You grace our lives

A prayer after singing For the Beauty of the Earth and partly based on 1 Peter 3: 13 -22.

Lord of all, to you we raise our songs of praise.
You grace our lives
with your presence and love.
You summon us to good and holy work
in the company of your people. 

You grace our lives
and set us on the road to life in all its fullness.
You pick us up when we fall;
you search us out and find us when we get lost;
you turn us around
and forgive our sin
and surprise us with new beginnings.

We bring before you now those times
when we lived out of our fears
instead out of your promises.
There are times when the bad news looms so large
and there seems no way forward.

There are times when the cost of loving like you love
seems too high.

Speak Your life-giving Word to us, we pray.
Teach us to trust your promises more deeply,
to see your Way more clearly,
to love You more fully.
We ask in the name of Jesus,
the one who willingly suffered
so that we might live in hope.  Amen.

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Participating with God in New Creation Communities

A message for a Sunday when we celebrated baptism, based on 1 Peter 3: 13 -22

I begin this morning with a story that some of you have heard before. I tell it often because it helps us understand what happened when we were baptized. It reminds us of what it means to be Jesus’ disciples in a world that has forgotten what it takes to be in relationship with one another.

The story begins in the early years of the fifth century. It is set in the dying days of the Roman Empire. In the spring of 410 A.D., a powerful tribal chieftain from northern lands, Alaric the Goth, had led his troops into the city of Rome. They ransacked the city, taking away its gold and silver and all the treasures that they could carry. They rounded up and carted off all its slaves. 

The raid was not the end of the Roman Empire but it signalled the beginning of the end. By the fall of that year, boatloads of refugees had begun arriving in the port cities of North Africa. In one of those cities, the young governor of the province, Volusianus, stood on the dock watching the refugees arrive. He saw them get off the boats, carrying all they had left in the world in makeshift bags and sacks. He saw the looks of numbed shock on their faces. 

Questions began to fill his mind. “Was this the end of everything? Why? What had gone wrong? Could anybody have done anything about it?” At the time, Volusianus was considering baptism as a Christian. So, he wrote a letter to his bishop, a priest named Augustine. Augustine replied to him, “Rome may be dying, but time is not dying. God is not dying. Even as this City of Man dies, there are those within its streets who are called to be the builders of the new city.”

Even as the world as we have known it is dying, there are those within its communities that are called to be the builders of God’s new creation, God’s new community. Even as the world around us is struggling with unsolvable crises, even as many of our structures and systems are failing and falling apart, God is at work, making a new creation. That’s what Jesus’ death and resurrection signals to us. 

God is not some vague energy force that simply surrounds us. The God who meets us in the stories of the Bible is an active agent in the world. The God who reveals Godself in Jesus of Nazareth confronts the forces in the world that work against God’s good and holy purposes. Those forces and powers cannot defeat God’s power for life. In the midst of our dead ends, God is making new beginnings.

When you are baptized into Christ Jesus, you join the community of God’s people who have been called to participate with God in building a new creation, a new world in the midst of the old. 

For the past few weeks, we have been reading Peter’s letter to the early Christian Church. In it, he describes the old world, the world that is dying. It is a world in which people lack integrity. They act maliciously. They are full of envy of what others have. Their speech is full of hurtful talk; they lie. They repay evil for evil; they respond to abuse with abuse. 

In the midst of all that, Peter says to the early Christian communities, “Conduct yourselves honourably. Don’t lie. Do good with tender and compassionate hearts. Don’t seek revenge; instead, respond to evil and abuse with a blessing. And, be always ready to explain to people why you are behaving the way you are. Just make sure you do that with gentleness and reverence.”

How is that going? 

Peter knows that the kind of behaviour that he is laying out for us is not going to be easy. It is hard to tell the truth in a culture that is drowning in lies. It is hard to respond to someone who crosses you with a blessing. It is hard to keep doing good when you know it will cost you.

Peter asks, “Who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” He knows that the answer is, “Plenty of people.” His whole letter is about the suffering that followers of Jesus encounter because they are trying to do what is right and good. 

