Micah 5.2

Years ago, in a high school classroom, I was introduced to the works of Northrup Frye and Margaret Atwood. Most people know Margaret Atwood as the Canadian writer who has most recently captured our imagination through the adaptation of her “Handmaids Tale”. In many ways, Atwood was building on the work of Frye, who was an English professor but also an ordained minister. Together they had a tremendous part in identifying some of the features of the mind of those who had been colonized. Fry named it the “garrison mentality” and Atwood went that much further in her work “Survival” to name some deep Canadian attitudes that spring from colonization; chief among these is the sense that “head office is always elsewhere”.

This deep sense of alienation from the center, surrounded by a hostile geography is one which the ancient people of Bethlehem also shared. They were considered part of the “little clans” of Judah – it is written right there in the scripture – not particularly important and well off the beaten path but from them would come the one who was to rule Israel. To skip just a few more verses ahead to verses 4 and 5, Micah reminds us that “…he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.”

This topsy-turvy kingdom which Jesus proclaimed reminds the people from the little clan that they will supply the mighty shepherd. The insignificant of the world will move the kingdoms and empires of the world. The unlovely will be made loveable and the broken shall lead the broken to the place of healing and restoration. Even death will die—an irony which the topsy-turvy kingdom sings and exults over.

The proclamation of the prophet Isaiah, that the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead are raised and the poor have the good news preached to them is being brought to life in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. As people of this land, it might be easy to think that the coming of the kingdom is something that is happening somewhere else; that “head office is somewhere else”.

The way of life Jesus makes possible for us is for everyone. There is no “head office” but rather the call to hear the angel’s message of peace among all people is for us, here, on this land. We need not wait for someone to come and tell us that we can begin the work of discipleship. Instead we are surrounded by the need, the broken lives and the desperation of the people who are waiting to hear the words of good news which Jesus spoke so long ago.

As you celebrate the birth of Jesus this year, reach out to those around you, the lost and hungry, and offer them some of the cup of joy that we have found in our communion with the Lord. Let your hearts and doors be open as we show people in our lives that the message of Christmas is for us, right here, right now, and that it can transform the pain, suffering and grief that might otherwise define us. Instead, we are offered the birth of a small child. This has made all the difference to us, who are some of the “little clans” of our land.

Happy Christmas!

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The sixth grade version of me understood the lesson from the perspective of recess politics, so it was not hard to understand. Imagine a teacher breaking up a fight on the playground. The first defence is almost universally “But he hit me first!” The word ‘but’ is meant to excuse the second punch in light of the injustice of the first punch. Mrs. Holbrook simply would not, in writing or in life, let us use the word ‘but’ in a way that tried to weasel out of responsibility or dismiss injury or injustice. I can hear her now in my mind saying: “‘But’ is a word that can cause injury on top of injury because it may dismiss pain while trying to justify it.”

Because the Church is a human institution of divine origin, we can often get things wrong. And when we do, the defense of our injustices or inflicted injuries may begin with a ‘but.’  To those healing from broken hearts, that ‘but’ becomes a further layer of grief added to an already painful burden. When the church responds with a ‘but’ and fails to care properly, no ocean of good works can negate the suffering of the one who has been injured.

On the other side of the coin, when the church acts as an agent of reconciliation and reaches out to those who are thought to be guilty parties in a dispute – part of our responsibility to care for all — the ‘but’ is often employed again, this time in righteous indignation to suggest that we should cut the guilty off and cast them into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

These are the frail and human uses of the word ‘but’.

But there is another way to use the word. That is—the way it is used in scripture by God. The words but God appear repeatedly in scripture to remind us of the true mercy, love and compassion on offer. The sentence structures are often the exact same as Mrs. Holbrook deplored, but the things that are being negated are all the failures we lay down.

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  – Psalm 73:26 

“When they had carried out all that the scriptures said about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead;”  – Acts 13:29-30

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  – Romans 5:6-8

I think Mrs. Holbrook would accept and applaud all these uses of the ‘but’ because they are all instances of how grace interrupts the cycle of death, or pain, or sin. This is the essential message we have to offer people that are deep in their own troubles or pain as they live them out. We can pour out before him all the reasons that we are unworthy, unready, unhappy, unloveable and unreachable. But God tells that inner storm “peace, be still” and we are made one with him again. We can all rejoice that we are living our daily lives after the but God. We can share this message with everyone who feels unworthy, unready, unhappy, unloveable and unreachable. We can become the living, breathing, incarnate but God to them.

