Flexing Our Prayer Muscles

Luke 9: 28-36  (Exodus 34: 29)

 

Earlier in the week I was captivated by recent pictures from Sicily of Mount Etna.  Mount Etna is Europe’s largest and most active volcano; currently it is erupting. Since 1750 the volcano has erupted countless times – summit eruptions- with the eruptions lasting for five to ten years at a time. In 2021, over a six-month period, Mount Etna erupted enough volcanic material to grow approximately 100 ft in height.

I find this astounding.  Mount Etna grew 100 ft up in six months!

At the summit of this mountain, extraordinary change, fire, and smoke are constant.

 

The Gospel of Luke tells the story that

Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.  As Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed.

 

This is the place to stop, to not hear the rest of the story, because there is so much in this one line to ponder. The mountain top experience happens in the first line of the story. Jesus goes to pray. Prays. And it changes his appearance. It is not unlike the story of Moses, who after talking with God on the mountain, -which is like prayer, conversation with God- comes down the mountain and people see that the skin of his face shone. Prayer alters one’s appearance.

 

What gets me about the story on the mountain is the next line?

Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but since they had stayed awake, they saw. Why were Peter, John, and James not praying? If a teacher chose me to go up a mountain with them, while they went to pray, my instinct would be that I was invited along to participate in the activity. I would try my best to pray too. If I was tired, I would fight sleep, and try to concentrate. Maybe I am being hard on the disciples, but Luke also recounts another story:

 

We read that after supper on the night of Jesus’ arrest, Jesus and the disciples go to the garden to pray.  Jesus’ steps aside and prays. Takes a pause. Goes to the disciples and finds them sleeping. Jesus says to them, “Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.”

Not so long before going to the garden to pray, Luke writes in chapter 21, that Jesus reminds the disciples to be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life and continues be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.

 

Luke is singular in his Gospel, emphasizing the importance of prayer in Jesus’ life. Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, giving the example of the Lord’s Prayer – but it is not the teaching of prayer that Luke highlights, it is Jesus taking time to actually pray. Luke records that:

Jesus prays at his baptism and as Jesus prays the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descends. Jesus takes time to pray before setting out to choose the disciples. Again and again, Jesus withdraws to a lonely place to pray, especially after teaching and healing crowds of people.

Jesus tells Peter at the last supper that he has prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail, and that on turning back Peter would strengthen the other disciples. Jesus prays for those involved in his death asking for forgiveness on their behalf.   

What is it about prayer that is central to Jesus’ life and actions? Does Jesus have the strength – to pray for those who persecute, torture, mock, and kill- at the end of his life, when facing death at the hands of the same, because of living a life of prayer; being constantly changed by prayer; becoming prayer – being in constant conversation with God?

 

In this morning’s story it is not the appearance of Moses and Elijah, the cloud, the voice, that is the great experience on the mountain, it is the prayer – prayer that changes one’s appearance- that is the mountain top experience, the element of change that grows a person exponentially to be able to live a life of faith and action.

 

Perhaps you have been to the Halifax waterfront store or had an opportunity to try chocolate from “Peace by Chocolate.”   Peace by Chocolate is a chocolatier company owned and operated by the Hadhad family.  The Hadhad family had a chocolate shop in Syria for 30 yrs. In 2012 due to bombing and war, the family was forced to leave everything behind, and flee to Lebanon as refugees.  The family are now in Canada and once here, with help from neighbours in Antigonish, they rebuilt their chocolate company and once again do the work they love to do.

Peace by Chocolate. Is there a better name?  Finding peace in what one loves to do? Finding peace in a new place? Finding peace in safety? Finding peace in one’s heart after so much disruption, grief and loss? Finding peace in the kindness of others? Finding peace and sharing it? Peace by Chocolate.  

 

How about – Peace by prayer. Change by prayer. Action by prayer. Life by Prayer. Joy by prayer?

 

American Evangelist Billy Graham wrote:

“We are to pray in times of adversity, lest we become faithless and unbelieving.

We are to pray in times of prosperity, lest we become boastful and proud.

