Posted by stpauls on March 29, 2009 under Sermons | 
[Alex Wilson delivered this sermon at St. Paul's on March 29, 2009.]
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Dust, my body is full of dust; one day my bones will be no more, my flesh will be no more, the features that make me who I am will someday be reduced to dust. What a hard contradiction to live with. Biblically I know we came from the same dust God made Adam and Eve, but physically I came from my parents, neither of whom are dusty in their composition. Yet within this very dust of eternity that defines who we are, we are all knit together as a human family, a family that often tries everything it can to help us avoid our eventual end. With the introspective nature of Lent, we find ourselves working even harder to live into the contradictions that are life, the sense of pride, the sense of betrayal, the lying, the whatever it is that weighs down our hearts and forces us to feel distant from God. We take up something, we give up something, we deny who we are, we celebrate what we become, in Lent we walk hand in hand with the living contradictions that are not only our lives but our world, trying to find meaning and hope in the midst of chaos and desolation. Every moment we walk this earth, we live into the most onerous contradiction we know- our death. Every moment, every second we are dying. With every breath that fills our lungs, and every thought that leaves our minds we are dying. Yet even as we watch those we love and care about pass into the loving arms of God, we get up every morning and move about our days like we will live a million years. We take health food supplements, cultivate plants and drugs, diets and products to help prolong our lives, and yet the inevitable comes- we all pass into the eternal light that is the Father’s house. At times, it is after a long and love-filled life; for some it comes in the blink of an eye, but for all those left, it makes no sense. It contradicts what society tells us about life: if we try hard enough we can cheat death.
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
The world around us reminds us daily of our ultimate reality. The childish, selfish and ultimately useless gangland wars happening on our streets – killing someone to save you temporarily from being the next victim. Crazed despots who eat lavish birthday cakes and drink a birthday toasts to their own inabilities cloaked as triumphs, while the people of the country suffer under the plight of soaring hyperinflation and the lack of the basic human rights: water, bread, shelter. Countries who elect the first black man as president, yet take away the right of another to marry who God predestined them to. Financial institutions so warped with greed that millions of people all over the world are losing their homes and savings every day. Our own city spending billions of dollars to host an international sporting event, rather than allow our brothers and sisters who call our streets and alleys home the basic dignity of affordable shelter and access to the help they need and desire. Our world lives into the contradictions that we create for ourselves. In our own ways, we try and justify how we related to this earthly island we call home. And that is not a bad thing. Contradiction marks our lives and can be a good thing to allow us to see the other with an objective point of view. The point is we need to be open to allow the other point to become clear, and far too often, we as individuals and as a society are unable to see just how clouded we have become.
Christ gives us clear direction this morning on how to avoid that clouded unknown. At the moment when he knew his death was coming, he lives into it- but admits his apprehension. He knows what is happening must happen, and he gives it over to the Father. We witness him say to his father- ok listen dad, I will do this I will not run away, I would rather be doing a million other things right now but I trust you- I know you love me and I trust you.
I know you love me and I trust you.
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return
I often wonder what keeps me from saying what Jesus said to his father. None of our lives are much different from his- we try with all our might to live into who we are created to be, to be happy and to love as God has loved us. But still I look for the moments that Lent affords me to enact the great “reset,” whereby the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday act as a great start over. Yet, I can’t help think that not every part of ourselves dies in the great “reset.” I am too proud to let it all go, we often say; it’s a totally human reaction. We allow ourselves to set up walls of expectations, needs, wants, demands, and social stigmas that govern our lives. We allow ourselves to be so driven at times by the pressures of the outside world that we allow our egos to take over and dictate how we will live in relation to others. We allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the contradictions that our ego’s cloak as life pressures. It’s what’s expected of us; it’s how we are taught to interact with the world. And it hurts to let that go.