To be a disciple of Jesus is costly. Building new communities where all people can thrive and flourish, where all peole are cherished and treated with dignity doesn’t just happen because you think it is a good idea. There are powerful forces working against goodness and truth and Christ-like love. They have a grip on our world and they do not let go easily.

Indeed, there will be times when the forces working against goodness and truth and Christ-like love will seem so strong that we shall grow weary in resisting them and confronting them. We shall get discouraged. We shall be pretty sure that we are not up to this task that God has given us.

That, too, is what it means to worship a living God. God is always pulling us toward more life — more love, more joy, more courage, more hope than we think is possible for us. There will be times when we shall encounter obstacles that are grater than our own strength. Peter says, “Even if you do suffer for doing what is right, remember that you are blessed.” 

Suffering comes with the territory but you are blessed because the one who has given you this holy work to do also suffered. He was willing to go to hell and back so that everyone could get in on God’s salvation. Remember that he has already won the victory over the powers that work against God’s purposes. He is with you in your suffering — to sustain you and to give you the courage you need to keep going.

That means that you don’t need to be afraid. You don’t need to be intimidated. You don’t need to shape your life around your fears. Instead, says Peter, “in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.” Approach every situation remembering that there is nothing in all creation that can ever separate you from God’s love for you, from God’s purposes for your life (Romans 8: 28). Live into every place where you are afraid remembering your baptism. God has called you by your name and will never let you go.

Do you remember Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa at the time of the fiercest battles against the racism and injustice of the system of apartheid. He worked for it to be dismantled. He was persecuted for speaking out aginst its evils. He was asked, “Don’t you ever get discouraged?” He replied, “God does not break God’s promises. Remember your baptism.”

This morning we baptized Bryce into a community that lives by the promises of God. In the midst of all that life might throw at him, the Risen Christ will be there, giving him the courage and strength he will need to live in the new future God is creating. Together with him we get to be part of be part of God’s new community of love in the world. We are, indeed, blessed. Thanks be to God.

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“There was once a man with two sons”

A message based on Luke 15: 1-3, 11b – 32

“There was once a man who had two sons . . .” Today’s scripture story is probably one of the most familiar of Jesus’ parables; at least, the first part of it is. For most of my life, I’ve heard it called, “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” One son. However, the parable has two sons — a younger one and an elder son. It also has a father, who is really the main character of the story. It’s the father’s actions that drive the story — that are the most decisive. 

“There was once a man with two sons.”

This isn’t just  story about a person who led a wild life and then had a conversation experience and found his way home. Many of the sermons I have heard and read give the impression that that is what it is primarily about. 

This is a story about a family. It is a story about a family navigating its way through the messiness and disappointments, the hurts and betrayals that happen whenever human beings live in relationship with each other. 

It is a story Jesus told to the Pharisees and the religion scholars. That means that it is specifically directed to the people of God. It is about the shape of the Kingdom of God that Jesus said is ‘at hand’.

The Pharisees and the religion scholars — the committed leaders of God’s family — were complaining that Jesus was giving too much time and attention to people they called ‘sinners’. It is not really clear what the Pharisees and religion scholars meant by calling the people with whom Jesus was hanging out ‘sinners’.

Just before this, Jesus had been encouraging the religious leaders to host parties that included the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind — the misfits, the homeless, the wretched. Outsiders. The people who had been pushed to the margins of the community because they did not fit in easily. They did not look like they belonged. They looked different. They behaved differently. They moved in different social circles. They lived by different standards. They probably held different views about the important issues of the day.

When Jesus included them in the community of God’s people and the religious insiders complained, Jesus told them three parables about something that was lost. Whatever was lost was sought for and when it was found, everyone was invited to a celebration party. The third of the parables was about a man who had two sons. 

The younger son was the wild child and broke all the rules.

The older son was the obedient son who kept all the rules and resented the son who didn’t. 

Throughout the parable, it is the father who just keeps navigating these fractured relationships. Again and again, he sacrifices his own dignity and his own position in order to bring this family together despite their differences. With extravagant love, he keeps pulling the two sons back into community with each other. He invites them to come together beyond the barriers that they have put between themselves.

