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Homily – Easter Sunday 2012

John 20:1-18

Gregor Sneddon

Father Thomas Keating suggests that over the present moment is a bridge. And we, in our fear, find it so hard to remain in the present moment, we end up on one side of this bridge or the other. The present moment, which is all there really is becomes split into a duality. On one side of the bridge is the past, and on the other side is the future.

Some of us are stuck in the past. We are forever regretting, looking back and wishing…if only…or we hang on tight to some resentment, some axe, buried deep. Or we have come to believe that we are not acceptable, that we are somehow dirty, unworthy, not good enough, and these visions are the only horizon we see, or silently we bury them, and have become invisible shackles, binding us into a self image we loath. Or we feel guilt, or shame, or unresolved broken relationships that haunt us like ghosts. We allow these ghosts to continue to shape us, setting limits on who we dare to be.

And some of us, we are stuck on the other side of the bridge. Stuck in the future. “I will be happy when”…forever looking towards the next chapter, forever planning, forever looking to become, looking for the next plateau to reach, never satisfied, always another project to tackle, another experience to consume. We allow ourselves to avoid the truth of the moment, of who we truly are by setting our sites on a phantom ideal in the future.

Think for a moment, how much time and energy you invest into either of these categories.

And both of these ends of the bridge are places of fear. For out in the middle, in the present moment, the winds of the spirit blow. Out here in the present moment, we are confronted with the great truth of who we are. Out here in the moment, there is the terrifying possibility of being known, of the truth, of hearing you name.

Jesus said to her, “Mary!”

Mary, who in that great moment of fear, of sorrow, worry, she who had been released of ‘seven demons’ – heard her name being called, and she knew it was him, knew it was Jesus, her Beloved calling her name – and the past and the future, her fear, the duality of past and future are dissolved in a present moment of utter awe, and joy in being known as beloved of God…the tomb is empty, Christ lives, and calls my name.

Another duality: A few years ago I had the opportunity to spend a few months in Iqaluit with my sister and brother in law and the gift of meeting many Inuit people. On one occasion I was sitting in my sister’s living room late at night when the front door creaked open and an Inuit man came tiptoeing into the house and into the kitchen and I could hear him opening drawers and rummaging through the contents. I called out “Hello? Ummm…can I help you?” – “I’m just lookin for a knife!” was the reply. As it turned out, he had just moved into a apartment a few doors down and was trying make something to eat, and without a knife, he was unable to cut anything so, naturally, he went and found one.

A week or two later we had an invitation to come to his housewarming party. And, as good Ontario folks, we arrived with a poupouri basket, a little plant, tied up in a ribbon – oh, and a knife. We stood outside the door after knocking, but no one replied…hearing the murmur of conversation inside, we knocked again and finally someone let us in. And we stood there in the door-way while Inuit family and friends crouched over cardboard munching away on a seal, and a big hunk of caribou, some raw fish …but nobody said anything to us, no hello, no taking our coats, no offering something to drink, no introductions…

It was not until later that we discovered an extraordinary thing – there are no words in the Inuit language for welcome. The reason there is no word for welcome is that, for the Inuit there is no reality of ‘UNWELCOME,’ so why would you need to differentiate welcome? The duality of welcome/unwelcome is swallowed up in just ‘welcome.’

This is a perplexing concept to imagine for we live in a world of duality, good, bad, beautiful, ugly, rich, poor, right, wrong – past/future…but in this example, a duality we rely on is dissolved. No insiders, no outsiders, no separation, no us and them…just us.

And this Easter morning we are welcoming two boys into the family of faith. Max and Van will pass through the waters of baptism and emerge on the other side, as Christ’s own, forever. And we do this on Easter morning, this eighth day of creation, because Easter is the ultimate encounter with non-duality.

The icon of the resurrection – you can see Jesus, standing on the cross, nails, broken locks and keys are by his feet for he has shattered the gates of hell itself. And the two people that he has brought with him are none other than Adam and Eve – the first who turned away from God – what we call ‘The Fall.’ Jesus has travelled to the ends of all that is evil, of all suffering, to the farthest reaches of that which is other than life and assumed it, transformed it, and returned it to unity.

Jesus has destroyed all duality forever – He has taken the opposite of life, which is death, and by becoming it, has destroyed it – so there is nothing left but life. The tomb is empty.

So Max and Van, as much as I want to say welcome to life, but I can’t, as our Inuit friends reveal – for in Christ Jesus there is no such thing as unwelcome, and in Christ Jesus, there is no death,  - only life.

But I can tell you – all you will ever need to know – that in this present moment, the tomb is empty, and that you are the beloved of Christ Jesus,  He is calling your name.

What is Truth?  – Homily for Good Friday, 2012.

Rev Gregor Sneddon

In texts reaching as far back as the 24^th century BC in ancient Syria, and throughout the near east the ritual purification has been practiced – an animal has the sins of the community laid upon it and sent into the wilderness. As was the Custom of the Jewish tradition during the Temple Period, on the Day of Atonement – they would take an unblemished goat, put him in a purple robe, and a crown of thorns, and beat it and send it into the desert – carrying the sins of the community – an ‘Azazel’ in Hebrew from Leviticus, or as we would call a scapegoat. In Greek antiquity, a cripple or beggar a  “Pharmakos” was shunned from the community in response to a natural disaster, or crisis.

The beauty of having a scapegoat, someone to blame, someone even to punish is that it sanitizes us. When we have someone else to blame, we are relieved of responsibility. When the bad guy is over there, we become the good guy. Whether it be witches, those evangelical protestants, Jews, terrorists, immigrants, the Tutsis, Hutus, Bosnians, Serbs, ‘dem moozlums’, that axis of Evil, Iraqis, the poor, the unemployed, the obnoxious neighbour, the wretched in-laws, the difficult rector…or Jesus – we wash ourselves by laying our burden on the other.

