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| Bishop Michael Bird |
Today the Ascension welcomed our diocesan bishop, The Right Reverend Michael Bird, as guest preacher and presider.
It is a real pleasure for Susan and me to be with you this morning here at the Ascension and as always, I bring you greetings and very best wishes from all of us at Synod Office and all the members of your Diocesan family. I want to particularly thank Bishop Terry for his faithful leadership here in the parish and for his support for me personally in my episcopal ministry. I also want to thank the whole ministry team: Deacon Janice, Leonel, John Lang, the wardens and corporation, the parish council and all who exercise ministry in one form or another. This congregation is alive with adult education, children’s programming, outreach, wonderful and varied liturgies and music and many wonderful events and projects. And I have to say I think you have one of the best parish websites in the diocese!
This all happens because of solid leadership and the willingness and the passion of our members to exercise their ministries in this place ……in so many ways we are being called to serve here and we are also being sent out by God and I am so pleased to be part of this service which celebrates the work of our volunteers in ministry in this parish. In this celebration, we recognize the treasure we have in the time and talents and dedication of the people who make up this congregation. Thank you, to each and every one of you for the gift of this work that is ours to share in together.
In our Gospel reading this morning..... a man who had been blind from birth was given the gift of sight and with that sight comes a new sense of purpose and meaning for his life....he was been set free to proclaim the message of Jesus and yet in the face of the joy and the sense of awe and wonder of this miracle ... the people around him do their very best to minimize or belittle the great treasure that they are confronted with in him.
In the first scene, the man who has been healed encounters his neighbours ...... and basically what he is met with is indifference and denial... people who don't want to ask the tough questions in their life ...... about what it means to have faith in the midst of the suffering and hardship of this world ...... instead they get into an argument about whether this is in fact the man they knew as the blind man or someone else.
His next encounter comes in the form of an interrogation by the Pharisees and this time the meeting brings hostility and outright disbelief as they argue and debate about the identity and the character of Jesus.
And then in the third instance the man who had been healed is reunited with his own family as they are questioned by the Pharisees, ....surely this time he would receive a much more positive response. But in an attempt to stay on the good side of the religious leaders, the parents hedge their bets and halfheartedly identify him as their son but also state that he is old enough to speak for himself.
It seems that life is so much easier when we can stay in our own little box and not have our perspectives challenged, our way of life called into question and when our own personal and corporate belief systems remain forever firmly in place. If we can keep things as they are, there is no need to stand up and be counted!
In the midst of this kind of apathy and hostility Jesus boldly claimed to be the light of the world; a world that is so often blind to the needs and the brokenness that is all around us and it is into this world that we who are followers of Jesus are sent. This word “sent” is an important one in the gospel reading today as Jesus says to the disciples: “We must work the works of him who “sent” me. And the word appears a few verses later as the blind man is asked to go and wash in the pool of Siloam and we are told that the name Siloam means “Sent.”
Perhaps the most powerful passage in our reading today, however, comes from the man who received his sight, himself. Having heard all the doubts, the fears, the indifference and the accusations....he stands before the crowd, an unlikely witness to the healing and restoring power of God’s love and says to them: you can call Jesus a sinner if you want to …. you can deal with this situation in any way you choose...... but here is one thing I do know.... “that though I was blind, now I see.”
Our Old Testament passage this morning is the account in 1st Samuel of King David’s calling and anointing. Like our Gospel reading we see here that God often chooses the most unlikely from among us and when we are called into ministry we are never the same again. David is a good example of someone whom was changed irrevocably by God’s call. Like others in today’s readings, David was minding his own business, out tending his sheep, when God took the initiative and entered his life. Samuel, also is called to be a servant and God’s representative, anointed David king of Israel.
I am now in my tenth year as the Bishop of Niagara and over these years I have had the privilege of experiencing just how profoundly God has chosen some very unlikely people to be the bearers of God’s message of love and hope and peace. Perhaps one of the most memorable experiences of this came on a trip to South Africa where I visited the cell of Nelson Mandela, prisoner 46664. It was hard to believe that the occupier of that 8 foot X 7 foot cell, for 18 of his 27 years in prison, could become one of the greatest political heroes of his day and with others would be responsible for such a dramatic transformation on the world stage. On the same trip, I also met one of my great heroes, another unlikely religious world leader, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. When the Archbishop became recognized as a great leader in the church and around the world he was not even considered a person according to his country’s constitution by virtue of the colour of his skin.