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Our egos are powerful machines that can captivate the imagination and mind of even the most in-touch person – it’s natural. Yet within each of our journeys, we are called to be much more than what we are willing to settle for. It is within our daily practice of death and rebirth that we must learn to allow our egos to die, our personal walls to collapse and the redemptive seeds of Christ’s death and resurrection to enter into our souls and germinate into the new life promised and fulfilled at the intersection of two pieces of wood. To truly allow ourselves to be given over to the liberating death of the self that protects us from the harms and trials of this world, we have to trust in the power of someone other than ourselves, to rest in the breach between known and unknown, to dance with passion in the light at the edge of our own dark nights.
How do we rest in such a breach? How do we ethically and realistically live into the demands of today’s Gospel in a way that nurtures and sustains us?
I do not have the definitive answers; however, I find a great landscape of hope within our monastic traditions. Monastic communities have often got the short shake in life, being hugely underestimated in their usefulness and practicality. Monastic life hurts, is hard and can be seen as a cloistered world of self-indulgence and perpetually selfish introspection. However, when we look more closely into these communities, we see the great gifts of the sprit illumined and multiplying, casting the seeds of the gospel to the ends of the earth. Within the microcosm of monastic life, we are given a tender womb in which to gestate our faith, our lives and our deaths.
In Chapter 48 of the rule of St John the evangelist, we see how monastics take death head on. In their quest for a holy death, they live what they say: that is “the gospel proclaims that Christ has transformed death by his cross and resurrection and that through our baptism we have already passed through death with him and have been incorporated into his risen body. But we grasp this mystery only by faith, accepting the inner struggle between doubt and confidence in Christ’s promise of eternal life…”
We are asked this morning to live life within the scope of our own deaths, and to live that journey unashamed.
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Markus [Dünzkofer] made a very clear observation for me early on in Lent at a Wednesday night Eucharist. He alluded to the fact that we often spend our whole lives running towards Easter when really we are not yet ready for that Easter morning- but that doesn’t mean it remains out of reach. The greatest questions for me are “Where is our Good Friday?” “Where is the moment of ultimate death to ourselves so that we can authentically scream ‘Alleluia’ with Christ from the Tomb at Easter?”
I believe we are living in it right now.
Listen.
Do you hear it?
Listen.
I would like us to try something a little different this morning. Where you are sitting, I invite you, as you are able to make yourself comfortable. Place your feet firmly on the ground, and sit as straight as is comfortable. Quieten your minds, concentrate on your breathing, keep your senses on your body.
Draw your attention to the soles of your feet, notice how they feel in your shoes against the hard floor.
Notice how your ankle feels as you pass by it up your calf to your hips.
Notice how the waist of your clothing feels against the small of your back;
how the pew supports your back, gives it form;
how your shoulders drop down with the weight of your arms.
Notice all the thoughts that are in your mind. Slowly name them silently as they come to the forefront… and watch them disappear from sight. Your mind becomes empty and receptive.
Notice how you can feel the slightest movement of air over your face.
Focus on your chest, feel the life coming into you with every breath, and leaving with every breath. Live into and listen to your breath.
Listen.
Listen to the words, emotions, and feelings being spoken at the cradle of God – your soul. Find them, name them. Rest in them.
Listen.
What do you feel?
What do you see?
What does it say to you?
Dwell there for a moment in the safety of God’s embrace and listen.
Slowly with your eyes closed, I invite you, as you are ready to come back to St Paul’s.
Slowly notice the space around you:
the hard wood of the bench;
the sense of the person next to you in the pew.
As you are ready, focusing on your breath – open your eyes.
