Sermon preached at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale - June 6, 2010

The church measures time differently from how most folks do.  We have our own calendar.  It used to be that this time of year was measured in Sundays dated from Trinity Sunday, which was last week.  So today would be called “Trinity 1.”  More recently, the Anglican Church has begun measuring the Sundays of this time of year from the Day of Pentecost, which was two weeks ago.  So today is called the Second Sunday after Pentecost.  But some Christian denominations mark their calendars differently yet again.  The Catholics and some Lutherans call this time of year “Ordinary Time.”  There seems to be a simple wisdom in referring to these bread-and-butter Sundays of the church year as ordinary time.  After all, not only in the church, but in all of our lives, most of the time is ordinary time.

Most of life is ordinary time.  You’ve had the experience of turning to somebody and saying, “What day is it today?”  One day sometimes runs into the next so that we lose track of the days.  Ordinary time.  People who live with a chronic health condition know what this is about.  You get up each morning, take a deep breath, and begin another day knowing that the discomfort of yesterday will be there again today.  Much of life is like driving across the prairies… driving in a straight line, moving forward, but feeling like it’s the same old monotonous scene over and over again.

 

The people of Israel knew what ordinary time was all about.  Wandering in the wilderness for year and years.  Manna and quail.  Manna and quail.  Always the same, just “How did you cook it tonight, honey?”  Same menu, same desert, same sand in the shoes day after day.

 

Advertisers prey on the monotony of life to get us to buy their product.  Buy this stuff!  You deserve it!  It will make your life exciting!  Well, maybe you do deserve it, but don’t be fooled.  Most of life is ordinary time.

But every now and then, the ordinary times of our lives are punctuated by extraordinary times.  They’re the moments in our lives that Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are to the church year.  These extraordinary times don’t get painted onto our experience with the wide brush strokes of ordinary time.  They don’t fill in large blocks of our personal history.  Instead, extraordinary time is measured in moments.  But these moments colour our whole experience.

 

The extraordinary times of our lives are not always joyful.  But often they are what some sociologists call a “significant emotional event.”  And according to these same sociologists, these extraordinary times in our lives are the only means by which we experience significant changes in attitude or behaviour.  It is the extraordinary times that contribute to our conversion.

 

Sad or happy, these extraordinary times may be as outwardly significant as the death of a parent or the birth of a child.  Or they may be as subtle as a passage read from a book that startles us into a new insight, a new outlook on life.  Falling in love.  Remember that fluttery feeling in your stomach when you first met someone who knew how to give your heart a twist?  Or, think of what an extraordinary time it must have been in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944 – D-Day - as thousands of soldiers waited at Normandy.  Big or small, these extraordinary times contribute to changes in attitude or behaviour.

 

The Bible tells us about a widow whose life was changed, suddenly, and for the better.  The way I read the story, her life had difficult due to famine, and as a single mother.  But one day, the prophet Elijah came to her town and everything changed.  Thanks to a miracle from God, she received an endless supply of flour and oil, and her hope was renewed.  The widow of Zarephath didn’t go seeking the extraordinary, it broke into her life by God’s power.

 

The Bible also showcases the experience of the apostle Paul, formerly a persecutor of Christians who, second only to Jesus, was the greatest proponent of the faith we now profess.  According to Paul’s own words in his epistle to the Galatians, the good news he proclaimed was not of human origin but a revelation of Jesus Christ.  His epistles, his preaching, his example of faith and life were compelled by the spirit of God.  Paul didn’t go seeking the extraordinary; it burst upon him in a Damascus Road conversion that changed and strengthened him.

 

Luke’s gospel gives us the story of another widow encountered by Jesus as the pallbearers carried the body of her dead son to its final resting place.  You’ve been to funerals.  You know what a sickening feeling it to stand with the other mourners around the grave, waiting for the thud of soil on oak, listening for those dreaded words “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  It was at a moment like this that Jesus burst onto the scene saying, “Do not weep!  Young man, I say to you, ‘Arise!’”  Moments like these don’t happen very often.  Not at funerals I’ve attended, anyway.  No wonder the crowd exclaimed, “Behold!  A great prophet has risen among us!”  Prophet?  Hah!  This was none other than the Son of God, demolishing the ordinary and replacing it with God’s extraordinary power.

 

In every example I given you from Scripture, transformation came because God brushed ordinary lives with God’s extraordinary power.  The extraordinary moments in our lives, tragic or joyful, serve an important purpose.  They open us – make us vulnerable - to the transforming power of God. 

But some people go through life trying to fill their lives with one extraordinary moment after another.  They seem to resent that most of life is ordinary.  They’re constantly searching for mountaintop experiences.  Like people who go from church to church looking for a new spiritual high.  Or people who go from one superficial physical relationship to the next.  Looking for love in all the wrong places.  Some people seem to expect that all of life should be a beer commercial.  You’ve seen the ads where everybody is young, and beautiful, and happy, having lots of fun on the beach, or in the mountains or at a party.  Dream on!  Life isn’t like that.

 

The truth is this.  Most of life is very ordinary.  It’s almost impossible for life to be otherwise.  We don’t have the energy to live lives composed only of extraordinary moments.  The extraordinary times change us, but we need ordinary time to consolidate those changes into our experience.  It’s the ordinary times that help us integrate new experiences with old ones.

 

I’m grateful for the ordinary times in my own life in the same way I feel good when I arrive home from an exciting holiday and crawl into my own familiar bed.  I’m grateful for ordinary time in the church’s liturgical calendar, too.  We can count these Sundays by two methods: either by their distance from the flames, wind, and general hubbub of Pentecost, or by rejoicing in these Sundays’ ordinary, bread-and-butter quality that nourishes us with the simple spiritual sustenance we need for the ordinary times in our lives. 

 

But either way, you will have lived extraordinarily well if, by skillful reckoning of your experience, you make an ordinary life original.

 

Kevin Dixon

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Sermon preached at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale - May 16, 2010

 

My text this morning is a single verse from the Book of Proverbs.  A passage that has burrowed its way into a deep part of me, and has helped me to make a difficult decision. The decision to leave St. Mary’s – a community I love and respect beyond words; and you, to whom I owe an immense debt of gratitude – has been one of the most difficult decisions of my life.  The verse is Proverbs 3:5 - “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (NKJV).

 

We want to trust in God.  We say we do, and we believe ourselves.  It’s probably one of the main reasons we’re here today.  We want to trust God, and deep down inside we have an inkling that life is better if we give our whole self into the care of God.  We catch glimpses of it.  But to actually “let go and let God” seems risky.  So we continue to cling to life’s splintered branch – to security as we know it – and never take the leap of faith that will show us the ultimate trustworthiness of God.  So today, in light of the announcement that’s been read, and that single verse from Proverbs, I want to tease out the contrast between trusting in God and leaning on our own understanding.

 

You may have heard about a renowned incident from Canadian history involving the French tightrope walker, Charles Blondin.  In June of 1859, Blondin was the first person to cross a high wire stretched over the gorge at Niagara Falls.  One day during that famous summer, he pushed a wheelbarrow back and forth… blindfolded. The crowd “ooohed!” and “aaaahed!” as he carefully went one dangerous step after another.  Upon reaching the crowd at the embankment, Blondin addressed them: “Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?”  The crowd enthusiastically shouted, “Yes!”  Then he said to an especially enthusiastic man in the front row, “Sir, do you believe I can push a man across?”  “Absolutely!” the man replied, “You’re the greatest high wire artist in the world!  “Thank you for your confidence,” said Blondin.  “Will you be that man?”