What this duality does, is it gives us a sense of unity with the clean, the elect, the in group and puts us in control of our own implied worth and value. Having an outsider, fortifies us ‘insiders.’ When you are wrong that makes me…’right.’ It is this fear of the outsider that has driven war, ethnic cleansing, and even our contemporary political life – vote for us, or you are in great danger – from the outsider.

Scape-goating happens not just in the political arena, but in the school yard, in our religious community, it happens in our families, in our most intimate relationships and within our very selves. Even the subtle movement of judgement of another, those who become other than us, or me, is the first split in the path that leads to a roaring two-way highway.

CS Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, was a favourite book of mine. This tale in the mythical land of Narnia, just on the other side of the clothes cupboard, was a wonderful escape. As a young boy, I loved to relate to the mighty Aslan, the heroic Peter, even the brave Lucy, Caring Susan…I liked to imagine myself saving Narnia, sword in hand…but as I got older, although I tried to avoid it, I didn’t want to see it, but the truth was I came to see that the one I really related to, was one we turned away from. The one I came to relate to most was Edmund.

Edmund is the younger brother who betrays his family to the wicked witch for a sweetie….

Edmund in his act of betrayal, motivated perhaps from living in the shadow of his charismatic brother, a deep need to belong, creates this polarity within his family, a broken relationship. He is blamed, and not un-righteously – he is guilty by his actions! In the eyes of the world, he should be punished! And if he is, would we the readers not all feel good about ourselves? Would we not congratulate ourselves on doing what is right, teaching him a lesson, the evil among us is gone, now we can get on with it?

Edmund is lost, unable to make things right, his shame and his families’ condemnation he remains a prisoner of the witch, unable to reconcile the relationship. Paralleling the Passion drama, Aslan, the powerful mighty Christ figure,  becomes week and offers himself to the wicked witch in exchange for the betrayer, Edmund. Aslan, willingly, becomes the scapegoat – and restores the unity of relationship.

And so it is for us, today, in this moment, that Christ is coming to us, in the other, those outside our moral categories, our scapegoats, he is coming into the heart of the messiness of our lives. He comes as the two visitors we had last night in our Maundy Thursday feast.

Christ does not come to greet us in our Sunday best, in polite well behaved moments of goodness, of piety. No, it is Friday, ‘Good’ Friday that we come to know that Christ is forever coming to us, not just in the cozy living room by the fire, but out in cellar, in the outhouse. Christ comes to us out in the desert, in all we consider OTHER, and in the corners, in the darkest, ugliest places within us.

There, in those places you dare not visit, your brokenness, your sin, there is Christ Jesus – beaten, peering at you through swollen eyes, I love you he says – You cannot make me let go of you.

By becoming wholly other, by becoming the scapegoat, by becoming ‘sin’ Jesus turns the world upside down. And we receive this action, not in some kind of morbid sense of guilt, or in some celebration of empty subservience or joy in suffering, but we sit in wonder, awe, our breath taken away – we sit in utter silence.

Like Edmund – this profound love we discover, liberates us from the duality of separation, and into unity, ‘communion’ with all creation.

For it is there, in the shriek of deafening silence that answer is given – “What is Truth?”

DEATH IN A KIT-KAT BAR

Rev GREGOR SNEDDON

Lent 5B: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 51:1-12, Hebrews 5:5-10, John 12:20-33

Old Aunt Ira McClelland was a fierce Orange-Woman, working Irish of Hamilton, worked her entire life at Stelco,  steel plant, Hamilton’s finest. She was a wee lady, widow, with a face bound up from life in a factory and the wounds of a lifetime. – Ira McClelland was nobody’s fool.

As was her tradition, each payday at the end of her shift, just after punching out, she would make her way down to the cafeteria for a coffee and her favourite, secret indulgence  – a Kit-Kat bar. It was something about that crunchy cookie and the velvety chocolate that was her escape – a guilty pleasure she only allowed herself once every two weeks.

Well, on this particular pay day, as usual, Aunt Ira made her way downstairs, after an exhausting day…she had been looking forward to this moment all week, before her long bus ride home.

Her long coat buttoned to the top, and a head scarf neatly tied, she bought her Kit-Kat and coffee and made her way through the busy cafeteria and found a vacant spot on one of the bench seats along the wall. Spending most of her day on her feet, the feeling of that hard bench was a welcome relief, to tired old aching bones. She unwrapped the Kit-Kat bar and prepared her coffee with a little milk powder and a few packs of sugar.

And as she raised the coffee to her mouth, welcoming the warm sweet steel factory coffee to her lips, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the man beside her reach over, and snap one of the four fingers of the Kit-Kat bar off and popped it in his mouth.

Aunt Ira froze…gripping her hand bag….she didn’t dare to look over at him…she slowly let her coffee down on the table, and reached over and snapped off a bar of the Kit-Kat….eyes blazing through her horn rimmed spectacles, her body still stiff, her mouth had suddenly dried and she was unable to savour the crisp cookie crunch, that velvety chocolate  could have been toothpaste…she again took her coffee to her lips, her hands shaking slightly…and to her great shock, the man, once again, reached out and snapped off one more of the Kit-Kat fingers, leaving only one lonely bar there, in the wrapping….

Aunt Ira, still not daring to turn her head towards her offender, – ‘Catholics!’…she almost muttered…she quickly reached for the remaining bar and ate it up, so angry, she couldn’t enjoy a single bite…she again took a little more coffee…her hand still gripping her hand bag on her lap, knuckles glowing white…

And then, something happened…she noted the man had a honey dipped donut in front of him and by the grace of God he was leaning over and speaking to someone to the other side of him…in a moment of great bravado, a courage welled up with-in her, from where she knew-not, Aunt Ira reached out and grabbed that donut and took the biggest bite a 5 ft tall 90 pound senior could possibly manage… put it right back – and promptly marched straight out of the cafeteria without finishing her coffee.

