God is not Magic

This was my Easter sermon.... well, a slight variation on it, as I don't know where it went. I was asked why my Easter sermon wasn't on the blog. I don't have a good answer. So, sorry for the delay, and here it is! Comments?

We do not believe in magic. We believe in God, and we believe in the love of God, which is the basis of all life. The story of the resurrection is not one about magical forces bringing someone back from the dead, it is the story of the power of life, and that the power of life is stronger than death.

Magic seeks to control or manipulate the world or things in the world. The power of God is the power of love and life itself, and does not seek to manipulate and control.  We as believers in God seek to let that power work in and through us. It is not about our power being stronger than someone else's, or our magic being better, older or more righteous. Prayer is about making space for and listening to God, listening to the power of life, and letting it lead, shape and transform us, not us seeking to control the power of life to do our own bidding.

God is not magic. We do not believe in secret words or secret knowledge that is only trusted to a few, the few who have God's ear in prayer. We must remember that prayer is not about our magic being stronger and older than someone else's magic - it is not about that at all. Prayer is not about telling God what to do and how to do it. The power of prayer is that it seeks to order or discipline our will to the will of God, and that is not a bad thing, as long as it is God's will, and not the will of another human seeking to control or manipulate. We seek the power of God, the power of the kingdom of heaven, not the power of the world. We believe that the power of God, the power of love and life is in and available to everything. There are no secrets, there are no select few. We as humans struggle to make sense of and understand miraculous events, and to make sense of and understand mystical things, but those are not the same as magic and spells. Just because something is said in a language that is different than the one or ones we know does not make it magic.

Do you know where the term Hocus Pocus comes from? It is at least thought to have come from a misunderstanding of the words of institution, during the eucharistic prayer of a Communion or Eucharist service: "Hoc est corpus meumm," meaning "This is my body." It comes from a time when all of the services of the church (in Europe) were held in Latin, but nobody except the priests or educated people spoke Latin - so nobody knew what the words of the entire service meant, let alone the words of institution. So the prayers that everyone should have known became the words that nobody knew, words with secret meaning that were hidden and only available to a select elite, or worse - just a bunch of hocus pocus, or mumbo jumbo (which the Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines as "an object of senseless veneration or a meaningless ritual") - meaningless.

We believe that life is not meaningless, but that there is deep meaning in life connected to God. The rituals that we have, the commemorations that we have, the point of it all is to remind us that we believe in life, not magic. The hope and faith we have in the face of the crucifixion is not of a magical solution to the problem of life and death, but that no matter what, life will continue and carry on in an unstoppable way, and that every living thing is a part of that, by design, by God's desire, by God's will, and through God's work.

What we are here to do in the church, is not perform a bunch of magical rituals, or engage in cannibalism, as was once thought with talk of drinking Christ's blood and eating Christ's body, but to enter into the mystery, and to work together to understand it, and share that understanding with the world, so as to work together to build up the kingdom that Jesus taught his followers was possible a kingdom that seeks to encompass all and ensure that there is enough of everything to share.

Celebrating the Resurrection is not about magical rituals that promise to make you or I live forever. It is about a group of people coming together and remembering God's faithfulness in the midst of everything the world has to throw at us. Mysterious, yes. Hard to make sense of, absolutely. Costly, very. Is it worth the time energy and investment? Jesus thought so.

Identity and Trust

Identity.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said that he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it. We assume that he meant the Torah, the Law of Moses which guided the Israelites in their daily lives. It was the religious and civil law. Throughout Jesus ministry, there seems to have been a number of challenges as to just what the Law was, what it meant to follow the Law, and what following the Law did for a person. If following the Law kept you employed, housed, clothed, fed, provided for the care of your family, and kept you in good social standing with your neighbours, did it matter if it did anything else? Jesus seemed to think so. Also from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told the story of a father and two sons, and how the father asked the first son to go and do some work, and he flat out refused, but later went and did it. The second said “Oh yes I will go right away,” and never did it. Jesus' question could be considered a trick question, because he asks those who were listening which son did what the father wanted. When everyone of course answers that the first son did, Jesus says “good! You've got it! So understand this truth – prostitutes and tax collectors are entering the kingdom of heaven before you.” What a thing to say! What do you think their reaction was? How did they take this?

So what does any of this have to do with today's readings? Let's call it a gut feeling that I ran with. Today's readings are all about trusting God to direct us. The apostles choosing Matthias, with God's direction. The psalm about those who trust God and how different that is from those who are evil and wicked. 1John about testimony – story – and how we can trust God's story to be true. In the Gospel from John, it is Jesus praying for the disciples, that they will trust in God, that God would trust Jesus' choice of disciples, and that God would trust the disciples to be bearers of God's story, the Law.

