – more often than we realize, and I’m sure it happens here at times as well. 

Years before that, back in the mid-eighties when I studied for a year in Boston I worshipped for a while at a church that had been recommended because of their minister, who was regarded as one of the brighter lights and leaders of the denomination – a great preacher and a good leader in thoughtful mission to the world.  I looked forward to it; it seemed Sunday morning as well as Monday to Friday were to be part of my education in ministry. 

But I stopped worshipping there after three or four Sundays.  I found it too tiring because of what I felt about the minister’s burden.  It seemed to me he was so skilled, so in touch with things, so determined that the congregation be led on a journey of faith into greater mission to the world, and so aware of his call to lead them there that the whole of the worship experience seemed to rest on his shoulders, and the success (or failure!) of it seemed to hang on his every word and gesture.  It was so carefully designed and constructed and so dependent on his delivery of what was promised, that I found myself exhausted by the end of it, by the fear that maybe this time it wouldn’t work, something would go wrong, and everything would shatter and fall into pieces because of it.   

In all that minister was doing and carrying on a Sunday morning, and what the congregation let him do and carry, it seemed there was something missing.  That happens among ministers – more often than we realize, and no doubt it also happens with me. 

The problem is not new.  The problem of “something missing” is as old as the church.  In today’s story from the Book of Acts – the book of the earliest communities of Christ, the leaders of the brand-new Jesus movement sense something missing in the new church in Ephesus.  What they diagnose it as is the absence – or at least the not-yet-presence of the Holy Spirit and the congregation’s not-yet-openness-to the flow and the deeper vitality of the Holy Spirit within their gathering. 

Paul says, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”  They reply, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 

³“Into what then were you baptized?” he asks.  “Into John’s baptism,” they answer.   

To which Paul says, ⁴“You have to realize John baptized with a baptism of repentance.  He invited people – as prophets do, into moral community – into turning from evil, doing good and trying to change the world around them for the better.  And that is good; the world needs communities and networks of good and moral people. 

“But he also pointed people to One who was still to come with something more and new – Jesus, who would baptize people in a new and deeper way into the life and flow of the Holy Spirit – into a new and more intimate relationship of God and humanity, a new way of being human beings, and a way of being together not only nice and moral in a way that the world always appreciates, but deeply spiritual and holy in ways that are understood only by those who are inside it themselves.”  

⁵On hearing this, the believers in Ephesus are baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, ⁶Paul lays his hands on them, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they speak in tongues and prophesy – all twelve of them who are there. 

In many communities of the earliest church, speaking in tongues was seen as the sign of really participating in the life and flow of the Spirit of Christ in the world.  It was a sign of being opened to, and filled with a power and a life from beyond themselves.  It was a language that neither Rome nor Jerusalem controlled or understood.  It united believers across other boundaries and differences that divided them.  It lifted their spirits with a beauty, vitality and hopefulness that was not of their design, but a gift from of God.  It caught them up in something greater than themselves, and helped free them to follow the leading of God in ways that others – even very good and moral people, often were not. 

We’re somewhat leery of this, of course, and even Paul came to see that speaking in tongues is not the only sign – and not the best test of whether a congregation is open to the Spirit or not.  In I Corinthians he says the deepest gift of all, and the greatest sign of a church living deeply in God’s flow, is love – love of God in all we do, say and have; and love of neighbour as ourself.   

And it’s in that vein – in that spirit, if you will, that this morning I suggest a few things we might be on the lookout for today as signs of living beyond niceness and goodness, in the deeper, more holy flow of the Spirit of Christ and of God at work.  I want to mention four things and for ease of memory I offer them as the E, F, G and H of being in deeper community with Jesus beyond the A, B, C and even D of being a good and moral church. 

This is not as a way of testing whether we are Christian or not as a church, or truly spiritual or not.  These are more simply possible elements of deeper spirituality today that sometimes are and sometimes are not true of us, that we can encourage and nurture when we see them emerge in our life together, and that we can seek out and be open to in intentional ways when we do not. 

The first of the four is Ease.  A truly spiritual community – like a moral community, is moral and good, cares about making Earth a good place to be for all creatures, a commits itself to the kinds of actions and programs that make a difference for good in the world.  But it does this with a kind of ease and absence of anxiety that is not always true of good people and moral communities. 