 

This is the question God asks us.  Will you be that person?  Will you allow yourself to be moved from belief to faith?  There is a difference.  To believe is to give intellectual assent, but not necessarily to respond with action.  To trust is to take the risk that what we say we believe is something to pin our lives on.

 

Michel de Certeau was a Jesuit priest in France who wrote an important book called The Practice of Everyday Life.  In it, he talks about the pretense of belief. The pretense of belief is not about the energy of convictions, but about their inertia.  He quotes the Jewish historian Léon Poliakov who quipped, “Jews are French people who, instead of no longer going to church, no longer go to synagogue.”  The truth of this quip could be applied to other things. “I belong to a particular political party because in the last election I voted for them.”  “I am a social activist because I signed a petition once.”  In all these statements is the assumption that unless you claim belief in something else, then it must be true that you are still affiliated with the cause you once espoused ( p. 177).  But in fact, it may be an affiliation founded on inertia rather than genuine conviction.  It stands to reason, then, that, for some people, their identity as Christians is merely a vestige of a former identity – in which they, or their parents, were once invested.  We do not move from the pretense of belief to the act of believing – of walking by faith – until our everyday actions testify to our claim of faith.

 

Michel de Certeau is good to quote if you want to impress your friends at cocktail parties.  Even better if you can quote him in French.  But the core of his concept about belief versus faith is that genuine faith is intentional.  Deliberate.  Active not passive.  People of genuine faith live differently from those who have a mere pretense of belief.  People of active faith aim for heartfelt trust in God rather than relying on self, assets, reputation, or intellect to see them through.  Will we allow ourselves to be moved from the pretense of belief to the expression of faith?

 

It’s a question to ask ourselves.  Will we trust God with our whole heart rather than lean on our own understanding?

 

The story goes that an elderly woman had no money to pay her rent.  At church on Sunday, she said to her pastor, “I prayed today that God would provide for my needs,” and she told the pastor about her financial dilemma.  The next afternoon, the last day of the month, the pastor turned up at the door of her house, rent money in hand, determined to see her prayer fulfilled, having paid a couple of visits to generous parishioners in the morning.  The pastor knocked on the door, but nobody answered.  So the pastor went away.  The next day the woman was evicted.  The pastor said to her, “I came to your house yesterday with enough money to pay the rent, but nobody answered when I knocked.”  She replied, “I heard someone at the door, but I was afraid it was the landlord, so I didn’t respond.”

 

Could it be that we profess belief in the power of prayer but do not have faith to trust in God for a response?  Do we say we believe in God, but hesitate to allow our limited perceptions of the nature of God to be challenged?  Do we come to church, but allow our pew to be warmed more than our heart?  Do we lean on our own understanding?

 

For a while now I have been reflecting on Proverbs 3:5. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (NKJV).  “Lean on” is used here in the sense of relying upon or trusting someone or something for help or protection. When we lean against a wall or on a cane, we trust it to support us. If it should fail to do its job, we will fall to the ground and perhaps be hurt. Relying on our own understanding compares to leaning on a cane that cannot bear our weight; it is unreliable for support. It is dangerous to rely solely on our own wisdom or understanding because human understanding is shaped by limited experience, it is flimsy and prone to fail us.  It is a narcissism of small things.  So, over and over again, the Bible urges us to remember God, and to trust God to guide our conduct and our decision-making: where we will live, where we will work, how we will serve God.

 

To trust is to wait upon God, to be attentive to what God wants for us.  To trust is to relinquish control.  To lean on ourselves is to choose our own path.  There are many pitfalls in this.  We cannot ask God to conform to our plans.  To lean on ourselves and our own understanding is to crave mastery of our own destiny.  It is to hide when God comes to the door. 

 

Perhaps you know the poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” about a forked footpath, in an autumn forest, strewn with fallen leaves.  The message of the poem is this:  we cannot know, before we have chosen one fork or the other, where the decision will take us or what difference it will make.  And we cannot know, ever, if we made the best decision.  I find myself at such a fork in the road, and so do you.  So now, we must have the serenity to trust that what is said at the end of the eucharist is true: that God’s power working in us can do infinitely more than we can imagine.  To know that all our times and travels are ultimately in God’s hands.

 

Here is Frost’s poem:

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

For it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Let us abandon the pretense of belief.  May each of our lives and the life of this fine and faithful parish be characterized by radical dependence on God.    Let us be open to God’s movement.  To allow God – and not ourselves – to have the final say.  This will be the way that makes all the difference.

 

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge God, and God will make straight your paths.”  Amen.

 

 

Kevin Dixon

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Sermon preached at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale - May 2, 2010

 

If you were to sum up in one word all the sermons you’ve ever heard, all the Sunday School lessons you’ve been taught, if you were asked to capture in a single word the heart of the gospel, what would that word be?  Years ago, a girl in her late teens became a member of the small town parish where I worked.  She had been raised in a religious sect whose bearded leaders were wary of any viewpoint different from their own.  One day Tina said to me, “You know, Kevin, when I was a little girl, the word I always associated with God was fear.  It wasn’t until recently that I’ve come to see that God is love.”  I felt a sense of relief when Tina told me about her move from the fear of God to trust in the love of God.  And I bet most of us here would agree that the essence of our faith is captured by that single word: “love.” 

 

God loves us.  This is the most important conviction we can ever have.  We are loved.  This is the sum of all the books in the Bible, all the cathedrals ever built, all the sermons ever preached.  We are precious in God’s sight.  From a manger in Bethlehem to a cross at Calvary, to an empty tomb at Easter, Jesus’ whole purpose was to show us that we are cherished within the heart of God.

 

Presumably, since we’re in this building this morning it’s fair to say most of us here have laid claim to this conviction.  We’ve come to the conclusion that God’s grace applies to us.  We’ve accepted Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives.  We’ve been baptized.  We’ve been confirmed.  We’ve filled out a pledge card.  We’re in!  We’re in, we belong, and it feels good.

 

Having said this, I know for a fact not everybody here feels they’re in.  Not everybody wants to be in.  Some are ambivalent about God and any claims about him.  Some people are here because they’re curious.  They like sitting on the edge.  Maybe you’re one of these people, dabbling your toes in the water.  Some are here because they’re searching or doubting, and looking for answers.  Some of you are here because you’re attached to somebody who’s in, and that somebody wants you to be in, too.  Maybe you’re here because you like the building and the atmosphere of the place, or because you’re staying away from somewhere else, or because you want to scrutinize these so-called Christians to see if they cut muster.  You’re sitting on the edge, splashing. 

 

Then again, maybe you’re not like any of these at all.  You’re like a shivery person on the high diving board, knees knocking, teeth chattering, hugging yourself tightly as you screw up the courage to spread your arms wide, to plunge into the pool of love, to be immersed by grace.  And someday, maybe you’ll take that leap.

 

Whatever the reasons we’re here, God welcomes us all.  And, odd as it sounds, some people resent this.  Some people don’t like the idea that God’s love flows so widely. That God welcomes people different from themselves.  Who haven’t been here so long.  Who haven’t earned their keep.  Maybe they think such profligate affection makes God sound like a bleeding heart.   

 

It won’t make you feel any better to learn that this is nothing new.  Religions and religious people have always tried to erect fences around God and themselves.  In the Old Testament, the Jews wrestled with the question of circumcision.  For the boys, you were in or out depending on the answer.  In the early days of the church, the question was about other ritual practices, like eating pork, shellfish, or food sacrificed to pagan idols.  When the Puritans came to North America to escape persecution in Europe, they devised civil laws to prevent the violation of the Sabbath, to keep their women pure, and to reinforce other taboos they concocted in the name of Jesus.   Sometimes they burned or drowned people who didn’t conform.  Unwittingly, they became agents of the kind of persecution they had fled. 