“God was in Christ,” says the apostle Paul, “reconciling the world to God.” In Christ, God reconciles us to God by entering into our communities. With extravagant love and grace, God sacrifices God’s own life in the work of bringing God’s children together in spite of their differences. God reconciles us to God by putting us into community with other people.

What we know about that community is that Jesus has very eclectic taste. He puts us into community with other people, some of whom we have very little in common.

What we do have in common is that Jesus’ death and resurrection sets us free to live without fear. Living in the power of Jesus’ victory over the powers of death, we are free to let go of the protective barriers we put around our hearts.

What we have in common is that the Holy Spirit is at work among us. As we navigate our life together through all the things we don’t have in common, the Holy Spirit is shaping us into the kind of community that reflects the love and grace of the community that we know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is the kind of community where we find healing for the brokenness and the wounds that are part of being human in this world. 

This week I heard about another nearby congregation that is shutting down. Do you know what is sad about all the churches closing these days? Many things, of course, but chief among them is that there are fewer and fewer places where people are gaining the skills and the habits and the character they need in order to live in community with other people. 

So many people are desperately searching for authentic community — for a place where they know they belong; where they are cherished and supported and loved and cared for. Yet, they lack the very qualities of character and soul that are needed to create and sustain that kind of community.

Being in authentic community with others doesn’t just happen because your soul is thirsty for it, because you long for it. Being in community with others — especially in the kind of community where people are cherished and supported and loved and cared for — is hard work. The qualities of soul and character that form those kinds of communities are nurtured and developed slowly, over long periods of time. In company with others who are also being formed by the Spirit of Christ, you learn slowly, sometimes painfully, the fine arts of forgiveness and patience and humility and grace. 

You cannot develop those capacities by yourself. You need other people —especially other people who are different from you. You need other people who stay on the journey with you, even when the path goes through rough terrain. You need other people who stay in relationship even when hurt happens and it would be easier to walk away. You stay with it because God keeps meeting you in the place of hurt and brokenness. God keeps pulling you back into relationships with people whom Jesus has changed from strangers and enemies into your brothers and sisters.

If there are no churches left to be that kind of community, where will people become the kind of people who are capable of living in peace with one another, cherishing our differences as precious gifts that make our lives richer?

One of the things that the pandemic has shown us is that human community is both very precious and frighteningly precarious. One of the first things that happened in the pandemic was that we were isolated from each other. Almost everyone was cut off from their usual ways of being in community with each other.

Two years in, we are witnessing how that isolation has diminished our capacity for being in relationships with people who are different from us; people with whom we disagree over important matters. People get divided into separated camps, each fiercely defending their own territory, their own convictions. Our communities are emerging from the pandemic wounded, fractured, weakened, even less capable of nourishing and enriching people’s lives than they were before the pandemic. 

We come to this moment, concerned for our communities and wondering what we can do. Over many years, God has been at work among you, building you into the kind of community that has gained wisdom about what it takes to be in community with each other. There have been some pretty painful times. Those difficult times  forged in you humility and grace and some sense of how costly forgiveness can be. 

We don’t do ‘community’ perfectly but the kind of community we are is a gift that God has formed amongst us for the sake of the world in which we live. 

You and I are here together at this place and in this time because “there was once a man who had two sons” and the two children had forgotten that their life, their well-being depended upon each other, as different as they were. What transformed the situation was that the Father refused to let either of them stay lost or dead in their separation from each other.

You and I are here, together in this place at this time because the Father is relentlessly at work in our lives and in our communities. Our Saviour is even now seeking out the lost ones, the ones who feel that they don’t fit anywhere, the ones that feel they don’t have a place where they are deeply cherished. God’s Holy Spirit is relentlessly at work inviting us and them into community together with Jesus — a community where all can be healed and grow and flourish and find the salvation and healing that our souls long for.

You and I are here because we get to be ambassadors for Christ. We get to host a grand party where all are welcome. Where everyone gets to hear the Father say, “You are my beloved child.” 

If we don’t do it, who will?

