post-diluvian treaty #1

Once again the people of University Hill Congregation are creating a Lenten devotion. Each day through the season of Lent a scripture reading from the Lenten journey through will be accompanied by the response of a member of the community. Here is my offering this year ...

I don’t often use the word “antediluvian”. I know it refers to something really old. But once you think about it this old word is really two words meaning “before flood”. Now that is old. Here, in Genesis chapter nine, we are in the very first post-diluvian days. The waters have begun to recede. The dove has returned with an olive branch. 

sin the virus cured by grace

Once again this year University Hill Congregation is hosting forty seven texts on its Lenten pilgrimage to Easter. You can find the daily reflections here. I was assigned Romans 5:12-19. This is my witness:

Here’s the problem. The original earthling - “adam” (literally “made of earth”) - was infected with the virus of sin. This virus then spread to all. It works like a gravitational force that draws humankind away from God with tragic consequences. Shakespeare’s tragedies - like many contemporary novels and movies - portray the ways in which all human actors are captive to this destructive force.

a psalm for ash wednesday

University Hill Congregation continues the practice of inviting the congregation to share in hosting scripture throughout Lent. This year I have been assigned Psalm 51 ...

I remember when I first truly encountered Psalm 51. Rabbi Martin Cohen was team teaching with me in VST’s summer school. The course was called “Reading in Each Other’s Light.” Each day in class we read scripture over one another’s shoulder. On Tuesday we each chose a Psalm central to our tradition. I selected Psalm 22 - “My God, why have you forsaken me”. Martin chose Psalm 51. Here, he taught us, lies the heart of the Hebrew scripture. Here is the Psalm read by all Jews on the holiest day of the year - Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. 

an oath of allegiance

(This year Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent, falls on February 18. At University Hill Congregation we are actively preparing our fourteenth annual online Lenten Devotional with forty-seven daily reflections on scripture to take us through to Easter Sunday on April 5. Following are some thoughts about the role of the sacraments in Lent.) 

The season of Lent has its roots in the preparation of candidates for baptism. Lent culminates at the Easter Vigil and on Easter morning when these apprentices in the Way of the Cross and Resurrection die to their former life and rise to new life in Christ. Over time Lent has become a season in which the whole congregation, baptised and not yet baptised, renews its communal baptismal identity.

In the early church the very name given to the community identified its members as those who had pledged their lives and their deaths to Jesus. According to the book of Acts followers of Jesus were first called “Christians” in Antioch (Acts 11:26). In Greek it means “belonging to Christ” in the same way that a slave belongs to an owner. The name Christian connotes not so much choosing to be a follower of Jesus as it does being called - drafted - into the service of the Anointed One - the King in the coming reign of God.

like rain and snow

When you live in a rain forest you learn what to expect. It rains. A lot. And up on the mountains? It snows. A lot. By the time March rolls around we are dreaming of the days when the rains finally cease and the snow begins to melt. If pressed to find a metaphor for God’s activity in all of this our minds wander to those long warm summer days and glorious sunsets. But not Isaiah. Not today. Today Isaiah (Isaiah 55:1-13) sees a God of rainstorms and blizzards. Isaiah the poet-prophet says God is raining down speech on the earth. He says God’s voice blankets the earth in the way snow transforms the landscape. Isaiah sees that God’s word is never futile, God’s message is not wasted. God’s speech is like the rain and the snow. It soaks into the earth, into us, into the church. It waters arid ground, dry souls. It prepares farmland and rain forest and you and I and the church alike for God’s coming season of growth.

children of the promise

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

It is a primal story, an odd story, our story. Paul names it as a taproot gospel story. It is the story of Abraham. He and aging wife Sara have left home and family, risking everything on God. Still there is no child, no home, no sign of the future God has promised. Now the LORD appears in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” Abraham is the great-great grand-father of the faith. Abraham is the primal figure of faithfulness. When God promises Abraham safety and a future we expect Abraham to say “Yes, Lord”. But, no. Abraham questions God’s integrity: “O LORD God, what will you give me, for I continue childless … You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” Abraham puts God on the witness stand and pokes holes in God’s testimony. “Oh, really”, says Abraham, “and on what basis am I to trust your promise since there is no child yet? In case you hadn’t noticed, we are not getting any younger.” We expect the story about the progenitor of the faith to portray him as confident, sure, as - well - trusting. But it does not. It makes a point of noticing that Abraham struggles to trust in God’s promise of an improbably blessed future. All the evidence suggests that Abraham and Sara are not the beginning of a new people in whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Everything points to them being the end of the line. Abraham and Sara are proto-types. They are proto-types for all those who follow their footsteps in the faith - in the trust - that God will birth a future out of barrenness. It turns out that it is proto-typical for believers to disbelieve.

tested

Luke 4:1-13

How appropriate it is that we celebrate Caleb’s baptism today, the first Sunday in Lent. Lent is the church’s great season of formation and little Caleb is deeply into formation in this first year in his life. When Lent began it was the culmination of the preparation of adults for baptism that would take place in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday. It was a baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Caleb is also baptized today into Christ’s death and resurrection here, already, at the beginning of Jesus’ journey to the cross and empty tomb.