It was several minutes later, when, still fuming with Irish indignation that she boarded the packed bus and reached into her purse for her fare that  she discovered the still un-opened Kit-Kat bar she had purchased in the cafeteria.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

This way of following Jesus  – who is the way, the truth and the life – the one who came to give us life, and have it abundantly, offers us the way of death.

“Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” The way of life, paradoxically is the way of death.

For me, beyond the great values of virtuous living, moral righteousness, social justice, liberation and political, ecological freedom, beyond these and all other valuable and important expressions of Christian concern; at the foundation, root, and beginning of our faith is personal transformation. A transformation into the person you are called to be, a consent to death – that Christ may live in you.

This transformation is a death to all the things that you think you are,, the idols, the illusions, the prides and prejudices, the fixations, convictions, opinions, resentments, shame, pig-headedness, small-mindedness, self-hatred, guilt, fear, sorrow, pride, self-centredness, addiction, control, manipulativeness and cold heartedness that prevents you from being You. A You which is an embodiment of Christ, a Temple of the Holy Spirit, a holy sacred divine word of God.

This transformation is a matter of Grace, a pure gift of God, but requires your participation, your effort. The effort of prayer, of sacrifice, of love, of consent. This is the mystical road, the path we have walked through Lent, indeed our Christian life is a road of death that leads to life, the road of the cross that leads to resurrection.

This road is not a road that can be taken with the mind, so those of acute mental acumen have no more advantage than those of a simple perspective like me. For this road is a road of relationship, of loving sacrifice to the one who indwells you, it is a journey of daily dying and rising in loving friendship with Christ and making choices that fly in the face of any reasonable choice.

It means being meek instead of strong, giving your coat, when they steal your hat, loving those who would strike you. Celebrating vulnerability and self-error, rather than personal power and righteousness. It means willingly embracing your cross. For those who resist, we are like the caterpillar who, too attracted to his tasty leaves, swears off the cocoon and never discovers he is meant to be soaring on the wind with the wings hidden within him.

This, I believe is the heart of faith, the heart of this table of weakness and self giving. As Christians we die a thousand times, we let that self which exists for itself alone disintegrate in faith and trust to a love beyond measure.

And this root of faith – personal transformation – is not – however for ourselves. Personal transformation is the first and never-completed participation in a true self, in true life – for a a true self is always a life where we live for others. For how can we truly be giving of ourselves, when the only self we know is only concerned with itself, how can we be for others when we have not become a self that can give?

The way of true life is in death – dying and rising, each and every day, every moment, life is found in death, even death in a Kit-Kat bar.

Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.

Love alone is capable of revealing the truth of Love and being a Lover.

The way of our prophets is the way of Truth.

If you want to live, die in Love; die in Love if you want to remain alive.

-RUMI

LENT 3B, 2012 – Rev Gregor Sneddon

Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

John 2:13-22

“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Two Sundays ago, the first Sunday of Lent we spoke about repentance, pointing out that repentance is not to appease a wrathful God or wallow in self guilt and shame but rather repentance being about our turning around, our posture of consent to the radical love and mercy of God that is always wastefully being poured upon us, unmerited. Last week we spoke about the human gift of free-will, that our Lenten disciplines are not to punish ourselves but to loosen the grip of our own self imprisonment and  idolatry, to resist even the good things of God’s Creation to make room for God alone. I suggested that we become fixated on the finger pointing at the moon, and we forget what it is pointing at. And this week, In the Byzantine liturgical tradition, the third Sunday of Lent is devoted to the Adoration of the Holy Cross.

The ‘I AM-ness’ of God, as Paul suggests is beyond the categories of human reason, of worldly wisdom, the mind and the faculty of reason is not equipped to travel to the liminal reality of God, and so we leave words behind and can only begin to perceive God’s self-communication in the language of sacred story, of metaphor, of symbol, and in relationship with God’s very self revealed in Jesus. The Cross is the symbol that has become the very thing pointing at – and like the parables is a conflicted symbol of paradox, of opposites –  of a conflicted God of paradox, of opposites.

I would invite you to turn to your bulletin the icon of the “Holy and Life-giving Cross” on your bulletin Cover. The following is taken from Praying with Icons by Jim Forest:

For those who see Jesus without the eyes of faith, his life was traffic. His first home was a cave. He spent part of his childhood as a refugee in Egypt. For several years he walked from place to place teaching a way of life that emphasized love of God and neighbour, but few became faithful followers. Finally he was executed for disturbing the religious establishment and the secular power. If this indeed were the entire story, the cross on which he died would represent nothing more than the ruthlessness of the state and the finality of death.

The first Christians would have been amazed that the cross would one day become a decorative object for sale in every jewelry store. For members of the early Church, living in a world in which the crucifixion of criminals and upstarts was a dreaded but not uncommon sight, the cross was an abrasive symbol, as chilling as the electric chair or a hangman’s rope is in ours. The shocking manner of Christs’ death was “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles.”

But it is “the holy and life-giving cross” that we see in the icon of the Crucifixion, the cross with which Christ defeated death and gave us Resurrection.

When the Son of God became incarnate as Jesus, it was an act of divine kenosis – self-emptying love. Thus he hid his splendour. Even among the inner circles of those who accompanied him, only a few were permitted to see in him the glory of God. Absolute power was hidden in voluntary poverty. He was born in a shelter for animals, as an in fact was pursued by soldiers seeking to kill him, as an adult had no home of his own, and only as a guest enjoyed the comforts of life. Entering Jerusalem for the last time, he stepped in the lion’s jaws, knowing he would be arrested and aware of the violent death which would follows.