 

Today, as fence-builders agonize over who is in and who is out, the focus is on sex.  They search the scriptures for proof-texts to justify the limits they would impose.  And, in this age when some are threatened by social discourse characterized by “inter-” everything – interfaith, interpolation, intercourse, intercultural, intermarriage, intervention, and interpretation – fence-builders increasingly strain to claim that Jesus is the only way to God.  They want to keep the “inter-s” out. Like terrible figures from our history who have obsessed about racial hygiene, they strive for a superior faith that is pure, clear, and undiluted – just so long as they’re on the inside of the fence.

 

In the Book of Acts we read about the apostle Peter’s dream.  Doesn’t it seem peculiar that Acts 10 gives a comprehensive description of Peter’s dream, and that chapter 11 then repeats a blow-by-blow, word-for-word, identical accounting of the same dream?  Repetition is the mother of all learning.  It seems intended that readers of the Book of Acts should learn that, beyond any shadow of doubt, God’s grace extends even to Greeks and Romans and Ethiopians.  That we should know everyone is welcomed.

 

Everyone is welcomed!  Do you remember Jesus’ parable about farm workers hired at the crack of dawn who resented the Johnny-come-lately labourers hired an hour before quitting time, but who earned the same pay packet as the early risers?  The problem was that the big boss was treating these guys with soft hands and clean jeans exactly the same as the industrious workers with sore backs and sunburns at the end of a long hot day. 

 

“What kinda way to run a business is this?” must have been the complaint among those who felt underpaid.  Whatever happened to equitable labour standards?  An honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work! Never mind that they’d agreed to the usual daily wage when they started work, and got what they’d agreed to.  It just didn’t seem fair.

 

Some of us know what this feels like, don’t we?  Just goes to show, it doesn’t take much to get resentful of people who haven’t played by the usual rules and still win.  People who haven’t lived by the traditional values we’ve always associated with being an upstanding member of society… you know, the kind who go to church.  It’s fine to say God’s grace is boundless until somebody tests the limits and pushes down fences, and moves the boundaries beyond where we’ve ever gone before.

 

This is what Jesus did. He pushed the limits to help us know, and trust, and live in the confidence that there is no limit to God’s love.  That no walls can contain God’s grace.  The parables and dreams and exhortations recorded in the New Testament aren’t just stories from an old leather book.  They’re God’s living word, to you and me, telling us that God’s welcoming embrace includes even those who don’t give a fig for doctrine, orthodoxy, or tradition. 

 

This Jesus touched people nobody touched. This was the quality of the faith of Jesus, whose friends didn’t usually get invited to nice parties; Jesus, who criticized the people generally held above reproach; Jesus, who cared for people nobody cared about.  This storyteller was the same Jesus whose Christmas card list included grumpy innkeepers and lowly shepherds.  Jesus, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with thieves on Good Friday and celebrated Easter in a graveyard.  That Easter morning was the big event that confirmed everything about what Jesus believed.   And what Jesus taught us to believe is that everybody’s welcomed.

 

This is what Jesus says to his disciples, then and now.  That God’s love is unconfined.  Sure, you may have left everything to follow me, Jesus says to us, but don’t

think your relinquished assets can be used to hold God ransom.  God will love boundlessly, extravagantly, and generously whether the people God loves conform to your standard of who’s in and who’s out, or not. 

 

There’s something more to be said in all of this about the manner of faith.  Sometimes, sadly, the truth of our faith has been denied in the manner by which we have declared it.  We have preached love lovelessly.  We have declared the gospel of grace gracelessly.  We have spoken of the divine mercy mercilessly, and have ourselves led others to unbelief.  How are our Jewish friends to believe us when we speak of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ when they have seen so little of it in our treatment of Jews throughout history?  Not all who profess the gospel of God’s boundless love are loving, and pride of religion has led to hate.  When it does, our faith is discredited and we deny the spirit of Christ.  The litmus test is not whether we meet some standard of faith in Jesus, but whether we express the faith of Jesus, who loved endlessly, lavishly, and cheerfully.

 

God’s embrace extends to everyone who wants to follow in the way of Christ.  The way of truth and compassion.  The way that leads to life.  And God welcomes them whether they’re on our Christmas list or not. 

 

God wants to do things in your life, to give you gifts, to help you grow, to make you strong.  God loves you just the way you are, and way too much to leave you that way.  It doesn’t matter whether you come to God when you’re still in short pants or when you are grey-haired, God’s grace is more than sufficient.  There’s lots to go around.  And you are welcomed.

 

Kevin Dixon

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Sermon preached at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale -April 17, 2010

 

Text: Acts 9:1-6

 

There’s a 17th century painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio called Conversion on the Way to Damascus.  There are three figures in the painting.  Saul lies on his back flattened by a divine flash, reaching out to heaven, arms beseeching God’s deliverance.  He’s been struck supernaturally blind.  The second figure is a muscular horse, oblivious to the divine light that defeated his rider. The third is an aged groom, who fiddles with the horse’s bridle, also ignorant of God’s intervention. Only Saul, soon known as Paul, is attentive to this illuminating bolt of faith.

 

It’s an insightful portrayal by Caravaggio.  We sometimes think of Damascus Road experiences as big, dramatic, visible, public events that change our lives and ripple out to affect everybody around us.  But at the time Caravaggio did this painting, European society was just starting to take hold of the idea of individualism.  The idea that individuals possess needs, goals, and desires apart from other persons was a new concept.  It’s something we take for granted now.  But Caravaggio was radical to endorse this new concept of individualism by portraying the conversion of Paul as a subjective experience.  Something visible only to him.

 

There’s a dark side to individualism.  It’s not all bad though.  One good thing is that we’ve now come to accept, for the most part, that one person’s point of view on any question is not necessarily shared universally.  Accepted truth is less widely accepted now.  We’ve learned the benefits of questioning our assumptions.

 

It’s important to be attentive to our own blind spots.  And this story of Paul’s conversion, in the book of Acts, suggests the possibility of being healed of them.

 

Let me say three things.  First, to be healed of our blind spots, we must be willing to hold up to the light those notions we cherish that have been shaped by our limited experience. 

 

Let me give you one example of what I mean.  It seems to me that most of life can be understood.  We discover this on the basis of lived experience.  Life may present us with some problems, but if we ponder these difficulties with enough energy and careful thought we will eventually find a solution to many of them.  Now, let’s suppose that nine-tenths of life can be comprehended by rational analysis.  For that portion of life – those 9/10 - there are reasons that explain why things happen the way they do.  Most of the time, we find an answer.  And so we encounter one of our blind spots.  It’s the notion that if we can understand the problems that occur in nine-tenths of our life, we should be able to find all the reasons for all the things that happen to us.

 

But it’s not that way.  No matter how much technical competence or additional knowledge we may apply to that last one-tenth of our experience, we won’t find an answer.  That’s because some things in life occur for no reason.  It’s not that God willed something to happen or not happen.  There is simply no reason.  God’s created order contains a degree of randomness.  Jesus alluded to this when his disciples asked him, “Master, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”  Jesus’ responded, “Neither sinned.”  Simple as that.  It just happened. 

 

This idea that all of life can be comprehended rationally is a blind spot that can afflict us until we’ve examined it, and allowed ourselves to be healed of it.  But the example I’ve given may be just one example of many of our cherished notions, informed by limited experience, that deserve to be brought out into the light.