What is perhaps even more noteworthy for me, however, is the countless number of men and women, that I encounter week by week, here in the Diocese of Niagara who are being called to exercise ministries that are changing lives and changing the world…… they serve with migrant farm workers outreach, refugee sponsorship, community kitchens, community gardens, breakfast programs, like the ones you are involved in, open door programs for the poor, the marginalized, for street workers and at risk youth… the list goes on and on and on.
I want to thank you for all the ways that the ascension is a wonderful example of how we are being transformed as a church and I know that over the last six months you have been celebrating and giving thanks for the miracle of God's abiding presence that has been made so very real here in the lives and the ministries of your parish volunteers. There is no doubt that we, as bearers of that treasure, are being “sent” to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ who is the light of the world.
I offer my congratulations and very best wishes to all those volunteers who will be honoured here today and may God’s richest blessings be upon us all, throughout the Diocese of Niagara, as we walk this road together in days and years to come. AMEN
(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown on the Third Sunday of Lent, March 19, 2017 at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario. Text: John 4: 5-42)
In the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in today’s Gospel, John continues his portrayal of Jesus as taking ordinary things (last week birth, this week water and food) and giving them deep spiritual significance. It is perhaps his version of the parables of the other three Gospels. In the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) Jesus tells simple human stories to give substance to the Reign of God; in John’s Gospel, Jesus takes ordinary substances (birth, water, wine, bread) and gives them deep spiritual meaning. Here Jesus is the water of life, faith in whom gives deep spiritual life, eternal life.
That deep water of life, deep faith in Christ as the Son of God, the Son of Man, and the Messiah, is so significant that it transcends ordinary human divisions between people. Unlike last week, when the revelation of new birth comes through a conversation with a young rabbi, Jesus’ social equal in many respects, perhaps even his social superior, this week’s revelation comes through a conversation with a woman from a forbidden religious tradition, that of the Samaritans, and whose moral life is less than perfect: an all-around outcast.
Indeed, one might even speak of the encounter as a kind of holy trespass. Jesus should not be speaking with a woman alone; he should not be speaking with a Samaritan; and he should not be speaking alone with a woman with such a poor moral reputation. He has trespassed all over the place as far as the Jewish law is concerned. The Samaritan woman, too, is engaged in trespass. She should not be talking with a strange young man at the well, let alone a Jew; and moved by the conversation with him, she becomes his evangelist, another act of trespass against her tradition and customs. Because of her testimony, the Samaritans ask Jesus to stay with them. He stays two days with them, despite the traditional hostility of Jew and Samaritan, another act of holy trespass.
One traditional way of reading Scripture is to put ourselves into each of the characters and let that exercise deepen our understanding of God’s will for us. There are three people or groups of people here: the disciples, the Samaritan woman and Jesus. For a moment, let us be each of them, successively.
Imagine we are the disciples. We are good Jews; we see the Samaritans as unclean, almost like Gentiles. We don’t want to have anything to do with them. We know who our community is and it is a closed community. Yet our leader, Jesus, talks to this Samaritan woman alone. We are shocked, we disapprove, we want to get him out of there to return to the comfort of our small band. Jesus speaks to us and we are challenged.
In one way or another, all of us are a bit like the disciples. We like our comfortable groups of friends and familiar ways of doing things. We sometimes exclude others for reason of faith or lifestyle or personality. Like the disciples, we are called to realize that the deep water of eternal life transcends all human differences and we are to share that life with all the world. Eventually the disciples got the message and, after Jesus’ Resurrection, they went out into all the world, Jewish, Samaritan and Gentile.
Secondly, imagine that we are that Samaritan woman. We are all a bit like her too in one way or another: perhaps on the margins because of our gender, education, sexuality, age, birth place, health, life history or lack of acceptance by others. Like her, our self-esteem may not be so high or we may just find life difficult, unable to settle.