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Younger members of our society have no frame of reference for the chaos and anxiety that they face on a daily basis—and that is just dealing with the issues surrounding growing up and learning how to be human in the early 21^st century. Add to it the political turmoil and disruption, the global displacement of millions of people and the quick easy answers of the ‘strong men’ who vie for our votes trying to convince us that they have what it takes to get all the emotional and political toothpaste back into the tube. I am not convinced they do, frankly.

We are approaching the season of Lent, and this means we are meant to have a good, hard look at ourselves and perhaps even at the figures who we have trusted in the midst of turmoil. The 40 days temptation in the wilderness is an example that the spiritual answers to many of our pressing questions are not answered quickly. Spiritual wisdom to face the chaos and uncertainty that are stalking the world does not come packaged as motivational posters or coffee mugs with wise sayings. If it were that easy, I suspect Jesus would have been the fool to face temptation and Satan for 40 days.

Our reliance must be on Christ alone, for he is our saviour and our guide of the way out of chaos and into the Lord’s marvellous light. Plenty of others will offer themselves as the ones with the answers, but our focus is meant to stay on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. That reliance does not mean that we will be protected from the storms or uncertainties that may attempt to overwhelm us. Rather it means that the uncertainties may be borne and the storms weathered knowing that they will not destroy us.

Much is made in the management culture today of “resilience”. Whole books on management and even child rearing are focussed on how we can develop resilient children, or resilient co-workers. If ever there was a season of the Church year, whose purpose was to teach us resilience, then it would be this one. We are reminded from the very start that every temptation that comes our way has an ending and we only need resist long enough and the temptation will flee away. This may sound old fashioned, but in a time when every matter under heaven is meant to be solved and resolved instantaneously, we need the help of lent to become more resilient.

That resilient ideal is based in our faith in Jesus, our confidence in his loving care for us and the temporary nature of the trials and tribulations that come our way. He has accomplished the fullness of salvation for us, we are not expected to do more than he has already done. Our only requirement is faith in his power and endurance for the trials to come. May this lent be a time for you stability and strength in the Lord, as we navigate the changes and chances of this life, for he is our resilience.

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I love the season of Advent. It is by far one of the richest seasons of the church year, and for me it rivals the depth of Easter. It is a combination of anticipation, excitement and almost a holy fear. The music of this season, the darkening days, the scripture we read which tells us of the expectation of God’s mighty final acts in this world, they all add up to a season of hope for me. This is different than the garden-variety hope which we all learn as children. This is more than the expectation of a coming party on a birthday, or the countdown to the end of school and beginning of summer holidays. Those are all instances of expectation and anticipated freedom – but these listed examples of expectation are all about something we know, or have experienced before. In Advent, we are expecting a mighty act of God, which we cannot know, for it is the stuff of mystery, and redemption and joy and faith.

Expectation can be a powerful force in our lives. Anyone who has tried to get a child to sleep on Christmas Eve when the expectation of the next morning is so real will know whereof I speak. Expectation is a state where we allow our minds to wander into the particular delight, the single pleasure for which we have been made to wait. Fantasies of the Christmas Tree piled high with presents, or day dreaming about the long lazy days of summer while sitting in a classroom in the middle of June are good examples of the power of expectation.

But hope, especially in the kingdom of God is not like that expectation. There is expectation to be sure: we expect God to arrive and with a mighty arm set up his kingdom, return to the temple and begin the reign of justice and joy which had been foretold. But we can’t exactly daydream about what that will look like because we have never seen it or experienced it fully before. We have definitely had flashes of it. We have experienced moments in our lives where God may have swept us off our feet with the power of his love and the transforming power of grace. These are flashes…inklings of what is to come. They are not the whole kingdom, rather they are a flash of the sun off of a lake: blinding and beautiful, but a reflected glory.

Advent is about what we cannot see, cannot know and yet believe will change everything. Advent is about hope suffused with glory and joy in the coming Kingdom and in the One who will bring this kingdom into being. Hope is the most powerful emotion because it can make suffering bearable. Hope can make simple expectation and its power, fade, for when hope is present, trust in the outcome becomes a matter of faith, and not a matter of knowledge.

