November 1 ~ What we will be has not yet been revealed

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Revelation 7:9-17

Psalm 34:1-10, 22

1 John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

C.S. Lewis lived alone for most of his life, writing. But in his 50s, he fell in love. Her name was Joy Davidman, an American writer who had recently become a Christian, and started writing to Lewis about his work. He was enthralled by her witty, intelligent letters, and she eventually travelled to England to meet him. In 1956, when Lewis was 57 years old, they married in a civil ceremony. But a year later, Joy was diagnosed with cancer, and they said their vows again, in a Christian wedding. Joy lived three more years – the happiest ones of his life, Lewis would later write. And then having found love late, he had to learn to mourn it.

Every year, at one time or another, I return to the book that came out of that experience. A Grief Observed is one of the most thoughtful reflections on love and loss that I have read. It has served me at times when I needed it, and I have shared it with others when I thought its word might also bring them comfort.

Lewis describes a journey through grief that reconciles not only how we understand mourning today, but also the overarching theme of our readings this morning. People used to talk about grieving as something you did and then finished. But of course, anyone who had grieved a deep loss knows that is not how it works. And when researchers studied those who carried on after a loved one’s death, they learned to think about grief as something you carry forever, even if the weight of it changes. Just as Lewis recounted, people continued to talk to the ones they had lost, and to hear their words at meaningful moments. What they feared most was not that their sadness would never go away, but that they would lose their memory of that person, so they found ways to hold on to it. Grief didn’t end; it just became something new, part of a new relationship with a person who had died.

This is what Lewis describes in his book. He feels the loss of Joy like an amputation. He fears that he is losing his memory of her face. He disavows friends who do not mention her -- a betrayal, as he sees it, of her existence. “What does it mean,” he wondered, “to continue loving someone who is not there?”

At one point, he writes: “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape."

That new landscape cannot be known until we arrive. Yet we know we are walking a path toward it. That new landscape, who we are becoming, is also what John speaks about in our second lesson: "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed." We are one person today, and on a path to becoming a different person tomorrow. Notice the tension in that sentence. We are God's children, in the present tense. Right now. Not after we get our lives together. Not after we become more faithful. Not after we learn to pray better.

We are God’s children now, and yet there is more to come. "What we will be has not yet been revealed." We are already accepted and loved, but not yet complete.

The same message is woven throughout the Beatitudes. The people who Jesus says are blessed are not static; they are on a journey – through mourning and hunger, to the other side of mercy and peace. They are people still longing and seeking and growing. People still travelling through life. People who are yet to be revealed.

Just as the people whom we remember today are still being revealed to us. None of the loved ones on our minds today were perfect. They don’t need to be perfect to be loved. None of us who are loved are perfect.

Some days, we might remember most clearly how imperfect they were. On other days, their kindness and love is clearest in our minds. And over time, the memories and wisdom that matter most to us may also change.

In the years since my mother died, in the decades since I lost my brother, the nature of my bond to them has constantly shifted. Some days, I see my mom as the woman who refused to let me buy the second-hand suit I coveted, and then only laughed from the choir loft, when I walked past her in church wearing it – and I remember to laugh off small problems. Some days, my mom is the Nana who watched the same kid’s movie for hours on the couch with Noah while I was at the hospital with Erin waiting for Samson to arrive in the world, and I feel her caregiving watching out for me. At other times, I hear when she judged me too harshly, or perhaps failed to give me what I needed in the moment – a reminder that we all make mistakes, especially with those dearest to us. And sometimes, I can feel the softness of her hand on my cheek, the day before she died, telling me that I was a good boy, and I feel loved.

As the years pass, however, I do not live with these memories in the same way; I am still becoming myself, and how I receive those images also changes. If I viewed them as a grieving son at first, and could not see clearly, I now sit with them ten years later and without the sharpness of loss. I can see the lessons lying in them more intentionally. My mother is gone, and yet she is still in the act of becoming for me. And more than a half century later, what I carry of my brother is also part of that becoming.

If we are wise, we listen to these Saints in our lives, however they speak to us. They are, for worse and for better, a part of who we are today, and who we will be tomorrow. There is something comforting and also powerful in that fact. The comforting part is that those we love keep teaching us as we move on. The powerful part, is that we, who are still living, still becoming, can seize the chance to learn from them, and be happier for it.

So, on this All Saints’ Sunday – but not only on this Sunday – I hope we hear the whisper of the Saints around us and listen to what they seek to tell us. For in the end, what C.S. Lewis learned in grief, what John tells us, what Jesus preached to the crowd that day, is that we may feel lonely, especially when we have lost someone. But we are never alone. Amen.

October 25 ~ The Reformation begins with people transformed.