We are to pray in times of danger, lest we become fearful and doubting.

We are to pray in times of security, lest we become self-sufficient.”

 

Did you notice that there was on time left out of ‘To pray in the times of?’ Humans are either in adversity or prosperity, danger or security. Humans are in the struggle of becoming faithless, unbelieving, boastful, proud, fearful, doubting, self-sufficient. Billy Graham’s words on prayer echo the focus of Luke’s Gospel: prayer is a continual conversation. Prayer changes one’s appearance.

 

And prayer did change Jesus. Prayer affected how he was seen, how he appeared.  People recognized that the Spirit was upon Jesus. People identified Jesus as having healing power. People noticed wisdom in Jesus’ teaching. People saw Jesus welcome and walk with the poor. People witnessed Jesus forgive his accusers from the cross.

Do we pray such that our appearance is changed?

 

When I think about prayer as a mountain top experience – I don’t think that I have grown 100 ft in six months or come away with a shiny face. On occasion I have come away with tears in my eyes, a momentary peace of mind, or a little less anxiety. And there are plenty of times when I have been the disciple whose eyes are heavy, who rather than praying, sits waiting for Jesus to be finished so that we can go back to whatever we were doing before going up the mountain.

 

Before the Season of Lent begins, Luke reminds us of the importance that prayer had in Jesus’ life. Our attention is focused on prayer -prayer that changed Jesus’ appearance – prayer that can change our appearance. Prayer the mountain top experience.

 

God of the volcano, God on the mountain, God in the lonely places,

Should my eyes weary and I fall asleep, may each breathe be a prayer;

Should my heart weary with the weight of the world, may each tear be a prayer;

Should my hope weary may each sigh be a prayer.

Grow my prayer, our conversation.

Grow the mountain top – that there be plenty of material erupting -as prayer becomes lived life; that my lived life deposits continuous peace, presence, kindness, hope, and healing.

Peace by prayer.

Amen.

History Will Not Be Kind ?

 

 

In the news this week from the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa it was stated, “history will not be kind to New Democrats who choose to support the Liberal governments decision to trigger the Emergencies Measures Act.”  It is not the first time in recent months that the phase ‘history will not be kind’ has been applied to Canadian politics. In Nov. 2021 for example, the Toronto Star ran an opinion piece titled, “history will not be kind to Justin Trudeau,” that article was in relation to differing agendas with big oil.

 

History will not be kind.

That all depends on who writes the history. And which histories are told, taught, remembered, which are forgotten, which are rediscovered, uncovered, or recovered.

 

February is black history month. The purpose of the month is to devote time to honour Black histories, beyond stories of racism, to focus on Black achievement. In past years, I have shared the story of Black Lutheran Pastors, churches, and schools. This year I would like to share this resource.

A number of years ago, The Original African Heritage Study Bible, came across my desk. The purpose of the edition is “to interpret the Bible as it relates specifically to persons of African descent and thereby to foster an appreciation of the multiculturalism inherent in the Bible.” It articulates a “viewpoint of racial pluralism and inclusiveness.” I have appreciated this new-to-me perspective of scripture.

 

History will not be kind.

That all depends on who writes the history. And who interprets the history.

In recent years school curriculums are changing how history is taught. World History for Us All  is an organization that developed a curriculum with a starting point that history is intense, complicated, diverse relationships.  History and cultural literacy are global in nature. History is a collective enterprise.

You will likely have noticed a shift in Indigenous land acknowledgements. A change has been made from identifying the land and its people to now including a phrase ‘we are all treaty people.’ Although more than one history – one perspective and story of history- the history is collective. Treaties require at least two parties for the treaty to be a thing.

 

History will not be kind.

Because of that one phrase in the House of Commons, Black History month, the change of land acknowledgements, I came to the Genesis reading and the whole story of Joseph starting in chapter 37, with a new curiosity. Whose history is being told in the Joseph story?

 

I bet most of you will be happy that I am not going to wait and ask you to answer the question aloud. The Joseph narrative is an intense, complicated, and diverse relational history.