God knows every secret of our heart, just as Jesus discerned the Samaritan woman’s life history. God knows both our virtues and hard work but also our moral failings, our greed, our pettiness, our confusion. On the social media, Facebook has a relationship label in addition to “single” and “married” called “it’s complicated”. God sees even what is “complicated” in our lives. God also sees within us the divine image and, indeed, our vocation as evangelists for the deep water of life in Christ. We are called to accept that we are known by God, every corner of our lives, good and ill; that we are called to repentance and to go out as evangelists of the Good News, as representatives of God’s love to the world. Culturally we may find it difficult to rush back to our communities, exclaiming, “I have found the Messiah” but we should live as though we are exclaiming that every day.
Finally, we may put ourselves in the place of Jesus in the story. We may think that is sacrilegious yet we are called to live as the image of Jesus in the world, as “small Christs” to one another and the world. So putting ourselves in Jesus’ place in the story is perhaps more important than putting ourselves in the places of the disciples and the Samaritan woman.
Gradually in his self-understanding, it has dawned upon Jesus that his ministry extends beyond “the house of Israel”. Samaritans and Gentiles are compelled by his powerful teaching to come to him to beg healing and acceptance. Gradually Jesus relents and he allows his ministry to extend beyond the Jewish community of his time. Eventually he accepts these Samaritan and Gentile requests. When the Samaritans invite him to stay in this story, he accepts. He has come a long way from the Gentile woman whom he likens to a dog eating crumbs from a table.
Like Jesus, we are called to let our love extend beyond the confines of our usual comfort levels, to those different from ourselves. We are not to be afraid of a little bit of “holy trespass”. I am a shy person and do not find it easy to talk comfortably with strangers in a public place. Yet others of you are open and outgoing and have that gift. But even if we are not so forward, others may approach us, whether face-to-face or through the social media and want to talk. It is important to accept and listen and try to love with the love of Christ. And not worry about barriers of culture, politics, faith tradition, or whatever. Nor do you need my permission: just do it. And don’t be afraid of a little bit of “holy trespass” – but it must be holy.
But sometimes the barriers are very small. Today after church we are having a community meal, thanks to the social committee. This is really a very ancient tradition of the church, going back to New Testament times, the so-called agape- or love-feast that followed the Eucharist in the early church. Indeed, in 1 Corinthians Paul chided the Corinthian church for its unequal love feasts in which the rich ate all their good food first and left nothing for the poor. Ours will be a very equal love feast, without that problem. The purpose, in the early church, was to celebrate Christ’s love and to break down barriers between rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, slave and free: indeed, this might have been the only time such barriers could be broken down. So, I invite you all to stay for this love feast, which I hope we can make a regular occurrence, eventually inviting in any from our neighbourhood who would like to share in a meal with us. And like Jesus and the Samaritan woman, try to sit with a stranger, someone you do not know so well. And next time, bring a friend.
Finally, crossing boundaries, I am pleased to report that a small group from the parish welcomed and helped our Karen refugee family as they moved to Hamilton yesterday. We have a good support group drawn from both Ascension and All Saints. Despite barriers of language, experience and culture, we pray that we can be a genuine help to them.
In short, just as the disciples, the Samaritan woman and Jesus were all called away from their usual comfort levels, so that deep eternal life in Christ may be offered to all, so are we called beyond our comfort levels, indeed, even to holy trespass and unexpected directions, all for the sake of God’s love in Jesus Christ. All of this is summed up in today’s Collect:
Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ gives the water of eternal life, may we always thirst for you, the spring of life and source of goodness; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen..
(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown on the Second Sunday of Lent, March 12, 2017, at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario. Texts: Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17.)
We are in Lent. If we take today’s Gospel reading, the secret nighttime conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee leader Nicodemus as a contribution to what Lent is all about it, we come up with re-birth, re-generation, a new life: a life different from our usual ordinary expectations and desires and their fulfillment. Rather, a life deeply rooted (indeed, re-born) in the Spirit of God’s Son: “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.” In John’s Gospel, “eternal life” means a quality of life so deeply rooted in the Word made flesh and the Spirit that we are re-born. In Paul’s letters, the parallel idea is living “in Christ”.
