Grounded Cross Bearing -Lent 2B

 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action (#59 and 60) were directed at church leaders and church practice.  Leaders and churches are called to teach, create resources, and educate their bodies for truth and reconciliation work. At a study conference two years ago Martin Lutheran University College theologian, Dr. Allen Jorgensen, taught East Coast pastors the characteristics of leaders who work reconciliation. One of these characteristics I would like to model this morning:

the characteristic is responsibility for personal location.

 

I am who I am because of my connection to the land where I spent my formative years. This was never so clear to me as when I moved to my first parish in New Denmark, NB.  Don’t misunderstand me, the land of the Tobique and Klokkendhal hill are beautiful, but I was homesick; homesick for big bodies of water, cedar trees and jack pines, limestone rock that lies horizontally, glacier affected landscapes, lake affect snow, fresh water salmon runs, tall standing cornfields interspersed with fields of cows, swarms of noisy red ring black birds and armies of bullfrogs that sing the sun down.  

My spirit was homesick because of how I related to the land from which I came; my relationship to it affected how I connected to creation, others, and Mystery – God. I had met God in places, sensed God’s presence, knew of spaces that held Mystery and healing; the land grounded me, my interpretations, my actions, my relationships. I knew its poetry, its scenery, its smells and textures, its seasons.

I am grateful for the land which formed me – the land of the Chippewa of Nawash known as Neyaashiinigmiing; ancestral and unceded territory of the Saugeen Ojibway.

For me the spirit of the land is part of who I am. When I read scripture I generally connect it to landscapes, smells, textures, experiences from where I was born and grew up. When I hear the story of Abraham, I remember him leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, his home, and travelling to an unknown place: I can see the landscape changing from known to unknown and the grief that accompanies that; like my moving from a land of lakes to the hill country of North-Western NB. When Jesus is in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, I imagine a boat on Georgine Bay – when the boat faced a storm, I re-experience the mighty thunderstorms that roll across Lake Huron, crashing on Sauble Beach. When the disciples are out and about walking from place to place I hear their conversation over the gurgling of water from Inglis Falls, foot steps skirting crevices, trilliums and jack-in-the-pulpits; and the way being framed by large cedars, with the disciples swatting at mosquitos.

 

This morning Jesus is teaching the disciples and then invites the crowd to gather round. There is no context of place other than a mention (before the text we heard) that Jesus and the disciples are visiting the villages around Caesarea Philippi.  Lots of walking. Lots of movement. This unidentified ‘where’ – this land- is significant in not being specific. When in Jerusalem, or going up to Jerusalem, Jesus is on a specific mission related to the Hebrew understanding of land, power, covenant, and the seat of God. Here in ‘non-specific’ land in villages around a Roman named city, Jesus talks about following, being disciples, and what this journey will entail. The words are spoken in a place, or non-place, thus including all people, all creatures- outside of the rules of religion and ideas of political or ethnic nationhood.

Jesus taught:  Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up my cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life must lose it, but whoever loses their life for the sake of the gospel will save it.

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet  forfeit their soul? What can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Our Sunday Lenten theme, ‘Sojourners in the Land,’ has me hear the gospel in a new way.  Following and taking up the cross of Christ is understood through being rooted and connected to the land.

So often, I hear ungrounded reflections on Jesus’ words, were people interpret taking up the cross to mean bearing one’s cross; interpreted as loving the prickly people in our lives, suffering with chronic illness, bearing the burden of looking after the aging, settling in an unfulfilling job because it pays the bills, or rescuing family that can’t seem to shake bad-luck or poor decisions.