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

It’s Reformation Sunday, and the scene that most seems to capture our imagination is that no-turning-back scene, when Martin Luther marched up to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg and hammered the Ninety-Five Theses into the wood. In fact, historians can’t say for sure that even happened. Nobody actually reported seeing Luther hammer the theses up there, and people put notices up at the church all the time. Even more importantly, Luther, to meet him in 1517, was still an obedient monk, committed to the pope’s authority, hoping church leaders would address the issues he’d identified around indulgences and the lay person’s relationship to God. He was not yet a rebel. That came later.

For the beginning of Luther’s Reformation, we need to go back much earlier, to 1505, to the year of a thunderstorm that terrified young Martin so much, he vowed to become a monk if he survived. The storm passed and Luther soon afterwards became a devout resident at the Augustinian monastery. At dawn, each day, the bell would call him to prayer, rousing him from his cell. He would pray, and confess. Fast. And pray and confess again. But he still felt no peace. His superior, Johann von Staupitz, reportedly became exasperated because Luther kept returning to confession with what seemed like microscopic sins. Not because Luther doubted the church. But because he believed in it so completely.

A second scene to imagine: Luther sitting at his desk in Wittenberg in 1517, drafting the Ninety-Five Theses. He does not intend it to be a declaration of independence, but more a proposal for change from an academic. The Pope will listen. The Bishops will hear him out. His older self will wince at his naïveté; but younger Luther is still trying to change a corrupt system from within. He is trying to save the Church.

Two years later, Luther sits each night with the same Bible verse: Romans 1:17.

"For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, 'The one who is righteous will live by faith.'" He kept tripping over the word righteousness. “I hated that word,” he recalls later. Finally, Luther says, he saw the word in a new way – righteousness was not God’s demand; it was God’s gift. "I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered Paradise itself through open gates,” Luther says. This is not only a theological breakthrough. This is a human being transformed. An obedient monk becoming a liberated Christian.

Another scene, a year later, in Heidelberg. Luther has arrived to defend his ideas. The rumours have spread: the trouble-making monk for Wittenberg is coming. The young scholars are expecting a fight about indulgences. Instead, they hear about “the theology of the cross.” They hear Luther suggest that humans are constantly mistaking glory for truth and strength for God’s way. Luther is reminding his listeners to question assumption, to challenge the framework they’ve been given, to explore faith in a new way. This is reformation – rethinking what has always been, pondering a better way.

And finally, we skip ahead, to 1545; Luther is an old man. His writings, at the end, have turned hateful and cruel; stripped of the grace he had once so devoutly challenged. His racist message in his last works will be used 400 years later, to underpin the most horrific, planned, and deliberate atrocity the modern world has known. “But even then,” he says, “look back through the story; I did not know everything. I learned as I went. My views developed. I changed as I needed to. In other words, ‘God kept reforming me.’”

The Reformation was not born the moment Luther nailed something to a door. The Reformation was born when Luther let God reform him.

And the Reformation is not over. Not for the church. Not for us. There is no one place that we reach and then stop. Change and reformation have been the very definition of our lives and faith. Just as some part of the Bible may resonate more with us at one point in time than others, the words of Luther speak to us in different ways. We must listen to all of them – the words that bring us joy and hope, the words that reassure us about our own understanding of faith, and, yes, the part that brings us shame. By listening, we find the truth that Luther sought. By listening, we make a path toward change. True discipleship is lifelong transformation rather than a single conversion experience.

It is a popular myth that Luther's first concern was indulgences. Really, he was focused on repentance. People were arriving in Wittenberg carrying indulgence certificates they had purchased and believing that repentance had become unnecessary. Luther feared that an external religious transaction was replacing inner transformation.

In Thesis 1, he writes, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent,' he willed the entire life of believers to be one of ongoing repentance." The entire life of believers, repenting and changing. And reforming. This is Luther’s ongoing argument: we are also being transformed by the gospel. We are always being reformed, especially by acknowledging where we have gone wrong.

Reformation – this act, this choice, this fight to be better - was never sheets of paper hammered on a church door. It was always the people of the church. It was always us. Amen.

October 18 ~ When we think we know exactly where God can be located, we often miss the Gospel message.

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Isaiah 45:1-7

Psalm 96:1-9 [10-13]

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

The voices of those who use the Bible – and even the gospel – as a weapon against the vulnerable, have become the loudest religious voice in our society today. They use God’s word as a means to hold power over those seen as less deserving -- to make rules run contrary to love, mercy and kindness. We hear them all the time -- the Pharisees holding their gold coin, talking as if they know best.

But like Jesus, we do not need to fall into that trap.

Our three readings all pose versions of these same three questions from different angles: Where is God's authority located? Who is included in God’s work? What is the relationship between faith and political power?

How we answer these questions is not a theological debate. These answers translate into a defining characteristic of who we are as people, as Christians, and of how we serve the world. What sets the tone for all our interactions is the question of where we see the presence of the Divine.