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We bring our praise to you

We bring our praise to you, God.
We bring our praise 
in the words we say,
in the songs we sing,
in the silences we keep.

We bring our praise
for those moments
when we have been awed by the beauty of creation,
for those moments when we have caught a glimpse
of the greatness of your steadfast love and faithfulness.

We bring our praise
for those moments
when we have sensed your Holy Spirit
hovering over this world
unsettling us
pushing us into new life
opening us to new possibilities.

Turn us toward you 
in those times
when praise gives way to 
sorrow
or anxious fear
or horror at the world’s pain and violence.

Teach us
that deep trust which 
makes even those troubling times
moments when we know that you are
moving us deeper into your love and grace.

We bring our praise, O God,
in the name of Jesus
and in the power of your Holy Spirit
for it is your goodness that holds us and keeps us
through all that life brings us.  Amen.

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In the Spotlight of God’s Love

Scriptures: Psalm 8
John 1: 1-5

I have posted this before but it seems like a good time to reflect again on these thoughts.

The climate of this planet is changing. Increasingly, weather is in the news, reporting the damage caused by severe weather patterns.

We face a great challenge: How do we live in creation without destroying it? At its heart, that is a spiritual question. It has to do with what we believe about God and about human beings and about our relationship with this world that God has entrusted to our care. We set ourselves under the stories and prayers in the scriptures that tell us about God’s creation, our place within it, and our role in its care, and we discover that the answer comes with wonder and awe. 

We live in a culture that, in many ways, does not encourage wonder. It comes naturally, spontaneously, in childhood. If you watch little children, you see them discovering this amazing world for the first time. You see their delight in the smallest of things. However, over time and in many little ways, that sense of wonder can get squeezed out. You can get pre-occupied with mastering and controlling the world. You can get busy becoming competent in manipulating its elements. You can become pre-occupied with ‘getting ahead’.

Wonder takes time. It is about mystery. It requires that you loosen your tight grip on life so you can be surprised, allowing the unknown and the unexpected come to you. You can get so busy that you lose the wonder that feeds your soul. You can lose the wonder that is at the root of living well and reverently in creation. 

The awe of God is the beginning point of cultivating the capacity for wonder within our lives. It is the beginning point for living lives that are adequate to the great gift of this marvellous and precious creation. That is where Psalm 8 begins: “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” The Psalm begins and ends praising God. 

That is what frames our lives, it claims: the majesty, the glory of the Lord, the Sovereign of all the earth. In Hebrew, the word is actually YHWH. YHWH is the personal name God gave to Moses when God showed up in a bush that burned but did not burn up. YHWH is the name of the God who enters into covenant with a group of newly liberated slaves and leads them through the wilderness. 

It is an amazing claim. What frames our lives is not just a generic deity, a vague energy force. Our lives take place within a creation ruled by a named God who keeps showing up in our lives and in our world. We are not orphans, lost in an indifferent cosmos. We are met. We are claimed by a God who sets God’s glory above the heavens. This God puts moons and stars in their places, lifting nothing more than the fingers of God’s hands. This powerful, cosmic God is, nevertheless, mindful of us human beings. This God attends to us mere mortals.

“Why do you bother with us?” asks the psalmist. “Why take a second look our way?” And yet, YHWH does bother. YHWH does take a second look. This God does even more than that. John’s gospel begins by quoting an early Christian hymn. It sings the wonder of the God who created the cosmos by the power of God’s Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life” (John 1: 1-3).   Then, this God became flesh and blood, “moved into the neighbourhood” (The Message) as Jesus of Nazareth. 

By the end of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection, we know that this God cares for us and for this world so much that God is willing to go to hell and back to rescue us and to restore our broken relationships with God and with each other.

Julian of Norwich, one of the great mystical saints of the Church, said, “Human beings are clothed in divine love.” God’s love wraps around us. God’s love enfold us every moment of our lives. We are not always loveable. We are certainly not always aware of that love, but that love is the bedrock of our lives. The sovereign ruler of the cosmos loves us and cares for us with an infinite, attentive, creative love. 