I wonder sometimes about John in the Gospel as he goes about his ministry of prophetic preaching and practice.  He does great and courageous work with his moral preaching, his prophetic critique of the corruption of the government and culture of the day, and his invitation to people of all kinds to clean up their act.  He is the epitome of the moral and prophetic voice of the community’s whole faith tradition. 

But does he sometimes feel it’s all up to him?  Why does he get so harshly judgemental of people who don’t listen and change their ways?  And does he worry sometimes about what he will actually accomplish – maybe create a bit of discomfort among the elite and inspire a little bit of change for a while among the populace, but in the end be gone with the world still carrying on much as it always has? 

Being moral and good can be exhausting.  It makes you hungry for signs of success and open to depression, despair and desperate measures when they aren’t there.   

But people open to the life and flow of the Spirit, who know themselves caught up in something bigger than themselves and than the world and the powers of the day, can go about the work in a different spirit – not thinking they have make the world good or else, but more simply doing what they can to be part of a future coming by a Power greater than themselves.  It’s not up to them to make the new heaven and earth; they simply answer the invitation to start living it now, as a witness to what is promised and will surely come. 

Which leads to Freedom, and even Foolishness sometimes in what is done – two F’s of the community of God’s Spirit.   

Not everything has to be calculated, or part of some program with a definable end, designed to create a manageable and measurable good outcome.  Rather, sometimes a community of Christ will do something destined to fail or be a waste of time and effort, just because it seems to be part of who Christ is and what Christ loves – like a congregation using well-designed colourful worship bulletins that are more expensive than plain paper; or a handful of elderly women dressing up as Raging Grannies, standing near a naval base to sing funny home-made songs about the evil of war and nuclear weapons; or a Sunday school class cleaning garbage off a section of highway knowing full well that in two weeks there will be just as much and maybe even more garbage thrown back onto it. 

When you live in the flow of the Spirit, not everything is subject to cost-benefit analysis because who knows what seeds sown into the world bear fruit?  Who knows that even the ones that seem to die are fruitless or useless in their being sown? 

Which leads in a way to another F – Forgiveness that’s based on Grace – the G of spiritual community, the Grace of God that passes all understanding.   

In a community open to the Spirit rather than just committed to doing good and being right, there is room for mistakes and error, and room always for forgiveness, learning and growth because we are not always right or good – not in our thoughts or actions, not in the ways we treat one another, nor the ways we think of, and represent God.  We are all here by grace – and a community of the Spirit of Christ and of God remembers this about themselves and about others.  It makes room for all who – like ourselves, make mistakes and are broken. 

Which involves then a fourth thing – the H of truly spiritual community – Honesty, primarily honesty about ourselves.  When we count on being nice and good, and that’s how we sell ourselves, we are not really free to admit mistakes, reveal our warts, or share our questions and doubts.  But when we know that by grace we are part of something bigger and better than ourselves, we don’t have to pretend anymore.  We don’t have to fear our mistakes and try to justify ourselves when we’ve done wrong.  When we hurt one another and act badly together, we don’t have to deny or ignore what’s been done, and just blindly hope time alone somehow heals all wounds. 

Rather, we can talk about these things – be honest about our wounds and our wounding.  Through humble honesty we can grow spiritually and find an even deeper unity that has nothing to do with being right, and everything to do with right relations. 

The world doesn’t often teach us how to do this.  It’s not part of the old way of being human.  But it is part of the new way of being human that the community of Christ at its best is about.  Beyond being nice, good and moral, we are baptized into a new way of living together in the world – the way God has intended people to be all along, and that has been revealed and made available to us now in these days in Jesus.   

So in this season of Epiphany, as we let Jesus lead us deeper and deeper into the light of God’s life, we learn to look for these elements of openness to his Spirit – Ease in the good that we do, Freedom and even Foolishness sometimes in what we find ourselves doing, Grace in our acceptance and embrace of others, and Honesty about who we really still are and what we really still do.  As we see these elements of spiritual life emerge in our life together, we can support and nurture them.  And as they do not, we can choose to seek them out and learn to grow into them.