BAPTISM’S MANY WAYS - Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2018; by Bishop Terry Brown

(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown at the Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario on the Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2018. Texts: Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16; Mark 8: 31-38.)

This morning we have both a Baptism and our annual Vestry meeting. Usually, I would not schedule those two together, but it has unavoidably happened. However, the more I think about it, the happier I am that the two have come together this morning. On the simplest level, Zya’s Baptism is a reminder of all our Baptisms and the baptismal ministry of this parish which we address in our annual Vestry.

Baptism is also a covenant, a mutual promise, in which the person to be baptized (or, in this case, her godparents and sponsor) promise faithfulness to God for the person newly baptized into the body of Christ. In our Sunday Lenten readings from Hebrew Scripture, we have been hearing about God’s covenants with Israel: last week we heard of God’s covenant with Noah, the most basic and foundational covenant between God and all of creation. Today we hear of God’s covenant with Abraham, making his heirs the chosen people of God, Israel, through his son Isaac. I am sure we shall go on to hear of God’s covenant with Moses and the gift of the Law.

From Hebrew Scripture we move on to the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, of which Baptism is a sign and symbol: God’s gift of his Son, his atoning death on the Cross, and his Resurrection. As St. Paul says so often, we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ; we are “in Christ” (en Xristo, in the Greek) and Christ is in us. Zya will be baptized into the Body of Christ, in recognition that she belongs to Christ, is loved by Christ, and in her own way, will be Christ in and to the world. Christ is both death and resurrection. Life-giving water will be poured over her and she will be anointed with the sign of the Cross. She will be Christ’s own, for ever.

Today’s New Testament lesson from Mark speaks of taking up the Cross: that in losing our lives we win them. That Cross may be difficult responsibilities that we take on; it may be illness or old age, whether of others or ourselves. That Cross may be difficult experiences and memories of the past; it may be poverty or disability. That Cross may be separation from loved ones or living with someone we cannot be separated from. But out of all these human experiences of Jesus’s Cross, we are called to Christ’s Resurrection. Lent, the season of the Cross, is not permanent; it culminates in Easter: Christ’s Resurrection and ours.

The sign of the Cross in Baptism is not a curse, like the mark of Cain. It is a sign of encouragement, like the water of Baptism; it is a sign of God’s protection, a sign of loving self-service. All the signs and symbols of Baptism – water, the sign of the cross, consecrated oil, the gift of a lighted candle, indeed, the Peace (greeting the newly baptized and one another) – speak of encouragement and new life: the affirmation of and strength to live Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection in the world. Some Baptismal services in the early church added milk and honey: perhaps we reserve that for the Baptismal cake that we shall enjoy following this service, a small baptismal agape meal. Today, we launch Zya on her baptismal ministry.

This morning we also come together for our annual Vestry. Reports have been written, distributed and read. We reflect on our baptismal ministry as a parish and our individual roles in it. We reflect on our resources, both human and material. We reflect on our historic building, whose roof always seems to leak and whose forbidding Gothic exterior, caked with decades of soot from Hamilton’s “dark satanic mills” sometimes frightens those who might like to come worship here. We make some important decisions for our next year of baptismal ministry. St. Paul speaks of Baptism as not washing away dirt but giving us confidence; and we pray that that confidence pervades our Vestry and our year ahead. And, still as friends, I hope, we shall all join in a fellowship meal, our community lunch for this month.

However, one concluding part of Zya’s Baptism is incomplete, her first communion. Ecumenical thinking on Christian initiation (including Anglican thinking on the subject) has moved away from what is sometimes called the old “three-step initiation” (Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion) to the early Christian view that Baptism with water, in the name of the Trinity, in and of itself, is full initiation into the Body of Christ, the Church. Thus, if we had a Holy Communion this morning, Zya would make her first communion. I know she is ready for that. More than once, I have noticed that she has not been so satisfied with receiving only a blessing at the time of Communion.

Likewise, next Sunday, or perhaps Wednesday, we shall come again around the altar as a parish for the Holy Communion or Eucharist, the sacramental continuation of Baptism. In the Eucharist, we hear Scripture read and reflected upon; we offer our prayers and intercessions; we confess and receive absolution. We greet one another in the Peace of Christ. Then we solemnly re-present (not repeat, not just remember, either), the central core of the Baptismal Ministry: Christ’s death on the Cross and his Resurrection, in a meal of bread and wine commended to us in Jesus’ own words: “This is my body, this is my blood”. And we are sent out to exercise our baptismal ministry in the world.

