Four Stones

Space is marked this morning with four stones.  These stones are not new.  They didn’t just arrive for today. These stones have been here for an entire year--- bearing witness --- to our confessions, our hopes, our dreams, our praises, and our laments.

Last Advent the stones marked the lighting of the candles leading to Christmas.

They were to be “Stones of Reconciliation” – symbolizing our commitment to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.  We were asked to reflect on the example that Jesus set for us  - Jesus kingship—a reign of confronting the unjust use of power and building right relationships with the whole of creation.   With the end of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we were encouraged to build relationship with First Nations peoples and the land.

We were reminded that Jesus said, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Have we been markers of reconciliation, truth, and right relationship? Or are the stones about to shout? 

This past week I attended clergy cluster with the other Lutheran pastors in the province.  We took time to share communion together and as part of the sermon – so not one person had to prepare the sermon – we talked about the readings for Sunday, to help us prepare for today.

In our conversation there were 4 thoughts – 4 words – that were clearly articulated; the words are the Word that these stones have heard and whisper to us to carry on. The words are standing stones, pillars of what God’s kingdom and Jesus reign are all about. That means the very core of what we are to believe and be about.

These are stones to live by. The stones are:  Time. Truth. Silence. Love.

Time.          

            I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

            The texts sound crazy this morning: an Ancient One, hair as white as snow, a stream of fire flowed from his presence, one like a human being coming in the clouds.  How crazy is that? Perhaps not so crazy! I would say timely. Currently on television Marvel comics are being brought to life with all kinds of characters just as spectacular as those from Daniel and Revelation.  The Flash, Arrow, Marvels of Shield, Super Girl, Agent Carter, Gotham ---- all about super-human or alien DNA combined with time warping and movement through different plains of time and various spectrums of timelines.  Life goes on here,  there, everywhere ---- all timelines fighting to either bring on the end or frustrate those trying to get to the end, or those trying to make the world some form of “righteous kingdom” – where sin and darkness no longer fights to snuff out light and goodness;  instead the world is complete - the reign of God with justice and peace for all.

            Time. Human beings are stuck in time; remembering past time, in the present wasting time, and re-visioning future time. 

This stone speaks.  Time is God’s.  The beginning, the end – who is, was, and is to come. Time is not for us to worry about, it is space to dream of the crazy, the marvelous – to hope that being faithful in time and in the present, God’s kingdom can become a reality. 

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God… God, through Jesus became incarnate, a human being in time and place.  Jesus sanctified time. Time is God’s. Time is holy.  Time --- our time can be filled with the kingdom, when we allow Christ to be incarnate in and through us.

Truth.

            John’s Gospel shares the encounter of Jesus and Pilate before Jesus is sentenced to death. The next line following the text we heard has Pilate ask, “What is truth?” Jesus doesn’t respond. There simply was no answer to that question.  It was the wrong question.   The question isn’t “What is truth?”  The question is “who?”  “Who is truth?”  Now that question can be answered. Throughout the year sermons have pointed to truth – the truth as God incarnate – Jesus. Have you heard this truth, born witness to by these stones.

The stone representing truth shouts to us ---- the truth is Jesus--- and the truth is about relationship; yes – that is one of the words I use in pretty much every sermon.  Relationship is not a what, as if truth can be owned; but, a who, as in it is a conversation, relationship, intimacy.  It is here where truth is continually discovered, learned, and honed.  It is never entirely known or held, and it continually changes and is experienced. Truth is living and breathing. Jesus is resurrected through relationship with truth.

Silence.

The stone that speaks not. This gets tricky.  Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”  Jesus remains silent.  And silence has Jesus ending up dead.

The silence was profound.  

The silence lasted for three days, until, at sunrise the garden tomb was discovered empty. The silence of death was filled with life.

 It begs the question of when is it that we are to remain silent; when it is that we let death lie, and when is it that the sunrises and we are to speak out and raise life?  When is the world silent, and voices are to be raised to counter injustice. And if we miss the sun rising will as Jesus said, The very stones will cry out

Love.