The Crucifixion icon…stresses Christ’s freedom and the gift he makes of himself. We see his non-resistance in his open hands and the lightness of his body on the cross. This is the heart of the icon…

Like the Gospel authors, all the icons linked to Christ’s suffering and death stress his love and freedom. He was not an unwitting victim but a free man. If you trace the word ‘free’ back to the ancient Indo-European language, the mother of modern Western languages, you arrive at the root word ‘pri’ – ‘to love.’ The family of words of which ‘free’ is a part includes ‘friend.’ In early English ‘free’ implied a relationship, meaning someone who was dear to the chief and who fought for his chief out of voluntary allegiance and love, not for money or out of fear. The free man was neither a conscript nor a mercenary. The free person is not our current Western image of the solitary cowboy on his horse in a desert ‘free’ of all familial ties and responsibilities. To be free means that your ties are freely chosen because of your love for those people to whom you give allegiance. Genuine freedom implies sacrifice and submission.

In bearing the cross, we see Christ submitting to everything each of us fears and out of fear seeks to avoid: rejection, condemnation, humiliation, pain, failure, and death. He does so freely, with no motive but love for those with whom he has become one in the flesh. “Greater love has no man that to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Orthodox theologian John Behr[1] relates that in and through the sufferings we inflict, Christ does not condemn, resist, or exclude; he suffers violence, but never inflicts it: he is the lamb who takes upon himself the sin of the world. He voluntarily went to the cross, as innocent as a lamb, making intercession for his transgressors.

This “ unspeakable economy of the mystery” says St Gregory of Nyssa thus overturns all our usual categories: instead of lowly, subjected servant, we now contemplate Christ the King, whose lordship is manifest in service, “the God revealed through the Cross.” It is in the very act of willingly embracing the very opposite of what He is, Love embracing its own opposite, that this crucified God redeems all things unto Himself. “What is not assumed is not redeemed”, says St Gregory.

Behr contends that for the Fathers of the Church, the figure of the cross is the very structure of the universe created by ‘the God revealed through the cross.” Manifest in the Passion of Christ, the power of God is the same power that upholds all creation, so that the Cross is, indeed, the axis mundi, the still, eternal or timeless, axis around which the world rotates…as the Icon suggests by the earth and moon at either point of His outstretched hands. The turning point where Christian Theology begins, the heart of faith is what we will celebrate shortly and week after week, at the table of weakness. The opposites of paradox, and all duality is united, death into life, light assumes darkness and weakness becomes strength in the one truth of Love crucified.

“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

LENT 2B  -  Rev Gregor Sneddon

Genesis 22:1-2, 9, 10-13, 15-18

Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

Garrison Keillor, host of NPR’s ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ says: “Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.” As you can read in the March issue of National Geographic – the comfortable pew was not the religious life of the 12 Apostles – 11 of whom were brutally martyred. Indeed the early Church up until Emperor Constantine was a story of struggle, at best marginalization and at worst out and out violent persecution. Luckily, for most of us, coming to St Luke’s this morning was not putting our lives at serious risk!

So what does it mean then to be a Christian? Good works, helping the poor, fighting for social justice, human rights, loving one’s neighbour? These are virtues worth striving for, and indeed every Christian should, however these values are not the property of Christianity, nor of any particular religion – these human values are shared by many in other faiths, or no faith, as we can see in a secular country like our own.

I would like to suggest that being a follower of Jesus precedes our outward actions, that Jesus is always addressing our interiority. To follow Christ is to address and intentionally cultivate the one thing that makes a human being a human being.

Yesterday, we went to the Museum of Nature – the Animal Castle as William calls it. An amazing place! I was struck by the dinosaur exhibit on the first floor to touch and witness bones of animals millions of years old. The story of the created order stretches the imagination. A Universe some 13 billion years old and an earth that is over 4.5 billion years old. Multicellular life did not even begin until about the last 10% of its lifespan, and through hundreds of millions of years, age after age, this life evolved, was destroyed, recreated,  and only in the last micro decimal of time, some 100,000 years ago,  human beings have arrived.

It makes one feel so small, as you contemplate the vastness of space, of the journey of life to this moment. It is an awe-inspiring question to consider that through the story of the created universe there appears to be a will to life. At the very least, the entropy of the created order, the journey from big bang, to the emergence of life on Earth suggests a desire, an urge, a direction towards life.

And this will to life, I believe, is love itself. No doubt a vast holy mystery –  comes to a great crescendo in a symphony of creation in the emergence of the human being. It is the human being, the culmination of evolution which receives the crown of glory for the one faculty it alone possesses. Human beings, as told in our own Creation Narrative of the Fall – have FREE WILL.

Human beings, made of dust, participate in the created order, and have the same desires to dominate, to procreate, and yet are endowed with the capacity for self-reflection and can so choose to turn away from these instinctual needs. The human will can cultivate and live within and as her source – as love itself…. That is Jesus – and being a Christian, I propose, is to follow Jesus in doing just that which is none other than being what we were created to be.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?

Jesus who lived his existence, who exercised his free will to one end – the other. As we celebrate week after week in the Eucharist, Jesus lived a life of total self giving, self dispossession, emptying himself unto death, even death on a Cross. Your freedom is not to choose and do whatever you want – you may think this is freedom, you may indeed gain the whole world – but you will find you are only trapped in the prison of your own self centred desire. True Freedom is found not in your own strength but in the Cross, is found in obedience to the source of all life, the source of your life.

Jim Elliot killed while in mission in Ecuador quotes Anglican Phillip Henry: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”  The Lenten disciplines of repentance, fasting, prayer, almsgiving are not to win favour with God, but to crucify your own attachements and idols, to bring your awareness to the ONE that animates every good thing your desire rests upon and to turn your heart towards this ONE you cannot lose.

This does not promote a God who desires or rewards our suffering, but rather, weeps with creation as it experiences the birthing pain of a greater communion a restoration to our true nature. The 5^th Century Diadochus of Photike says it this way: “All of us who are human beings are in the image of God. But to be in his likeness belongs only to those who by great love have attached their freedom to God.”