Take our first lesson, and the story of Cyrus, chosen by God to lead, even though, as Isaiah says, Cyrus does not know God. A traditional reading has focused on God’s control, viewing Cyrus as an instrument of God. Some have used to it argue that political figures – at least certain ones – are appointed and raised up by God, promoting a blind loyalty that overlooks cruelty and tyranny. Like many passages in the Bible, it’s been used to argue that there is only one correct faith, and that no others are equal.

But the scandal lies in God’s appointment of Cyrus, a pagan emperor. For it shows that God is present and active in the world outside the religious rules created, in many ways, to contain and shrink God. If God can work through a pagan then God may work through anyone. God is free to do good works wherever injustice and persecution are found, in whomever God chooses. That choice is not ours to make. And now the question becomes: what gospel work in the world have we failed to recognize, and how can we support and learn from it?

In the same vein, the Psalm this morning might also be interpreted as elevating some humans and certain beliefs above others. But what happens if we focus on this line: "Sing to the Lord all the earth"?

If we place God in the centre of the forests and the ocean and nature, then we understand they have value beyond what we take from them. In that context, when the Psalmist writes, "All the gods of the nations, they are but idols,” we must ask ourselves what idolatry makes our song to all the earth a lie.

Is it doing nothing and sacrificing nothing, while waiting for God to take care of everything and save the right people? Or is it acting with those of different beliefs – those Cyruses among us - to defend conservation, to support decisions that allow all the earth to be equally shared?

In Thessalonians, we might see Paul’s message as focused on right and wrong belief. But that is an individual question – or it certainly should be: when we sit with the gospel, what is right or wrong is our own inner journey. If we extend that internal reflection beyond ourselves, we self-appoint ourselves to sit in judgement – like so many who have distorted the gospel’s message over history.

In the second reading, Paul is praising community, not individuals. And not a powerful, wealthy community, but a marginalized and vulnerable one. Paul is calling on the crowd to focus on collective action and relationships. Communities are built, not with judgement, but with openness to difference and change. Paul is saying that faith is about the care we show to others. And so, our question, while we search for God’s presence should be: what kind of community are we becoming?

Finally, we come to our gospel, the most divisive of our readings. This conversation between the Pharisees and Jesus has been seen, traditionally, as an argument for the separation of church and state. Give Caesar – the state – what is Caesar’s. And God what is God’s. By focusing here, the message is: “Pay your taxes and obey your leaders.” But it is much less clear on what parts of our lives belong to God. Does God have influence only at the end of our workday, when we’ve finished earning the money to pay those taxes? And how do we even divvy up what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? Does God get the sea and forests that the Psalmist writes about? Does Caesar get the marketplace that defines the needs and desires of the community Paul is celebrating?

Let’s step back; Jesus is getting a version of “proof-texting” from the Pharisees. They are trying to trap him; to have him say out loud that people should not support the emperor in the hopes that he will be arrested for treason. But Jesus is no fool. “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he tells the Pharisees, when they have shown him the coin, “and to God the things that are God’s.”

The religious leaders walk away amazed. Jesus has outsmarted them. Should Caesar hear his words, he would think that Jesus was indeed saying, “Pay your taxes.” The religious leaders could not complain either, for God gets what is God’s.

But what Jesus avoids doing is defining either, and yet elsewhere in the gospel, Jesus continually widens the people’s understanding over who and what falls into God’s purview. Jesus includes those who are outcast or seen as weak and irrelevant by society, those have done wrong but sought forgiveness, those who have done wrong and not yet sought forgiveness, those who believe different things. He tells parables that cast God as landowner or gardener over the crops we harvest and the seeds we grow, the most important part of that early, ancient economy.

What Jesus leaves unsaid when he responds to the religious leaders is that “all the earth” falls into God’s domain, and all the earth is part of the gospel.

We can never be blindly loyal to a leader, because we must view leadership through the principles of the gospel; we make decisions so that our actions, as much as possible, are the best chance of producing a just community.

In our country, that means we pay taxes – so that opportunity may be created and shared. And we follow rules, so that we don’t have chaos for the sake of chaos. But we also take to the streets to raise issues, and vote to make our priorities known, and question and challenge and debate.

But when we take all our readings together, what we learn is that spreading the gospel is not about the signs we hang on the walls in places of power, or the prayers we say in rooms of leaders, or the people we convert to our exact understanding of God. The gospel’s strength is bolstered by community-building and standing against wrong-doing; its strength, specifically, is other-centred action.

That’s the conclusion of all our readings this morning: The people who think they know exactly where God can be located often miss the gospel message. Meanwhile, God quietly carries on – working through foreigners, small communities, ordinary people, and unexpected places to bring more justice, inclusion, and hope into the world. We choose how to interpret that message. And we choose what to do about it. Amen.