 

Here’s the second thing I want to say.  To be healed of our blind spots, we must be open to the possibility that those who think differently have a perception of reality that is just as valid as ours.  When Saul-who-became-Paul set out on the road to Damascus, he was in a rage.  He was infuriated by this new movement of believers who claimed Jesus was the messiah.  Up until this point in his life, he had experienced equilibrium in his faith.  He was a well-educated Jew, he lived in Jerusalem where he dwelt at the centre of Judaism, he possessed a spiritual map rooted in ancient religious law that gave him comfort and a sense of stability.  But these upstart Christians were claiming that Jesus had brought them to a renewed expression of the ancient faith.  A faith that was informed by Abraham, who trusted in God without benefit of the law.  These Christians claimed a faith that pre-dated the Torah.  The first followers of Jesus didn’t say the Jews were wrong, they held to the conviction that Jesus had restored the essence of the faith.

 

When Paul had his blinding and destabilizing encounter with the spirit of Jesus on the road to Damascus, he realized that Christ had, indeed, come not to “abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them” (Mt. 5:17).  Paul became open at last to the possibility that those who thought differently from him were not necessarily wrong.  And by embracing their perception, and combining it with what insight he already possessed, his faith became richer.

 

Yesterday, a dozen of us from this parish attended a diocesan conference with Alan Roxborough, a leading Canadian educator who focuses on the formation of leaders for churches with the potential to thrive into the 21st century.  Alan told the story of an experience he had among the lay leadership of a large Presbyterian church.  In the middle of his presentation, one of the leaders stood up and expressed her sadness that her children had been raised in the church, but that now not one of her grandchildren attended church.  She felt she’d done all she could, but somehow she’d failed.  She wanted to share her faith with her grandchildren, and for them to share the faith she possessed.  Alan said there was a pin-drop silence in the room as she tearfully expressed her sadness about her family. 

 

What came out of the consultation with the Presbyterian leadership was that the church decided to organize an opportunity for grandparents to interview the grandchildren of other grandparents in the congregation.  It was a kind of “grandchild exchange” in which the older people listened as carefully as they could to young people’s perceptions of the church.  And what they discovered was that, if they really wanted children to come to church, the grandparents had to adjust their perceptions of what church should look like.  They had to consider that the children had a perception of reality as valid as their own.  That it might not be a matter of getting the kids to see things their way, but for the older folks to begin looking at the church through the young people’s lenses.

 

So that’s the second thing I wanted to say.  That to be healed of our blind spots, we must be open to the possibility that those who think differently from us have a perception of reality that is just as valid as ours. 

 

The last thing I want to say is this.  To be healed of our blind spots, we must be honest enough to acknowledge that we may actually possess blind spots! 

 

H.G. Wells wrote a short story called The Country of the Blind.  In it, a mountaineer named Nunez slips and falls into a remote valley in Ecuador where he discovers a strange village where every baby is born blind.  No one in the village has ever known sight.  At first, Nunez thinks his ability to see will give him the capacity to rule the valley like a king.  But the villagers perceive his obsession with this fifth sense as a mark of instability.  Faced by the impossibility of escape from the valley, and craving acceptance, Nunez very nearly succumbs to their perception of his condition.  For Nunez, his blindspot was to think that his experience would be readily accepted by the villagers as superior to their own experience.  For the villagers, their blindspot was the inability to consider that there could be any reality other than their own.

 

To be healed of our blind spots, we must be honest enough to acknowledge that we may actually possess blind spots! 

 

To be healed of our blind spots, we must be open to the possibility that those who think differently from us have a perception of reality that is just as valid as ours. 

 

To be healed of our blind spots, we must be willing to hold up to the light those notions we cherish that have been shaped by our limited experience. 

 

To conclude, let me put in a good word for blind spots!  When I was a teenager, I sometimes spent a summer day on Flowerpot Island.  Beneath the surface of this island is a warren of underground passages.  As boys we would worm our way down into these caves, and push further than most picnickers were willing to go, until we came to a low room with stalagtites hanging from the ceiling, and stalagmites and smooth calcium deposits on the floor.  And while we were deep inside the cave, we would always turn off our flashlights just to experience that darkness that made our breathing sound louder.  A blackness that had never known sunlight.  But a darkness that we could overcome with the flick of switch.

 

In my life, some of the darkest and most bewildering times have also been catalysts for new insight.  Maybe it’s been the same for you.  And some of these experiences may not have been visible to others, but they were little conversion moments.  The dark times aren’t exactly the kind of experiences we hope for, are they?  In the midst of them, we long for a handy “on” switch.  But moments of darkness remind us of the value of clarity, and deepen our sense of longing for sight.

 

The Book of Acts goes on to say that Paul spent three days in a state of blindness until he met a disciple in Damascus named Ananias.  For three days, he stumbled around, nothing like the self-assured Pharisee he’d been just a week before.  If he hadn’t spent some time in the dark, perhaps his life’s purpose, as a leader and a person of remarkable and inspiring faith, would never have come to light!

 

Perhaps that’s why there’s so much poignancy and faith in the baptism phrase: “Receive the light of Christ, to show that you have passed from darkness to light.”

 

Kevin Dixon

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Sermon preached at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale

Easter Sunday – April 4, 2010

 

We’re fortunate to have a journalist like Douglas Todd on the staff of the Vancouver Sun.  As a writer on religion and philosophy, he deserves his award-winning reputation, and he provokes us to think important thoughts.  Yesterday, he quoted Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple computers, who appreciates life more now after a tumour on his pancreas gave him a brush with death.  Speaking to a group of Stanford University graduates, Jobs said, “Death is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”  And then, speaking from personal experience, Jobs said to the grads, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

 

Truer words were never spoken.  Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

 

I received a phone call at my office one day from a woman whose father was dying.  He attended this church years ago, but I’d never met him.  The woman wanted me to come and pray with her father before he died.  So I did.  I was welcomed into his well-appointed condominium, and politely ushered into his nicely furnished bedroom, where he lay – skin-and-bones – propped up in bed by a generous heap of luxurious goose down pillows.  I have to say, I liked the man from the moment I met him.  And I’ve never forgotten his ironic wit.  “I guess I’m a little late getting around to this,” he said to me in a weak voice, “But I guess there’s no time like the present!”  That’s for sure.  He had nothing but the present.  So he talked, and I listened, and we prayed, and within a day he died.

 

That conversation captured all the clichés about coming to the end of life.  Moments like that one exist so we can get our affairs in order.  Settle our accounts.  Get right with God.  Some people call it “cramming for the finals.”  Imminent death does, indeed, have a remarkable capacity to clarify the mind.

 

When we get to the end of our lives, and we have only enough time left to do the really important things, the important things are the things we should do.  On Good Friday, Jesus was nailed to a cross.  As he hung there, sucking his last few breaths into blood-soaked lungs, he noticed his mother standing at the foot of the cross with one of his disciples.  What did Jesus do?  He summoned his strength, investing a first and then a second of the few breaths left to him, to say, “Woman, behold your son!” “Son, behold your mother!”  And the Bible says from that hour the disciple took her to his own home (Jn 19:27).

 

Even as he was dying, Jesus acted on his concern for those who would be left behind.

 

You may have met people who – even in the face of their own death – reached out to others.  Showed concern for those to be left behind.  It seems that our own suffering can deepen our compassion.  I remember Linda Hoita.  I first shook hands with Linda at the side of a hospital bed occupied by a woman with only a few days left to live.  Linda had cancer herself, and she knew it.  It was her cancer – her own imminent death – that motivated her to go into palliative care wards and private homes to make friends with strangers, fellow cancer patients.  She didn’t get paid to do it.  She just did it.  Linda was sick, but that was her life.  She knew her time was limited, and she didn’t want to waste it living someone else’s life.