So many people whom we encounter day by day do not know that. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine being loved that deeply and not knowing it? Our culture mostly gives us two messages. We are told either, “You are the centre of everything and you deserve to get everything you want or desire”, or “You are nothing more than a bundle of appetites. You are nothing more than the chance product of the survival of the fittest.” We live in the tension between these two messages. 

Both of them lead us away from wonder. Both of them destroy community and compassion and care. They lead us, in the first case, to reach too high for our own good, trampling over others in careless arrogance. In the second case, we settle for too little, figuring that there is nothing we can to do make a difference so we might just pursue our own private happiness and comfort.

Then, we come to worship and we pray Psalm 8. We remember that we are not gods and goddesses. We cannot arrogantly use and abuse this planet. We are accountable to a sovereign Creator who bestows upon us great dignity and a holy purpose: to love and care for this fragile creation. 

We come to worship and we pray Psalm 8 as a protest against every force that tries to demean us, to make us think less of ourselves than we should.

We hold these two truth together: You have made us a little less than gods; yet, You have given us charge over Your handcrafted world.”

It is said that a rabbi said that every person should carry two stones in her pockets. During the day, she should touch the one stone and remember, “I am but dust and ashes.” She should touch the other stone and remember, “For my sake, the whole universe was created.” The rabbi said that each person should use each stone as she needs it. 

We face large problems for which there are no easy, large-scale solutions. The way forward will consist of many small actions. The way forward begins with framing our lives in the loving care of a sovereign God who bestows upon each of you great dignity and responsibility. Find two stones small stones and carry them in your pockets. Carry them remembering, “I am but dust and ashes” and “For my sake, the whole universe was created. Take two stones for yourself and two stones for someone else. Invite that person to live this week, each day, with wonder. “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”

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You Invite Us Deeper

A prayer based on John 15: 1-8

O Lord, our God,

you surround us with your grace and your mercy.

You create us in your image

and invite us to share your holy work

in the company of your holy people.

You place among us gifts and hopes and 

hearts that yearn for your presence.

We thank you, 

we praise you

for your faithfulness,

for your rich love so generously given.

Now, in this time together,

as we turn towards you,

you invite us to venture

ever deeper into your love.

You know the fears that keep us 

from saying, “Yes” to you.

You know the ways we resist your Way.

You know the wounds that mark our souls.

You know the risks of loving

that we hesitate to take.

Grant us this further gift, we pray —

that your Holy Spirit moves among us again,

purifying, cleansing, healing our spirits,

preparing our hearts to abide

each moment

more fully in Christ,

making our lives living sanctuaries

where his love makes a home.

Then, let his love pour out of our life together,

full and overflowing

to nourish the places where we live,

bearing the fruit of peace and joy and hope.

So may our worship bring you joy.

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Jesus Invites You into His Life

A message at Shiloh Inwood United Church on May 2, 2021 based on John 15: 1-8.

One of my favourite ways of reading and praying the Bible is one that some of you are familiar with: lectio divina — holy reading. It approaches the Bible differently from many Bible studies. In most of the Bible studies that I have experienced for many years, the group reads a passage from the Bible. Then they would start learning information about it: When might it have been written? Who was it written for? What do some of the words means? What lesson or moral or principle does it contain? How might you apply that moral principle in your life?

Does that sound familiar? I think of it as a matter of stepping back from a passage, examining it so you can apply its message.

Lectio Divina – holy reading — approaches the Bible not by stepping back from it but by stepping into it. You are not mining the passage for information or for some life lesson. You enter into it; you wander around in it; you let it sink into your spirit.

You begin by reading the passage slowly several times. As you listen, you pay attention to words, images, phrases that emerge or stand out for you. Then, you let those words, images, or phrases take your mind where it will, entering into a dialogue with God. You pray. You listen for what God might be saying to you. In the final stage, you sit in the presence of God, intentionally conscious that you are immersed in the love and care of a good and holy God. 

When you use lectio divina, you end up in a different place than when you engage in the more common type of Bible study. You are listening to who Jesus is more than to what you should be doing. You are experiencing a deepening of your relationship with God — a deepening that shapes who you are.