Did you listen? What did you hear? I bet you heard God. I bet you heard God in the clearest possible way. But don’t be afraid, or too hard on yourself if you didn’t hear anything, or didn’t think it could possibly be God speaking. God is there, God is still and silently waiting for us in the depths of our souls and it can take some time before we allow ourselves to hear her. What we just heard or saw or experienced is what I call the pregnant silence, the ultimate contradiction of Lent. Lent can often be when we feel the most alone, the most afraid, the most vulnerable; but it is the moment that leads us to our ultimate joy. Within this pregnant silence that is a mystery so great that it stirs within us an audible silence and wonder, God is with us, but we make ourselves unable to hear her. We know something is going on, but we are unsure what. It is within these moments that we must allow ourselves to die to the outside world as we just did, so that we can hear the new life being born within the silence of our hearts. This is the good news we hear this morning. God is never far from us, even in the depths of our own humanity. She is with us, in us, next to us, holding us, healing us, guiding us. All we have to do is stop, listen and allow the wonders that are the graces of God working in our lives a space to impregnate our minds, and hearts and souls, preparing the way for our own Good Fridays. As we approach the edge of another Easter, we are invited to kneel in the pregnant silence and allow the voice of God to speak and triumph over the desolation of our egos and social fabric. Living through the contradiction of being known as people of Ashes, we are given the road map to the glory our own Easter resurrections- but we’re not quite ready yet. It is through that glory that we must make our conversion from this world to the world of God so that we can finally experience the freedom we find in our ultimate contradiction: our own deaths to ourselves, and rebirth to God.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Staff Blog |
John 12:20-33 ~ Gospel reading for March 29, 2009
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them,
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.
“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—’Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
Then a voice came from heaven,
“I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said,
“An angel has spoken to him.”
Jesus answered,
“This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
Posted by stpauls on March 22, 2009 under Staff Blog |
At its 107th session in May 2008, The Diocese of New Westminster adopted ten Priorities for the diocese as we move forward in mission towards the year 2018. These are:
1. Nurturing Spiritual Journeys
2. Supporting Christian Education
3. Deepening Anglican Understanding
4. Renewing our Worship
5. Caring for God’s Earth
6. Nurturing the Parish Community
7. Building a Community of Parishes
8. Participating in Local Communities
9. Cultivating Interfaith Understanding
10. Addressing Issues of Poverty
See more on Plan 2018 on this page of the Diocese’s website.
Where is our diocese heading? What are the diocesan goals for the future? What is the Spirit saying?
Be part of St. Paul’s congregational discussion about the strategic plan for our diocese on Wednesday, March 25, in the King Room, just after the 7:00 p.m. service.
Posted by Webmaster on under Contributors, Staff Blog |
Article and photographs submitted by Rose Desrochers.
As I have just returned from a short stay at St. Mary’s Retreat House, a monastic community in Santa Barbara, California, I hope to pass along some information about this amazing opportunity to others. It is the home of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, but more recently the temporary home of the monks of the Mount Calvary Monastery.
the patio view beyond to the mountains
As
St. Mary’s website says,
Meditation, Communion, Prayer, Solitude, Reflection.
Providing a place,
and a time,
for those yearning
for something more…
something deeper…
and the sunshine, the orange and lemon trees, and the majesty….
Posted by Webmaster on under Sermons |
[Lois Boxill presided at St. Paul's on March 22, 2009 and delivered this sermon.]
Today is a banner day. Those who have come to know me have also realized that I often use that expression to indicate my intention to complete or at the very least address a significant portion of the tasks that are currently on my plate or that have been cluttering my mind. Before I ever get started on the tasks to be accomplished, I visualize success, which for me is a day I can be proud of, one worthy of a “banner” of sorts. A day that I will come to the end of knowing that I have worked hard and therefore can truly enjoy the company of my loved ones without guilt or wondering whether I had done enough. A day when I throw myself my own tiny ticker tape parade in my mind and I rest well knowing that I have given my all. However, today, my motives for using this phrase are slightly different. You see today, the words we hear from both St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and from Jesus himself, might be described as the banners of our faith and the banners of the Christian story. They represent not only Christ’s raison d’être, but describe whose we are and what we are all about. Listen again carefully to these words:
From Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
Then, let us turn to Jesus’ words many of us growing up in Sunday school had to memorize:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Banners indeed. But what of them? What comes up for each of us as we are reminded of the gifts we have received and of our importance to God? Does this inspire deeper commitment or do we resort to the increasingly common response to things we think we “know” already – the response of indifference. Or worse yet, do we listen selectively to those words that seemingly provide us with warrants to justify the current way we live our lives cut off from others and committed to maintaining things the way they are?