 

I wonder if, when I get to a stage when my own death is imminent – and I will – whether I will be concerned for others, or whether I will be preoccupied with my own needs.  I know a woman who was ill, and who knew her death was imminent, and that when she died she would be leaving behind three small children.  Her name was Drew.  What did she do the day before she died?  She went to the grocery store and bought as many groceries as her station wagon could hold.  She didn’t want her children to lose their mother and have an empty refrigerator.  Drew was preoccupied with the needs of others.  Do you wonder how you will be?

 

Jesus’ death, and his kind words spoken from the cross, remind us that the way of Christ is the way of compassion.  This past week, we had Beth Baskin, from the national church’s World Relief and Development agency in Toronto, as our guest speaker throughout Holy Week.  She told us that after the earthquake in Haiti, the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund received donations from people in remote northern churches that collected coins or held bake sales to raise money for earthquake relief.  Tens and twenties came from people in nursing homes who wrote in shaky hand-writing that they were sorry they couldn’t give more.  Elderly Canadians who have lived through depressions and wars know what it is to suffer, they know how important compassion is because they have experienced it.  And some of them are sorry they can’t do more, but the compassion they can show, they do.

 

But of course, we don’t need to wait ’til we’re at the end of our lives to do the important things, do we?  For many of us, still caught up in the daily affairs of life, the end of life is not something we think a lot about.  Maybe we’d do well to remember the words of Samuel Johnson:  “That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.”  If we remembered sooner, maybe we’d be better at the important things now.

 

Is it possible that when things are going well, and we’re preoccupied with planning our next vacation, and thinking that that would be a good time to have the hardwood floors refinished, there is a risk of complacency about more important things?  In marriage, complacency could mean unhappiness.  Giving priority to what is inconsequential makes, in the end, a wasted life.

 

I wonder if important things slipped the minds of two of the disciples when they went home from the empty tomb on the first Easter.  Simon Peter and John came to the tomb, and stooped to look in, and saw the linen cloths lying there, and they believed that Jesus was risen, and then the Bible says they “went back to their homes” (Jn 20:10).  Doesn’t that seem like an oddly, anticlimactic statement?  The Bible says they found the tomb empty, they believed Jesus was risen, then they went home… they just went home.  Didn’t they think to tell anybody?  Jesus was crucified, laid in a tomb, and raised to life again on the third day by the power of the Creator of the universe.  Oh yeah, the resurrection.  That was kind of an important detail, don’t you think?  Silly, forgetful disciples!

 

I’m just playing with the text, of course.  There was more to the story than faulty memories.  But, in all seriousness, I can’t help wondering if when things are going well for you and me, when the people we love are alive and well, when we have friends and we feel secure, when we have homes to return to for Easter dinner… if it isn’t in these really good times that we are most likely to forget about the important things.

 

In the middle of life, and our schedules are full, so often we overlook the important while attending to the urgent.  The tyranny of the urgent.  In the midst of life, when things are hectic, there’s a kind of a shell game happening right beneath our eyes – we may lose sight of our priorities and find ourselves distracted by what others tell us we should pay attention to.  Are you investing your life in what is important to you?   Your time is limited.  Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

 

None of us would ask God for an experience of hardship to help us get in touch with our compassion.  Instead, let us ask God to put us in touch with our gratitude for our lives’ good things so we will channel our gratitude toward what is important, like caring for others who find life hard.

 

Listen, if you go away from listening to this Easter sermon determined to live today as if it were your last; if you feel renewed in your commitment to invest your time and energy in what is important to you – priorities that help you to be your very best self; if you go home today reminded of the importance of gratitude and what you have to feel grateful for; and if you re-commit to putting that gratitude into action, then good.  I’ll feel that I’ve used my limited time here well.  But please… don’t just “go home.”

 

If Christians around the world, gathered everywhere to remember Jesus’ resurrection, are renewed in the desire to bring new life to the world, then Jesus’ resurrection will not be just a historical event.  It will be Easter today.

 

Rev. Kevin Dixon

 

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Sermon preached Palm/Passion Sunday at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale

March 28, 2010

 

Do you know how many times I’ve stood in this pulpit and preached?  From my perspective, it’s been three times each Sunday, thirty times a year, for more than a dozen years:  3 x 30 x 12 = 1080.  That’s a lot of sermons you’ve heard from me (the skiers may have missed a few)!

 

It’s a challenging task to preach Sunday by Sunday.  Those of us who have accepted this challenge hope that our listeners will take something home.  That a seed will be planted.  That faith will take root, and grow, and blossom, and bear fruit.  And the honest preachers admit to the hope that this task will enrich our own spirituality, that we’ll learn something ourselves from the words God gives us to share. 

 

Some preachers, hoping to drive home the message to their listeners, or tired of listening to the sound of their own voice, pound the pulpit, or resort to gimmicks.  Palm Sunday is a good day for gimmicks.  Somebody could ride a donkey, and everybody else could shout!  What they’d shout is anybody’s guess.  Maybe it would be, “Blessed is the one who comes in God’s name!” Or, “Crucify him!”  Or maybe, “Somebody should clean up after that donkey!”

 

By the time Jesus got to Palm Sunday, he’d preached a lot of sermons.  The Sermon on the Mount.  The Sermon on the Plain.  From a boat.  In the synagogue.  At the temple.  In town squares.   From time to time he repeated himself.  After all, repetition is the mother of all learning. Jesus noticed that some of his listeners showed up just to see if he’d use a gimmick – do a miracle – to wow the crowd.  And sometimes he did.

 

But by the time he got to Palm Sunday, the gimmicks were pretty well exhausted.  I’m sure Jesus was too.  Exhausted. Weary of worldly rejections of God’s welcome.  Beaten down from bumping up against people’s passion for money and power.  Tired of trumpeting God’s goodness to the gospel deaf.  Lots of listeners just never saw that the gospel call was for them, personally.  And so they just never got around to coming to Jesus.

 

Remember the old children’s song based on the parable of the wedding banquet?  “I cannot come.  I cannot come to the banquet, don’t trouble me now.  I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow. I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum.  Please hold me excused, I cannot come.”  It must have been tiring for Jesus to find that some of his listeners didn’t care about much more than cows and fields and temporal comfort.

 

What’s a preacher to do?  Is it possible that we preachers ask too much of our listeners?  That the price of following Jesus is too high relative to the rewards we enjoy already?  After all, who needs God when one can afford an earthly life that is quite heavenly?  Who needs God when a little spiritual consolation can be bought in the form of a therapeutic retreat, a bottle of massage oil, and a CD of soothing music with nature sounds?  Who needs God when government lottery profits can fund agencies to get poor kids off the street, and give us the dream of a cash bonanza?  We’ve got to admit, a little disposable income can drive us a long way from depending on God. 

 

I heard last week that a friend was shot, once in the arm and once in the abdomen, in El Salvador.  Francis – a good Christian man – is the Anglican bishop’s driver who travels everywhere in El Salvador with him.  The bullet that broke Francis’ arm was probably intended for Bishop Barahona, who was in the passenger seat.  Francis is recovering in hospital and the bishop is under protection after this assassination attempt.

 

I wonder what Francis is thinking as he lies sweating in that hot hospital bed.  Is he remembering the dozens of sermons he’s heard from the bishop about taking up a cross to follow Jesus?  About the risk of being a disciple?  Is he carefully reading the fine print on his job description?  Maybe he’s thinking, “I didn’t sign up for this!”  Or, “So, this is what it costs to follow Jesus.”

 

Or the bishop’s thoughts: “Are my commitments worthy of putting others at risk?”