 Connected to the land, this is not what Jesus is referring to when calling listeners to take up my cross and follow me.  Taking up the cross – following Jesus is about journeying – sojourning in the land toward our own death – sojourning meaning a living out of God’s kindom in the world; bringing the kindom near, in the present, to the land where we are. It is not, however, just a ‘now’ project.  Sojourning in the land takes into consideration our relationship with creation and the land, being conscious of what we leave behind as garbage and what we grow as good news and spirit – those things that build the kindom of God.  In God’s covenant making with Abram, the father of many, the promises are not just about Abraham – a covenant is made for generation upon generation.  Psalm 22 is paired with the readings for today; it reminds us that we are called to consider ‘future generations.’ Indigenous practice connects making decisions now based on the impact for the seventh generation down the line; like the health of the environment, the welfare of the people, the spirit of the land. 

One way of taking up Jesus’ cross and following is taking responsibility for personal location. My location is the work of seven generations before me, and participation in the creation of seven generations into the future. That is a cosmic amount of time and a heavy responsibility. How I sojourn in the land – my practices of reconciliation, my relation to the earth and the environment , and the good news I choose to grow – will affect my and your great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and neighbours.

 

Christians have spent much of their history focused -not on reconciliation, relationship with the earth, good news-  but rather on sin. Today Christian communities still spend much time muddling in sin; talking in terms of movement away from sin, away from guilt; where the starting point for conversation about God and faith is sin. When we think of faith in this direction we become preoccupied with sin, we get stuck in a mire that acts like quicksand: ranking sin, judging our neighbours, deciding what is or is not sin, feeling guilt, shame, using our own works to try to get out, bondage, weight, resentment, God’s judgement. This takes considerable energy and hinders our ability to sojourn, and answer the call to take up Jesus’ cross and follow.

 As Lutherans I would hope that you have heard and have a sense of a different starting place, a different direction of movement.  As people of God we are not asked to dwell in the past, to get bogged down in sin;  we are baptised -and in that washing we die to self to rise and live resurrection; our focus becomes living faith where we start in the waters of baptism and sojourn through life moving toward grace;  and a fuller experience of grace.

Do you sense the difference in the phrases: ‘away from sin’ verses ‘moving to grace?’

Consider the cross of reconciliation. The journey of reconciliation is forward focused moving to grace, to a place of reconciled relationship. It is a journey that will take time, effort, and continued walking side by side with each other.  Today in school history lessons, children are hearing more voices, more sides of the story. Europeans are talked about as settlers. Settler language is a truth, however if we continue to think of ourselves as settlers that does not help the work of reconciliation; moving forward requires sojourners in relationship with people, land, and the spirit of both – so that generations from now are in better relationship with people and land than those relationships are presently.

 

I have been reading a book by Rodger Kamenetz reflecting on Jewish mysticism.  The book comments that for most of its history Judaism has been a landless religion.  Even though the texts talk about promised land – people experienced wandering in the desert, hundreds of years of exile, occupation by foreign powers, living in diaspora around the world.   Promised land was a concept, interpreted according to Rabbi Abraham Heschel, into a mystical idea where the sacred had to be found in time rather than space; thus the importance of keeping Sabbath, a “cathedral in time.”

We gather on Sunday mornings in a ‘cathedral in time,’ this week some of us in the church building, but our gathering is not just connected to this piece of property, this tiny piece of land in Mi’kmaki; ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw people.  We are connected in relationship -across the land, connecting virtually and in person – we come together bearing with us the peoples and the land from which we grew; we come to explore how to be sojourners, moving to grace. Hand-in-hand we challenge and support each other to take up the responsibility of personal location, being in covenant with God, by taking up the cross of reconciliation with people and creation- working and sojourning in the land with hearts to better our relationships;  so that  grace will bloom in the seventh generation.

East Coasting (Lent 1)

 

‘East Coasting’ --- I have titled the sermon after this poem, written by George Elliot Clarke, which was shared earlier in the service. ‘East Coasting’ is my reflection for the first week of Lent. Let me explain.

For me, the season of Lent focuses on the idea of journey, and the time it takes to make or commit to a journey. In my heart and understanding, journey is rooted and connected to land. – in this case the East Coast. 