When I am working with groups of people, I often use a variation of lectio divina called Dwelling in the Word. Dwelling in the Word begins in much the same way as lectio divina. A passage is read two or three times. You are asked to pay attention to words, images, phrases that emerge in your listening. But Dwelling in the Word asks you to pay attention to something else as well. It asks, “Where did you stop?” As you are listening to the passage where did you stop paying attention to the words that are being read? Where did your thoughts start wandering down a different path instead? Pay attention to that. 

Perhaps your thoughts didn’t wander down a different path but you did encounter a ‘speed bump’. The story was moving along smoothly. Then, something interrupted the flow for a moment or two. The speed bump may not have sent you off in a different direction, but the ground shifted under your foot just a little. Your pace was interrupted. You are invited to pay attention to that. 

When I am doing Dwelling in the Word, I don’t often pay much attention to the speed bumps. I don’t know why— that is just how it has been. However, this week, as I was studying and praying the gospel passage, I kept experiencing a speed bump and kept ignoring it. Finally  I clued in that I ought to pay attention to it!

“I am the true vine and my Father is the vine-grower,” says Jesus in his final talk with his disciples. Yes, yes, I have heard this before. 

“He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” The image of pruning — not an entirely pleasant image but typically good gardening practice. Okay.

The talk goes along until he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches.” Powerful image.

“Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit” Wonderful promise.

“. . . because apart from me you can do nothing.” Wait! What?? “Apart from me you can do nothing”? Really? That’s different. That’s not what we’ve been trained to believe. We live in a culture that urges us to stand on our own two feet, to claim our own abilities to go after our dreams and make them happen. 

What child has not heard, “You can be anything you want to be”? “You make your own life by the dreams you dream, the choices you make”. “You create you own identity by setting your mind on your goal and letting nothing get in your way.” “You are the author of your own story and that story is all about becoming the ‘you’ you want to be.”

Do you remember Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley singing “I did it my way”? They crooned a seductive anthem for people who were being trained to believe that what made their lives significant was that they were self-made people.

Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
and saw it through without exemption.
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way.”  (the lyrics were written by Paul Anka)

No talk there about depending on anyone else. No talk about participating in a deep relationship that immerses you in someone else’s way or direction. Just you, yourself, your actions and your decisions.

Which song do you listen to? Which promise do you lean into with your life? “I planned each charted course . . . I did it my way”? Or, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”

Jesus invites you out of a self-made life, a life shaped by your own choices, a life focused on your wants, your self-determined identity, your rights. Instead, Jesus invites you to participate in his life. Did you notice? Jesus says, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” The abiding is mutual, a shared life. You often hear people talk about having invited Jesus into their lives. That covers only part of what is going on when you sign on with Jesus and it’s not the most decisive part. Here, Jesus is inviting you into his life. He is inviting you to move out of your self into something so much larger than your own self. You abide in Christ — you move out of your own self-created story into the large, beautiful, life-giving story that God is telling in our world. And the promise is that, when you make yourself at home in that story, your life will bear much fruit.

As you grow in faith, you hear Jesus’ invitation to abide in him, in his life, over and over again. You enter into a life-long process of letting go. Instead of trusting your own efforts to make something of your life, you submit to God’s work of creating your life. 

You face a difficult challenge, or you encounter some pain or sorrow or suffering. You find yourself dealing with disappointment or betrayal. You come to the limit of what you can manage and control. In each situation, Jesus is inviting you to abide in him – to move more deeply into his life, into the work God is doing in your life.

As you accept the invitation, each event becomes more than simply that event. It becomes holy — our holy God at work in it, refining you, deepening you, making you holy, fruitful, part of God’s salvation of the world. 

It is risky to to accept the invitation. It often feels like God is pruning your life — cutting back attitudes or behaviours that are no longer serving you well; pruning that which is alive and healthy in you so that you bear even more fruit. We resist the pruning work of God. There is something in each of us that keeps turning us in towards ourselves. As Eugene Peterson writes, “The kingdom of self is heavily defended territory.” We have a lot of learning and unlearning to do. The learning, the unlearning, the risking, the letting go — that’s all part of being made a living sanctuary so that God can do God’s saving work in the world through you.