 

What does it cost you and me to follow Jesus?  I spoke to someone on the phone this week about the cost of discipleship who said, “Can you imagine?  My biggest worry is that what God wants for me isn’t as nice as what I want for myself!”   So, what if God does ask of you and me – comfortable Canadian Christians – something that requires sacrifice or pain, or at the very least inconvenience?  Assassination attempts are inconvenient.  So is crucifixion.  On Palm Sunday, we remember that Jesus walked a path he didn’t want to travel.  Are we still willing to follow when God’s path leads where we don’t want to go?

 

To provide a platform for asking this question is one reason this church was built.  It’s a question that puts me into this pulpit week after week – what did I say… 1080 times?  What does it cost you and me to be disciples of Jesus Christ?  It’s a big question.  And, if we care about the answer, it’s guilt-provoking.  Sorry about that.  If you’re like me, you know that none of us lives up to all the ideals we hold for ourselves. It’s hard to break free of the conditioning of our culture.  Somebody really does have to tend to the family, feed the cow, plough the fields, and manage the commitments… how are we supposed to do all that and attend the banquet Jesus invites us to?

 

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said, “To become ‘an admirer of Jesus’ is much easier than to become a follower.”  The difference is that an admirer looks at the life and teaching of Jesus from a distance.  As something that doesn’t apply personally.  For an admirer, the church is like a fine art gallery where it’s possible to gaze upon and remember the glories housed there.  But the cost is too high to take anything home.  In contrast, a follower knows that the gospel is personal.  A follower internalizes the message.  That’s why the church’s evangelical call has been “to take Jesus into our hearts.”  To make it the life and teaching of Jesus a part of us.  Unlike admirers, followers take the glory home.  And in order to make room for it, we may need to clean house.  Get rid of the things that take up too much space.  Maybe we already have more cows than we need.

 

The opening to the service today said we follow Jesus during this Holy Week “from the glory of the palms to the glory of the resurrection by way of the dark road of suffering and death.”  From glory to glory by way of darkness.  If we’re to hear the message that this week sends, we must see that Jesus teachings, his life, his passion, his death, and his resurrection are an organizing metaphor for our lives. 

 

There’s an exercise that can help us take the gospel to heart.  Throughout this week, as we hear the scriptures of Holy Week, we might ask, “Which character am I in that story?”  Am I Peter, denying Christ three time?  Am I Simon, carrying Jesus’ cross to Calvary?  Am I Jesus, forgiving a penitent thief?  Am I Mary, taking burial spices to the Lord’s tomb?

 

It isn’t just Jesus’ Holy Week.  It isn’t just Jesus’ resurrection we will experience.  It is ours.  The promise of a holy week.  A promise of new life.  If only we take the promise to heart.

 

1080… 1081.

 

Kevin Dixon

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Sermon preached March 14, 2010

Text - 2 Corinthians 5:19-21

 

Last September the Dalai Lama made his second visit in recent years to Vancouver.  He has won the affection of many people here for his stalwart desire that China be reconciled to an independent Tibet, and he is regarded even more fondly for his compassion, wisdom and good humour. 

 

The Dalai Lama is both exile and ambassador.  He is the President of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.  He is also a spiritual ambassador to the world, widely respected for his message of harmony among all nations and religions.  As exile and ambassador, he is truly a good example.

 

The apostle Paul picks up on the theme of exiles and ambassadors in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians.  At the beginning of the chapter he bemoans the Christian’s experience of being exiled far from our “heavenly dwelling” (5:2).  He invokes the image of refugees living in flimsy tents – that is, in our physical bodies – here on earth.  We are spiritually exiled from our true home with God.  Then as the passage unfolds, Paul shifts from describing Christians as exiles and promotes us to the status of ambassadors.  “So we are ambassadors for Christ,” Paul says, “since God is making his appeal through us” (5:20).

 

One Bible commentator has called this section of Second Corinthians one of the most pregnant and important passages in all the writings of the apostle Paul.  In effect, Paul is hauling out a job description he’s just drafted and saying to us Christians:  “Here is your diplomatic portfolio.  Now, get to it!”

 

Let’s think, first of all, about what an ambassador does.  Last year, when some of us from here served as official observers at the election of a new president for the Republic of El Salvador, we met the Canadian ambassador, Claire Poulin.  In a quiet conversation she informed me that, depending upon the outcome of the election, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department saw the potential for revolution.  She gave me her cell phone number and told me that if we encountered political unrest she could move us to a safe place.  All’s well that ended well.  But this incident highlights one aspect of what an ambassador does:  she looks out for the well-being of her nation’s citizens with the authority of the nation’s head-of-state to support her.

 

As we work our way through our ambassadorial job description from Second Corinthians, we find this directive at verse 16:  “Regard no one from a human point of view.”  This statement implies two things at the same time.  On the one hand, Paul implies that ambassadors for Christ are to view others as though looking at them through the eyes of Christ.  Like a diplomat viewing citizens abroad through the lens of the nation.  On the other hand, this directive implies that we are to view no one as merely human, but to look for the presence of Christ in others and extend to each person the reverence owed to Jesus Christ.  Last year in El Salvador, Ambassador Poulin took upon herself the responsibility she carried in her capacity as a Canadian diplomat.  She wore the badge of our government looking out for us, viewing us through that lens.  And because she identified us as Canadians she extended the offer of particular care and concern.

 

So, how do people look when viewed through the eyes of Christ?  Some would have us believe that Christ views us primarily as miserable offenders.  Fallen.  Sinners.  Others would tell us that Christ looks upon us like bewildered rats scratching our way through a maze.  Lost.  Without direction.  But both these perspectives fail to consider the two-sided implication of Paul’s directive.  We are to look through the eyes of Christ in search of the face of Christ.  As though looking through an old family photo album, we should squint to identify the familiar faces of loved ones, and remind ourselves of what makes each person special.

 

Now, here’s another aspect of the spiritual diplomat’s job description in Second Corinthians.  The apostle Paul says, “God is making his appeal through us” (5:20). 

 

If you were to look at the Canadian Foreign Affairs website you would discover that the department has a publicly-stated mandate.  One aspect of this mandate is to ensure that Canada’s foreign policy reflects true Canadian values and advances our national interests.  A Canadian ambassador abroad has a responsibility to implement this mandate to the extent possible.

 

What is the appeal that God is making through us as Christ’s ambassadors?  What is our mandate?  According to this passage from Second Corinthians we are entreated to proclaim the message of God’s reconciling love, and to be reconciled to God ourselves.

 

It’s interesting.  The other day Diane and I drove past a small, fundamentalist church and noticed a large, vinyl banner above the front doors:  “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’ John 14:6.”  It’s a passage that gets quoted a lot these days.  And I remarked to Diane how curious it is that the most commonly quoted Bible verse among Christians used to be John 3:16.  “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  The message used to be:  God loves you.  Come into relationship with God and have eternal life.  Now, more and more, the message seems to be:  Jesus is the only way to God.

 

Did our mandate change, and I didn’t get the memo?  Paul says we’re to proclaim the message of God’s reconciling love and be reconciled ourselves.  We’re to live love.  We’re to live in a state of reconciliation.  I like Paul’s mandate.  I like this job description.  This diplomatic corps I can happily sign up for.  And one reason I like this job description is because it says that testifying to God’s love by word and deed is my responsibility. But the task of conversion is God’s job.  I don’t have the job of telling people, from other religions or no religion, that the story that gives their life meaning is inferior or wrong.  I don’t have the task of herding miserable offenders or scratching rats into God’s pen.  My responsibility is simply – and with respect – to share my experience, my story, how I have found meaning for my life through relationship with Jesus Christ.

 

I heard a remark a while ago about the wisdom of the First Nations people.  In the First Nations culture of the west coast, if you hear a story you don’t like, you don’t criticize how the story is wrong, or how you don’t like it.  You just tell a different story.  You tell your own story.