For those of you who live on the East Coast you do not need me to explain that East Coast living has its own unique spirit, culture, and personality.  And it is not just the people, it is the land too. There is something about living close to the coast and the mighty ocean that affects everything – the smell in the air, the song of the birds, the taste of salt. I knew a colleague who sensitive to the places where they lived – feeling the spirit of place. They described the East Coast as a place where life goes on in bright colours (seen in our houses and folk art), in engaging gigs and sea-shanties, in community mindedness, but all of this joy comes from a sadness -griefs- held in the land and the hearts of the people. It doesn’t take long – journeying here to understand:

The ocean is life-giving, teeming with fish and resources, work, prosperity, leisure, moderate temperatures; and the ocean is life-taking, storms at sea, lost boats, drownings, hurricanes, corrosive salt.

The land bears witness, our lives bear witness, and live the tensions of the dualities of life. People living in this land become attuned to the seasons and the nature of the land: the rise and fall of tides, the in and out of waves, and the beauty and destruction held in their power.

Living the dualities of life – the tensions of life- are our speciality because the land continually binds us into this space.  The season of Lent is a conversation focusing on tension and polarity, and how it is we navigate along the journey, keeping in mind God’s covenant and our relationship with God, creation, and others. We wrestle with sin and forgiveness, doubt and faith, unrighteousness and compassion, bondage and freedom, death and resurrection.

 

Bringing an ‘East Coasting’ sense of living to the scripture text we see the natural connection to the land – a wave – where Jesus comes in to the Jordan river for baptism and then is washed out, driven into the wilderness. Coming from the desert Jesus crashes in to Galilee and then slips away, the kingdom of God comes near – not quite wetting toes and hearts, and retreats, to return again – almost grasped to roll away yet again. Jesus’ ministry is a coming and going, waves of teaching and understanding, retreating to pray in a quiet place, waves of miracles, retreating to private conversations with the disciples, waves of wrestling conversation with religious leaders, retreating to homes of friends for a meal.

 

Canadian poet laureate and playwright, George Elliot Clarke, was born onto, into, the land of the Black Loyalist community of Windsor Plains, NS. In the words of his poem you hear the rhythm of the ocean, the rhythm of the coastland in the activities people are about; in music, in preaching, in worship, in farming/work, and in interaction in the landscape. I shared this poem with you this morning because the spirit of the land -and the people affected by the land- is in his poetry. His journey though life and his expression of that journey in his poetry was also whelmed by another spirit – the spirit of the holy.

Journey in the land, by the sea – affected his interpretation and journey through the land of scripture and reflecting on it. Clarke’s mother Geraldine once commented on his Bible.  She described it as old, ragged and torn, without a cover, completely bent out of shape with all sorts of papers stuffed in it here and there. It was “more worn than a minister’s Bible.”

Honestly my Bible is not that worn – not from lack of use, but careful use. I keep it ‘clean’ so it is easier to read when reading from it in public. But, if you look closely, there are pages that are bent, some that wrinkled having been rained on at church camp, others that have small tears, and a myriad of spots along the edges that are oil from my fingerprints through the years of journeying through the pages.

The Season of Lent returns us to scripture to journey through the covenants that God made with creation and God’s people. The Word, like water, continually laps at our feet (our hearts) drawing us to journey through scripture and journey through life in conversation with each other: to wrestle with the tensions we find therein.  

 

In David Du Chemin’s book, “Beauty of Anarchy,” (pg155) he describes to readers that there are only two ways of how to live in the present. Both make me think of the ocean –“East Coasting,” because each way has a strong pull for human beings to be the opposite; for us the opposite of what through covenant God calls us to be.  As waves come in, waves go out there is a connection in the polarity – inseparable;  an acceptance of this tension of how we know we ought to live and our failed attempts to live in the present.

According to Du Chemin: to live in the present - to be grounded, rooted, and landed- is to live first in forgiveness, and second in faith. Imagine both – forgiveness and faith- as rogue waves; the kind that crash ashore at Peggy’s Cove, surprising the unprepared, coming unseen with power, knock-you-down kind of force, an overwhelming deluge of cleansing water – destructive and full of life. This is the tension in which we live and where the scripture asks us to wrestle:

In the wave of forgiveness there is freedom, until we are tempted and pulled back into guilt and anger, bondage.