So as a kind of self-examination, we may well ask, what needs to die in me, so that through God’s grace, I may be re-born. That is a question each of us should ask ourselves individually, perhaps best in a quiet and reflective time. It is generally not very constructive to tell another person what is wrong with him or her: “you worry too much, you eat too much, you’re stuck in the past, you don’t face reality, you handle your finances poorly, you drink too much, etc.” If someone talked that way to me consistently, I’d eventually say, “Get lost!”. Yet each of us, in the quiet of our hearts, is called to reflect (especially in Lent) on areas where we need rebirth. In doing so, we may want to ask the advice of others or even offer our confession. But in the end, each of us decides for ourselves and tries to make the changes necessary for re-birth to take place.
What that re-birth may be is not always clear. That is the whole point of Abram’s following God’s call in the short Old Testament passage today. He simply has faith and goes, even though he does not know what the destination will be. He does not determine the destination, he simply goes. His rebirth as Abraham is rooted in faith that is absolute trust in God. He lets go of the past and never returns to it.
Unfortunately, we tend not to be so trusting today. We often want everything explained and determined beforehand: a fixed and guaranteed goal, one without risk. Imagine two scenarios. You have an opportunity to go away on a weekend holiday. One travel company tells the destination, say Niagara Falls or Muskoka, with every detail about accommodation, food, sights to be seen, and social activities given. But another travel company offers a “mystery tour”, “guaranteed to be interesting” but with no details. Which would you pick? How many would pick the “mystery tour”? I suspect that because of the general rise of distrust in our society, more and more people would choose the all-details provided tour and distrust the mystery one. We don’t much trust “blind dates” anymore; we want all the details, even the picture, beforehand. Yet, Abram went in faith into a new and unknown situation, a mysterious land, a blind date.
So, one element of opening ourselves to re-birth is cultivation of trust – trust in the judgement of others but also cultivation of our own sense of self-trust: for moving into new and unfamiliar situations. If those situations relate to aging or ill health, for example, they may not seem very promising or we may be tempted to resort to denial. Yet even in ill-health and aging are opportunities for new life and re-birth.
God wants us to have and experience “eternal life”: a life marked by depth and quality, even if long years are not a possibility. Better a shorter number of years of quality than many years of misery. But a good quality of life often produces length of days and we do not seek or encourage death. That eternal life is rooted in times of prayer and reflection, reading and discussion of Scripture, self-examination and self-criticism, good relationships, constant attempts to amend our ways and the “leap of faith” that all this makes sense: that we are Christ’s forever, born of water and the Spirit in Baptism, sustained in the Body and Blood of the Eucharist, nourished in loving Christian fellowship with one another.
As with previous weeks, Paul’s reflection in our Epistle, brings together the Old Testament teaching about Abraham living by faith and the Christian life of faith: that we are heirs of Abraham, justified by “the righteousness of faith”. We do not know what the future will bring. No church or civil law will give the full answer, though we do well to be guided by them. Rather we are encouraged to share Abraham’s and Paul’s great confidence: that moving ahead in faith, even if we do not see the final goal or outcome, is the way to go.
Finally, I believe all of this has relevance for us as a parish. We can make rules and guidelines, we can plan with goals and outcomes, we can fine-tune budgets, but what is the foundation of it all is deep faith: faith to love however God calls us to love, openness and friendliness to all, undergoing constant regeneration and rebirth in our relations with ourselves, our neighbours and the world, a place where the word of God is heard and studied, a home for the Spirit of God, a place of eternal life experienced. That already happens but we can always improve. Lent is that time for improvement: a time to step back individually and corporately in self-examination. Like Nicodemus, how do we need to change, that more grace of rebirth might take place within ourselves – rebirth that will lead to hearing God’s true call to ourselves, so that like Abraham and Paul and all the saints, we may respond with deep faith, even if we do not know the destination. Only in that way will we grow in eternal life. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable before you, our Lord and our Redeemer. Amen.
Good morning, my friends. It is so good to be here.
I want to wish us all a very blessed Lent, I want to pray that we may all use the time and opportunities afforded by this liturgical season for prayer, discernment, and service and, like today -when we meet as a Christian community- for listening to the Word, making common prayer, and being nourished by the Sacraments.
I pray that, despite their seeming somber tone, we may observe the disciplines of this season with a joyful heart, a confident and joyful heart.
Which is why I find so meaningful that our psalm in this first Sunday of Lent should begin with the word ‘Happy’: ‘Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is put away’.