Attaching one’s freedom to God, bearing one’s cross does not mean willingly receiving abuse, or injustice, being a doormat, meekly suffering to be like Jesus – No, on the contrary, the outward sign of a follower of Jesus is to stand with those who suffer, to face injustice. But the Gospel first calls us to a preliminary inward transformation and from which our outward actions follow as fruit of the Spirit. The Gospel is addressed to our motivations, bearing one’s Cross means to bare the suffering that comes from turning one’s life towards God and thus towards others.

Like Fawzia Koofi, Presidential candidate in Afghanistan, who knows the chances are more likely that she will be assassinated as has already been attempted several times. She believes that the freedom of woman should not be the price paid for peace in her country.

Like Nobel Peace Price Recipient Aung San Suu Kyi General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, under house arrest for 15 years in Burma. Like the people of Syria who stand in defiance for a greater good, like Mahatma Ghandi, like Rosa Parkes, like the Apostles and martyrs and like you and me when we act with love and compassion, everytime we live a Eucharistic life, embodying Christ’s self-disposession and selfgiving.

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.” Says Garrison Keillor “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Says Jesus.

LENT 1B  Rev Gregor Sneddon

Genesis 9:8-17, Psalm 25:1-10, 1 Peter 3:18-22 , Mark 1:9-15

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

As a young boy, I struggled with a learning disability – being dyslexic, I had trouble reading and writing and this somewhat isolated me from others, made me feel like a bit of an outsider, that I didn’t quite measure up.  I remember being around 9 or so, I had this craving to do something really ‘bad’ – school boy bad – I wanted to do something mischievous, like the heroes of school boys of  ages past – I wanted my name to be whispered with dread in the hallways for generations to come. Not being particularly creative, I suppose, I was struck one day with an idea, no doubt planted in me by Lucifer himself that evoked only the most evil laugh you could muster. I created a plan for my great escapade, that I was sure would propel me to legend status in the eyes of my peers. I was going to pee in the washroom radiator.

I waited in class until the perfect moment arrived – the halls were quiet, it was midmorning, I knew I would be alone to pull off my great entry into the world of schoolboy glory. Sweaty palms, weak in the knees, I got permission and made my way to the washroom – Looking over my shoulder, just to make sure, and peeking my head out the door for one last scan of the perimeter. I slid stealthily into a stall, for a few breaths then  prepared myself and quickly moved into position like a shadow through the underworld, = unzipped, I stood, armed and dangerous.

Body arched like a bow, throat dried out, my conscience was complaining, yet I pressed on and just as I was about to engage, the washroom door swung open, and for the first time in the history of my 4 years at Merivale Public Elementary School, literally with my pants down, I was one on one with the School Principal.

I doubled over and began the old ‘pretend you are looking for something’ ploy – inspecting carefully the radiator that had been spared my assault…knees of rubber, and no doubt eyes like a deer in the headlight,  I crafted an on-the-spot narrative on how I had lost my pen, sort of half pretending I had not really noticed that our 6 ft 4 principle was standing just behind me making a more proper use of the facility.

He was an older man, close to retirement, with a gentle heart. “hmmm…he said…funny how that can happen.”…He asked me to follow him back to his office – an inner sanctum I had never dared to tread…”OH boy, I am going to get it,” I thought…but he gently told me to take a seat, and looked through his desk until he found a screw driver and together we went back to the washroom, to open up that radiator. Not a word was spoken, he did not accuse, or judge, but I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew…. I stood there for what seemed like a thousand years as he unscrewed the rusty old radiator cover…and as it popped off, there covered in cobwebs down at the bottom, was a capless, dried up, chewed bit of salvation – “my pen!” I exclaimed…

With a twinkle in his eye, he let me grab that old dusty pen ‘You had better be getting back to class,’ he said, ‘glad I could help.’… this old guy’s compassion far outwayed his judgement, and this young boy, who wanted to be popular, an innocent need misdirected, wound up in defensiveness, denial, and fear, my conscience was lovingly shamed into realizing my error.

I so wish I had had the courage to tell the truth, and I carried that guilt around my head for years after for his love was greater than my fear and had I been able to tell the truth, he no doubt would have told me what I really needed to hear – that I was OK, that I was loved, that I was forgiven.

The 40 day journey into the desert of Lent is one of reflection on our individual and corporate participation in the human condition, in our poverty, in repentance. My human poverty, my constant need to be satisfying my self centred desires of affirmation, esteem, power, control and security. This is the root of all suffering and sin, and no matter how hard I try I always seem to be ‘losing my pen in radiators!’

Repentance means to turn around, and it is in naming our transactions and holding them out to God that we find healing, and restoration, for it is never condemnation we receive when we confess our brokenness, our need, but always compassion, and infinite love. This is the good news, and we discover manifold times the measure to which we acknowledge our lack and need. The suffering and tears of humility are in our recognition of our brokenness in the eyes of one who loves us unconditionally. And every opportunity to acknowledge our poverty is a pure gift.

Carmelite sister Ruth Burrows in Love Unknown has this to say:

Human poverty is a deep mystery that plunges us into Trinitarian depths…the quite homely way we come up against our poverty, and by that I mean our experience of sinfulness, weakness, and in general our limitations of one kind and another, and to suggest how, practically , we might embrace it as our Lord would wish us to. Is there one of us who has not, at some time or other, been forced to look in the glass of self-knowledge at an unflattering image? We cannot live with other people and not get our corners knocked off. The trouble is that we do not use this grace – for grace it is – as we ought.

We allow ourselves to resent criticism even when justified…and maybe we try to smudge the unpalatable truth by discrediting the critic and, should an opportunity arise, retaliate in kind. Perhaps we run to someone on whom we can count to soothe the hurt, to reassure and rehabilitate us. The same sort of escape routes are taken when, in one way or another, we fail in our own eyes or in the eyes of others. What opportunities for growth we disciples of Jesus miss by not giving proper value to these common place occurrences!