My brothers and sisters in Christ, I’m here to tell you today that far from just being familiar words we hear but have long since stopped listening to or being challenged by, these banner words still, after all this time, have the potential to set each of our lives on fire causing our inner light to burn that much more brightly. So what I am getting at? Well, at their base both passages can be distilled into one word – covenant. What happens when one being says to another, this is who you are to me and because of who you are to me, this is how I’m going to live my life in relation to you. Covenant. I guess the word covenant is on my mind lately for several reasons. Maybe it’s because of the experience of failed relationship; or of the reality of troubled marriages that sometimes end in ruptured families, or maybe it’s because in spite of statistical reports, people still dare to publicly proclaim their love for one another and endeavor to be a comfort and a help meet through all the changes scenes of life.
But, beloved in Christ, we need not fear covenant if we fully understand what that term means. In the passage from Ephesians, St. Paul makes it clear that there is nothing we can do to make God love us any more or any less than God already does. God’s love for us and our preciousness to God just is. I realize that part of the difficulty with accepting a statement like this is because examples of this sort of loving can be absent from many of our lives. Unconditional love that says, “You know what, you may disappoint me from time to time and even make me downright mad, but I love you, and I will always love you.”
St. Paul says,
for by grace you have been saved through faith, and not by anything of your own doing, not because of who you think you are in your own mind’s eye. No. It is because you are beloved of me. I loved you into being and I love you now. I marked you as my own and I will not let you go. Know that you are my beloved. All that you are is good and there is no part of you that was not and is not of me. Live into all that I created you to be. I gave you abundant life, so live abundantly.
And here, by living abundantly, I am implying living a life that gives from the abundance that is within us and not a life that seeks to take and accumulate for itself. It’s about getting the trajectory of giving oriented the right way.
Then as we turn to the familiar words of the Gospel, we learn what it was that Jesus was about. Yes, we know that Jesus didn’t come to condemn but to save the world, but what is this saving all about? Here we are in the season of Lent. A season of penitence and reflection. A season of longing and of expectancy. A season we can’t get around. A season that leads us to Calvary, where the Son of Man will be crucified. Now there are entire courses in seminary on soteriology – that’s the word used to describe the area of discussion concerning salvation through Jesus Christ. Indeed there has been much debate and discussion throughout the history of the church on this topic. However, while fascinating, I will suggest that we need go no further than today’s passage from Ephesians to understand what it was that Jesus came to “save us” from.
“But, Lois,” you might say, “hold the phone…there’s a problem with your logic. You just told us that in Ephesians we were created of God and beloved of God, so why on earth and what on earth could we need saving from?” And in response I would say, “let me read the last part of the passage from John to you.”
“And this is the judgment [this is the predicament we face], that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read these words, I read the concise version of human history and experience. Yes, each of us is beloved of God. Each of us is beautifully and wonderfully made. Each of us has capacity for good and to be a source of tremendous healing in the lives of others and in our own lives. Yet, each of us has the ability to either respond to what I would describe as this imprinted good, this imprinted life force that we know connects us with all that is outside our physical being, or we can reactively respond to the situations we are presented with. We can get in our heads and start thinking “rationally,” and “practically.” We can focus on the splinter of wood but miss the log in our own eye. We can miss the forest for the tree. We can focus on self-preservation and advancement, instead of tapping into the boundless and innate wisdom that is within. We can refuse to tap into what I will describe as deeper knowledge, opting instead for the expedient.
