Posted by stpauls on June 27, 2010 under Sermons | 
[This sermon was written and delivered by The Reverend Dr. Yazeed Said on June 27, 2010, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost.]
“No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” I suppose that we could have a sermon about how we ought to be detached about this or that tradition or theology; “let the dead bury their dead,” sounds like another suitable quote for such a sermon. But, this is not going to be it. Jesus is not preaching about deserting certain things; rather, he is living in and living out the kingdom of God, which is about emptying ourselves of everything, about having nothing.
“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Earlier in the same chapter of Luke, Jesus sends the twelve with power to proclaim the kingdom. He does not tell them to travel light. He tells them to have nothing. Our gospel today is about the mission of the disciples, and therefore, about our mission that is rooted in Jesus’ own weakness and homelessness. In other words, the mission of the Church is rooted in a spirituality that does not look for success as a necessary conclusion, nor does it look for self-congratulation in everything we do.
In Galatians, Paul is still struggling with the divided Galatian Church, calling the Church to freedom. And what is this freedom all about? It is not an objectless and timeless bliss for the solitary subject, but the state of a self being engaged (in communion). Paul makes a distinction between the freedom that is for the sake of the flesh and that of the spirit. The first is opposed to the mutual service of life in the spirit. Life in the flesh designates the state of self-protective mutual hostility, the culture of achievement and possession, the definition of each other’s identities in terms of their place in such a culture. He points out that the desire of the spirit is at odds with the desire of the flesh, because while the flesh wants rivalry and greed (financial, sexual, magical, material), the spirit wants communion (joy, love, generosity, things that cannot be done except when done in community).
And so the definition of “spirit” seems to be that which is oriented to the new humanity, which is the divine life communicated to us human beings. Spirit does not designate here some part of an organism. To grow in the life of the Spirit is the process of having Christ formed in us. This is what spirituality truly means, an education in the new humanity that relates to all our work, our art, our politics, our sexuality, and our economics, and prayerful looking to God which must pervade them all; it is not a subdivision of our humanity any more than spirit is an item in the list of things that make up the human being. It is the business of making our lives mean what Christ’s life means: the presence of gift, promise, commitment, new relation. A spirituality uninterested in this would indeed be divorced from mission – and thus divorced from God. It would be a fake spirituality. Spirit is what wants the kingdom that Jesus talks about in Luke, and so desires to realise the humanity of Jesus in its own act and being. And in turn, the church is called to communicate the reality of the new humanity or new creation, a reality only communicated in the facts of communal life.
Last Wednesday, I attended, as you all may have heard (together with the honourable David Facey-Crowther[*]), the interfaith forum for ending homelessness in Vancouver, where Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders met with the local minister for housing in British Columbia and a representative of the city counsel. Here we had an occasion where it was clear that the Church in all its various branches was called to minister the gospel in an environment of plurality, challenge, and difficulty, in the context of people with different convictions and priorities. Our first power in this context is to know how to speak words that open and do not close the options of conversation. It was not all very successful as far as the way those attending were speaking, and there was a kind of attack on the minister from one participant, which certainly closed off the options of further talking, a bit like James and John in today’s Gospel, who when they failed to prepare the way for Jesus to enter the Samaritan village wanted to wipe it off the land.
When we talk, we do not ever know what long-term result of any particular encounter with people of other convictions and faiths might be. What we do know is that the door opened by Jesus for the whole human race can never be shut. How exactly the communion of the Church can enter into and transform the situations in which Christians live is not something the Church can project or control. The action is God’s alone, and he alone can break our selfish fear and will to compete with others. The need for the discipline of silence remains important for this so that God can break onto our servitude to fear and rivalry. That is why it is important to pray.
Jesus, we are reminded in the gospel today, has his face set towards Jerusalem where our fear and rivalry take him to the cross, but still he defeats our fear and opens the doors for us yet again. Our business as a Church is to try and stand in that great opening cleared by the cross and resurrection, speaking the words that the Spirit gives us that will make relationships. What comes from it, God knows. The Church that produces no visible sign in its inner life of the extending of communion and the challenging or breaking of competitive and destructive patterns of life is a Church that ought to ask itself whether it is really in love with the kingdom of God. Without the conviction of gift and judgment, and the vision of a humanity converging on Christ, there is no excuse for the Church. This is the basis of all that you do here and that we pray about here, especially the work of the Advocacy Office. Of course, this remains a place that we have to manage administratively with as much care and imagination as one can muster. We do it as best we may, but Jesus is telling us today, that if that is all we do, we have not actually heard the gospel. And the gospel is telling us that suppose everything were taken away from you, even your confidence that the power of the kingdom would be visible, suppose that you carry nothing with you, then be sure still that God’s word is still what it always was, Christ’s lordship is still what it always was, and the Spirit’s freedom is still what it always was, and they will be so whether you live or die, fail or succeed.