The Hebrew word asher means ‘happy’, yes, but it is more like, ‘of a joyful life’ or, even better, ‘driven to leading a blessed life’. Asher denotes intention, agency, and purpose, in our joy, moved by the acknowledgment of the mercy of God, who lifts transgressions, covers sins, and does not count iniquities, making Himself our joy and purpose.
The psalmist goes on to acknowledge that it was not until he chose to open his mouth, confess his transgressions, plea for forgiveness and remission, that the heavy weight of the hand of God was lifted off his soul.
There is some reluctance in the confession, which takes three verses, if we compare it to the swiftness of God’s pardon, which only takes one verse. But there is also the expressed happiness in submitting one’s self to the saving, merciful love of God: there is joy in committing one’s self to the guidance and teaching of the Lord, says the Psalmist.
As the Church, we step into this season of Lent, these forty days of intentional discernment, by hearing the account of the forty days that our Lord Jesus spent in the dessert in fasting and prayer.
Just like Jesus, the Church and her children are led by the Spirit, who nourishes and builds us all up in all things, throughout a season of penitence and growth. This season is meant to help us discern our true nature, call, and end, and to act accordingly.
And this discernment of our true nature, call, and end, even for the Church, here and now, is often marked by the experience of temptations. Just as it was for our Lord out in the desert, two thousand years ago.
What are temptations? Where do they come from? Is it God? Is it the Tempter, the Devil? Does it matter?
Years ago, I heard someone define temptations as coming from Satan, as opposed to trials, which come from God.
It may sound like an overly simplistic distinction, but I think it does the job of setting temptations, the fruits of our obsession with our ego, well apart from trials, one of many logical outcomes of our relationships in the world.
Trials speak to our embrace of the Cross, while temptations speak to the seduction of our ego.
Temptations are those yearnings we can all have for, basically, instant gratification.
They make the unfair seem plausible, nay, desirable -if only we would twist the rules a little bit…
Temptations make honesty and joy of living look redundant, and common sense always second to personal gain.
And, as you can imagine, for Jesus, as he was facing the most public and wounding part of his ministry, as he turns his face towards Jerusalem, there are plenty of temptations to be dealt with.
And it is not just those things Jesus might have struggled with. Mostly, I would think, they were about the very high hopes and expectations that others might have been throwing on him all along his ministry.
How could Jesus live up to these hopes, or delusions, who can tell for sure anymore?
In each of his openings, Satan, the Tempter, appeals to the divine sonship of Jesus –‘if you are the Son of God’- to trigger his pride and foolishness. ‘Who is your daddy?’, seems to ask the Devil, enticing Jesus to a move of power and arrogance.
And, each time, with each temptation, Jesus responds by grounding his identity and calling in his obedience and, in being obedient, in having surrendered his control and agenda to God, his freedom from insecurity and hunger for power.
Jesus responds by invoking the Covenant, that link of love and obedience which also renders temptations powerless.
In the way Jesus responds to the entreats of the Devil, the way Jesus responds to the temptations of power, might, and total autonomy from others, we are again, as before with the Psalmist, drawn into trusting our whole being, into embracing the saving confidence in the providence of God.
And I want to point out that this is a decisive factor in the recalling of these events. If you remember, last week we heard about Jesus going up the mount of the Transfiguration, when he took along three disciples who, predictably, came down with the experience and the story to eventually be told.
But today, right off the bat we are told that Jesus went into the wilderness on his own. No disciples. No witnesses. All by himself.
So, the gospel writers knew about this event in the desert through different means than when learning about the Transfiguration event.
If for the transfiguration, we now rely on the witness of those who were brought along by Jesus -Peter, John, James- in the case of the Temptations, I have to assume that the community only knew so much about any of it, and filled in the gaps for the most of the story.
If we look at Mark, for example, this entire story is told in but two verses. The Lord went out in the desert, was tempted by Satan, but He overcame.
Because this is as much as the disciples “really” knew, not having been witnesses to the events in the desert.
So, the disciples, the authors of St Matthew’s gospel, adorn the initial story with all these narrative bits we can read today, out of their experience with Jesus, whom they knew was being tempted, not only at this point in his ministry, but in fact throughout it all.
The personification of the Devil, the Accuser, is a very useful teaching device to bring our attention right away to the actual object of concern or temptation for Jesus: the place and importance Jesus gives of his covenanted relationship with God, versus the place and importance Jesus gives to his own way, to his own will, to his own agenda -the way away from God.