Jesus came to remind us that we are more than the sum of our parts. He came to show us that the heart we have has an infinite capacity for loving action made evident through compassion for the other. The Son of Man came and dwelt among us to show us how to walk the dusty roads and to get the dirt of the city streets on our feet and for us to realize that it is in dying that we are raised to life eternal. The Son of Man came to say to each of us, as Marianne Williamson reminded us in her reflections on our greatest fear, that our “playing small does not serve the world” [anyone or anything]. Jesus came to remind us of the light within and to say that a light hidden under a bushel is no good.
“Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify God who is in heaven.”
And what is sin? Anything that clouds out that light or dishonors the light of others. And what did Jesus come to do? To remind each of us to honor the light within and to honor the light within each other. One only need watch the daily news headlines to realize that we as a society continue to choose the ways of darkness over the ways of light. From time to time, each of us does something that is against ourselves and does not serve our inner light. This is why the gifts of grace and of Jesus’ example are such wonderful gifts. They are both gentle reminders along life’s journey of whose we are and of who we are created to be. Each and every single one of us. Remember, there is absolutely nothing you can do to make God love you any more. And, there is absolutely nothing you can do to make God love you any less. You are children of the light, beloved. Walk in the light – by God’s grace, through faith and in love.
Ephesians 2:1-10, and John 3:14-21
Ms. Boxill ended her semon with a quote from Marianne Williamson’s “Our Deepest Fear.” Due to copyright issues, the text of the poem is not included with the text of this sermon. The words that were read and attributed to Williamson can be found here.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Staff Blog |
John 3:14-21 ~ Gospel reading for March 22, 2009
Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
Posted by stpauls on March 15, 2009 under Sermons |
At a conference about Benedictine spirituality at Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, declared that the Anglican Church is the quintessential Benedictine denomination. Not that the Archbishop of Canterbury needs this humble priest to confirm what he said, but I do believe Rowan Williams is right.
Why?
First of all, Benedictine monasticism and spirituality were very much present in the English church before the Reformation. Unlike its European counterparts, many English cathedrals, for example, were not run by secular priests, canons, or a chapter recruited from parish clergy. But for the most part, cathedrals in England were Benedictine monasteries first and continued to be so even after they were elevated to the status of cathedral. And don’t forget Westminster Abbey, which, though never a cathedral (though the site of the coronations of sovereigns since 1066), it was also a Benedictine foundation.
This prominent presence of Benedictine monasteries in life of the English church meant that the daily rounds of monastic prayer services, so very much at the heart of Benedictine spirituality, influenced the ethos of the English church. These services were not just part of a religious elite in remote rural areas, but they shaped the lives and consciousness of urban folk too. Our Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Alternative Services still reflect this prayer tradition: Morning and Evening Prayers are modeled after the monastic offices of Matins and Vespers.
The Benedictine spirit deeply influenced the English church and the establishment of the post-Reformation Anglican Church. Anglicans, for example, unlike their Christian sisters and brothers in the churches of the Reformation on the European Continent, are not confessional Christians. Yes, there are the Thirty-Nine Articles, but, unlike the Augsburg Confession of the Lutheran Church, or the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian Church, or the Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed Church, the Thirty-Nine Articles are not a major source for dogmatic debate within Anglicanism. They are viewed more as a historical document, and I, for one, did not have sign on to the Thirty-Nine Articles in any shape or from, even when I was ordained.
Equally, our decision-making process is not hierarchical, either. It is not top down as it is in the Roman Catholic Church. We do not have a teaching magisterium; no one single person or one single body of the church that can define Anglican doctrine. Rather, all four orders of the church – bishops, priests, deacons, and, equally important, lay people – together participate in the governance of the church and in the discernment of the will of the Spirit.