 

 

The story of Joseph is that of an Afro-Asiatic family fathered by Jacob and mothered by either Leah, Rachel, or their maids Bilhah and Zilpah. The story of 12 black brothers is a history where each became a patriarch of an Afro-Asiatic Israelite tribe, with offspring reaching remote parts of the African continent; the Fantu, the Yoruba, the Sudanese, and the Bantu.

The story has Joseph, the youngest and favoured one, being thrown in a pit and sold by his brothers, brothers Rueben and Judah being mentioned specifically; to Midianites, black arabs, who draw Joseph out of the well and sell him to Ishmaelites, North Africans from Egypt. As a young man Joseph gets thrown in prison and later rises to a governor position in the court of the Great African Pharoah.

By the end of the book of Genesis, 70 or so of Joseph’s Afro-asiatic Israelite family settle in the Land of Goshen (Northern Egypt in the delta).  The family settles into life and culture; there is prosperity for a time, until with changes of Pharaohs eventually they are enslaved.  There are 43 years of North African living before the Exodus – there is intermingling with other cultures coming to Egypt for bread and being brought to Egypt as labour. When Moses comes on the scene and the Exodus occurs, the mixed multitude leaving Egypt are called Hebrews; Israelites, and a host of others like the Ashanti peoples from West Africa (their culture specifically mentioned by the ritual of sprinkling blood on door posts).

 

So, whose history is being told?

The history of 12 Afro-asiatic patriarchs? The politics and relationships of one family, one tribe? Is it Egyptian history? The Great African Pharoah history? African history? Is it just Joseph history? And what about the Midianites, the Ishmaelites?

 

There is something rather beautiful about the book of Genesis -although often interpreted as one story, one history- it is a book that was written over a long period of time drawing on a variety of historical perspectives:

The early prehistory material like the creation, the flood, are similar to or borrowed from the tales found in universal traditions of other cultural myths, tales written for instance in the Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic which was put together a 100 years before the beginning of Genesis;

Then there are two distinct Israelite histories – a history articulated by the South, who referred to God as YHWH written in the time of King Solomon, 970 BCE;

A century or two later the Northern people’s history relates other stories and refers to God as Elohim;

Added too were Pre-exile stand-alone stories from independent documents and oral traditions, stories of Jacob and Joseph in particular, including one from Eygptian folklore; stories from a Rueben stream, a separate Judah collection;

The book of Genesis went through a post-exilic priestly editor after 538 BCE.

So whose history is it?

Are people articulating history, reporting history, recovering history, rediscovering history, writing self into history, being truer to history, trying to present inclusive history?

And do readers – do we- when reading the story, the history of Afro-asiatic Joseph do we interpret the complexity and the diversity of the history, histories, presented?

 

History will not be kind.

This doesn’t have to be true! I think that is my take-away from my reflection this week.

The story of Joseph includes lots of ‘unkindness;’ there is boosting, and ego, favouritism, jealousy, lying, conniving, tricking, testing.

There is also a depth to the story that comes by the contributions from the addition of diverse perspectives; a willingness to articulate in writing … history… as intense, complicated, diverse relationships.

The combination of stories illustrates a biblical record of inclusivism and multiculturalism – not that it has always been interpreted as such.

 

Where we ended the Joseph story this morning, we read that Joseph made a choice when coming face-to-face with his history in the faces of his brothers.  There was a chance that history would not be kind, Joseph could have simply sent his brothers away, or worse had them imprisoned, indentured, killed. Joseph decided in this moment to step forward – history in his hands – history in the making! And chose an act of reconciliation.  He kissed his brothers.

…it was then, and only then, that the brothers talked with Joseph. The course of history was reset.

 

We have that choice.

We stand face-to-face with history: personal history, family history, Christian history, Jewish history, Western interpretive history, Black history, biblical history, Indigenous history, Lutheran history, this faith community’s history, Canadian history, Halifax history – history is in our hands – history in the making!

Will history be kind?

It depends on who is writing the history.

History is in our hands – history in the making! And we choose –

…I pray we choose to follow Joseph’s example in this moment; so that history is kind and remembers that we, as a collective, a community, chose to move forward and reset history with an act (or two) of reconciliation. 