glorified

John 12:20-33

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus”. These are the famous words beginning today’s scene in John’s Gospel. Well, they are famous if you are a preacher. These are the words engraved in many a pulpit. No, not facing out so the congregation can read them. I mean, carved or painted or scratched so the preacher can’t miss them when she places her notes down and reads: “Reverend, we would see Jesus.” I suppose it is the question most every first time visitor to the Christian church is asking, one way or the other. After all, visitors to Buddhist Temples wish to see the Buddha. Newcomers to Islam wish to see Mohammed. Visitors to Christian churches wish to see Jesus. It is a good reminder for preachers who often assume Jesus and then get busy talking about other things, other issues, other interesting diversions Sunday after Sunday. In a world where Jesus is otherwise regularly overlooked “we wish to see Jesus.”

i am no longer my own

When I arrived at University Hill Congregation in 1995 I was introduced to the congregation's practice of renewing baptismal vows and of a corporate covenant renewal on one Sunday in the year. This is a tradition that we have inherited from our Methodist forbears. Covenant Renewal in Methodism has often been a way of marking New Year's Eve. At University Hill Congregation this annual rite of renewal took place on the Sunday in Epiphany when we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. Though I had been active in the United Church for four decades when I arrived at UHill, it was all new to me. At first it felt odd. I had not integrated this ceremony into my own life or into my ministry. Now, all these years later, I look forward to the Sunday in the year when we renew our promises with God and with one another. This is what we will do this coming Sunday, the fifth Sunday in Lent.

in the wilderness

(Written in November 2011, the following article appears in the February 2012 issue of Mandate under the title "Remember That You Are Dust". It was awarded first place in the Theological Reflection category of the 2013 Canadian Church Press Awards).

Last year my Lenten journey began at the hospital on the morning of Maundy Thursday. That is when my appointment for a bone marrow biopsy was scheduled. During the procedure the doctor was surprised to learn that I planned to go to work later that day. I told him that I couldn’t imagine a better place to be than preaching my way through Easter weekend while awaiting the results.

The test was, in my doctor’s words, just due diligence. Some odd results had appeared. It was unlikely that anything serious was the cause. But it seemed wise to be sure. That was the reason that I limped through Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. When asked, I said that I had a sore back. I didn’t explain the reason. Those first days awaiting the test results were difficult, lonely, and worrisome. It was good to be able to preach of death and resurrection to myself in the guise of preaching to the congregation.

choosing a fast

Isaiah 58:1-12; Mark 1:9-15

Mark tells the story of Jesus’ journey into the wilderness succinctly. It takes two verses: “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mk 1:12-13). On these things all three synoptic gospels - Matthew, Mark and Luke - agree: that following his baptism Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan. Matthew and Luke include the tempter’s threefold temptation of Jesus. They also claim that the Spirit of God does not drive Jesus into the wilderness but, rather, leads him there. They are more polite than Mark. Mark alone says that Jesus is with wild beasts during his sojourn. Only Mark records that angels care for him there. Given the wilderness journey that we are currently walking in the land of multiple myeloma I rather like Mark’s portrayal of the wilderness as a place of encounter with wild beasts - perhaps plasma cells running amok - and of being sustained by angels - even a congregation of angels. I also rather like the portrayal of the wild beasts on this morning’s order of service - a goat and a rabbit keeping an eye on a slumbering Jesus. Really?! I suppose the point is that even the wildest of beasts - a crack addiction, say, or a traumatized family or, well name your own dangerous beast - are about as dangerous to Jesus as a cute little billy goat or bunny rabbit. There is one other difference in Mark’s telling of the forty days in the wilderness. Did you notice it? Both Matthew and Luke make the point that Jesus’ does not eat for forty days and, at the end, is famished. Mark seems to know nothing of this. What fast does Jesus choose in his forty day journey into the wilderness? Mark does not say except to imply that Jesus does not stop eating.

declaring an emergency

“Sound the alarm” (Joel 2:1). Declare an emergency. So begins the season of Lent. In Lent the church hears that things are not well, that much has gone wrong and that now is the time to face the trouble. In Lent Jesus says “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). In Lent the church enters into a forty day journey of catechesis, of formation in the way of God that it often forgets in favour of the ways of the world.

Again this year University Hill Congregation responds to the emergency that is sounded in Lent by listening each day for God’s Word in our time and place. From Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday there are forty seven days on which to read forty-seven texts. Forty seven hosts from the congregation have each responded to the call to listen to a single text and to testify to the Word that they hear from God in it. The hosts are children and elders. Some have known the stories for a life time, others are very new to the faith. Each offers their humble witness as an invitation to you to join in hosting the text and listening for God in your own life as well as in our life together. Their offerings of testimony can be found online in this year's lenten devotional - "Declaring an Emergency".

We are grateful to God for such a company of witnesses in such a time as this and pray for the courage not only to hear the alarm but to act accordingly.

to dust you shall return

At University Hill Congregation our Lenten, Holy Week and Easter celebrations are becoming thicker as we rediscover ancient practices for a new setting. We now take it for granted that we will mark each Sunday in Lent with a celebration of the Eucharist. This reminds us that the Sundays in Lent - like all Sundays in the year - are mini-celebrations of the resurrection and do not count in the forty days of baptismal preparation that is the original purpose of Lent. Later, Easter will bring an even greater celebration - fifty days - of the resurrection and of God’s power to redeem, reconcile, save and make new.