In a few moments we shall gather at Jesus’ table to which all those who hunger are invited. As we gather, we hear again Jesus’ invitation to share his life in the world, to abide in him. At this table, we are reminded that what the world needs most is not more of us. What the world needs most is more of our Saviour. We come with empty hands and thirsty souls and wounded selves. We abide in Jesus. We sit and wait and share in Christ’s life. We pray that in all of that, God will do His good and holy work in us so that our lives bear fruit — fruit that will last; fruit that will bless the world God loves.

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Holy lives reflecting God’s Grace

A sermon preached at Shiloh Inwood United Church on May 30 2021 based on Isaiah 6: 1-13

A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you a quotation from Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury:  “The hardest thing is to be where we are”. [quoted in Stanley Hauerwas, Living Well in Ordinary Time] It is much easier to live in the past, reminiscing about the ‘good old days’. It is easier to live in the future, dreaming dreams about what you will do when conditions change. “The hardest things is to be where we are.”

Rowan Williams goes on to describe where we are as a ‘confusing, damaged time.” Isn’t that a good description for the world these days? — “a confusing damaged time.”

In such a time, hope is hard to come by. In such a time, we find ourselves at the end of our own resources. Our souls are crying out for something more than what we are currently experiencing. Our souls are needing more than the ‘do-it-yourself’ life that our culture offers us.

In the scripture reading this morning, the prophet Isaiah invites us to be where we are by becoming aware that the more we are hungering for is being offered to us. He begins by saying, “In the year that King Uzziah died . . .”, which is short-form for saying that he, too, lived in a confusing and damaged time. 

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and exalted.” He saw the God who made all creation, the whole cosmos. He saw the God who hundreds of years later would send Jesus to heal the broken world. This is the ‘more’ that our souls are thirsting for. Where we are these days is in the presence of God who is glorious, awesome (as the children sang). This God is so large, so brimming over with life and energy and power that just the hem of his robe fills the temple.

Can you picture that? Imagine sitting in the sanctuary in either of our buildings, participating with the rest of us thirsty souls in an ordinary Sunday morning worship service. Suddenly, you catch aa glimpse of God’s presence with us. It is not just a warm feeling or a vague sense that something or someone is hovering around the edges. No, you are aware of God’s presence so massive, so alive that the space seems to be bursting at its seams. The four walls and roof cannot hold all of God’s presence. All you can see with the eyes of your soul is the hem of the robe that tells you that God is here with us. 

How would you feel? Awe? Astonishment? Terror?

Isaiah is first of all speechless but he draws our attention to the angel seraphs who have also showed up to our ordinary run-of-the-mill Sunday morning worship service. Mind you, these are not the cute, comforting, reassuring angels that are often pictured in religious and children’s books. These are large, fierce messengers who make their way up to the choir loft and signal to Irv and Joanne and Kay to start playing for all they’re worth. They start to sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is God-of-the-Angel-Armies. his bright glory fills the whole earth.”

[Steve Bell song, “Holy Lord”]

As happens so often with music, their singing helps Isaiah find his own words. “Woe is me!” he cries. “I am lost, as good as dead.” 

That is the usual reaction of human beings to God’s glorious holiness. We become acutely aware of our own brokenness. We become aware that we have wandered away from God and are now lost and cannot find our way. We recognize the ways in which we have contributed to the brokenness of our world.

It is true that God loves us just the way we are. It is also true that God loves us too much to let us stay that way. God is present, at work, in our lives. That work is transforming us, pulling us deeper and deeper into God’s own life, into God’s saving love, into God’s abundant joy. 

On our own, we shape our lives in ways that hinder that journey into God’s life. We pick up habits and attitudes that weigh us down. We put up defences around our hearts, thinking that they will keep us safe from getting hurt but they only end up blocking our experience of God’s love.