The experience of Jesus in the wilderness, facing these temptations, comes to us then as a parable in itself, a storied understanding of the true nature of Jesus and his calling to be fully God’s.
Accordingly, our own observance of Lent is, in few words, a sacramental remembrance of this struggle between the calling to be fully God’s, and the temptation to be plentiful, or at least the temptation of pretending to be plentiful -on our own strength and provision.
Which is what the lesson from the book of Genesis seems to be about. Man and woman are said to be in disobedience not because they chose, one way or another, to eat this or that fruit, but because they are shown to have done even so in concert with someone besides the same Lord God who gave them life and freedom primordial, untouched. They went to a third party, so to speak.
Walking away from God means succumbing to the temptation that we can be plentiful on our own, disregarding relationships, ignoring the joy and the cross of being one in community in the world.
And, once having broken that first seal of trust with God, it is no wonder that their mutual nakedness should inspire but distrust, the need to cover and hide away.
Such is very much the opposite of the joyful heart, a confident and joyful heart we were hearing about in the psalm, and which we have heard in how the gospel writers and their communities understood the struggles that Jesus experienced.
To have a confident, joyful heart, even in the midst of struggle, is possible when we acknowledge that our body, our health, our life and our death are ultimately in the hands of God.
To surrender joyfully to the mercies of God is possible when we acknowledge the supremacy of relationships over power.
To abide in the confident providence of God, when we face the utter reality of our life and our death, is within the realm of the possible when we accept that only in God does our death have much sense, even now.
It is relatively easy to resist the temptations of selfishness and certainty when we acknowledge, even joyfully so, that our lives and beyond are in the hands of a God of endless mercy.
This time of Lent is a season to be with Jesus, while also alone with ourselves, making community with others in our embrace of the covenant of love made true in the Incarnation, and made victorious in the Resurrection.
This time of Lent is a season for honest, loving self-examination, which because of being loving and honest, can only turn us outside of ourselves, with our friends in Christ who join us in this pilgrimage, and towards the Spirit, who leads us into every truth. Even the truth which renders temptations powerless.
Thanks be to God.
(Homily preached by Bishop Terry Brown on the Last Sunday of Epiphany, February 26, 2017, at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario. Texts: 2 Peter 1: 16-10; Luke 9: 28-36.)
For those of us familiar with the Book of Common Prayer, the Feast of the Transfiguration comes on August 6th, so its appearance today may come as a surprise. Yet there was not much sense in that August 6th date, which usually came on a weekday and was often unobserved. This new placement, the last Sunday of Epiphany (which is also the last Sunday before Lent) aligns the feast with the events of Jesus’ life as he moves towards Gethsemane and the Cross: thus, we have our own moment of glimpsing the Transfiguration, a pre-figuring of Easter, before we enter the darkness of Lent and Good Friday, as Jesus went on from the Transfiguration to his arrest, trial and crucifixion; but also Resurrection.
For the last few weeks I have been part of our Wednesday evening Bible study on the book of Revelation. For me, the most important insight I gained was John the Divine’s insistence on integrating Jewish revelation (the Exodus, the Passover, the twelve tribes of Israel, the Law, the promise of the Messiah, the Ancient of Days and Son of Man) with the revelation of Jesus Christ as that Messiah, the Lamb of God, who suffers, dies and is risen and who provides support and sustenance to those who suffer. It is almost impossible to untangle the Jewish and Christian imagery of the Book of Revelation. Thus, John the Divine was also writing to encourage the unity of the mixed Jewish-Gentile church of his time – saying to the Jews, here is the Messiah you have been waiting for, Jesus Christ, the Lamb, and the Gentiles are following him and dying for him; and saying to the Gentiles, Jesus the Messiah comes out of deep Jewish roots not to be despised, and Jewish Christians are also dying for their faith.
Somewhat similar might be said of the Transfiguration. It is an event laden with Jewish symbolism. The holy mountain, dazzling garments, thick cloud, human fear and the divine voice all remind one of Moses on Mt. Saini. Here is the new Moses. And the prophet, Elijah, is there to give testimony to Jesus as the Messiah. The Transfiguration is a Messianic theophany (showing forth of God) identifying Jesus as the Messiah – but a Messiah who is about to suffer and die. He is the Suffering Servant, not the conquering military King. Jesus has brought three witnesses with him, Peter, John and James; in Jewish tradition, three witnesses makes an event unquestionably true. And in the second lesson from 2 Peter, we hear Peter being just such as witness: “we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty”.