            And the greatest of these is love. The love stone is a Word of how it is that we are to call out in the silence:  to respond to death, lack of hope, and in recent days – how we choose to respond to hate. This past week the most beautiful story was that of a Syrian father who spoke of his response to terror, the death of his wife at the hand of terrorists. –He said, “I will not throw stones. I will not teach my son revenge, or anger. I will not teach him to hate. Hate has not won.  Love has.” In the end, this really is what, or I should say who, every sermon this year has been about; LOVE.

Sundays with readings like todays have grand images and hopes for the future, super-fantastical-happenings, and crazy-scary ideas that sometimes distract from the simple message.  Time. Truth. Silence. Love. –and the greatest of these is love.

The stones bear witness that we are church, a people who marks time.  We relive the life and death and life of Jesus – every year.  Through the year we heard over and over that God’s kingdom comes in the past, present, and into the future.  We need not worry about time as God is in all time.  Through us God can be made more present.  The truth is Jesus incarnate living in our midst, as we live in relationship with each other, with all creation.  Silence is profound for in it death dies and new life arises--- it comes about when love affects every action, every word, every molecule of our being.  The kingdom comes – God reigns- when you can say, “I will not hate” and mean it to the depths of your being.  The kingdom grows when your neighbour also says, “I will not hate.”  When all can wail, “I will not hate” – whether wailing through sadness or wailing in joy.

It is time for the world to change.  It has been for a very long time!  Since the beginning of time – to the end of time. And then to begin again.  The message as heard a million times and held by these stones … Choose not to hate; resurrect truth in the present.  Love --- for in love comes the reign of Christ.

To Be A Missionary, 2015 - Learning from the widows.

                                                                (info on missionaries thanks to Augsburg Fortress, Sundays and Seasons)

Yesterday was the commemoration day of three Lutheran missionaries.   

Around 1700, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg went to the southeast coast of India, to be a missionary to the Tamils of Tranquebar.  Mission work was opposed by the Danish authorities in the area and by local Hindus. After 10 months of preaching – first Christian converts were baptized - on a charge of ‘converting the natives’ Zeigenbalg was imprisoned.  His mission work continues to this day through the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Around 1800, John Heyer – pastor, Sunday school builder, and professor at Gettysburg Seminary- became the first American Lutheran sent out as a missionary. He went to the Andhra region of India.

Around 1900, Ludwig Nommensen went as a missionary to the Batak people of Sumatra.  The Batak first heard about Christianity through Nommensen – at first there was some conflict, but, later a number of tribal chiefs converted.  He translated the Bible into Batak while honouring the native culture.

Move ahead another 100 years and we find ourselves in a time when mission work is not carried out in the same way.  Sure there are missionaries that go to other places in the world; Brian Rude, a missionary that Resurrected supported for a long time, is still working with people in El Salvador.  It was and is different – the gospel had already been taken to the people of El Salvador long before Brian arrived.  Due to guerilla war the country was in crisis. Missionaries went to build an orphanage and school for displaced children. Years later Brian remained and worked with young men precariously close to prison and in the gang culture. 

Brian was called a missionary.  How much preaching did he do?

The dictionary offers two definitions for missionary:

1.      One who is sent on a mission, especially one sent to do religious or charitable work in a territory or foreign country.

2.      One who attempts to persuade or convert others to a particular program, doctrine, or set of principles; a propagandist.

Mission work around the world in our time is not like that of the 17, 18, and 1900s.  For mainline Christians, the second part of the definition is not attempted;  mission work is no longer about taking Christianity to isolated places on the planet, to people who have not heard the word of God.  Mission work is frowned upon when Christianity is the medium to import European sensibilities, culture, doctrine, and civility --- assuming that the imported is better than whatever is encountered.

So what does that mean for those of us with Good News to share in our world today? How does one go about being a missionary?

The sermon today came about because of reading a blip commenting that Medieval art presented a parallel between the Zarephath widow gathering and carrying wooden sticks with which to prepare the last meal before she and her son died; and Jesus carrying the wooden cross to his own death.