When we try to make sense of scripture, we inadvertently change things so that it makes sense to our sensibilities, so we aren't offended. Maybe we mix up our sensibilities and God's, and we end up confusing the wants, dreams, desires and rules of the world with God's. Jesus' prayer for the disciples is that they would not get mixed up, that God would guide them, so that they could pass on God's guidance. Well that lot just as it fell on Matthias, fell on the church. We are now the church, or at least part of it. So back to the tax collectors and prostitutes – just as in Jesus' day, we distance ourselves from what is uncomfortable, and what offends our sensibilities, and we say that is wicked and evil and God is displeased by that, and surely God despises them, like in the psalm, the wicked won't stand up to judgement and there won't be any sinners in congregation of the righteous. For me, this is where it all comes grinding to a halt – who are the wicked and who are the righteous? Jesus in his prayer in John talks about those that you have given me. Fisherman, tax collectors, shepherds, the poor, the rabble; even the brightest best and shiniest of Jesus' disciples are flawed and fallible characters from the fringes of society. Paul was a murderer and a persecutor of the church. Most of the prostitutes and the tax collectors of the world, in Jesus' day as in ours, are not there because they choose to be there – they are there because they are trying to get by – to make it through the day, with enough food and enough water and some shelter, so that when tomorrow comes, maybe it will be better. In jobs like that, there are people with power and there are the tax collectors and prostitutes, and all the jobs like those, that have very little or no power. But society and culture look at them, and judge them. I'm not trying to say that they are all angels in hiding, and that things are not rough, but trying to make sense of what Jesus meant. The shocking truth is that Jesus came for them – Jesus said that nobody is beyond God. Jesus talked about the Law of God, that it is grace and mercy and love. Those concepts, delved into beyond the warm fuzzies, mean a lot of hard work, work that costs, and work that might offend the sensibilities of the world. Work with boundaries that seem elastic and movable and unclear with the ways of the world. Work that challenges power and who has it and why, and work that builds the kingdom of heaven, and welcomes in prostitutes and tax collectors.   

Easter 6 - Mother's

Love
Mothers

Last Tuesday in the church calendar we celebrated the commemoration of Julian of Norwich, an Anchorite, a woman of great faith who devoted the second part of her life to explaining her 16 mystical visions which she received in 1373 – She wrote one book called The Revelations of Divine Love, in which she reflects on
“God in the crucified Christ Because the Saviour bore and nurtured a new humanity on the cross, she took up an image often employed by other spiritual teachers in the Middle Ages and likened himto a mother. This image of Christ, and all else in her book, found fulfillment in the divine love. For in everything that God showed her, Julian wrote, “Love was our Lord’s meaning. And I saw for certain, both here and elsewhere, that before ever he made us, God loved us, and that his love has never slackened, nor ever shall.”

I bring this up because of course today is mother's day. Last week I said that every image has its limits, especially when we are trying to talk about or describe God. It has long been an issue for the church about what to do with female descriptions of God. For many, it is not just uncomfortable, but heretical. And for many others, it gives a more complete image of God, to be able to think of God with both male and female images. I will let you choose where you sit on that.
But on Julian and her reflections on God's love, and an understanding of mother's let us look at today's Gospel reading in that light. Broad, sweeping generalizations thought they may be, A mother wants children to be equals, not hierarchical, to help one another, to support each other, for the bigger / older ones to look out for the younger / smaller ones; for the younger / smaller ones to learn from / follow the example of the older / bigger ones etc. A mother wants children to learn good manners, to learn how to provide hospitality, how to welcome a stranger. A mother wants children to be inclusive, not to exclude others from their activities. A mother wants children to love each other. We do not choose our mothers. Mothers, unquestioningly will lay down their lives for their children.
I am sure this list could go on and on, and that you get the idea, and the angle of perspective.
Not only do we have much to celebrate with our mothers, but we have much to look for, and to see in the world around us, especially when it isn't living up to our vision of what should be, or when someone's mother, father, brother, or sister, is not living up to the standard set out for us by God, as explained for us by Jesus in today's Gospel reading.

God bless mothers and all of their love and care for us, give thanks for God our Father, our Mother, the source of all life and creation. Amen.  

"Rethinking Heaven" - Time Magazine article

I was given this issue of Time magazine by a parishioner of St David's and found the article interesting as it points to some questions about how we think about the afterlife and they way that thinking influences what we do when we are alive.  Bishop N.T. Wright is quoted extensively in the article and he sheds some helpful light on the subject (as he has written a variety of books on biblical perspectives of Resurrection).  Rethinking Heaven is in fact a first thought on heaven, as it seems many people (a large percentage) believe in an afterlife, but little thought, discussion, or teaching is given about what we believe as Christians in the area of Heaven.  After having feedback from parishioners about preaching of a bodily resurrection, I wonder what other opinions are out there in the churches that might cause us to think critically about what we believe.  This article is a good starting point for that conversation to begin.

Stewardship

A new Stewardship Team is forming at St Peter's and I have added a link (down the side bar) that takes you to read the TENS: Blog (The Episcopal Network for Stewardship).  I hope that many will find the resource useful and that we can rediscover how God calls each of us to be stewards.

Prayer Group

The following is written by Verity about the importance of prayer.  The prayer group which meets Wednesday evenings at 7 pm at St David's is open to all, and specifically prays for the life of the 3Saints Ministry.

"Prayer is a gift from God.  A gift we can either use or abuse.  It is a powerful gift - one which can be used to praise, worship, thank and plead for ourselves, for other people and situations.  Prayer should never be underestimated and I find meeting together with others is an exciting way of exploring my faith, my joys and my concerns and it is a privilege to share and pray with others.  It is a very uplifting experience to come together with a common purpose to praise and worship and seek God's will - and all it takes is a little time and effort on our part to receive the blessings and prayerful support.

No qualification or experience are needed so why not find a prayer partner, or group with whom you could share your prayer life."

Messy Church Dates

And some MESSY dates for you:

We are planning on doing Messy Church on the last Saturday of every month, 10am- 12pm.

St. David's by the Sea, Cordova Bay, 5182, Cordova Bay Rd.

So that means, April 28, May 26 are the next two months worth of Messy Church.

More fun filled, family intentional, engaging, spiritual and holy time!