Our doctrinal identity as Anglicans neither stems from the insights of a religious elite nor from historical dogmatic documents, but instead from the Book of Common Prayer. We are a bunch of Christians who come together to pray together and whose lives are defined by the common worship of all. Lex orandi, lex credendi – the way we pray is the way we believe. Prayer penetrates our faith and directs the way we go about being Christians. This is as much a fundamental character of Anglicanism as it is deeply enshrined in Benedictine Spirituality, which understands every aspect of the life of a monk or a nun as an opera Dei, as a work of God, as prayer offered to God.
Yet, prayer is not about rattling off a laundry list of the things I want to have or the goals I want to achieve, or, to put it more succinctly, prayer is not a laundry list of what I want God to work on for me. Prayer, instead, in both the Anglican and the Benedictine understanding is a process of listening, listening to the Spirit’s words of wisdom, listening to the Spirit’s manifestations in the world, listening to the Spirit’s love-song for you, for me, and for all of creation.
In this context then, the use of fixed liturgical documents and prayers that were handed down to us for generations is not a prescribed way to speak to God. We Anglicans are not trying to bore God with repetition, as one Evangelical friend of mine once suggested. But the repetition of familiar words and prayers, said together in community, opens us to what the Spirit is saying to us. It is not about finding the right words to change God’s mind; it is about listening to the prayer of the Spirit, who is already praying in us and who is already interceding on our behalf before the throne of God with sighs too deep for words1. Prayer is about entering into a deeper communion with the living God. It is about an intimacy with God that penetrates all the aspects of our lives. It is about listening to what the Spirit is saying to the churches2 and to us as individuals. The first word of the Rule of St. Benedict is:
“Obsculata!” Listen.
“Listen,” it says, “and incline the ear of your heart.”3
This act of active and interactive listening is something that is not passive, however. But it is grounded in a mutual exchange of love. To quote from a contemporary monastic rule, the rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, an Anglican religious order for men:
“A ceaseless interchange of mutual love unites the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our prayer is not merely communication with God, it is coming to know God by participation in this divine [interchange of mutual love].”4
Prayer is an expression of the relationship between God and God’s creatures, between our Creator and us: you and me.
This has deep implications for our understanding of Holy Scripture, too.
For Benedictines, and I believe for Anglicans too, the Bible is not a book of answers, but more a book of poetry. And, when we enter into this poetic movement, our souls will be shaped by it. As our souls are filled with the poetry of Scripture, our souls will expand, our hearts will become more generous, and our lives will be penetrated by love beyond our imagination. It is, after all, the word of God, the will of God, and the love of God that comes to us through the texts5. Just like prayer is not about a throwing our wishes at God, but about listening, and just like listening to God can only be founded in a mutual exchange of love, so the Book of books is not about rules and regulations, but about relationships: with God, with one another and with ourselves.
Just look at today’s reading from Exodus.
The Ten Commandments, which are so foundational to our identity as God’s beloved, have been used and abused for millennia! For many, they have even become ammunition in the fight against supposed “infidels.” Yet, those who claim to adhere to the Ten Commandments cannot even agree on the exact method of counting, as Lutherans and Roman Catholics count differently from Anglicans, Eastern Christians and other Protestants!
Yet, the Ten Commandments are not the ingredients for a recipe for spiritual success. They are no recipe at all. Instead, they are an outflow of a relationship with God, which is already ongoing, leading us from darkness to light, from death to life, from Egypt to the Promised Land.
It really is unfortunate that most Christians, when they think of the Ten Commandments, skip right over what could be termed the Prologue of the Ten Commandments, and I quote:
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
“I am the Lord, your God” it says. These few words already imply a connection between the Creator and the Created, that is ongoing. We would not be, without God. And God would not be known, would not be a Creator, if there was no creation. These few words – in a rather abstract way – establish a bond that cannot be severed, that is indestructible.
But Exodus does not stop here, lost in abstracta. The text gets rather concrete.
“I am the Lord, your God, who brought you our of the land of Egypt.”