As we enter Advent, my prayer for you is that you will feel the power of hope which the Christ brings to those who put their trust in him. That there is something, someone, coming that will change everything for you. It was to the forgotten, the hungry and the broken that he came. The rich and the powerful did not need, or did not anticipate the hope which Jesus came to bring. They weren’t even interested in the message which Jesus proclaimed until they began to understand that his preaching might upset their comfortable lives. Jesus is still here, calling us into the deeper hope of the kingdom, still preaching the end of the powers who have oppressed and broken the people of God. Advent is about that hope: the topsy-turvy kingdom of God where the meek inherit the earth and where those who mourn are comforted.

May that hope – suffused with glory and joy – grow in you each and every day as we approach the birth in time of the timeless Son of God.

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Disruptor: (noun) a person or thing that prevents something, especially a system, process, or event,from continuing as usual or as expected ( Cambridge Dictionary).

Disruption is a word that has begun to be used regularly in the business world too. ‘Disruptors’ are companies whose ideas and modes of business take over an industry in such a way that the established businesses don’t see it coming. By the time they cotton on to what is happening, the disruption is well underway and it’s too late to fix it. Think about how big the Kodak film company was before digital photography disrupted everything. Or how many of us have an old Blockbuster Video card in a drawer long after the store itself closed. Netflix and streaming movies were something that disrupted the normal business of movie nights at home. Both Kodak and Blockbuster are examples of titans in the business world that could not see the disruption that was coming to their businesses because they did not have a view to how the world was changing around them.

The same can be said to be true for the church in some ways, although in the vision which the scripture casts for the church, the Holy Spirit is meant to be the disruptor. Whether it is the religious establishment, the kingdoms and empires of the world, our sin and shame before God, or even our own understanding of how God is going to deal with us, we have plenty of moments in scripture where God acts as the great disruptor. Either personally in convicting someone of their sin (like Paul on the road to Damascus) or corporately where God interrupts what everyone thought was the plan. Consistently, God reminds us that “my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55. No matter what century, be it synagogue or church, we generally shudder at the prospect of (as the above definition explains) disruption of a system, process, or event, from continuing as usual or as expected.

As people of faith we acknowledge that there are many systems, processes or events that ought to be disrupted. Think of the cycle of poverty and perpetual debt that some find themselves in. Or perhaps the system of bondage and enslavement that seems nearly invisible to us as human beings are trafficked around the planet in general—and up and down Hwy 401 in particular. These are systems and processes that need to be disrupted.

This is why I have been preaching week by week in the parishes about the ways in which the Church is being called to be agents of the disruptive Spirit. In places where human dignity is ignored, stand up for those who are unseen. Where people are oppressed and forgotten by poverty, intervene in their lives in ways which can break the bondage of that gnawing sense of want.

If we think of our churches as communities where people can find hope in the midst of whatever distress, loss or trauma that they have suffered, we will become a hopeful place where we might be agents of disruption to all those forces which brutalize or trouble the children of God. We need not take on the whole structure of injustice or sin around us, but we do have a responsibility to work one life at a time at disrupting the effects of that brokenness. We also have to remember that all our work is “one life at a time”. If we are conscientious about it, our little communities can grow and do to the systems and merchants of misery what the business disruptors did to Blockbuster and Kodak. At the very least, why don’t we equip ourselves to serve and limit the market share of death and misery in our modern day world?

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Forgiveness isn’t a feeling. If you wait until you feel like forgiving someone for a sin against you, I guarantee it will take a very long time and more often than not you will not get there. Many times in talking to folks I have had to prod them a little about the resentments and pain they are carrying and eventually we get to a point where they finally admit they thought they had forgiven, but it didn’t feel like it. They were still angry. They were still upset. They still lived with the emotional scars of the wounds they had received. They didn’t feel like forgiving and that made them decide that they haven’t forgiven.

Forgiveness is a choice. It is an act of the will, which means we are choosing – not based on our emotions – but on the principle that it is a command of Christ. It also happens that forgiving is good for us and allows us to move past the wounds we have received.

But there is so much more to forgiveness than just that act of the will. Forgiveness cannot be rushed, it cannot be imposed, it cannot be expected, it cannot be bought or sold, nor can it be an automatic “get out of trouble free” card. After all of those complications, there is also the matter of the forgiveness we require for ourselves.

In the kingdom of God, forgiveness of sin is assured, but the consequences of sin remain. In the realm of human affairs it is the consequences of sin that make us feel like we can’t forgive. When we have hurt or offended one another, personally, as groups, or even as nations, we must acknowledge that the consequences of sin still hang about us. The wounds and brokenness which sin caused don’t just vanish magically in a puff of forgiving smoke. When we are forgiven, we have to acknowledge the damage we have done, and show some form of repentance for the injuries we have caused. We have to recognize the effects of the consequences of our sin. Those consequences can echo for decades…even hundreds of years.