You do not have to fight for God’s honour. This is the basis of our encounter with other faiths, too. God’s power can only be manifest as totally different when we disconnect it from our methods of managing and being anxious that we do the right thing and control those around us. Paul’s motto “Not us, but Christ,” should be our motto, making the world see that we are able to live with looking foolish and making mistakes, simply because of Jesus’ victory over the world. Then failures will proclaim what our successes could not proclaim. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit … Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5: 24-26).
Amen.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Luke 9:51-62 ~ Gospel Reading for June 27, 2010
When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them.
Then they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Paul’s Letter to the Galatians 5:1, 13-25 ~ Bible Reading for June 27, 2010
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 ~ Bible Reading for June 27, 2010
When the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.
Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on.
Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.”
As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.
Posted by stpauls on June 26, 2010 under Staff Blog, Webmaster Blog |
Fifty-four of New Zealand’s finest school-aged singers (aged 15-19) will be singing at the 10:00 a.m. service at St. Paul’s Church on July 4, 2010. They will give a free concert after the service.
We wish to thank the generous benefactor who has sponsored the lunch to be provided for the members of the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir after their concert.
The group will also be performing at the International Choral Kathaumixw in Powell River from July 6 to 10, 2010.
Posted by stpauls on June 20, 2010 under Contributors, Webmaster Blog |
Every year in the diocese of New Westminster, there is an honoured speaker who comes to address Synod. Most years, the “Synod Partner” is an Anglican minister from a sister diocese elsewhere in the world. Last year, it was the Right Reverend David Jung-Hsin Lai, of Taiwan. It is always nice to have a bit of a fresh impression, and see things from a different point of view.
This year, in a tangible effort to begin to “Move into the Neighbourhood,” Synod welcomed the Rabbi Dr. Robert Daum, the director of the Iona Pacific Inter-Religious Centre and Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature & Jewish Thought at Vancouver School of Theology. Because Synod takes place primarily on a Saturday, Rabbi Daum broke his Sabbath to come speak with us, and give a little insight into inter-religious dialogue.
This was only the third time he’s broken Sabbath in the past year. The second time was to join in a community-wide Muslim celebration honouring the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. The first time was to meet with a group of Aboriginal elders at the Vancouver School of Theology. As he said it, each of these times he has broken the Sabbath he has “had the pleasure and the privilege of visiting the neighbours – a venerable Sabbath tradition in itself.”
What Rabbi Daum spoke of, and in fact what his presence spoke of, is a need to share our “experiences and teachings with one another.” It is through this sharing process that we will see the ways we are different, yes, but perhaps more meaningfully, the ways we are the same. Sharing our experiences, and just as importantly listening to others’ experiences, we are not diminished in our identity, but instead we are enhanced and transformed.
Most importantly, Rabbi Daum stressed the importance of leaving our baggage (and pre-conceived notions) behind, because it will just weigh us down. If we are able to open our hearts and minds to one another, we will not be trapped within ourselves.
Here is a link to the Rabbi Robert Daum’s Synod address: What are we carrying into the neighbourhood?
by Hope Telford-Rake
Posted by stpauls on under Sermons |
[This sermon was written and delivered by The Reverend Dr. Yazeed Said on June 20, 2010, the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost.]
Our lessons today present to us opposing characters. We have Elijah the “troubler of Israel,” as Ahab calls him earlier in the book, the prophet who has a zeal for the Lord, standing against the corruption of Israel’s worship of Baal, whilst his experience of meeting God in silence is a reminder to Israel of its own tradition of refusing to pronounce, even sometimes write, the sacred name of God. He is escaping for his life for witnessing to this holiness of God. On the other hand, we have Jezebel, a troublesome woman who appears like just the sort of offensive atheist liberal who could not see what all the fuss was about that Elijah is making, and would probably not be happy with Paul’s letter to the Galatians (our second reading as Paul reminds us that we are justified by faith). And in the Gospel reading, we have Jesus meeting a demoniac with a legion of demons, who get the green light from Jesus to attack the Gerasene swine causing trouble to the locals (what was that all about we might wonder?) If you had any illusion that Jesus was simply this nice prophet who makes you feel good and cosy, well today he does not seem to make that effect it seems.
“Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to stand by,” Elijah is told. The Lord was not anything that Elijah expected him to be. Similarly, the Lord in the Gospel is going around and meeting people; but his presence does not seem to be good news to those who hear of it. Last week, he accepted the invitation of Simon the Pharisee, and Jesus criticized his host’s hospitality and exposed its limits, the fears and contempt that appear so close to the surface of apparent welcome. In today’s Gospel, the local people decide that they do not want to welcome Jesus and beg him to leave them alone. It is not a safe assumption to suppose that we will feel good when we let Jesus come to our homes. Our homes are too small for him, and we will need to keep up with the depths of his truth; he is the truth, as he cannot be mastered. But, despite his frightening presence to those who want a nice calm life, the demoniac like the sinner woman last week falls at the feet of Jesus, and Jesus commands him to go and tell others how much God has done for him, how much God has interrupted and disoriented the norms of the locals, their blindness and ignorance, and that interruption is not a comfortable clearing up of their problems. It is the kind of appearance that made them strangers to themselves. When Jesus appears on our scene, the first thing we know is that we don’t “know” – and never did. That is why he is the truth, and that is why when this happens we are closer to the truth too.
And that is what we are here for, not to master the truth and make it fit our own ways of understanding, but to worship the one and only God, who is the creative reality of our lives, who is utterly unmasterable, so much so that He forces our defensive ego out of its home in the world of our making. We tend to think, as Anglicans, that the vision of God is natural to us in our worship, and that grace and quiet are an appropriately low-key acknowledgement of this (no one habitually falls on their face as if dead during Anglican worship). But, when Paul is trying to explain hard to the divided Church in Galatia that in Christ there is no Greek or Jew, there is no slave or free, male or female, he is also saying that discovering the Living Christ, and welcoming him to our homes is dangerous and disturbing to our self-enclosed assumptions as each group thinks that they got it right. When the demoniac is asked to go home and proclaim the good works God has done to him, it is thought that his home is indeed a gentile home, prefiguring the mission of the Church, the bursting of Jesus from the confines of an ethnic tomb. He becomes an Apostle of Jesus.
Paul explains how this disturbance happened in his own story of conversion (which is how he begins the letter to the Galatians), which sums up what happened with greater intensity in the history of his own people until it reached a point of crisis and focus that broke down their whole assumptions and put them on a new mission. Once we were Jews, he says, who followed and were obedient to the law. But, out of this obedience, out of this commitment came out a set of events in the history of Jesus in which the law became enfleshed so sharply and decisively in Jesus that the way God’s people thought about themselves was deeply challenged. Jesus crucified is the central image of the strangeness of God. He is that which interrupts and remakes the world, as he stands for that strangeness.
But, the kingdom he sees and lives out is not a threat, except to those who are deeply frightened and struggle to control their humanity by law. The grace that we have in Jesus, says Paul, is a promise, to be truly Abraham’s heirs, but only if you have your own picture of yourself constantly questioned. It is a promise for the “poor in spirit,” the humble, the compassionate. Last week, I said that the Gospel does not work with lazy people. Today, it appears that the Gospel does not work with puffed-up characters either. It requires a good deal of soul searching. “Blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of God is theirs,” said Jesus in a different context. They have found and been found by God’s truth. When the people around Jesus stop taking for granted that the world revolves around them, and take the risk of self-questioning, then they discover a harmony and an affirmation of their humanity that does not depend on surface security and shallow happiness and that it is not just about us Jews or Greeks, males or female, gay or straight. Rather, we hear an assurance that whatever happens, we are rooted in something deeper than the divided nature of our world, and the world’s concern to emphasize issues of identity.
And here in our celebration of the Eucharist, we are recalling how Jesus our Lord, goes to his death, caused by our fear and insecurity, but does not turn and condemn us for our fears. He steps lovingly into the kingdom of death and emptiness, and breaks to an unimaginable new level of being. He is risen and gathers his friends in renewed acceptance and love – to make himself the cornerstone of our new humanity. He leaves himself with us so that we can cope with the traumas of our own lives and world through him and his story. The demoniac, the frightened locals, the frightened Elijah, and the offensive Jezebel are all different characters and faces of our own humanity. Telling the story of Jesus can hold them all together. To rephrase Paul, there is in Christ no frightened locals, or Elijah, or Jezebel. They are all one. Without Jesus, we have an impossible choice between a Jezebel, or a demoniac, or a frightened prophet, and puffed-up locals, madness on the one side and sentimental cosiness on the other side. But, in the story of cross and resurrection, loss and fullness, madness and joy are woven together in one word of grace and promise. Come let us receive him.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Luke 8:26-39 ~ Gospel Reading for June 20, 2010, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost.
Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As [Jesus] stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”– for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)
Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.
Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Galatians 3:23-29 ~ Bible Reading for June 20, 2010
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
1 Kings 19:1-4, 8-15A ~ Bible Reading for June 20, 2010
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.”
Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”
He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He answered, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He answered, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” Then the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.”