Love An Action Not An Emotion

 

written for a Liturgy Focused on Loving Our Neighbour  - Romans 13: 8-10

 

Do you remember in grade school when you or your children were involved with the flurry of activity around Valentine’s Day?  Spending class-time making boxes or fancy envelopes with red construction paper and white doilies, lots of cut out and glued on hearts -  made to collect Valentine’s cards? Or were you responsible to make sure that your child had the tiny Valentine’s they were going to pass to their friends?

 

One year, grade 5 -when I was at the almost-too-old-to-do-it stage – I made cards for my whole class.  The cards were standing angels for the girls and origami beavers for the boys; 35 in total.  No, they were not all my friends. I didn’t even like some of them. I did it because I wanted to give them to my friends, but, how does one determine how much of a friend another person is? How does one draw a line, ‘you get one, you don’t?” They were standing cards and delivered to peoples’ desks; everyone was going to see who received one. So instead of hurting anyone’s feelings, everyone received a card.

 

Today’s liturgy focuses on loving one another, with a component of loving oneself. The reading from Romans challenges readers to ‘owe no one anything, except to love one another’ and further on ‘love your neighbour as yourself.”

What does it mean to love another? What does it mean to love yourself?

We get really messed up in what we think love is and what we expect love to feel like. In this era, most will identify love as an emotional state, at least having an emotional component.

 

Ask a couple newly in love .. ask a couple celebrating a 50^th wedding anniversary … ask a parent … ask a pet owner … Ask someone like Mother Theresa? Ask Jesus?  You will notice  different understandings, different practices, different experiences, and a variety of expressions of love and the feelings of love.

 

New Testament scholar, Paul Achtemeier, reminds readers in his commentary on Romans, that the Apostle Paul spent much time writing about the Christian responsibility and obligation to be good citizens of the state – including following laws, paying taxes, and respecting the authorities who administer and enforce both. The passage we read today draws readers to a fuller understanding of what Christian obligation means; more than just being good citizens a Christian’s larger obligation is to act in love toward fellow human beings. The focus becomes centred on a smaller societal unit, one’s neighbours.

 

Achtemeier also draws attention to love in Greek scripture referring not to an emotion, but, rather, action; an action that promotes the well-being of another.  The Romans passage mentions actions to refrain from -committing adultery, stealing, murdering, coveting- refraining from these, is love.  Luther’s Small Catechism offers the ‘opposite’ action, the loving action for each: honour each other in matters of sex, spouses respect each other, help others improve and protect their property and means of making a living, help others with their physical needs, help your neighbour keep what is theirs, and encourage people to remain loyal.

As actions, perhaps love is easy enough to practice. Yet, our experiences tell us differently because, human beings are not devoid of emotion. Love as action gets complicated as we attach love as an emotion to the action or the people receiving the action.

Achtemeier wrote, “to love an enemy therefore does not mean primarily to change one’s emotional state toward that person so much as it means to do good for that enemy, regardless of what one’s emotional response to that person may happen to be.”

 

I find this a helpful distinction and a clarifying thought.  Love, not an emotion. Love, an action.

If I think back on the cards I made for my grade 5 classmates, there were cards given out to people who bullied me, or ignored me, teased me; given to those who couldn’t receive them and immediately threw them out or left them behind.  I didn’t consider the emotions of that, only how I would feel if I hurt someone’s feelings.  Cards to the ‘enemy-sort-of-classmates’ weren’t given with a loving feeling at all – just an action; to protect those who I really did have emotional love for.  And when I really think about this example, I suppose in some ways it was really about self-preservation, not wanting to be hurt because I hurt someone else.

 

The Romans passage, after specifying action based on the Law, the Ten Commandments, action towards one’s neighbour; love as action; the Apostle Paul brings the discussion down to yet a smaller societal unit; smaller than one’s neighbour, is one’s self.

‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’  Do you love yourself? Do you love who you are?

Have you accepted your imperfections and see yourself as a work of art?

