May 4, 2008

So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. (John 17.5)

On a number of occasions in the Fourth Gospel, we encounter this notion that the Word (now incarnate in Jesus) has, as it were, "another life", rooted beyond time and space in the eternal communion of the triune God. By a mystery attributed to the power of the Spirit, that "other life" grows as a zygote, embryo, and then fetus in Mary's womb, and enters the world with the usual mess and hollering on the occasion we celebrate as Christmas.

Today, the evangelist reaches across time by the power of that same Spirit, and reminds us that Jesus our brother is woven eternally into the divine life, and that we are woven, by our baptism, into him. By what the Creed of Athanasius (5th century) calls the "taking of manhood into God", something has happened not just to Jesus, but to us in our humanity. The Incarnation opens a new dimension to our humanity - the capacity to join our lives to the life of God.

That new dimension of our humanity is not reserved for the mystery we enter at the time of our death. The capacity to join our lives to God's life is a present reality, proclaimed by Jesus as the "kingdom of God". In our baptism, we were anointed as citizens of that Kingdom, and called to live by its ethic.

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, Boxer the horse faces every obstacle with determination to "work harder". It would be easy for us to fall into the "work harder" trap when we hear an invitation to live by the ethic of the kingdom of God, to imagine that this is somehow a matter simply of our will and willingness. The Kingdom's ethic, though, is more than just demanding. It is impossible, as impossible as - say - a camel going through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19.24). So there we are, stuck on one side of a knothole, and there is God, on the other side. And unlike so much of our life, in which we manage obstacles and difficulties by getting bigger, this is a passage we can only make by becoming smaller. If we can get small enough, God can pull us through the knothole - our lives can be woven into the divine life and purpose, serving the kingdom and its ethic of justice, hospitality, compassion and thanksgiving.

Not only that - God can make us small enough to make this passage. This is not the smallness of humiliation, but the smallness of a child who trusts the hand and heart into whose care she puts herself. Perhaps the most important thing that Jesus does is to entrust himself to that hand and heart, to allow himself to become small enough to be drawn by them through the fearsome passage of death into the Easter moment. For it turns out that it is in our smallness, in our trust, that we stand closest to the truth about our human lives. Our humanity at its richest is not a massive, overwhelming juggernaut, but fragile, sometimes wounded, and at risk, willing to take the hand that leads, to trust the heart that loves. In a world of flexed muscles and the thunder of the mighty, it is our unique and holy treasure to offer our small selves to God's astonishing purpose. In a world dominated by what is big, what is powerful, what can force its agenda onto the stage of history, we ask God to make us small enough to be useful, small enough to pass through the knothole, through the needle's eye, into a Kingdom in which we may grow into our true fullness - fullness of compassion, fullness of courage, fullness of generosity, fullness of joy.

April 27, 2008

This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

If "the world" in this text means the collection of creatures and habitats - critters, rocks, waters, trees and soils - that constitute our earth, then what we have here is in one sense quite familiar - Christian denial of the goodness of the material world. Its roots are more Greek than Hebrew, more Plato than Jesus of Nazareth, but its grip on Christian imagination over the centuries has been fierce and relentless.

But what if "the world" means something else? What if it means a collection of habits that condition how we understand the world and ourselves in the world? Is there a collection of habits so pervasive and convincing that they shape, even determine, what world we see and inhabit. Like the default settings on computers, which are in play behind the scenes unless and until we choose to change them, is there a default "world" that we call the "real" world? What shape does that world take? Is it a faithful rendering of the world, or a distortion?

Our ancestors believed that there is a collection and habits that distort and obscure the truth, and they had a name for that collection - they called it "the sin of the world". They believed that it was persistent, resilient, and elusive. The 'world' constructed out of these habits is not the world called into being, blessed and redeemed by God. It is some other world entirely, a world defined primarily as a highly-contested resource depot, a world of scarcity, of uncertain access to the necessities of life, and, as a consequence, of indifference, hostility and violence among persons and societies, and of negligence towards the wellbeing of the non-human creation. It is a world defined and driven by fear, a world in which fear does not merely inform human actions, but determines them.