Finally, just a reminder that we are not just witnesses to Zya’s Baptism or, indeed, to each others’ Baptisms. We are participants in her Baptism and each others’ Baptisms and baptismal ministry. We will join in the reaffirmation of our Baptismal promises, including one not the Book of Alternative services because it is new, the promise to look after creation, a fitting addition of God’s covenant with Noah into the baptismal promises. We shall all promise to support and care for Zya, and we shall welcome her into the church. We pray that that God’s welcoming and loving Holy Spirit may pervade our Vestry and our parish life. With Zya, let us not just remember our Baptisms, but also live them.

Let us pray.

God of mercy, God of grace,
Show the brightness of your face;
Shine upon us, Saviour shine,
Fill your church with light divine;
And your saving health extend
Unto earth’s remotest end.

Thanks be to God!

First Sunday in Lent - Sunday, February 18, 2018; by The Rev'd Leonel Abaroa Boloña

Please allow me a bit of a personal moment, sooner than later into this homily.

I give thanks to God for standing before you as your friend in Christ, and also a priest in the Church of God.

I am very grateful to those of you who were able and stubborn enough to drag yourselves to our Cathedral on that evening of such awful weather. To those who held me in prayer, who wished me well, who thought of me at the time.

I am very grateful to this congregation. Here I was welcomed and affirmed and embraced in my vocation, gifts, and loyalties. Bishop Terry, you have been a pastor, a teacher, and a friend. Thank you. I am yours, and this ministry of mine cannot be understood apart from whence I have come to it.

And these are not just expressions of my true gratefulness to you and the rest of the Church, but in fact an expression of a sacramental reality of my priestly ministry. It is sustained by a covenant-like relationship, of obedience, communion, and love in Christ, with God, and the bishop, the church, which is all of you, my friends. 

Now, as for the Lectionary for today …

In our gospel reading, Saint Mark presents the events concerning the coming of John the Baptist, his baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, Jesus’ time spent in the desert, the arrest of John the Baptist, and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry -all in one single swoop of narrative. 

As we read or listen to this early bit in the gospel, we can sense that Mark is going at full speed, it would seem, and such a pace of story-telling conveys the dynamism and urgency of Jesus’ ministry and mission, proclaiming and sharing the good news, the evangelion, the gospel, of the reign of God.

The Gospel of Mark is very peculiar in this regard. The rather elaborate narratives we find in the other gospels in our Bibles only make more evident the brevity and directedness of Mark’s style. 

And this might be particularly appropriate in this our first Sunday in the liturgical season of Lent, the forty days in which, to put it one way, we move on as we learn and worship, in prayer and sacrament, as one body, following Jesus to Calvary and the Easter Garden.

Lent is a season for us to be shaped after the words and events concerning the ministry, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as we seek to be the church, in this our own time and place.

And I want to continue reflecting with you about this notion of covenant I was referring to before, of the ordained ministry of the church with each and all church communities, because there is some of that theme running through the readings for this First Sunday in Lent.

In fact, the reading from the book of Genesis we heard earlier contains the first reference to the concept of a covenant in the whole of our Old Testament of the Bible. And here is not just a covenant, the legal term for a curated relationship, and as we most often encounter, but even a covenanted promise, offered by God to all of God’s creatures, and in the case of the covenant with Noah and his family, a covenant in which we, Gods children, are deemed accountable for the well-being of other people, and other forms of life. Indeed, while later notions of biblical covenant will tend toward the ritualistic, filled with symbol and narrative poetry, this first mention of the covenant between God and God’s creation is also spelled out in a much wider ecological sense.


This initial covenant resolutely links the well-being of humans to that of the rest of creation, and vice versa, and symbolically so by means of a rainbow, the token of that covenanted relationship.
Our ability to respond to the love of God is conditioned here to our willingness to care and be responsible for other forms of life.

But our being willful participants of a covenant, also entails the willingness to bear the consequences of such a choice.

In this sense, the author of the Epistle of Peter identifies suffering as one of the potential consequences of sharing in the covenant, the testament, of Jesus the Christ.

For example, in verses fifteen and sixteen, the author of this epistle writes:
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” and “Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.”

