Good bye Shoal Lake

So last night was my final service as rector of St. Paul's, Shoal Lake. That congregation is now joining the parish grouping of Holy Saints as their third point, under the leadership of my friend, the Rev. Nigel Packwood. This will allow them to have Sunday services, increased pastoral attention, etc. etc. etc. It means that I now serve a 5-point parish instead of 6; I don't have to drive out as far, my Sunday services now cover 2 days instead of 4. So it's a logical decision, though one that was difficult to make.
Emotionally, it's hard. That congregation has a long history with some of the other points I serve, and we've been intentionally working to be a wider wider family here in the Wider wider of Pelly Plains. I've been with them for almost 2 years. And I love them. Deeply. So saying goodbye last night was nowhere near as easy as I had hoped - they have blessed me profoundly (as have all my parishes). But I did write a short prayer of Thanksgiving for that church; a prayer for St. Paul's.

Lord God, you are in this place. We feel you, we praise you, we thank you.
You have bestowed upon us many gifts, and we continue to be amazed at the wonders you set before us.
We respond to your calls for us, to be a family of your children acting as your hands and feet, your heart and your voice in Shoal Lake.
We are blessed with leadership, with joy, with love.
We are blessed with you.

Sermon for Reign of Christ (2011)

Sometimes I want to ask God why He allows there to be injustice in the world. There are too many people who are hungry, and lonely, and homeless, and in need of life’s necessities, and ill, and offenders against society.

I know that God has the ability to make all these situations disappear. To make them right.

Because if God did that, just made all these problems disappear, then *we* wouldn’t have to deal with them. We wouldn’t have to see people hurting, and physically abused, and emotionally crushed in their own communities. We wouldn’t have to interact those who experience discrimination, those who battle addictions, those whose lives we find offensive. We wouldn’t need to acknowledge those who live on the streets, whose career is based on the streets, who very existence seems to be one great tragedy after another. If God would just take care of all that unsavoury stuff, then we could celebrate a community, a wider society, where justice prevailed and the reign of Christ was ever-present.

The challenge becomes, however, HOW this disappearance would happen. Are we expecting God to address the root causes of these problems, or are we hoping that God could just make these ‘unsavoury’ people cease to exist?

So here’s my question – in this utopian Christocentric society, would YOU be there?

Yes, that’s a provocative question. It’s intended to get you thinking. For some of us, the first response will be shock. “Wait – you mean I might *not* be in Christ’s community? Huh?” For others, the first response will be a defense. “Of course I would be there” we might think. “I come to church, I help my neighbour, I do good things. My work has contributed to society, I smile at people in the stores. I do what I can to love the people around me – so yes I would be there!”

Imagine for a moment if your life circumstances were such that your first response was a resigned acceptance of being rejected. “Of course I won’t be there, I’ve been too harshly judged.”

This touches on the very issue of the readings today – judgement. Of all of us being judged. And, sadly, of all of us judging.

We hear the cry for justice in the readings – for things to be set right, put into right relationship. Ezekiel reminds us that the Lord God will save his sheep – that his flock will be searched out and gathered together in safety and health. They will not be battered or bullied or oppressed by other sheep, nor stolen or abused or taken advantage of by other shepherds. God will look after his own, spreading love and compassion and care as widely as possible – and then a little bit further.

The gospel tells us of the division of the good from the bad, the sheep and the goats are separated and dealt with accordingly. Yet once again we see judgement happening. I’m not referring to God’s judgement – because that’s a judgement and justice system that I think we can all agree on as being good. But there’s other judgement happening, a harsh and cruel and worldly judgement. It’s the same judgement that happens day after day in our culture, in our community. It’s the same judgement that we can be found taking part in.

And there are challenges with this understanding of judgement and justice – first off, when we hear these terms, we think in a very negative and penal way. Judgement means harsh prison treatments, justice means people getting exactly what they deserve (of course in a negative context). Secondly, when we think of judgement and justice, we automatically presume that our way of thinking is the only right way.

Jesus challenges his followers in this reading about how they are treating one another – about how they would like to see the perfect world created. And their answers are sadly human-centred. They would choose to ignore those who are most in need, in order to fully honour and glorify the great one in front of them. When Jesus says that the righteous, those who will inherit the Kingdom, have fed him and clothed him and welcomed him and visited him in his prison, these people are baffled. “What are you talking about Jesus?” they seem to say. “You were never in a position like that where we needed to take care of you!” This very response demonstrates that they are not necessarily looking for justice for all, but only those who they see as having authority. Their utopia would include only the good folks that they see, those who think and speak and act like they do.

But the Kingdom of God is a very different place. The true Kingdom of God is one where (as Walter Brueggemann suggests) everyone is working together in “Seeking the lost, Bringing back the strayed, Binding up the injured, Strengthening the weak, Feeding the hungry. … the restoration of the common good so that all members of the community, strong and weak, rich and poor, may live together in a common shalom of shared resources.”

