felix hominum

boxing day syndrome...

That's the holiday right after Christmas where we take all the stuff we got for Christmas and divide it into two piles - stuff we like and want to keep;  and stuff we don't like and want to exchange for something else. 

Which is fine, except we tend to do that to Jesus - divide him up into stuff we want to keep and stuff we don't like about him and want to get an exchange or a refund.  (the bits about love and forgiveness I'll keep, but give me something else for the "take up your cross" and "love your enemies" bits)...

I don't make new year's resolutions, but if I did, my first resolution would be "Don't be a boxing day Christian".

Take all of Him.

christmas eve...

A story for Christmas Eve.

Prelude

Once or twice people have asked me about a story I related in the course of a sermon I gave a few years ago.  It is the story of a Christmas Eve I experienced.  Here it is.

Aria

I write many sermons, as I have written much of  this one, in a coffee shop on Whyte Avenue.  There are no administrative calls or knocks on the door to disturb me.  But there are other things to disturb me there.  People.  If it is difficult to preach a sermon isolated from people,  it is perhaps more difficult to write one isolated from people.  On Wednesday mornings at nine o clock there is a group who get together to share their stories of misery or happiness, more often the former than the latter.  They struggle with addictions. I have become the informal “chaplain” of that group.  One of their number is a 45 year old man we shall call Steve.   Steve came from a rather unfortunate past and carried that misfortune into his present.  He had been from time to time a carpenter – he was trained as a furniture maker.  I asked him almost a year ago about a gift for Alisa, my wife – perhaps an anniversary present. I had the idea of a chest, something into which our family could place our  various treasures in  the years to come. 

He drew a sketch of a wooden chest, I asked him to build it for me.  He described the wood, the size, the time it would take to build and finish, and the cost.   It wasn’t quite ready for our anniversary, which was in August.  Throughout the fall Steve continued to work on it sporadically, and I from time to time would visit him in his small shop and check on the progress.   As October and November came around,  I was beginning to panic, hoping that it would be ready for Christmas.  Not having an anniversary or a Christmas present in the same year would be bad news for any husband.   In the days leading up to Christmas, I was in my new parish, thinking of all the details I needed to tidy up for the festive season.  In the back of my mind was the horrifying thought that my Christmas present to Alisa would not be ready, and that I would be in the domestic doghouse for quite some time.  Steve and I traded messages on the 22nd, and 23rd and the morning of the 24th of December.  In St Andrew’s that evening  we had a wonderful Christmas Eve service at 7 pm.  Alisa’s sisters had come home from the States and the house of God was a full  place that night.  We all drove home, the kids were in bed, everything was perfect.

At 10:30 pm this past Christmas Eve, as many were either drifting off to a happy and excited sleep, or dressing up for an extravagant midnight celebration of the birth of a King,  I went to meet a carpenter in his shop.

Steve had finished the wooden chest.  It was ready.  He told me with  pride all the details of the craftsmanship;  how to care for the wood, how to oil it so its colour would radiate, how it would  last, as he said, to give to my grandchildren.  He was proud of his work.   We sat in a small  room and I handed him a Christmas card,  and small box of chocolates, which he said he couldn’t eat because of his diabetes, which was complicated by his drinking.   We drank some coffee and chatted. There are four churches within a stone’s throw of Steve’s place.  I told him about our Christmas service at St Andrew’s, about God and Jesus, about love and prayer.   We chatted some more.   He told me that he had been to church a few times as a boy,  and he had even met some members of the clergy.  His experience of ‘church’ had not moved  him.  I did not convert Steve. 

Instead we loaded the wooden chest into the back of my Jeep Cherokee, and I drove off to place it among a large pile of gifts in our living room.   I went back to the companionship of a loving wife, with two beautiful children, and a house full with anticipation of the large extended  family feast we would have the next day.  Steve went back into his shop and closed the door.