In the wave of faith there is freedom, until we are tempted and pulled into the surf of the opposite, fear.

Through the season of Lent we journey through expanding our practice of faith living. Summarizing Du Chemin’s thought expanding faith living is having: an openness to possibility and the faith that one (or the community) can handle whatever comes, that journeying through circumstances will make us stronger together; and while not everything happens for a reason, we can find or make meaning out of it (even tragedy) for our own lives; and in the end, to practice a faith that pain does not harm us, but journeying through pain – our own and accompanying those in pain- we return a new person (even triumphant); washed ashore to continue the cycle of gracefully living the tensions of life.

 

Perhaps it is living in a time of pandemic, experiencing waves of emotion, spirit: being okay and not okay all at the same time, feeling safe and unsafe, connected and unconnected, focused and unfocused... a journey of oceans and deserts; facing life and death, bondage and freedom --- and in the midst of all of it faith that God is present in the now--- whether flood or desert --- God is moving in the waves, journeying in, with, and around us. 

Journeying through pandemic, and beginning the Lenten journey through the biblical story of covenant and journeying with Jesus’ to the cross, has readjusted my thinking and is pulling on my heart to consider life in a new way; to consider myself on a journey – as a sojourner- where I no longer have a ‘bucket list,’ -those things I will do someday whether its travel or different hobby or an experience I would like; but rather live from an attitude and approach where life (my life, your life) every day life IS the bucket list.

 

This week I am inviting you to connect, reconnect with the land on and in which we live and move and have our being. I am inviting you to practice ‘East Coasting.’  Where God who moves over the waters, whose spirit is present, through the land calling us to live the tensions of life, continually calling us to forgiveness and faith.

East coasting is coming for baptism, then being drawn back in by the world, crawling in for forgiveness, rippling away, washing up to offer praise and soak in hope, to go disperse these to the community, to  push up on shore exhausted, filled to return back to the tumbling of surf .... forever action, resurrection-death, discovery-loss, receiving-giving, freedom-bondage, faith-fear...

in the tension of Lent be washed again and again in the tide bringing new life, and be whelmed by God’s presence amidst your East-coasting; so that your journey – your receding leaves behind forgiveness and faith.

Amen.

Characteristics of Transfiguration

 

for Transfiguration Sunday

 

A number of years ago, I introduced the congregation to an exercise where you were asked to reflect on the three descriptive words you would want people to use at your retirement or at your death to describe you. I suggested that these descriptors were virtues to focus on and to use to define your work, play, and life.

For those who did the exercise, do you remember what descriptors you chose?

The descriptors I chose – the way I wanted to be remembered – were: faithful, authentic, and engaged.

I have been revisiting these descriptors this week.  First, because I wonder if they have changed due to circumstance and a re-evaluation of priorities, or what I feel the world needs. So from the perspective of being a leader and living through pandemic – how do I act and how do I want to be remembered for my contribution through this time? And second, in conversation with the scripture texts, looking at the characteristics of Elijah and Jesus, I contemplated what words Elisha and the disciples would have used to describe their particular teacher – and what that meant for them.

 

The Elijah stories that fill the book of 1^st Kings are fantastical stories. Elijah is a charismatic sort of person:  powerful and prophetic. He has an  authority about him, one could say ordained, where each action comes from a faithfulness, righteousness, and a trust in God.  In the stories we hear that Elijah is prayerful – when in public and when sulking, or fighting inner fear and depression.  There is a perseverance shown where he keeps on going even when he feels like the only prophet left – the only human staying true to God. His actions are bold, showy, spectacular even; and at the same time a quiet miracle worker in the intimacy of peoples’ homes.