St Teresa assures her Carmelite sisters that one day of humbling self-knowledge – in relationship with others, our nerves are set on edge and our tempers frayed and we see ourselves as we are, selfish, unloving creatures – one such day, she says, is of far greater value than hours spent in meditation. Our days are strewn with graces that we do not recognize: opportunities, for instance, of letting another take precedence or receive the credit for something we ourselves have said or done; of refraining from profuse excuses when we have made mistakes and shown ourselves incompetent. A thousand and one things happen that wound our self-love. Let be, let be!

If only we really knew Jesus we would not be so concerned with putting on a good show and of how others see us. Instead of concealing our insecurities, fears, secret failings even from our selves, we would accept the reality that we are, tranquil in the certainty that our Lord looks on us with infinite compassion and love.

Julian of Norwich: “He that is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is lowest and meekest, homeliest and most courteous.” “For our soul is so preciously loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasseth that knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may fully know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us.”

Whether that old principal knew the unspoken wounds I was carrying in my heart, from where my actions that day emerged, I don’t know. But I know God does. You see, God does not see the actions of our sin, only our broken hearts, and he so longs to love us with all of himself. It is in acknowledgeing our poverty that we receive God’s love – it is not God that needs our repentance, it is we who need to repent, to receive the loving arms yearn to embrace you.

Acknowledging our poverty is never returned with condemnation, but rather the wings of freedom and liberation in God’s tender love and mercy. Repentance is the way our poverty is filled with the riches of the Kingdom.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

HEAR LEAVE FOLLOW

Homily:Jan 22 – 3rd Sunday After Epiphany, Year B

Mark 1:14-20

Something I really enjoy is fly fishing – fly fishing for trout. I can’t really call myself a flyfisherman, I am more of a guy who goes out on the water and splashes around with a fly rod…But there is something magical about hunting this elusive fish. Wading down a river, one’s awareness and attentiveness shifts…. The trout swim together and have patterns and instincts formed in community for generations.

On those rare occasions, when I just manage to get it right, the excitement of that hit is amazing, the snap of the line, the bend in the rod, as you carefully bring the fish in…and I always wonder, if I can manage to get it into my net, and raise the fish out of the water to remove the little hook – what is happening in the mind of the fish – suddenly stolen from the only world it knows, encountering a whole new universe that it does not even have the faculties to properly perceive. Is this fish changed when it returns to the community, is it awakened to something beyond what it has always known? Have I done it a great service?

Well, probably not, and certainly not if I whack it on the head and pan fry it with a little butter and lemon. But none the less, I wonder if this is where our Gospel has invited us this morning:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

“As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

Notice, the action in this beautiful text: When Jesus calls, the disciples HEAR, LEAVE, and FOLLOW – We hear our call, attracted and found anew in relationship, we leave the world we once knew, and we follow entering a whole new universe, a vision, a reality beyond our capacity to imagine, a universe of faith, wherever Jesus is, the kingdom has come near.

Perhaps you or someone you know may have had to deal with addiciton.  The thing with addiction, is that it creeps up on you, you don’t realize you are being consumed, it  becomes normalized, the constant need to fulfill a craving to normalize yourself, to distress, to cope, to soothe, one unknowingly creates a universe where your drug, your buzz becomes integral to your life rythm, you can’t see how, like a weed it has woven its way into your self understanding, your bank finances, your relationships, your socializing, your recreation, your self-affirmation, control. You end up swimming in a lagoon, with a community of like-minded others and really have no idea that there is a whole universe just beyond.

It may happen that in your lagoon, in your hunger, in your yearning, you find yourself attracted to something, a call that starts as an awareness, you swim around it, you retreat, and maybe in your curiosity – or maybe your desperation, you strike, and by Grace alone you are pulled out of the river, and you find yourself in a new world, a world of recovery where at first you cannot breathe.

Once out of your familiar territory, all of the structures, the relationships, the way you spend your time, the intensity of emotion which was always caudorized becomes overwhelming, the loneliness, the sorrow, the overwhelming shame…but in time, by grace, you may find a path in this new world, through the darkness, and rebuild, and again, by grace might eventually discover a new vision, an entirely refreshed perspective on reality, on oneself, a whole universe unfolds you could not have imagined when swimming in the pond.

One hears, leaves and follows. But first one hears.

And it is the same invitation that comes from Jesus to us all, for all of us suffer in the lagoon of the human condition. You see, Addiction is a spiritual disease for it attacks the heart of the soul – the will. Addiction decapitates  the crown jewel of our spiritual nature – the ability to choose freely: addiction usurps human freedom. Although substance addiction may be the most apparent and possibly self – destructive, especially when it is of the type that is not socially accepted – there are myriads of ways we are kept in the same old pond – often by means that are socially acceptable or even encouraged. Faith addresses the human condition – the ways we all suffer from addiction.

Are we slaves to our fears? Our financial concerns? How about our over-identification with a group? How about our unconscious need for affirmation and esteem, for power and control or security? Are we free when we are blind to our feelings of shame, or unworthiness, our pride, our inability freely give and receive? Do we work countless hours, devoted to some cause, profession or a business, or caring for another, or some ‘holy activity as the only means to find an identity, to avoid loneliness, or our hidden pain?  or are we bowing to the God of achievement or success, or duty?

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  Once we Hear  – we LEAVE

The invitation, to hear the call, is a call to response – repentance. Repentance is the naming and turning away from the idols that have bound our freedom, the veils through which our vision is withheld, the ropes and chains that have bound this self. Repentance is coming into right relationship with the one who calls us, the one who knows us, the one in whom we find our deepest truth.