The three disciples briefly share the Messiah’s glory and hear God’s voice. At first, they forget it – think of Peter’s denial in the garden of Gethsemane – but after his Resurrection they remember. For Jesus, the event must have been one of affirmation and encouragement, giving him resolve as he faced his now immediate death. For the church-to-be, it is a clear statement of who Jesus is, witnessed, and makes sense of what was to follow.
What of ourselves? Who are we in the story? Witnesses who then forget but remember later? Prophets pointing to the new Revelation? Or images of the Transfigured Christ, encouraged before we go on to pain and suffering? Or perhaps all of those? In any case, we are invited into the story and asked to make it ours.
It is perhaps ironic that we have as our Scripture readings the Transfiguration on the day we have our annual Vestry, which often is about the most un-transfigured matters possible: budgets, trust accounts, election of officers, infrastructure, and so forth. Yet I would like to think that in the Vestry reports, even the financial reports and budget, are small images of Transfiguration: of how we have allowed ourselves to enter the glory of God at least in some small ways; and how we might encourage ourselves and our neighbours to enter that glory more completely.
Jesus has invited his three closest disciples, Peter, John and James, to the holy mountain. They trust him and go, though they do not know quite what is to happen. They try their best, despite wanting to sleep. They do not complain; indeed, having experienced the talk of Moses and Elijah, they want to stay. Then they are blessed with God’s own words; and they eventually return to the ordinary world with Jesus, but to suffering, pain, death, and resurrection.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Sunday worship in all its glory is sometimes likened to the Transfiguration. The same may be said of the beauty and dignity of Anglican worship; and even of its joy when it is more unrestrained. But we are always sent out to take up the Cross, day by day, week by week. We hope and pray that our worship unites us, despite our disagreements, as the Transfiguration united the disciples and eventually the church.
We hope too that the ministry of the Diocese and the church beyond reflects Christ’s Transfiguration. This morning I was to read you a pastoral letter from Bishop Michael to the Diocese following all the input he received in response to his last Synod Charge, where he invited such input. The letter is quite long and our time is limited, so I thought I would read only the concluding vision that Bishop Michael hopes for the diocese in 2018, his tent anniversary as diocesan bishop. The whole letter will be available in print next Sunday and in the Friday electronic newsletter. Here are some of the themes that Bishop Michael hopes might guide our future:
• Liberating our lives to embrace Jesus’ call to discipleship.
• Liberating our ministries to move beyond our church buildings and to become more visible in the public square of our communities.
• Liberating leaders in the diocese for innovative and faithful ministry.
• Liberating our imaginations and our understanding of our calling to be the Church; reimagining our structures to help empower us for this ministry in the 21st century.
• Liberating our parishes to live with greater vitality and sustainability.
• Liberating our voices to stand with and for those of God’s people whose voices are silenced and who are bound by the forces of poverty, violence, prejudice and warfare.
I hope we can discern some Transfiguration in these visions.
As a parish, we too need to continue to dream and have visions, but also make concrete plans. My report to Vestry, which I hope you have all read, spoke a bit about some of our issues for the future. As is clear from the Bishop’s vision, much is in transition, ourselves included. We do have the flexibility and time to plan our future as a parish the way we believe God is calling us: indeed, to be transfigured for ministry. To that end, this week the Bishop has given me a slightly different title, Bishop Rector, rather than Bishop-in-charge, but with a special mandate to work with the parish and diocese in moving to our next step in clergy leadership in this parish. While we see some parishes closing, others are moving from half-time to full-time clergy; that might be a possibility; but there are many other models we need to explore.
So as we embark upon our annual Vestry meeting today, let us remember that we are also about Transfiguration and Resurrection, and not just who will get the donkey for the ride into Jerusalem or who will buy the food for the Passover Meal. Let us stay awake and be always ready to welcome God; and not become discouraged for our God does not abandon us. And let us be transfigured people going out into the world radiating the love of God.
“You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
May we be that lamp and that morning star. Amen.