Just one example: For many years, the doctrine of "Mutually-Assured Destruction" formed the basis for nuclear policy in United States and the former USSR. This doctrine asserted that neither side would launch a first strike, because such a strike would lead to retaliation on such a scale as to lay waste to the instigator's country. The proposed construction by the American military of a missile defense system (Star Wars) was, in such a delicate balance, accurately understood as a dangerous act of aggression. Because if a system like that actually worked, it would mean that the United States could launch a preemptive strike and deal with the retaliatory strike by blowing the missiles out of the air before they reached the United States. For decades, we called all of this nonsense "security". We turned our most powerful weapons over to our fears; in fact, we built them because we were afraid. And having such weapons on all sides simply validated our fear, reinforced our conviction that fear was an accurate lens through which to see the world. It is this 'world' that cannot see or know the Spirit of truth.

Some, many, most of those around us will continue to live in that 'world'. It is not our task to tell them how wrong they are, but to offer them a living alternative, a community of persons every bit as fragile and, sometimes, afraid, who nevertheless choose to live in the world in ways that embody the truth made known to us in Jesus, that love is more powerful than death, that we are not orphans alone in a heartless universe, but beloved children of a courageous and compassionate God, and that our lives are safer in the wounded hands of God than in the clenched fist of the 'world'.

April 20, 2008

He is the Way. Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness. You will see rare beasts and have unique experiences.
He is the Truth. Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety. You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life. Love Him in the World of the Flesh. And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy. - W.H. Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio

"No one comes to the Father but by me," says Jesus. No sooner are the words off his lips than somebody starts up the marketing plan. "The one and only!" "Exclusive!" "Only available at [put name of your church here]!" I wonder if there's another way to look at these words attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel.

I wonder, for example, if maybe Thomas wants what so many traffickers in certainty want - certainty without the messy complications of relationship. "We do not know where you are going", says Thomas, and asks, "How can we know the way?" That is, "What's the roadmap?"

Users of the CAA's "Trip-tik" service will have some sympathy with Thomas. This service provides a series of detailed maps for every leg of whatever automobile journey you propose to undertake, complete with estimated times and likely delays. With your Trip-tik in hand, you can travel from Oakville Ontario to anywhere you can drive, and never have to stop to ask for directions, or visit a "Welcome to Wherever" information centre. A journey without any of the messy complications of relationship.

Not for followers of Jesus. The followers of Jesus are companions - a word that means people who share bread together. And because the landmarks of the way are unfamiliar, strange, that is to say, holy, they will lead through a land of unlikeness. In that land, if our companionship is strong, we will encounter wonders and hopes that we had never imagined. "There" is not on a map. "There" is in companionship with Jesus.

And because the Kingdom is about what matters most, because it touches us at depth where the real truth is, we are on the edge of our seats, in a kingdom of anxiety, uncertain whether we dare to dream such bold and hopeful truth in such a business-as-usual world. "There" is where we seek Jesus, not on a map, but in companionship that allows us to tell the truth about both our predicament and our hope.

And because the Kingdom is about the creatures of God, because we are bodies and not ideas, it is not, it turns out, a matter of escaping our bodies, but of enduring companionship in our bodies, that is the work of love.

Could all of this inform our celebration today, as we initiate new followers, not into some hard and certain road-map kind of truth, but into a relationship, a companionship, a bread-sharing friendship with Jesus? In a land of unlikeness, where the unfamiliar, both daunting and holy, enriches and enlivens us, where He is the Way. In a kingdom of anxiety, where the stakes are the highest and the hope is the boldest, where He is the Truth. In a flesh-and-blood world where a touch can heal and bread can feed and love can endure all our frailty and fear, where He is the Life.

April 13, 2008

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10.10)

Once upon a time Christianity seemed to me, and perhaps to some others as well, as essentially a list of things one couldn't, shouldn't, mustn't do. Many of these prohibitions were grounded in a profound apprehension about pleasures, about bodies, about passion. The residue of that pleasure-prohibitive version of Christian life is found, for example, in the name of a local catering business, "Sinful Pleasures". The pleasures implicated are the pleasures of a good meal, well-prepared and shared with pleasure among friends, neighbours, colleagues. As a community whose central ritual act is the sharing of a meal that anticipates the abundant pleasures of the Kingdom of God, we might want to think about that a bit. Did Jesus come to wreck a good meal? At the wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus, with a bit of prodding from his mother, turns water into wine, we witness an early indication (it takes place in chapter two of John's gospel), that Jesus isn't here to wreck such celebrations, but to make them even more pleasant.