It was not the first time a carpenter had been abandoned by one who called himself a  disciple.

“He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Postlude

While I was away at a church camp a year and a half ago, Steve died.  I found out about his death a month after it happened.  I don’t know what Steve was thinking at the hour of his death.

If there is room for another thief or two on a cross to be with Him in Paradise, I hope it’s Steve and me.

the hidden joy of longing

It’s now two days until Christmas, but it’s still Advent.  Is there any virtue in waiting?  We were talking last night about how different the seasons of Lent/Easter are from Advent/Christmas.  It’s as if we need the labour pains of a Good Friday in order to fully grasp the nativity of Jesus.  As the day gets nearer, all sense of Advent seems to disappear.  All the sense of waiting for the unexpected presence of God dwindles away.  We know the day and the hour of his appearing.

Why wait?  What virtue is there in waiting?  It seems much of our culture is filled with the “I can’t wait” syndrome. We see this in a lot of the passages from youth to adulthood – I can’t wait to get my license; I can’t wait to get drunk for the first time, I can’t wait to have sex.  The list goes on.  I can’t wait til I graduate; I can’t wait til I get a job, I can’t wait til I retire.

What is behind all of this?

We have lost the hidden joy of longing. 

We think of it as simply waiting, as if lined up behind so many others who will get it before us.   The Song of Solomon gives us a picture of longing.  Not simply waiting, but longing, yearning, aching for a love – a communion - that is not yet complete.

I am trying to cultivate that sense of longing in my prayer this Advent.  Longing for a communion that is not yet complete.  Advent is supposed to remind me that, despite my calendar marking December 25, I do not know the day and hour of His appearing.  And so in the mean time I learn to stretch my desire forward.  Leaning with all my might toward that which I do not yet have (but know that I will) and toward that which I am not yet (but one day will be). 

Waiting for birth.

The hidden joy of longing.

which end is up

Sarah Joy trying to figure out how to use a glue stick, in the midst of making some Christmas crafts...

God made me this way

Toward the end of Tuesday's class we were getting around to thinking about that whole question - which is a big one.  I'll put up something over the next few days about that phrase, how it's used well and poorly, the permissive and active will of God, and all those other things that came up, tying together a knot of monstrous proportions.

while waiting for pasta to cook..

ummm...

if you rearrange the letters of "The Purpose Driven Life", you come up with:

"thrive o purple fiends"

jesus, soundbites, and saying hard things

Incomplete thoughts with the usual disclaimer, and yes I know there are flaws...

Pick a] b] or c]

a]  Repent!
b]  The kingdom of heaven is at hand!
c]  Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

We were having another one of those conversations.  Putting a question on the table In the midst of a "controversial issue", someone asked:  “Would you like to be the one to tell Mrs. Jones/Smith that there is something wrong with her child?” 

The question implies several things. 

It implies that our action as Christians is governed by how we think someone will respond to us personally.  That we should avoid at all costs those situations where we will be made uncomfortable by someone else’s discomfort or distress.  It could be seen as a self centered question – it is more about how I will be made to feel by Mrs Jones, than anything else.

It implies that the worst thing we can possibly do as Christians, and especially for those who are ordained clergy, is to tell anyone something they do not want to hear.  We should avoid, at all costs, being bearers of “bad news”.  We are, after all, a gospel people.  Shouldn't we only have “good news” to bear?

Yet bearing bad news is sometimes a part of the task of being a bearer of good news. In the course of my ministry I have had to tell people things which were hard, even tragic, for them to hear.  That is the most difficult part of authentic ministry.  Who is called to the bedside?  Who speaks to the widow and the orphan, who tells them the “news”?  People engaged in real life ministry will find themselves in situations where they are called by Jesus to bring words that no one wants to hear.   