So our challenge today is not to simply acknowledge the true leadership of the Christ in our lives, but to go out and live justice –not an arbitrary ‘right or wrong’ assessment, but an opportunity to recognise our abundant gifts and to use them to work towards setting things right in the way that Christ would. To live our faith in such a way that we, like the Ephesians, could be applauded for our loyalty. To have our eyes opened to see and therefore help those who are hurting, and physically abused, and emotionally crushed in their own communities. To interact with those who experience discrimination, those who battle addictions, those whose lives we find offensive. To be present to and allies for those who live on the streets, whose career is based on the streets, who very existence seems to be one great tragedy after another.

Sometimes I want to ask God why He allows there to be injustice in the world. But I’m afraid He might just ask me the same question.

Sermon, Pentecost +21

MATTHEW 25.1-13

“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour”

Have you ever realised how much we depend on knowing the time in our society? We have people regularly looking at the clock on the wall, listening to the radio announcer tell us the exact hour at the sound of the beep, frantically checking our watches over and over again. We seem to have become a society that is founded on always knowing the day and the hour. Appointments are scheduled, sunrise and sunset are identified, we have electronic devices (or loving spouses) who remind us of the time. And if we did not have all these devices, then we’d be late – we would miss the arbitrary numbers turning on the clock.
Imagine, if you will, a time before watches. Before clocks. Before people told us that we were always in fear of running late. People would wait patiently for one another if they had scheduled a meeting, because they knew that their companion would arrive. Time was imprecise – mid day was sometime when the sun is directly overhead; midnight was sometime in the midst of the deepest dark. No one knew the exact time, and yet everything was accomplished. People tried to be respectful of other people’s times as they hoped their time would be respected.
Imagine, if you will, if time were not the centre of our schedules. If we had something to do and just did it. Imagine, if you will, if time was not linear. If we allowed time to simply ebb and flow, to move in and around us without our trying to control it. Imagine if none of us had a day timer or a clock, if we could follow the rhythms of our bodies and our cultures without the added pressure.
Before we became slaves to watches, people all did this. They would get up at dawn, and go to bed when it got dark. They would pay attention to the passing of the days based on accomplishments and learnings rather than checking off another day on the calendar. Wise people would be said to have lived a certain number of years one after another, less-wise people would be said to have lived one year over and over again a certain number of times. You weren’t given an age, because that was again an arbitrary number.
Imagine, then, what church would look like if we didn’t have watches. Sermons could go on for hours! (Just kidding, I wouldn’t do that!) But worship would flow according to how people felt, it would be guided by the Spirit to offer praise and thanksgiving as based on the hearts and minds of those gathered. Scriptures would be read, teachings taught, and prayers prayed. People would not need to worry about what day and hour the Lord might come at, because they could listen to the movement of the Spirit and be prepared.
So what about us? How do we prepare? There’s a BBC comedy series called “The Vicar of Dibley” where one of the congregation is... well, she’s not the brightest bulb on the porch. On hearing this reading, she gets very confused, and spends half of one episode asking the vicar what day and time the Lord will come. She wants to put it in her calendar, to make sure Jesus is aware of local bus schedules so He wouldn’t be stuck in traffic, to have plenty of prep time to clean the house and choose her wardrobe. She wants to plan her schedule around to present her best to God upon his arrival. She doesn’t get it – she thinks that the coming of the Lord can be scheduled and categorised and restricted to modern timings. And it’s funny to watch, because it is so ridiculous. The disturbing part, however, is that some people believe that the second coming of Christ will be easily scheduled – just this year we experienced Harold Camping telling us of 2 specific dates (both of which passed by without event) when we could expect the Rapture.
But God doesn’t work that way. God is timeless. God does NOT carry a day timer or wear a watch. God’s time is a different time than ours. It’s not linear or restricted, it is not defined by numbers. God’s time is beyond our imagination, yet is present to us. It speaks to our soul, if we are open to listening. God’s time does not fit with the rhythms of our societies because God is beyond those limitations.
This means that being prepared for God is a difficult task – it’s not like preparing for hosting a party, where you have time to clean the house and make the food and be all dressed up to answer the door when the knock comes. It’s preparing for the coming of God at any time, in any place. That means that we recognise that everything we do may be our last opportunity, our last moment, before the coming. So every time we speak, we use words that we would be happy to have as our last. Every time we hear someone else’s words, we hear them in our hearts with the emotions we would be happy to have as our last. Everything that we do, we would be happy to have as our last accomplishment. Every prayer, every song, every action could be our last – and so we need to prepare for that.
We cannot expect that God will let us know in our cultural reference what time, what day and hour, he will come again. We can expect, however, that God tells our deepest selves that He wants us to be prepared – that God wants for us to choose to prepare ourselves not just for the final day and hour, but for every day and hour – with joyful expectation.
Our God is timeless. Our responding love should be the same. And if it is, we have kept our hearts awake, prepared for that unknown day and hour.