There is a history between God and God’s people: God has freed God’s people and sent them on their way as a liberated people! The Ten Commandments aren’t just pulled out of thin air; they don’t just appear out of left field. They are the expression of relationships that started way before God listened to the cries of Israel when they were enslaved and oppressed. The Ten Commandments are the fulfillment of a life in God, which fills us with love and liberates those who suffer. They are not the starting point of the journey, nor the yardstick of what is right or wrong with society, nor the tool that helps us decide who is in and who is out. The Ten Commandments are not the means to fulfil salvation.
Rather, the Ten Commandments are a sign of a deep and profound connection with God, which is not about rules and regulations, but all about a loving relationship. The Ten Commandments “happen,” when our love for God and God’s love for us penetrates every fibre of our being, when we are immersed in opera Dei, in prayer that fills our hearts and minds and souls.
We are in the midst of the Lenten journey. Two and half weeks ago, I invited all of us with words from the Book of Alternative Services “to observe a holy Lent … by reading and meditating on the word of God.”6 Unfortunately, too often Anglicans look at the texts of our Holy Scriptures and get turned off by passages that are rather off-putting for our modern sensibilities. What kind of God, for example, would drown humanity in the flood, only to spare one family, just because humanity behaved in a way that might displease God. This is a rather horrific picture! And, so we throw out scripture and declare it as having no relevance for us.
But, if we solely read Scripture cerebrally, just with our brain, if we look at it as text to be dissected and analyzed, then those who advocate for a selective reading of the Bible do have a point. However, they probably also miss the Spirit of God speaking to us through the words on the pages, even when the words make us sick to the stomach.
“Listen,” it says, “and incline the ears of your heart!”7
When we listen actively and interactively, when we mull over words and move them in our hearts, when we fight and wrestle the words on the pages, when we enter into the poetic movement of Scripture, rather than look for definite answers, then God will drown not humanity, but what separates us from God’s love, will drown not men and women and children, but those things that hurt and harm us. When we let ourselves, our souls and bodies be taken into God’s plan of salvation, then the Ten Commandments will not be fences that imprison and constrict, but an expression of the love that flows abundantly from God, who wills to lead us from Egypt to Israel, from slavery to the promised land, from death into life.
Footnotes
1 cf. Romans 8:26
2 cf. Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3: 6, 13, 22
3 cf. Prologue of the Rule of St. Regula Sancti Bendicti, which quotes Proverbs 4:20.
4 The Rule of Life, Society of Saint John the Evangelist, Cambridge, MA, Chapter Twenty-One, The Mystery of Prayer.
5 This idea was formulated by the Abbot of Worth Abbey in the UK, during the 2005 BBC documentary “The Monastery”
6 p. 282, BAS
7 cf. footnote 3
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Bible Reading for March 15, 2009
Then God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Posted by Priest on March 10, 2009 under Labyrinth, Staff Blog |
I know that God cannot be limited to just one spot on earth, but there are sacred spaces, places where God reveals God’s self in a particular, dense, and especially experience-able way. It is what Celtic spirituality calls “thin places,” spaces, where the separation between our existence and the realty of God is very thin. And the Western Wall is such a place.
A few years back, I had the opportunity to spend six weeks in Israel and Palestine. I spent most of my time in Haifa at an Ulpan, a Hebrew language school, for I was there in order to learn Hebrew. Two weeks into our experience, we embarked on a four-day excursion to Jerusalem – and I was giddy to get there.
We arrived on a Friday afternoon, checked into our hotel and were met later at the reception of the hotel by a Lutheran deacon who gave us our first walking tour of the Old City. By then, the sun had set already and Shabbat had settled over the homes and houses of the people of Jerusalem. There was an eerie silence as we made our way through the small alleys and lanes. Everything had closed down and with the exception of a few monks and a handful of tourists like us, there were not many people finding their way through the narrow pathways that formed a true maze, which could swallow you up easily without any trace.