Do you love yourself? Action kind-of-love: where one sets aside the inner critic, unlearns the unhelpful messages received from the world, practices being non judgemental, stops self-sabotage, embraces being a work in progress – on a journey, lets go of shame and guilt, dispels feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, rises above fears, is willing to try and fail, shows self-compassion and kindness, and allows time for self-care.

Do you love yourself?

 

Victoria shared in Thursday’s Bible Study that her professor said, “that we need to make peace with the parts of us we don’t like because otherwise we embody hatred towards ourselves.”

When we harbour hatred towards ourselves and embody it, love – in either definition, action or emotion- ceases. If we are called to love our neighbour as ourselves, and we have embodied hate towards ourselves, this doesn’t bode well for the love of neighbour; and on a larger scale impacts our actions of good citizen within and towards the state.

 

The Apostle Paul’s words are love as action. Again and again he addresses the Christian community, building up self-esteem, self-worth. He preaches: you are God’s beloved, called to belong to Jesus Christ, justified by grace as a gift, adopted, children of the living God. He is speaking to the individual – the heart of the matter of love- ‘as you love yourself,’ remember you are loving God’s beloved, a child of the living God.

 

A few verses beyond where the Roman’s reading stopped, Paul writes, ‘instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.’  Consider this an action, -love- Paul is begging Christians to dress themselves with God’s action, God’s love.  To help us embody this clothing, Jesus enters the most vulnerable places inside ourselves, the places where we fail at self-love, self-compassion, and self-care. Jesus’ presence, God’s word, - the positive affirmations Paul presents to readers throughout Romans- continue to whisper ‘I am present, you are whole, love yourself.’

 

Practice love as action.  Act in love towards yourself. Act in the same way toward neighbour, toward enemy. Act in the same way toward society, to authority, to God. Free yourself from feeling and be about action.

 

The Valentine’s day cards given to the class – this congregation- from the letter of Paul to the Romans reads:

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God (from the action of God) in Christ Jesus.

 

There’s a Valentine worth keeping.

 

 

 

 

 

Wear a Fabulous Feathered Boa and Listen to Fish Stories

 At some point, people decided that peacocks had the right idea, and feathered flamboyance entered the fashion world!

This phrase comes from the Britex Fabrics article: “Feathers in fashion: A History of Plumage”

After last week’s Atlantic Ministry Area service, where Suzy (puppet in kid’s corner conversation) was quite excited by the thought of Area pastors wearing feather boas, how could I not; knowing too that Pastor Rick in Lunenburg has a green fuzzy boa-esque scarf for his service this week.

 

The boa though reminds me of a story --- well a few stories--- that I want to share with you in conversation with today’s Gospel reading from Luke.

 

When arriving in my first parish, I was a fish out of water. I was 25, from two provinces away, with a love for liturgy, bursting with creativity and lots of ideas. I didn’t own a black suit coat, and all my socks were patterned, including a pair of rainbow toe socks.  I was the first woman pastor in the area and my closest Lutheran colleagues were an hour away across the border in the United States or three hours south at the other end of the province.

Reflecting back … I showed up with a feathered flamboyance and entered a settled faithful faith community.  Different fish.

 

Being a feather-boa-sort, ministering with a different kind of fish, there were many encounters on the lake, fishing to know each other:

I clearly remember the first service, nervous and excited, wanting to prove to myself that I could do this; it wasn’t until halfway through the sermon when there was a collective release of air…. There was an acceptance that this Sunday relationship was going to be okay: I realized nothing was going to be thrown at me. And the congregation heard I can preach. 

I clearly remember the first time I arrived at the local restaurant where the older men had their morning coffee hang out. After finding me a chair I joined them. The men were rather quiet – they had been talking up a storm when I walked in. The conversation changed it was politely pleasant. I was invited to join them anytime.

The second time I showed up the men were different – they were themselves. There was a collective acceptance “I came back, I had accepted their invitation. I thought they were okay.’  Then it happened. Fish story after fish story. I was trusted with their sacred stories: the ones that they told each other; stories told a 100 times and crafted with new exaggerations and fantastical feats in each telling.