 

Or for another perspective, consider this quote from the Dalai Lama.  He said, “Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.”

 

The apostle Paul urged us to view others through the eyes of Christ.  To look for the face of Christ in those we meet.  And he entreated us to live reconciled lives.  Reconciled with God.  In harmony with one another.  Telling the story of God’s love in our own lives, by word, or even better, by action.

 

Someday, we will pack up our tents and leave this refugee camp.  And when we do, we will experience a homecoming like none we’ve ever known.  And we may very well be surprised and delighted by some of the people we will meet there.

 

Kevin Dixon

St. Mary’s Kerrisdale

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Sermon preached at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale, January 31, 2010

 

My text this morning is one of Jesus’ best known aphorisms.  It’s a pearl of wisdom Jesus tossed off after paying a visit to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.  No doubt, it applies to many situations.  Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (Lk 4:24).

 

What is it that makes us nod our head in agreement with this statement?  No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.  Maybe we nod because we know the truth of it from experience. 

 

If you’ve ever moved away from home, then returned for a visit with family at Christmas time, and remarked to your uncles and brothers and father after a festive dinner at the dining room table that it doesn’t seem right that the women should do all the clean up while the men sit at the table rubbing their fat bellies.  And if you found that your socially progressive views were not shared by everyone at the table, then you may know what it’s like to be an unwelcomed prophet in your hometown.

 

Parents chide their teenagers, “Be home by twelve.  Nothing good happens after midnight.”  Yeah, yeah. 

 

A concerned friend says to the workaholic, “If you don’t work out a better balance between your professional life and your personal life, something’s going to give at home.”  Yeah, yeah. 

 

My grandfather went to the same family doctor who’d treated him for years, and who’d told him time and again, “If you don’t quit smoking it’s going to kill you.”  “Yeah, yeah,” said my grandfather between puffs.  Then one day the doctor said, “Since you won’t listen to what I’m telling you, I’m not going to treat you any more.”  That shook him.  My grandfather quit smoking, but by then it was too late.

 

In light of Jesus’ wise dictum, I have three things I want to do this morning.  I want to talk about people who advocate change.  They’re the prophets.  I want to talk about people who resist change.  They have their reasons.  And I want to talk about what happens when necessary change does occur.   

 

Rabbi Abraham Heschel was one of the twentieth century’s best known Jewish writers on spirituality.  Rabbi Heschel said a prophet is someone who identifies and condemns destructive habits and assumptions (The Prophets, Vol. 1, New York: Harper Torch Books, 1962).  Heschel also noted that prophets tend to use agitated language.  They’re not best known for their spirit of inner harmony or poise. Prophets speak in burning, rather than shining, images.  They wrench us out of complacency.  In other words, prophets bug us.

 

Now I don’t know about you, but when somebody bugs me, and I don’t want to hear them – even when they’re right… especially when they’re right – I’ve got some proven strategies that work.  Tested methods for perpetuating complacency.

 

Sometimes it’s possible to flatter prophets out of prophesying.  This was the first strategy the Nazareth synagogue tried on Jesus.  Even though he’d just made the outrageous claim that he was the Messiah, the Bible says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth (Lk 4:22).  But flattery only works on prophets who are not particularly determined to advocate change.

 

Another time-honoured way to push prophets aside is to divert them.  If the rector starts talking about making changes in patterns of worship, or advocating some new outreach project, then somebody better get the rector focused on strengthening the Sunday School, otherwise something might happen before it’s too late!

 

Yet another way to silence a prophet is by out-and-out attack.  When, during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Archbishop Oscar Romero began challenging the political and economic status quo in El Salvador, he was assassinated by a single bullet through the heart while he elevated the chalice during the Eucharist.  Obviously, an extreme example.  But, attack was the strategy adopted by the Nazareth synagogue in response to Jesus’ agitated language about God’s expansive welcome even to those who did not fit the usual categories of belonging.  The mob tried to drive Jesus off an escarpment.

 

The last most popular way to deal with unruly prophets is to marginalize them, sometimes in cleverly seductive ways.  In the church, we sometimes do this with youth.  We create special programs for youth rather than encouraging their boisterous and youthful advocacy for change as part of the central life of the church.  We create special categories for youth in the church’s governing bodies.  We tell them they’respecial, we assure them that they’re the future of the church.  Of course, youth grow up; so by the time the future comes they’re adults.  Consequently, for youth, the future never comes and the church’s core remains the domain of grownups.

 

Flattery, diversion, attack, and marginalizing.  Four proven methods to silence those who advocate change.  Oh, and there’s one other.  Just ignore them.  Pretend you can’t hear what they’re saying.

 

But why?  Why do so many people resist change?  Well the fact is that it’s not change that people oppose.  What we really oppose is the experience of loss.  We don’t mind change so long as it comes without personal cost.  When indoor plumbing and central heating became widespread, not many people opposed the change. 

 

Change is fine so long as it comes with gains and not losses.  Of course, there’s almost always some dimension of loss that comes with change, even if it’s nothing more than the loss of what is familiar.  So when Jesus started telling religious people they needed not only to make room in their pews, but also in their hearts, for people different from themselves, he got some blowback.  And when people began to see that he was advocating not only for change, but questioning their longstanding attitudes, values, and behaviour, well then he earned himself a cross.

 

Human nature is such that we don’t see at the beginning of a process of change, when the prophet’s message is still a little rough around the edges, that the new situation could be better than the current condition.   We hear the prophet’s shrill voice.  We feel crowded by what seems unnecessary.  And what we see clearly is the potential for loss.  So, when it’s like this, we postpone change, we place the burden on somebody else, or we call on someone in authority to intervene and stop this thing before it passes the point of no return (Heifitz & Linsky, Leadership on the Line, p 13, Boston: HBS Press, 2002).

 

So, I’ve talked about those disruptive prophets who advocate change.  I’ve said a few things about why we resist change.  But, what would happen if we embraced necessary change, even change that disrupts the attitudes, values and behaviour we’re accustomed to?

 

Let’s talk about the benefits of change, especially as it relates to change in our experience of the Christian faith.  Change in the church.  Peter Senge is on the faculty of MIT.  He is the founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning.  He famously wrote a book called The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.  He advocates meditation and other forms of spiritual practice.  Senge remarked one time - to a roomful of Christian priests and ministers - that people are yearning for a spirituality that is characterized by a meaningful way of life.  Christianity, in contrast, presents itself as a system of belief.  The Christian faith is a way of life but this isn’t how it’s widely perceived or experienced.

 

So, assuming that at this church we want to expand our capacity to present the Christian faith as a way of life that draws us into a deeper experience of God, are we willing to do what needs to be done? 

 

A parish that presents the Christian faith as a way of life is a community of people talking to one another about their experience of God’s presence and action in their lives.  Would you describe this is as an overwhelming characteristic of St. Mary’s?  In a parish where the Christian faith is experienced as a way of life there is excitement about getting to know one another better, caring for one another, and reaching out to people we don’t know well.  Do you do this?  When Christianity is a meaningful way of life, the sense of community extends beyond Sundays and beyond the walls of the church, and people pray with one another, and confide in one another, and trust one another.  If someone were to ask you about St. Mary’s, would these be the characteristics at the top of your list?  A vital parish bears witness to the truth that faith is caught at least as much as taught.  We thrive on a principle of attraction, and not just promotion.

 

Two things are necessary to initiate necessary change.  One, is to examine our current way of doing things to see if it matches the outcome we want.  This demands mutual reflection, open and candid conversation, and questioning of old beliefs and assumptions.  Second, is to recognize when we’re off-track and make the necessary corrections to move us toward the goal.  This requires learning to let go, and being aware of how our current actions create problems and block the path (Senge, The Dance of Change, 1999).