But our share in this covenant in Christ is not passive, and is not even limited to defending ourselves, but goes on to move us and empower us to give a daily, coherent witness of our calling, our vocation. To let others know of what hope moves our lives, warts and all, and how that hope has power and grace to change not only our own lives, but that of the whole of Creation.To preach the Gospel at all times, as St Francis teaches us, and to use words, when necessary. And Peter goes on to address the primordial covenant of our faith, our baptism.

A covenant grounded on the promise of the life we have known in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In our celebrating and remembering of our baptismal promises, we recognize the potential consequences of standing on the side of Christ, who cries for justice and life for all.

We recognize that Christ, indeed, died, for the sins of the world, in the fulfillment of a covenant which stands forever. And we cannot but name the sins of the world as injustice, hunger, oppression, and violence. In advancing and embracing these foundations of the reign of God, we look up to Christ as our example and goal to follow.

The Church gathers to enact and celebrate the sacraments, the covenants, of our faith, primarily through baptizing new Christians, and celebrating the Holy Communion, the sacrament and covenant of our redemption.

And we also gather to cultivate and harvest the fruits of such spiritual commitments, as we witness to and serve Christ in the world. We participate, in an active fashion, in the daily translation of our faith into actions which seeks to proclaim the coming of the reign of God, for the here and the now of each one who listens  in.

Our sacramental life and our mission and service are one, however, rather than two or more separate realities. The hands that set up the altar, brew our coffee, clean our floor, take our phone calls and pray over our gifts are equally as beautiful and holy to God, who rejoices in each of us in our gifts and unique ways for service.

In Lent, we are led by Christ to follow as He fulfills the covenant enacted in his ministry, speaking truth, working justice, and practicing love. It is a season of penitence because we are called to discern, as people of faith, that which may prevent us from not only clearly hearing such truths in the Gospel, but from seeking to enact them in the world around us.

From the immediacy of our partner, friend, colleague, and neighbor, to the seemingly anonymity of any person who suffers in this our own time in the world of our own age. Penance is a healthy work of the soul, and it cannot but help us see Jesus more clearly, both in the promise of the sacraments, and the reality of those who lack.

It is only fair to also ask ourselves, how to lead others to such joy, to this mutuality of the covenant of God in Christ? How to be clearer, gentler icons of the joy of that life we confess is to be found in Christ and, even more daringly so, in the fellowship of Christ’s church? This Church?

It is in our service where the words of the gospel are able to become more of themselves, whether that service is worship, witness, assistance to anyone who lacks, presence, or proclamation. We enact the covenant of God in Christ in everything we do which recognizes that covenant, that promised embrace, of our being Christ in the world.

Thanks be to God.

TRANSFIGURATION LIGHT - Last Sunday after Epiphany, February 11, 2018; by Bishop Terry Brown

(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown at the Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario, on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, February 11, 2018. Texts: 2 Kings 2: 1-12; 2 Corinthians 4: 3-6; Mark 9: 2-9.

Today’s Gospel, for the last Sunday before Lent, is Jesus’ Transfiguration on the holy mountain, before he goes down to his crucifixion in Jerusalem a few weeks later. The imagery, especially the brilliant light, prefigures the Resurrection.

I am sure this Gospel is placed here in the liturgical year, as an encouragement and reminder of Easter as the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection, at the end of the dark tunnel, so to speak, of Lent. Jesus is placed with two figures from Hebrew Scripture who also had mountain-top revelatory experiences, the law-giver Moses and the prophet Elijah. Christ is the new Revelation about to be defined by his death and resurrection. The disciples accompanying Jesus barely understand but they will later come back to this experience, time and time again. The Transfiguration vision is also the culmination of the many small epiphanies of the Epiphany season, with a voice from heaven declaring, “This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him!”

And so, as the disciples eventually listened, we listen: in Scripture, Bible study, prayer, meditation, common discernment and community. We do so with the hope that we are moving towards the truth, towards the justice of Moses’s law, towards the quiet authority of Elijah’s still small voice, but most of all towards the embodied love of God modeled in Jesus, the simple prophet of Nazareth, who taught simple folk how to love and be just, with authority and simplicity, who for that met his death on a cross, and who rose, ascended, and reigns with his Father on high – because God declared on the holy mountain, “This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him!”