In the messiness and misery of the dark underside of human life and death, joy and tragedy, we are often called upon to bring those words.  I have brought them to others, and I have brought them to my own family.  Yes, I have faced telling Mrs Jones that there is something wrong with her child.  Mrs. Jones was at the time Mrs. Walker, and the child in question was Sarah Joy, our second daughter, suffering from congestive heart failure.  I would rather that there was no "bad news" to tell, but if there is, how can I abdicate the the compassionate obligation  to be its bearer?  For that is not all the news that I have heard.  I have heard that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and I must bear that news as well.  I must face the reality of what is wrong, in order to authentically bear the good news of the person of Jesus.

There are two equal and opposite errors to avoid.

Jesus is reduced to soundbites:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”  becomes only “Repent!”, or it is reduced to “the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”.   The two go together, though we in the church have often tried to separate them, particularly in our recent debates.   But one is the first word, and the other is the last word.  But more later, after coffee...

a brief theology of the eucharist

"you are what you eat"

new parenting 101

WARNING:  the following should not be read by anyone, particularly those of a sensitive nature or weak stomach, pregnant women and excited dads-to-be. 

The relationship between diapers and the Christian life.

Change. 

Ahhh, “change”.  How often I/we use that word.  How often have I flippantly talked about change in the past.  I thought I knew what change involved, had explored every dimension of that word and concept.  But no longer.  I am wiser now.  Let me tell you what I have learned about change over the past few years and the past few children.  There is such a thing called change.  It happens not once, or twice, but many times.  Many, many times.  Change is ongoing and perpetual.  It is not a one time occurrence.

There are several varieties of change.  Each change is a gamble; each change has hidden within itself the seed of unexpected surprise, of an explosive presence which was unforeseen.  There is sometimes a hesitation about the procedure itself.  And yet that is part of the mystery of change.  The longer you wait, the greater the wager of the gamble becomes.  The need for change tends to ripen.

In our house there are 3 types of change.  There is the “regular” change, there is the “messy” change, and then there is what we like to call the “hose down” change.  The “hose down”  involves much running of water and opening of windows.  This is often complicated by the fact that during the initial discovery of the need for a “hose down”, the subject tends to interfere in such a way that the operation is made more difficult for the one administering the change.  Sometimes two subjects, rather than one, become the recipients of the final “hose down”.  The one administering the change must enter the world of the one in need of change, and take upon himself those things which have soiled the one in need of change. Finally after the change is completed, there is a sense of joy, of comfort, of purity from being immersed in the flowing stream of cleansing water.  Being washed and made whole once again. 

Clothed in white.

Until the next change.

interruption

After starting morning prayer much earlier this morning, I am now getting around to finishing it.  The interruption came in the form of a person (which I suppose is not an interruption in the bad sense).  For the past number of years, I have used the discipline of morning and evening prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.  The center of this form of praying is really the Psalms, with the rest being essentially scripture arranged for worship, confession, intercession and praise.  The scripture readings (lectionary) are really just the original format of the "read the Bible in a year" idea  (there is nothing new under the sun). 

Why do I use this form of prayer?  I am unimaginative, and lazy, and so when I think some one else has come up with a helpful idea, I use it.  For me the psalms are the heart of human prayer in scripture, and to have a way of praying which is shaped by the psalms is helpful to my Christian life.  And to have a way of praying that is saturated and grounded in the Scripture from beginning to end.  And to remind me of all the things that I need to pray for .  And as Alisa is fond of pointing out (tongue in cheek) "You're an Anglican priest - don't you get paid to do that?"

hope/less

Walked past a display in SUB for suicide prevention/awareness week here at the U of A.  Some of you may recall last year that a student committed suicide in Lister Hall last term.   How can our hearts not break?

A thought which has haunted me since...there's a church only half a block from the front door of Lister Hall.   What were we so busy doing...

it's Saturday night

It's now twenty past eight;  the kids are all in bed, the dishes are done, the house is reasonably clean (at least of large objects on the floor).  Alisa has gone over to the school to do a few things.  It's Saturday night.  Time to get crazy.  Time to get out that wild man from the 60's.  Actually from the 1760's.  A guy named William Law .