Our deacon tour guide, however, lead us through the twisted and crooked streets on sure footing. All of sudden, we turned a corner and stood on a balcony-like platform overlooking the square just in front of the Western Wall, which at one time had been known as the Wailing Wall.
For Jews, this is haShekinah, this is where God touches the earth, this is where the divine presence resides. It was a powerful moment. Most people had already left to observe Shabbat in their homes. A few had remained to pray and to be in the presence of God. It was a wonderful sight, a site filled with wonder
I approached the Western Wall with a certain sense of trepidation. I really could feel something. It wasn’t a strong feeling, but it was there. I guess I had dreamed of being there and hoped for this moment for such a long time and that’s why I felt nervous. This is at least how my cerebral, German, male brain justified my feelings. It still came as a bit of a shock.
Slowly, I edged my way forward towards the Wall. At first, I did not have a strong desire to go within the enclosure that separates the public square from the place of prayer just in front of the Wall. But eventually, I placed a kippa on my head and headed towards the wall. I stopped about an arm’s length away from the Wall, which is a massive pile of hewn stones, all different, but all of them also quite sizable, over-towering, even over-powering. There was no way around this massive wall. It was right in front of me.
I stood there looking at and being mesmerized by this stone monstrosity for a while and joined those around me in prayer. I couldn’t help it, but eventually I looked around me and upward. And I saw a most curious thing:
About 3-4 metres above ground, a bush was growing out of the stone. A weird sight… Where did it come from? How did it stay there? On what did it live? But there it was. And it wasn’t just there. The most amazing thing was this: the bush was in full bloom. Tiny, light blue blossoms surrounded by deep green leaves were dancing in night, illumined by the artificial light shining on the Western Wall. It was as if this plant defied the coldness of the stone, defied the dead material it grew on, defied the despair and anguish of those praying around it and of the whole city that is so entrenched in hate and injustic.
And this is when it hit me. All of a sudden I was aware of the presence of something indescribably and unfathomably larger than me. The only word I can use to describe my emotions is “awe.” I was overwhelmed by awe. Yet, it was not frightening or scary. It just was. All. Encompassing. Presence. Life grew out of a dead stone. Flowers bloomed in a place no-one would choose to plant anything. Hope blossomed unexpectedly, mysteriously, and awe-inspiringly. Yet, I almost missed it. But there it was: haShekinah, the presence of God.
Article written by The Reverend Markus Dünzkofer.
Posted by stpauls on under Staff Blog |
Lent is the season that prepares us for the annual celebration of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The church invites us “to observe a holy Lent, by self-examination, penitence, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and by reading and meditating on the word of God” (p. 282, BAS).
It is a sombre season, filled with inward and outward reflection and renewal. As Christians belonging to a liturgical tradition, our Sunday liturgy will incorporating elements reflecting the sombre and solemn mood during Lent, such as silence and simplicity. At the 11:00 a.m. service, we will still gather as usual on Sunday mornings. But our opening hymn and our hymn of praise (the Gloria) will be replaced with a recitation of the deeply penitential Psalm 51. This will be followed by the singing of the Trisagion (cf. p. 186/7, BAS). Mindful of our sins and transgressions, we will next move to the confession and absolution, and thus give this part of the service more prominence (cf. p. 216f, BAS). “Alleluias” fall silent during Lent and the Gospel acclamation is replaced accordingly. The prayers of the people will be simple, almost simplistic, leaving space for our own reflections and for our own offerings of prayer and thanksgiving.
These might seem like radical alterations, yet, they are very much within the scope of our tradition, both as Christians and as Anglicans.
All are welcome and all are invited to celebrate Lent as a way of deepening our relationship with our triune God and as a way of opening ourselves to surprisingly new encounters with the God who became one of us, died on a cross, and rose again. If you have any concerns, questions, or inputs please feel free to call the office at 604-685-6832.