That process should be like “light shining out of the darkness”, in the words of today’s epistle. But that epistle also reminds us that that light is not us or our enlightenment or brilliance but Jesus Christ the Lord. By now, Paul, late in his ministry, is very clear that any brilliance is not his but Jesus Christ’s. At best we can only reflect that light. The passage then moves on to the well-known image of having this wonderful treasure in fragile clay pots, bodies and minds that are flawed and failing but which can still contain and shine forth the treasure of divine love.

I hope Deacon Leonel (and his mother) will forgive me if I use him as a simple example. This afternoon he will experience what for anyone with a vocation to ordination, is a wonderful mountaintop Transfiguration experience. The literal mountaintop is perhaps only a few steps up to the bishop but the promises and the prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit with the laying on of hands, with the music, presence of friends, and the whole sense of celebration, is deeply moving. I still remember one surprising thought during my ordination as a priest: “if the weight of these hands gets any heavier, I am going to have to put my hands on the bishop’s knees to brace myself”. Still, the experience is one of Transfiguration and is meant to be.

But then there is the morning after: yes, the world has taken on a new glow of joy, but I am also still me, with the same temptations, worries, personality characteristics, challenges and disappointments. I have not suddenly become God and know everything and am without sin. But there is a new confidence, a new resolution, a new recognition, a new empowerment to minister and serve, and to overcome whatever obstacles there are in one’s life to that ministry. The Middle Ages spoke of that new state as sacramental character, whether it be of a priest or bishop; or, indeed, of the laity, as we all share in a new sacramental character through our Baptisms and Confirmations. Sacramental character sends us out from Transfiguration to nitty-gritty ministry and all its difficulties and ambiguities.

In the Orthodox tradition, Sunday worship is meant to be an experience of Transfiguration in its rich combination of beautiful art, architecture, music, incense and liturgy. Because of its Protestant tradition, Anglican worship tends to be sparser but even here we should experience Sunday worship as uplifting and not go home angry or annoyed. That is the point of dignified liturgy, clear reading, beautiful music and a friendly congregation. (It is a reason for not doing church business during coffee hour!) Perhaps some of our large funerals better model the Transfiguration experience of worship because of numbers and the services’ deep emotional quality and the personal choice of hymns. Still for others, following the tradition of the “still small voice”, Transfiguration is found in quiet meditation, in silence, in the model of Elijah on the mountain; for example, in the Taizé service or centring prayer.

As Jesus and his disciples were sent from the mountain of Transfiguration back into situations of difficult and dangerous (indeed, fatal) ministry (as Deacon Leonel will be sent back to us, at least for a short time, to minister as a priest), all of us are called to move from Transfiguration events back into ministry. That ministry is exemplified, of course, by the ministry of Jesus: healing, forgiving, welcoming, encouraging, comforting, seeking justice – in short, embodying God’s divine love in the world. As with the post-Transfiguration Jesus and his disciples, that living the Christian Way will entail bearing the cross, an emptying oneself of entitlement and privilege, being present with the outcast and despised with love, protecting and enabling the vulnerable, and seeking to be God’s love in the world.

Churches are sometimes notorious places for conflict. As a bishop, I sometimes presided over synods with debates that ended with fistfights. Not always successfully, I tried to prevent irate Anglicans from burning down the new churches they disagreed with. But along with conflict are provisions for restoration of unity, including within the Eucharist. In the Melanesian and New Zealand liturgies, after the confession and absolution, the words of the Peace (“The Peace of the Lord be always with you”; “and also with you”) are accompanied by other biblical sentences: “We are the Body of Christ; by one Spirit we were baptized into one Body; Try hard to keep the unity of the Spirit; in the body of peace.”) Transfiguration produces the desire for unity, the desire to stay together, despite disagreements. And effective ministry also requires unity. The Transfiguration experience united Jesus and his closest disciples and they never forgot it.

Those are a few thoughts before we begin Lent on Ash Wednesday this week. I invite us all to observe a holy Lent, recognizing that we are all sinners. While as Anglicans we may entertain a high view of human nature (correctly, I believe) there is also the reminder of Jeremiah: “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.” Even in my seventh decade of life, I can still say those words of myself. And if we cannot, then some self-examination is in order. We have forty days. One simple prayer, I think, is in order, it is a prayer I use all the time: “Lord, help me to see my sins as you see them”: not as I see them and not as others see them; but as God sees them. The results will bring us Transfiguration, fruitful ministry, and Resurrection life. Thanks be to God.