This is what reconciliation looks like in the Christian context. We must learn to live with the consequences of our sin, and learn that the forgiveness that we seek is a longer process. We must learn to live between the apology and the eventual washing away of the consequences of sin.

Jesus shows us that reconciliation in his conversation with Peter by the sea of Galilee. Remember that Peter had denied Jesus three times. Maybe Peter thought Jesus wasn’t going to bring up the denial on Good Friday. Perhaps Peter thought the glory of the resurrection had wiped all of the brokenness and fear of that night away. But it hadn’t , it still seems awkward with Peter.

“Peter, do you love me?” Jesus asked three times.

“Lord you know I love you” Peter answers. Then he told three times that he must feed the sheep of the church. Care for them and love them.

It wasn’t until Peter had faced his denial and the brokenness of his relationship with Jesus that the consequences of his denial could finally be put to rest. Peter couldn’t avoid it. Peter couldn’t hope it would go away or that Jesus would move on. Peter had to face it. Peter had to reconcile with Jesus…not because Jesus needed it, but because Peter did.

Peter couldn’t become who Jesus needed him to become until he had faced not only the sin of his denial, but the consequences of his denial as well. It took some time too, but in the end, Peter became the fearless apostle that lay down his life for the flock. Peter became the one with the faith to see the Kingdom beyond Galilee, beyond Ceasar, and beyond even his own time. It is on that rock of faith that we continue to build the church. but it takes time.

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Having faced a short Epiphany, and an early Lent this year we face the Lenten disciplines with Epiphany fresh in our minds. Ash Wednesday fell on February 14 and the celebration of Easter is not far ahead on March 31. Years like this find us pivoting almost immediately from the celebration of light and the revelation (the theophany) of God in Christ to the whole world, to the implications of our own shortcomings in the Lenten season. The preparations for the Easter feast are already underway in our homes and at our tables.

As a bishop, I am constantly seeking for ways to explain, cajole, preach, assure, win over or otherwise help folks understand the commitment of discipleship and its cost. Jesus regularly assured his followers that they needed to count the cost of following him – up to and including “taking up your cross”. What Jesus calls us to is listed again and again as an act of following him wherever it is he leads us. When Jesus saw a person with the faith or character required, his own apostolic call was “follow me”. When others came to him puzzled and wanting to know what to think about what he was saying and doing, Jesus said “come and see.”

I was raised in a tradition that valued belief above all else. So much so that it seemed less important to ask the questions about what was believed – so long as I could say “I believe”.

However, faith is a gift. This is a truth which many miss and fail to understand the implications. Many people who have been hammered upon by the drumbeat of “belief”end up exhausted trying to find a way to “believe” what the Church says or what the Bible teaches, but they get stumped. They can’t quite get their brains to “believe”. Faith and belief are used synonymously. The words are used interchangeably. But there is a subtle difference.

To believe something (in our rational world) usually means the intellectual assent to a series of points. God exists. God loves us. God sent his Son to live and die for us. To the average person who struggles with their own place in the world of doubts, disinformation, alternative truths and conspiracy theories, “believing” almost anything can be difficult. Without acceptable evidence, well trained minds cannot simply believe, and then wonder at what the older generations understood and accepted so easily.

It can be helpful to try and tease this out by asking what the opposite of believing is….and then the opposite of faith. Often I get different answers: the opposite of believing is not believing, while the stock answer for most is that the opposite of faith is doubt.

It’s important to note that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Doubt can be a good friend of faith, for doubt can keep faith from tipping over into certainty. Certainty requires no faith, it admits no doubt and carries on impervious to the grey areas of life. Certainty does not hope for anything, it will not bear with anything other than itself. Certainty knows itself before it acknowledges anything or anyone else. Certainty knows for it declares it so.

This makes certainty the opposite of faith. Faith includes lots of things, but it does not include certainty. The author of the book of Hebrews points out “Faith is the confidence in what we hope for. The assurance of things we do not see” (Hebrews 11.1) Faith includes confidence, and hope (for things unseen), but there is no certainty here. There is only faith. Faith is an assurance, but not one that is blind to all the other realities that face us.