Juxtaposed to Elijah and his character – the biblical record recounts the upheaval of the time marked by long droughts, and war after war – and how the kings of Israel did not address the needs of the people whom they were to be serving. The kings are characterized as: wicked, evil, unfaithful, war-mongers, apostates (meaning they have turned their back to God). They are seen as unrighteous, irresponsible, and self-absorbed. The text uses words like  immoral, idolaters, corrupt, and inflictors of suffering.

 

A similar comparison can be made in 1^st century Judea, between Jesus and the leaders of his day.

The Jesus stories that fill the Gospels are fantastical stories. Jesus is a charismatic sort of person: powerful and has an authority about him; holy with a purpose that is bigger than himself.   He is as teacher, prophet, healer, miracle worker.  Considered wise, along with being friend, he has moments of being a rebel, fear-less, a visionary (meaning talks about the big picture, a fullness of God’s kin-dom). We see Jesus also as prayerful, stepping aside -to a quiet place- to talk to God.

Juxtaposed to Jesus and his character – the biblical record recounts the upheaval of the time marked by Roman occupation, political and religious turmoil, social injustices – and how the rulers, scribes and Pharisees of the Judean people did not address the needs of the people whom they were to be serving.  The leaders are characterized as: powerless, unrighteous, harsh, self-serving, political pawns, corrupt, and sell-outs. They are seen as lacking vision, slow in comprehension, compassionless, showing no mercy, being judgemental, and when praying making it a show in the marketplace.

 

Elijah and Jesus are noticed by others in their times because they stand in contrast to the leaders who had been given responsibility for the welfare of the people. Each had followers who were drawn in by their character and an invitation to come and be a part of their good news sharing.   Elisha and disciples followed  their respected teacher/mentor; choosing characteristics to make their own and live into. In their following, both Elisha and the disciples witness the dramatic deaths of their teacher. In both cases the mantel of the teacher was laid on the shoulders of the followers.  Elisha and the disciples demonstrate that the power and authority- the spirit- of their teacher goes on living through them and doubles, and as the good news is shared it continues to multiply and bear fruit.

Elisha and the disciples end up being that juxtaposed presence to challenge the ways of the world and a thorn in the side to those who fell into the world’s ways – just as their mentors were.

 

I think that the exercise of choosing descriptors to live into, can be done in a different way. Rather than pulling out the characteristics from thin air; start by considering the characteristics of the Bible characters presented to us this morning, which characteristic draws your attention.  Can you be that or try to be that, help someone else be that, or support someone who is that?

We can also take a look around our neighbourhoods, communities, and the world.  We can reflect on the state of the world and the ways of the world that people get trapped in – and then look for those who stand as a juxtaposed presence.   These should be our teachers and mentors – people whose character we want to emulate or pass along and share.

Consider such a person. Choose a characteristic of that person – that juxtaposed presence. Pick one – or pick a few- name the qualities you admire in them; take these characteristics on  - be that person who wears the mantle of another’s spirit and multiples the dispersement of power two-fold.

 

As our days continue in a sort-of-holding pattern, when we feel like crawling back into bed, when we get tired of not knowing, or just seem to be going through the motions of living – it is ever more important to focus on things that really matter: items, words, deeds, actions, that bear fruit, bring life, grow hope, relieve fear, comfort grief, and encourage common wealth. 

In times of ‘crazy,’ in fact at anytime, a spiritual practice I have found helpful and that gives each day purpose for me is this: each day is a day well lived when one thing is done for God, one thing is done for another, and one thing is done for the self.

None of these words, actions, or deeds need to be big – only come from the heart with the intention of growing good news -  for it is good news that transfigures the world around us through the people touched by God’s spirit working through us.

 

In conclusion I invite you to carry with you this week the intention of each day doing one thing for God, one thing for another, and one thing for yourself.  Be filled with the spirt -the characteristics of God made manifest – and be encouraged by the words of Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu – let these words be true as God’s spirit works through us -

God places us in the world as his  fellow worker-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God’s world.

Amen.