So many centuries before Jesus, a widow woman, a foreigner, in a foreign land (now Lebanon), a non-Hebrew, non-Israelite, outside the Temple and religious laws, not an adherent to the faith of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob --- a heathen, a native, uncivilized, “the other” --- one who needs to hear the Good News, be preached to, have missionaries arrive on her door…. This preconception is all wrong!  Elijah is sent to this woman to whom God had already spoken. She had already encountered God.

The widow of Zarephath really had nothing to loss. She had resigned herself to having a final meal with her son before they died of starvation.  “Giving all that she had to live on,” – her last meal—was her daring to have hope that this hospitality was for good, not ill.  There was more hope in feeding and welcoming the stranger than there was in not sharing.  Her action is a powerful witness to what occurs in the spirit of one who is talked to by God.  Medieval artists saw her giving “all that she had to live on,” as being Christ in the world centuries before Jesus had died.

The poor widow who comes to the treasury in Jesus day is noted to have placed two small coins in the box. She slips in and out, without fanfare, for the most part without notice, to put in “everything she had, all she had to live on.”  It is not about the money, it is about the life-style the woman lives – and how it contrasts so completely with a particular group of religious people of the time. 

Well maybe it is about money.  So often I am asked, “how much should I give?” “I need to keep some to live on, right?” And other such phrases, people trying to determine that sweet spot where guilt around having wealth, property, and abundance – disappears and one can live happily-ever-after, enjoying their accumulated resources to the fullest.  If one is asking the question, one is contributing out of abundance --- not living life from giving all one has to live on.

Modern day mission work.  I wonder if the answer to what the sharing of the Good News is to look like in the world today, is found in how the message is delivered?  In the 60s Marshal McLuhan coined the phrase, “Medium is the message.” What is the appropriate medium? The medium is offered to our attention this morning through the actions of the widows. 

The medium is offering hospitality, welcoming the stranger, and quietly giving all that we have to live on. And then perhaps, just as the Medieval painters connected the widows actions to Christ- perhaps our actions will appear Christ-like to the artists of our day.

There was time when the missionary I spoke of, Brian Rude, was harassed, beaten, in danger, and was smuggled out El Salvador via the Canadian Embassy.  He was home, in Canada, safe and sound and the wider church had him speak across the country – this is when I met him while attending seminary.  It wasn’t long, however, before he felt so strongly connected to the people that he returned to El Salvador – and this time on his own, not through the church mission’s program, but, as a concerned global citizen whose heart had been changed as he encountered God through the people with whom he worked.

What struck me most about Brian is that he had become an El Salvadorian.  Physically his skin had darkened through work under the hot sun; he sported a moustache –not cool in Canada at the time; he spoke English as if Spanish had been his mother tongue; he thought in Spanish; his theology was liberation theology of the global south … he became one of them --- the community did not become Brian.  Brian became a part of what God was doing in the world, so much so, that he didn’t even realize he lived as one giving all one has to live on.

One of the things I like the most in our hymn book is the prayer at the time of communion; once fed by the Jesus the bread of life, after encountering God in the meal; we pray that we are given the courage live a new way – we pray that we might give ourselves away as bread for the hungry.  This phrase is exactly what Jesus was talking about with the widow.

You are invited to be a missionary this week- not by proselytizing on a street corner, or pushing your beliefs on someone else -  rather, you are invited to give yourself away as bread for the hungry.  Do this through the mediums of offering hospitality and welcoming the stranger.  Spend so much time, talent, and energy seeking out such opportunity and providing the bread to situations – that you give no thought to whether you have given enough – because in the action and in being bread, Christ will live in your hearts through faith and shine through your whole life.

Praying together our mission prayer:

GOD you are on a mission and we want to be part of it.

YOU continually pour out your Holy Spirit and provide people who spread Good News.

We want to be Good News bearers. We begin by surrendering to YOUR Spirit.

Within us provoke YOUR change- empower service.

We see that YOU are on a mission.

YOU have a purpose!

Thanks be to YOU we are asked to be part of YOUR unifying love for all.