As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.” And when we Leave we Follow

When we leave the idols…when we have left everything behind, the familiar paths and have come into relationship with He who Loved us first, we follow – otherwise, we would quickly find our way back to the lagoon. We follow Him on an unknown road, to an uncertain future, a path, illumined by faith alone. Though strange, and even fearfull at first,  before we know it, a horizon, a universe opens before us, indeed, more than we could ask or imagine.

Like me when fly fishing, God is hunting for you, calling to each of us, sending a lure customized just for you, in your particular lagoon. Unlike me, God is a pro – and just as I can’t force that trout to bite my hook, God does not force you, it is your choice – but listen for the great fisherman, for he is calling you, casting his nets, and see the example of Simon and Andrew, James and John. Pay attention, HEAR, LEAVE and FOLLOW.

Epiphany Homily 2012

Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12

We woke up this morning having left behind 2011, a year filled with tremendous events: Conservative majority, NDP official opposition, a seat for the Greens! The Arab Spring with Riots in Egypt, resignation of Hosni Mubarak, a Tsunami in Japan, Nuclear reactor meltdown, Revolution in Libya, the death of Moammar Gaddafi, the Assassination of Osama Bin Laden, wedding of William and Kate, Vancouver riots after the Canucks loss to Boston, sadly, Jack Layton and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away, Occupy Wall Street Movement, Canada withdraws from Kyoto Accord. And we had our own changes here at St Lukes – new friends among us, the passing of others, new experiences, new traditions.

All of these stories, these people, relate a world that will never be the same. For many, and for many in our own community, the roads they once knew are gone forever, a new way to journey home must be found.

Today we are celebrating the feast of the Epiphany. An epiphany according to Wikipedia, “(from the ancient Greek, epiphaneia, “manifestation, striking appearance”) is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something. The term is used in either a philosophical or literal sense to signify that the claimant has “found the last piece of the puzzle and now sees the whole picture,” or has new information or experience, often insignificant by itself, that illuminates a deeper or numinous foundational frame of reference.”

Like the 3 wise men, each of us come to faith, to the scriptures, with our own sets of questions, we each travel from distant lands with our own questions of meaning – maybe questions of justice, or questions of liberation, of feminism, of spirituality, of science, or of our own pain, our own questions of belonging – and we follow our questions and have arrived here – to a manger, where Almighty God appears as the babe of Bethlehem who points to his cross at Jerusalem – opening us to a deeper paradox, answering a question with a question – offering an epiphany, illuminating and drawing us into a deeper relationship, a deeper mystery, changing, transforming us – like moths dancing around a flame, each epiphany singing our wings until we are utterly consumed.

Sometimes our epiphanies are of great beauty, and sometimes Grace delivers an awakening where we are invited to let something go, to shed a way of being, to follow a new road and leave an old one behind. St John of the Cross describes our spiritual journey as a series of consolations and desolations where we are invited into a deeper relationship, a maturing of our faith, where we leave a previous understanding behind for a greater one – sometimes painfully, for in the absence of all that we once knew, God can seem far away.

I can remember the epiphany I discovered on my Father’s knee that changed my world forever. The discovery of the true reality of Santa Clause. I had heard about it in the school yard, but refused to believe what they told me – I loved Santa Clause, and that magical world that it sustained, I held on tightly to it, until I confronted my father. For a boy of 5, my world was changed forever, an innocence gone, a painful epiphany which made me leave a self understanding behind and to continue my journey in a new cold world, but a new road which opened new horizons of meaning and maturity.

I have some friends who have an extraordinary story to tell, a story of deep seeking, carving a path towards God in a great wilderness. For some, their story began in Iran. Through the 1970s and into the Iranian Revolution of 1979, they operated a network of vegetarian restaurants. These vegetarian restaurants, quietly made Yoga classes available, for those interested. They had to be very careful, for the political and religious climate made this kind of activity dangerous.

The community operated the Yoga classes, and made available, further teachings, the philosophy of yoga to those students who were interested. They were even more careful about who they invited to the philosophy classes, because this was the entry point into a growing community of Hindus secretly living in community throughout Iran.

Some of them lost their lives during the revolution and persecutions of their community, but under these tremendously difficult conditions, they speak of the forging of a tremendously empowered spiritual community based on love, compassion, fellowship, justice and hope. They served one another, helped the poor, and yearned for the freedom to live openly and so secretly planned a great escape to India, to the home of their leaders, a paradise over the mountains.

Eventually the conditions in Iran became too much to bear, so  many in the community left everything and made a harrowing escape to the promised land. Right out of a movie, they set off on a life and death journey to their longed-for paradise. When some of them share this story, it is with great sadness for they lost many sisters and brothers, in the name of hope, in their journey to a greater world – but even more so, because of the realization that awaited them.

Arriving in India, they discovered their fellow devotees living in poverty, selling holy books on the street, and flowers at the airport while their celebate holy gurus drove around in Mercedes Benz with entourages of young western women. After all they had been through – their hopes and vision vaporized before them – They experienced a true epiphany – and “they left for their own country by another road.”

God is greater than any religion can contain, and the truth is surely revealed in different robes – and we are invited not to cling too tightly even to our own tradition and language, structures of faith, for God may invite us to let go of everything we think of as true, in order to reveal a greater vision of God’s self – a burning away of all that prevents us from being utterly consumed by the heart of God.

The whole Epiphany of Christmas with its cast of characters: shepherds, wise men, angels, even enemies – is testimony, says Martyn Percy “to a mosaic of perspectives, insights, encounters, revelations, and projections.” This is the beauty of the narrative of scripture and tradition – it holds us in a tension of absurd irony and paradox, we bring ourselves to these stories of revelation and slowly, epiphany by epiphany they change us, the veils of our perception are lifted, gently drawing us closer to the light of life.

Emily Dicknson put it like this in her poem, ‘Tell all the Truth’?