 

Some of what I’ve said to you this morning has been about change in the church.  Maybe in light of what you’ve heard, you’ll decided we need to change… to take another step in the direction we need to go as a parish.  You’ve heard me say before that good is the enemy of great because often we’re prepared to settle for good enough.  Let’s take another step toward achieving greatness for the sake of God.

 

Some of what I’ve said to you this morning has been about resistance to change.  Maybe you’ll recognize something of yourself in what you’ve heard, and you’ll have the insight now to know what you need to do to be a more faithful follower of Jesus.

 

Some of what I’ve said to you has been about being an agent of change.  Some of you know, from your professional lives, or from your personal lives, or from a leadership role you exercise in the church, how challenging this can be.  You know what it is to ask the hard questions for which no easy answers exist.  You know how difficult it is to promote a shift in attitude, behaviour, and values.  Maybe now you won’t feel so alone in the good work you do.  Jesus of Nazareth was an agent of change.  Great things have been accomplished in Christ’s name, and the spirit of Christ continues to sustain us.  Let’s not be pushed off the edge by those who resist.  Instead, let’s work together, in harmony with God, to ensure that what Jesus began is completed - in you and in me - for the sake of the world.

 

Kevin Dixon

 

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Sermon preached at St. Mary’s Kerrisdale - January 3, 2010

Matthew 2:1-12

 

Today we celebrate the feast of Epiphany.  In some parts of the world, like the south of Ireland, it’s called Little Christmas.  It’s a custom in County Cork for Irish men to take on all the household duties for the day, and for the women to go out to the pub with their friends.

 

In popular culture, Epiphany is all about those three wise men, following a star, smoking rubber cigars - and their gifts: gold, myrrh, and Frank sent this.  But when the antics are set aside we recall that the word epiphany means “a sudden comprehension of the essence of something.”  Did you catch that?  A sudden comprehension of the essence of something.

 

Every January, at Epiphany, we’re invited to look back over our shoulders and take stock and, just as importantly, to look forward with some new vision.  We get our word, January, from Roman mythology. Janus was the god of gates and doors, of beginnings and endings, and he is usually depicted with two faces, one looking forward, the other back.

 

On this feast of Epiphany, let’s think about our journeys, past and future and today, and how we encounter – or miss – the action of God along the way.

 

There are crossroads on all our lives’ journeys.  Intersections.  Forks where the path veers left and right, and we’re not sure which way to go.  Our journeys are filled with moments of decision, and they are not always easy ones.  Moments to decide between right and wrong.  Ethical decisions.  And, at times, we’re required even to make complex choices between right and right, what we might call character-defining moments.   Sometimes these moments demand a measure of experience we simply don’t possess.  Think of them in your own life.

 

Do you remember when you left home and took your first job?  At first you didn’t know if you would get a job, and once you had one you hardly knew what to do with it.  What if you failed? 

 

Some of you remember when your first child was born.  What doctor in his or her right mind would let someone with absolutely no experience take such a vulnerable and tiny baby away from the safety of the nursery into a world full of germs and biting dogs and dangerous people.  Only a week before, you had been eating the piece of toast that fell to the floor, and now you would listen to yourself saying, “Don’t touch that, it’s dirty!”

 

Do you remember when someone you truly cared for died?  It seemed impossible that the grief that filled your every thought didn’t seep from your pores, didn’t rub off onto everything you touched, wasn’t visible to everyone you met.  It seemed that nothing would ever heal the pain inside you.

 

So think for a moment of the difference it could make if you had the absolute assurance that God was there to hold you when you thought you’d fall, to encourage you when you lost hope.

 

Back in the 19th century, there was an Englishman named Hugh Redwood who was well known as an orator, and also for his work with children in the slums of London.  He went through a particularly trying time in his own life.  He was confused and didn’t know which way to go.  Until one evening, in the home of a friend, he picked up a copy of the Bible and opened it to Psalm 59.  His eyes fell upon verse 10 which read, “The God of my mercy shall prevent me.”  Now, in the days when the King James Version of the Bible was written, to prevent didn’t mean to stop something from happening, like it does today; it meant to go before, to go ahead of someone.  The God of my mercy shall go ahead of me.  But, in Hugh Redwood’s borrowed Bible, an anonymous hand had penciled an alternate translation in the margin:  “My God, in God’s loving-kindness, will meet me at every turn.”

 

Imagine how strengthening and reassuring it could feel to repeat those words to yourself whenever you feel frightened or alone.  When you don’t know which choice to make or which way to go next, or you feel that you’ve been off the path for a while.  My God, in God’s loving-kindness, will meet me at every turn.

 

How could the magi possibly have known what their journey to Bethlehem would show them?  They didn’t even know the way there!  They relied on a mystical star to guide them.  What if they turned right instead of left?  They’d have ended up in Lebanon!  And yet, when they came to their destination – a two-bit town on the edge of the Judean wilderness – they encountered God in a way and in a place that could least be expected.  It was an epiphany.  And their story is one that can inform our experience.  Like he did for the magi, Jesus meets us.  We can be reassured by the conviction that God, in God’s loving-kindness, meets us at every turn.

 

I’d like you to notice something peculiar about the visit of the magi.  The gospel of Matthew tells us that after their visit to Bethlehem they returned to their own country by another road.  Could it be that the gospel writer wants us to know that, once we’ve encountered God, we can never return to our lives the same as we were before we met God?  That our journeying will be different?  That we will be changed by the epiphany of God’s presence and action in our lives?

 

James Taylor wrote a song inspired by the visit of the magi.  He called it “Home By Another Way.”  When we’ve acknowledged Christ as Lord, as the magi did, we go home by another way.

 

This morning, two children – Andrew and Siena – are being baptized.  They were dressed and bundled into the car and brought to church today in the usual way.  Andrew and Siena’s mom and dad probably drove to church by the same route as always.  But they’ll go home by another way.  They’ll go home having been met by God, assured that they are never alone, that the Holy Spirit strengthens them.  Through their encounter with God at the font, Andrew and Siena have been changed.  Made a new creation.

 

I wonder what the future will bring to them?  The future is a mystery.  Do you wonder, as you think about your own life, how you will fare down the road?  What effect your work, and words, and actions will have on the lives of others?  How God will be glorified by how you conduct yourself?  As you look to the future, do you feel hope or dread?  Imagine what a difference it could make if you believed - right down to the soles of your feet - that a force greater than yourself was cheering you on and encouraging you.  Imagine if a whole group of people, working together and inspired by this faith, set out to do something good together.  Why, if you were part of that group - that congregation - you could change the world!

 

So, whenever you wonder about what tomorrow might bring, vest yourself in this conviction, “My God, in God’s loving-kindness, will meet me at every turn.”  The knowledge that God goes before you, filling your future with hope and light and love is the essence of God’s grace.  God brightens and cheers you.  And once you’ve met this God, known to us in the Child of Bethlehem, you’ll go home by another way.  You’ll never be the same.

 

This sermon is over, but I can’t quite leave it there.  It’s not enough for me to say to you, “If you believe what I have told you it will make a difference in your life.” I must say to you that even in this moment, as you listen to the sound of my voice, God is graciously present inviting each of us to commit our anxieties to God’s tender care.  We stand at one of the crossroads on our life’s journey, just as we do in big and small ways every day.  This very instant is one of the turns where God meets us.

 

The moment you let go of fears that are too powerful for you, and trust yourself to the care of God, God will begin to bring to birth a new sense of assurance and hope.  Will show you another way.  This is God’s promise to us.  A promise from the very heart of God, sealed with the sign of the cross. 

 

Kevin Dixon

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