The work of God is often, then, the work of taking down our defences. It is the work of prying our hearts and hands from the tight grip we have on life — a grip that chokes and diminishes the life of God’s Spirit in us. That work can feel like a burning fire. It can feel like our whole world is shaking. Indeed, the scriptures says that the fire is a purifying fire. It is burning away the chains that are holding us captive; it is getting rid of the things that are separating us from God. The shaking is revealing what in our lives has been built upon faulty foundations. The shaking is revealing what is solid, what cannot be shaken because it is grounded in the firm foundation of God’s bedrock presence.

Isaiah experienced that purifying fire and then found that he had been freed enough to hear God invite him into God’s own work in the world. Having had his selfishness burned away, he is open to hearing the voice of God ask, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And, he is free enough to reply, “I’ll go; send me.”

That story is also our story. We tell it to each other because we, too, are set in the presence of our holy God. 

Our lives are not shaped by a pandemic or by the violence and brutality and selfishness and greed that are making this a confusing and damaged time. Our lives are shaped by our holy God who is massively, gloriously at work, healing this broken creation, setting captives free, bringing good news of rescue and redemption to those who have been neglected and abused and left wounded. 

We are a sacred community, commanded by Jesus our Lord. We get to participate in God’s holy, healing work in the world. We get to help people bear their grief and their sorrow, to walk with them through the valley of the shadow of death, assuring them that they are not alone. Our risen Saviour walks with them and is leading them home. 

We get to create the kind of community that seeks to restore dignity and bring grace into the lives of people who have been de-humanized and brutalized by systems of greed and violence. We get to help each other hear the words of welcome and love and reconciliation that Jesus is speaking into each of our lives.

We get to live holy lives that reflect the grace and holiness of our God. This is where we are. Our souls cry out for this. Our thirsty souls have been met by God’s extravagant grace. Thanks be to that God who invites us  into the loving community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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Your Music Sounds in our Lives

A prayer for Trinity Sunday, with Isaiah 6: 1-13

Angels and archangels,
cherubim and seraphim,
your children who have gone before us,
all creatures great and small —
all are gathered around your throne,
praising you.

Now we get to join the chorus,
“Holy, holy, holy Lord!
You are love and mercy and wisdom and power,
You are God-in-community, Three-in-One”.

Your music sounds in our lives
day by day
night by night.

We confess that, so often, 
too often, we do not hear it.
We wander through our days,
missing your life-giving Word
— your Word that would feed our souls
and guide us on your Way.

Neither do we see you:
the ways Your Holy Spirit is moving our lives
deeper and deeper into your love and freedom and joy;
the ways you are creating new life 
where we see only loss and death;
the ways you are healing our brokenness,
forgiving our guilt,
reconciling us to you.

Yet, you still have summoned us into your presence;
you have gathered us into your community of love;
you summon us to serve you
amongst those who are broken
or lost
or looking for a reason to hope.

Unstop our ears
Open our eyes
Tune our hearts to sing your praise
day by day
and night by night
in this time in which you have placed us. 

Make our lives holy,
a reflection of your Son, Jesus.
It is in his name we pray,
through the power of your Holy Spirit —
your gift to us for the living of these days to your glory. Amen.

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A prayer to God in a disrupted time

God who was,
God who is,
God who will be,
you meet us in this time of worship,
taking the praises we bring
and joining them with the songs
that are sung around your throne
by angels and archangels
and all the company of heaven,
by all creatures, great and small,
by your children, past and present.
We thank you for setting us into such
a large story,
for making our lives
part of your holy work in the world.
Receive our grateful alleluias, we pray.

God who was,
God who is,
God who will be,
you have promised that 
your steadfast love will fill each moment,
that your mercies never come to an end,
that your grace meets us in our weakness.
We confess our forgetfulness
of those sure promises.
We bring to you the times when
trouble has flooded over us
and we have found it hard to 
hold on to you.
We thank you that your hold on us is 
sure and steadfast.
We turn again toward you
and lean into your faithfulness once more.

God who is
God who will be
you meet us in this disrupted time;
you fill it with your redeeming power.
Give us grace to live in it
with creativity 
and courage
and hope.

We pray in the name of Jesus
who goes ahead of us into the future
and through the power of the Holy Spirit
who opens the way for us to live 
in your new creation.

Amen.

Photograph by Gillian Schafer.

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