No, Jesus isn't here to ruin the party, but to round out the invitation list. His scandalous table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners, and his willing attendance at meals in the houses of the wealthy, suggest that Jesus believes that life's abundance brings even more pleasure when it is prodigally shared. The table at which God is host and all are welcome guests is a more joyful table than the table that must be protected from riff-raff. Not incidentally, the definition of "riff-raff" always depends on who's doing the defining, and it wouldn't stretch the metaphor to breaking to suggest that to the creator of the universe, the human embodiment of the Word by whom God uttered creation into existence, we might all of us fill the riff-raff bill. "Catholicity" - the identifying characteristics of the universal of the Body of Christ attending to the mission of God in and for the whole world - is not circling the wagons to keep the riff-raff out with rules, exclusions, and prohibitions. It is, rather, a movement that opens outward out of its secure identity as God's beloved, called to serve and follow in the way of Jesus.

And that way is a life of abundance, not parsimony. To be sure, to serve and follow in the way of Jesus requires discipline. There is a thief, a sometimes convincing thief, who wants us to "trade down", to exchange, for example, shared abundance for personal consumption, hospitality for control and convenience, freedom for security. The important thing to know is that this thief does not actually take anything without our consent. Like Esau, we are prone to give up our birthright for a bowl of lentils, or as the Authorized Version more vividly puts it, a "mess of pottage". It takes deliberate and sustained attentiveness, what the Buddhists call "mindfulness", to know when such a choice is before us, and to have the balance, strength, clarity and courage to refuse such a trade. Such balance, strength, clarity and courage come from sustained practice. That practice comes in many forms, but among the most powerful is in the ritual relationship between our offering and God's offering. We offer some part of our wealth, our time, our attention to God, and as we take it bless it, break and share it, God offers his very self to us. And oddly enough, it is those who have shrugged off the mantle of scarcity and offered abundantly who perceive most readily and gladly the abundance God holds out to us in return. And most deeply of all, those whose very selves have been offered and broken in the work of love who know most deeply that they have touched and been touched by the heart Whose rhythm is eternal, deep, and true.

April 6, 2008

Why are Cleopas and his companion heading for Emmaus? Perhaps that's where they live. The text, though, doesn't name Emmaus as their home, but only as "the village to which they were going." Are they beckoned by the promise of home, or driven by the fear of violence and death in Jerusalem? They are clearly disciples of the Galilean rabbi whose teaching and practice led to execution. It would not be unreasonable for them to imagine that some part of the violence that landed on him might land on them as well. And if it is fear that drives them, the astounding witness of the women, which they repeat to the stranger on the road, has not yet sunk in.

Because the resurrection is, among other things, a compelling invitation to repent of the authority of fear in our lives, authority that we have granted. The resurrection unmasks that of which we have been so afraid - the power of death - as, in the end, empty, an empty tomb, a broken bondage. The resurrection does not obliterate the cost of our living as soft bodies in a hard world. It does, however, disclose the limit of death's power. It invites us to see and know that death lays no claim on us that love cannot overcome. The death of Jesus is indeed, then, a ransom for many. It ends our captivity to the power of death, and invites us to live as free persons.

But Cleopas and companion do not know that yet. They are "heading for the hills", hearts broken by the apparent power of death to end hope ("we had hoped") by destroying him whose life and witness was the occasion for their hope. Jesus is dead. Life is deadly. We're safer knowing that and acting accordingly.

And then - then the stranger takes the bread, blesses, breaks and shares it. In some ways, this is the first eucharist. The meal on Thursday took place before the death had unleashed its full arsenal of violence on Jesus' body. This takes place as a response to that violence, denies it the authority it seeks. What was alive in our midst as Jesus before his death is alive in our midst as Jesus after his death. Something more powerful than death is at play when in our midst bread is taken, blessed, broken, and shared. All the power of death unleashed across all of created time and space is smaller than the thing we do together this morning. Smaller, because in this eucharist we join our doing to God's doing, our imperfect offertory to God's perfect self-offering in Jesus, our bounded love to God's unbounded love.

And all the power of death unleashed across all created time and space is smaller than any action by which any creature participates in any way in God's work of love. We do not measure here by any scale other than the mysterious scale of the Spirit, in which love is love, never more, and never less.

So Cleopas and his companion repent of fear, turning from a trajectory into which death and fear have driven them, to a trajectory into which the Spirit invites them, the trajectory that leads them back into the community in Jerusalem, a community with a story to tell, a community that will proclaim and enact that story, albeit imperfectly, from that day until this. A community in which we are members by baptism, and into whose witness are woven our kindness, love, and courage, never more, and never less.

So, to quote Bruce Cockburn's closing line in his haunting "Mystery",
"Come all you stumblers who believe love rules. Stand up and let it shine."