Tell all the truth but tell it slant:

Success in circuit lies,

Too bright for our inform delight

The truth’s supurb surprise.

As lightning to the children eased

With explanation kind,

The truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind.

“In God is there is a deep yet dazzling darkness,” continues Martyn Percy, a deeper mystery and relationship that always awaits us, so take courage, and have faith. Perhaps this Season of Epiphany you might consider how God has opened your heart and eyes. What do you need to leave behind on your journey home? What remains to be said, forgiven? What habits, or behaviours no longer serve you on your journey, what relationships, what directions need to be adjusted or changed?

As you gaze upon the crèche, as you come to the Altar bringing your gifts, meeting the God who offers all of himself, Do you need to travel back to your country by another road?

It was 1977, and the annual car rally was coming to town. This was the climax of months of preparation, of engineering precision, practice, calculated preparation. The highly competitive nature of this event, kept drivers and mechanics in covert operations, trade secrets, and the newest cutting edge technology were discreetly hidden in basement workshops.

…Yes, the Annual Boyscout Car Rally at the Old Cattle Barn at Landsdowne park was serious business. …As a Cubscout, my Dad and I purchased the start up kit which included 4 wheels, track measurements and instructions on how to build your own high performance hurricane of speed.

Many sleepless nights went into that car, sitting at the front door for my Dad to get home from work, or waiting for him to wake up on a Saturday morning and get to work down at his workshop in the basement. On would go the old tweed radio to CBC, with rusty old Peter Gsowski offering a commentary in the background as we brought together our collective engineering and mechanical excellence.

An old block of wood, cut and sanded, spray painted silver. Finished with lightning bolts down the side with a marker, as perfect as any 6 year old can, and a little driver’s head drawn on the side window.

Nails for wheel axles, and ingeniously, even an emptied compartment to insert metal washers to bring the weight up to the perfect level. No doubt, this ferocity of velocity would strike fear and dread into the heart of any opponent. I could see the those checker flags waving me down the victory lap, the snap of the ribbon, the humble bow at the podium to receive the GOLD…the victory speech…

It was done. The Silver Hornet was ready for action.

Te big day finally arrived, the Silver Hornet packed into a shoe box (with a little baggie of carrots for a snack, care of Mom) We made our way down to Lansdowne park. The place was teaming with Dads and sons, parking was scarce, so we found our selves half sprinting through the rain to make our race time.  I clung to the The Silver Hornet, clunking up and down in the shoe box with the carrots.

But as we entered the park and tried to find our racing group, I could feel my pre-victory spirit beginning to deflate, my visions of glory fading and the lustre and splendour of the machine which I held under my arm began to melt.

The machines the other kids had were in a class I had not even dared to imagine. These cars were built of fibre glass, many with aero-dynamic wings, titanium wheels, with on-board electronic weight calculation and self lubricating wheels. Professionaly painted and detailed, and covered in decals – even sponsors and equipped with actual miniature drivers!

Dads and Sons with little brothers wore matching glittering or black leather outfits topped with mirror shades and leather driving gloves. Me in my salt covered moon boots, snowsuit with mittens hanging by yarn from my sleeves, and pockets packed with extra tissue and a juice box just didn’t seem to compare.

Overheated, running nose, cranky, we finally made our way to the track we were registered to qualify on…we watched the Silver Hornet compete in the qualifying round come in second last. The coordinator gave us a ticket and sent us over to a different section of the Cattle Barn – the class for my category of car was in the “Every entry gets a ribbon” category. Surrounded by elderly ladies in crocheyed Christmas sweaters, I received my “You’re number One” ribbon, a cookie and several affirmations about my car: ‘oh, that’s nice.’ We drove home that day in silence, the hornet went straight back to the wood bin.

You see, I had been duped – duped to believe that my value came from how I measured up to everyone else – I believed what they told me.

Isn’t that what they tell us? What is the treasure we aspire to? What is the race we compete in? IS it not about who has the most stuff, the best stuff? Isn’t it about how we look? How we fit in? Isn’t it about what brand we have, what group we belong to? Is it not about the powerful, the successful, the achiever? Who does not want to be perceived that way? Who among us would not want to belong to the 1%? We search and we search for all the things we think we want, and we are never satisfied.

The great 11^th century Persian Poet Sada’isays:

“You are pure spirit

But imagine yourself a corpse!

Pure water which thinks it’s the pot!

Everything you want must be searched for except the Friend.

If you don’t find HIM you’ll never be able to start to even look.”

Yes, it is this night, this holy night of Christmas, that we are invited to remember the Friend, Emmanuel, God among us. The one who animates all of life, who is the spirit of life that dwells in each of us and where our true happiness, our true purpose, and from where the source of peace comes.

Yet we walk in darkness, believing a lie. A lie that sustains a world economy that would see some 30 million still under the yoke of slavery, a world, according to Unicef, in which 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. A lie that says there is us, there is them, and I know who I need to take care of.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.”

Yes, God does not reveal himself as the elite, the well to do, God does not reveal God’s self in strength and might, in power, not even in success, independence, or achievement. No, God arrives unwanted, in estrangement, in broken lowliness, in dependence and vulnerability. God reveals himself as a helpless dependant baby born in a manger, because there was no room for him in the Guesthouse of success.  Yes God does not arrive in our perfectly crafted persons of pious excellence, but rather,  here…here within these cracked vessels lies the ocean of life.

The silver hornet turned up again years later – in the back of an old wood box, discarded, unwanted…only one wheel still left. Beatup, worn out, unwanted, no good. And I realized that car held for me the beauty of love shared in a basement workshop, between a parent and a child. And that car is sacred and holy, and perfect.

Just like you. God comes among us, a needy God, a God of weakness, into our midst demanding to be loved and cared for and shows us to love and care for each other, because in God’s eyes – YOU, us, and them are sacred, holy and perfect– lightning bolts and all.