 

I heard the miraculous: – boats so laden with fish that it took the calling of buddies to bring in the haul- there was so much abundance they would eat for a winter, and their neighbours too, freezers full. The telling of the fish stories though was not about the fish at all. The telling of fish stories was about trust and acceptance, sharing experiences -as exaggerated as they might have been- with another person, testing the listener’s listening ability, their caring ability, their ability to laugh, their openness to the truth nuggets interspersed in a miraculous story.

The telling of the fish stories and hearing the fish stories- meant that later on as we lived in community, I would hear the Peter pleas too. Remember in the Gospel Peter says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

The fish stories built enough trust that they knew I would not leave. I would hear their confessions, and yes, they were heavy: secrets, alcoholism, violence, adultery, depression, lack of faith, bankruptcy, inner demons (for lack of better term).  And in that moment, I was Jesus in Simon’s boat, out in the deep water, far from shore, rocking back and forth, where the miracle was not the abundance of fish or fish stories, but the confession of being human.

Jesus sat in the boat with Simon that day and listened. Jesus did not turn Simon way. Jesus accepted Simon; That may be Simon, but “do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

In the articulation of not being perfect, of failing (to love God and love others), in this raw uncut unexaggerated moment, Jesus called Simon to go and be about the very thing that he confesses he has failed to do.

 

This is Black History month. Synod’s Racial Justice Advisory Group his challenging members of the Synod to do something: read a novel by a Black author, learn about Black Canadians, seek out presentations offered by local libraries or Black cultural groups.  Do something!

Obviously, I have had fishing stories on my mind this week. So I did a search and learned two things:

In St John, NB, prior to 1870, the growing black population was barred from living in the city limits and from fishing in the St. John Harbour.

Further exploration of Blacks fishing in Canada led me to the work of Canadian Historian and Professor at Dalhousie University, Afua Cooper. She writes about connections between Newfoundland and Jamaican culture. For centuries NFLD cod fed Black slaves in the Caribbean -dried cod went down, rum (Screech) and molasses came back.   Cod is Jamaica’s national dish. Slaves from the Caribbean were brought to the Grand Banks to fish, coming into St. John’s to dry the cod.  Ships with black fishers were so excellent at it, whites banned them from coming to fish locally.

 

These tidbits of history of Black lives in St. John and St. John’s point to a group of people putting a kibosh on miracles; good fishers are stopped. White government worked at controlling experience and the possibility of abundance. The miracle of abundance -of fish- was right there, but the moment was lost.

Settlers decided not to face and articulate their humanness: the sense of inadequacy, unworthiness, shame, guilt, letting go of ego – as Simon did.  If they had, they would have experienced the miracle, invited the other boats to help, and then moved on to work at going to fish together.  Somehow the miracle passed by unnoticed as ego drove the people of St. John and St. John’s to build walls, hold on to authority, advance one’s cause above another, create systems to improve the life of some, segregate life to have a better life at the expense of others.

Jesus had already been out and about doing ministry. Calling the disciples was not his first task after baptism, like it is in some of the other Gospels. Today was just another miracle - another day at the office.  Already crowds were following Jesus, that’s why Jesus climbed into Simon’s boat in the first place, so that the boat could be set out a bit from shore and Jesus could sit and teach from there.

After teaching Jesus went out to the deeps to go fishing. The nets were cast, and Simon called other boats to come and help. There was enough fish for today and tomorrow and for the community the tomorrow after tomorrow. Abundance allowed them to leave, everything at home was looked after.

The story is not about this miracle and abundance. The story is the miracle that happened when Jesus set out with them and listened to their fish stories… sharing their stories they shared themselves …confession was made allowing eyes to open.  Jesus was still there accepting them with all their sins and foibles. And offering ‘fear not, come fish for people.’

And they left their boats on shore and followed Jesus.

It is time to leave our boats on the shore, along with the cod, the rum, the molasses…

To go be the bearers of true miracle… accepting human confession and being God’s presence.

 

Go - Wear your fabulous flamboyant feathers and listen to fish stories.