This is a first step in the change from believer to a disciple. A disciple is an active agent, confident in the constant love of God and hoping for all the gifts and blessings promised by the Lord – but ready and hopeful even when they do not appear. For disciples in difficulty, patience is engaged, compassion is cultivated and the community of believers supports and upholds one another in the actions of being a disciple, walking a way that makes a difference in the lives around us.

Consider for a moment – when others look at us, and at our lives, people don’t ask us what we believe, for what we believe is made manifest in how we live. This is the very definition of being a disciple. Belief is an early step on the road to being a disciple and walking with Jesus in faith.
So here we are in Lent – the time where by fasting and almsgiving and prayer we are meant to prepare ourselves to be better disciples. This time is our extended and focused chance to cultivate our faith, compassion and love to deepen our walk with Jesus and to immerse ourselves in the Paschal mystery. In doing so we will find ourselves giving more of ourselves and loving more deeply – forgiving more readily and softening our hardened hearts. The world needs us to grasp this difference – our kindness, our love, or compassion, our action toward all those around us are founded in our walk as disciples.

It is time to move from being a believer to being a disciple – to walk the way with the Lord in a very real and tangible way. To walk with hope and confidence of what has been accomplished in Jesus life and death and what as been promised. Knowing that the One who promises is faithful beyond our capacity to ask or imagine.

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Advent is about waiting and yearning. The deep desire of the ages—that all creation be wrapped up in the final, saving acts of God—is the subject of the whole season we have set aside and called Advent. This year we are facing a world seemingly gone mad. The war in Ukraine drags on, and now the tit for tat death-dealing of the middle east is out of control again. While it is the beginning of a new church year, it is also the season when the shadows lengthen, and the night comes early, and in the midst of so much darkness we begin cast about for light in our lives. In the midst of the darkness that has been unleashed in the world, we are looking for a little light, a little hope. The distance we have to travel mentally seems that much further, so we are not entirely sure if a little candlelight, or a little tinsel, and hanging some greenery will comfort us. At the same time that the grip of winter tightens and we cast our eyes to the sky to see how heavy the snow fall will be this time, we are mindful of the cycle of terror and death that stalks the land that Jesus called home.

The church, wisely it turns out, notes that the moment  the darkness begins to gather that we cast our minds to yearning. An eternal yearning, not just for light and peace which is part of the season but in what we read in scripture and what we sing in our churches – we begin to pay attention to the deep yearning we believe every soul has for God. Yearning is the deep desire for God to act: “Oh that you would tear the heavens and come down…” (Isaiah 64:1-9) and make a definitive conclusion to the changes and chances of this mortal life for all of us. It is a profound desire to see God and see God’s action in the world as it promises a new heaven and new earth.

Expectation for a Christian is the conviction that that God is going to act and chooses to wait vigilantly. Contained within that expected act of God will be a profound bit of good news for all those who find themselves hopeless, or helpless or hapless. The faith that in God’s declaration “Behold I am making all things new… ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. ‘” (Revelation 21.5) is the only hopeful word in this world of death and destruction.

I will be blunt, the world is wrapped in chaos, confusion and fear. The world would seem to be captive to death, war, famine, and pestilence. Add to that the political uncertainty and the explosion in the costs of ordinary necessities of life and you will begin to perceive the profound and unsettled way the world is feeling. It is no wonder the ancient prophets, whose oracles we read, when they experienced similar crises spoke of both their yearning for God to ‘hurry up’ and their expectation of the coming of God’s final action.

Christians, we have a triple duty in times like this: we have to live with the both our yearning for God to act, and testify to our faith as well as the  expectation that God is going to act as the people who yearn for justice and peace call out to him. Advent is the season in which we do this through prayer and preparation for the Christmas miracle. How trivial that makes the usual “24 shopping days left before Christmas” kind of expectation seem. Our drive to acquire things  is a cheap imitation of the real desire to prepare the heart and mind for the coming birth of the Holy Child.

We can attend to the mystery of the season and our above-mentioned triple duty by studying the words of the prophets who told us to wait for the One who was to come. We can deepen our trust in the Word of God by looking closely into those things which generations of our ancestors proclaimed, their hopes, their faith and even their eternal salvation. The cold winds and deep snows might then show us a way to reflect and rest and trust that the Spirit of God is still working in spite of the very terrors that might otherwise drive us to our knees. Jesus is coming, and he will gather us as his own into the eternal kingdom. Not even death can prevent this, because not even death could hold him. Yearn for that new life that is promised and expect the miracle that Jesus is preparing for each of us.

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