I am delving into two pieces of writing by William Law:  "The Spirit of Love", and "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life."  Law's influence as a teacher of the Christian devotional life stretched from Wesley to Newman, with others in between and since.  I'll toss off fragments as I work through. 

I think it was CS Lewis who passed on the sound advice to read at least one old book for every modern one you read, or something like that.  The advice seems more wise with every passing day.

p.s.   There was a time in my life when I would have looked with utmost pity on someone who said they were going to be spending their one free Saturday evening doing such a thing as I am about to embark upon...

true glory...

Every once in a while I catch a small glimmer of what I believe must be the glory of God.  The latest such glimmer is in the form of a thought which Alisa and I have been tossing around in conversation and prayer for the last several months.  We are thinking of applying to adopt a child with disabilities.

Now just to dispense with the romantic notions of what a great "Christian" thing that would be for us to do, let me say first of all that we are "tossing around" the idea.  Because we already have a child with a disability and we know first hand the amount of work, tiredness and frustration that parents can experience in dealing with all the "extra demands" of a "special needs" child.  Get rid of that term "special needs" - it is too generic and not nearly descriptive enough of the truth.   The other side of course is to recognize the particular gifts that such people bring to our families and communities and churches  - if we let them.

Why do I catch a glimmer of God's glory in this thought?  Because I see in it several things:  the value of personhood, the bearing of the image of God by a human being, the opportunity to give and receive love.  While all of our children have helped me in my own discipleship, Sarah Joy has done so for me in a most profound way - almost ineffable.  Glory is found in the humblest of service to another human being, in showing them their worth, their value, and in letting them call forth our most profound brokeness as they present us with theirs.  And we both offer it up to Christ for healing.

Searching for the Glory of God can lead to most unexpected places.

the basic differences

Now that Emily is 5 and Sarah is 3 and Adam is 18 months old, I can affirm that body of research which states that little female children do like to make play which is nurturing and creative, and little male children like to pretend they are ravenous meat - eating dinosaurs. 

"It is not good for the man to be alone"...

on the broken minded

After that last conversation with Matt at Dabar on Friday after the jam session, I thought I would throw out some thoughts on the faith of persons with mentally disabilities.  (And on a side note, next time I will dig up the blues harps and add them to my bag of tricks for your musical enchantment.)  Not that I am an expert on such things, or speak with any great authority, but I will try to see where the conversation can move forward...

First, as was noted, there is often a level of "uncomfortableness" around persons with disabilities.  They are not often present for our worship, and if they are, how do we respond, invite, include?  How do we help them discover and use their unique giftings for the glory of God and the love of neighbour?  Or do we assume that they do not have spiritual gifts, because they themselves do not participate in the way that we do in the life of the church?  As Matt and I chatted, the topic of L'arche came up - so here is an invitation for us to join them for their Christmas pageant on the 17th of December.  St Thomas D'aquin RC church - 8410 - 89 St, 7 pm.

Jean Vanier once wrote that the particular gift of the mentally disabled person is relationship.  Because we who are "normal" are so used to relating to others using our minds/intellect/emotions, we often fail to have a true relationship of the heart - of the inner self which bears the image of God.  We decide that our "higher faculties" alone are the means by which community and relationship are formed, and so we dismiss from community and relationship those who do not relate to us using those faculties.

It is obvious, but one of the primary means of relating for us as embodied beings is touch.  And as we talked, and as I myself have felt and observed, we are often uncomfortable with touch,  and even more so around those who are "different", and perhaps especially so with those whose bodies are not quite what we have in mind for human beauty.

Yet as those of us who have been part of the worship community L'arche have experienced, touch is the first demand that meets us when we come together.  The offer and exchange of human contact and presence through touch is vital.  But more later, or when we meet again...