posted on February 6, 2012 in Columns, The Messy Table

Share :

There are 32 verses in the book of Leviticus to contend with, and Jesus just hopped over all of them. Maybe by sending him to the priest, Jesus was trying to ease the leper’s re-entry into society

posted on February 6, 2012 in Columns, Patricia Schneider

Share :

It was a bright and cheery morning and we were all collected around the table of a much loved acquaintance…we had been doing this each Saturday morning for years. My friend has Parkinson’s and we try each week to bring her a bit of the past and the present in our remembrances and our togetherness.

posted on February 1, 2012 in From the Moderator

Share :

“Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked
cisterns that can hold no water.”
–Jeremiah 2:11 – 13

I hang onto a far too pride – filled moment from a time I spent backpacking in Europe in the autumn of 1978. Kevin and Dave, two personable American lads from Springfield, Mass., had joined up with our travelling twosome from Hamilton, Ont., and we were entering a port in Greece onboard an Italian vessel. Ahead of us, spray – painted in gigantic letters of red ink along the portside break wall, was a blindingly loud statement: “Imperialist Yankee, go home!” With a demoralized look on his face that I shall never forget, Kevin turned to me and said, “That Canadian flag on your backpack; got a spare one I could borrow?”
That pride is much harder to find today. Once the beloved and generous international partner of many around the globe, Canada’s reputation for innovative development support to have – not nations is rapidly becoming a distant memory. In Lebanon last October, our moderatorial contingent visited a children’s learning centre in the Dbayeh refugee camp near Beirut. We saw computer monitors with that familiar Government of Canada logo attached to them, and for a moment our vain pride returned, until they told us that those were the last gifts from Canada they had received since 2006. They were told that nothing more would be coming their way.
What troubles me is not that different governments have different priorities. I understand that political policy is shaped by many factors, and often driven by economic realities on the ground locally. But what I struggle with is the larger “values” question. It used to mean something higher and better when Canada entered the international arena. It’s as though we once intrinsically believed that our blessings were to be shared rather generously with peoples around the world who were not as fortunate as we were. And the influence of the Christian church was a big part of that sense of how we acted as Canadians. Our federal government paid attention to the “service beyond self” values that our churches preached. So what has happened? Have we taken our eyes off of God? Have we stopped believing and living the Saviour’s message? What are we actually becoming if we are no longer the nation we once were, and perhaps more importantly, where is the passionate voice of the Christian church to be heard in these times?
I suspect this new entity we are evolving into as a nation is neither your choice nor mine, correct? So have we now become a nation that is content to have traded the Christ – driven concern and care of others for the exclusive preservation of ourselves? Is Jeremiah’s voice no longer heard, if not through our own voices or protests, at least through our sadness for the poor and oppressed whom we are, more and more, silently abandoning? Are we actually succumbing to the human folly that our economic policies, our “cracked cisterns,” will somehow nourish our souls? Surely the One who is our fountain of living water is calling us back to the wellspring, buckets for sharing in hand!

posted on February 1, 2012 in Books, Features

Share :

The Messenger:
Friendship, Faith and Finding One’s Way
Douglas John Hall
Cascade Books, 2011

What does it mean to be a mentor? What does it mean to be a friend? Who are the key people in our lives who have helped guide us in the directions we have taken in life? What kind of qualities do they exemplify?
Douglas John Hall, a minister and theologian with an international reputation, has written a highly personal book as a work of gratitude to his mentor, Robert (Bob) Miller. What is particularly unique about this book is that mentorship and friendship are spoken of not theoretically, but by means of a biographical and auto – biographical journey through the lives of Hall, Miller and other individuals during a key period in Canadian Protestant church life from the 1950s to the present. Also unique and worthwhile is an insider’s view into intimate relationships of friendship and guidance between men—in this case, an older with a younger—at a time when such intimacy is rarely trusted, let alone communicated.
Hall speaks of growing up in a time where Protestantism taught dogmatic certitudes and moralistic piety with little room for the “dark, subtle places of the human spirit.” As a teenager and young adult with many questions and a hunger for honesty, he was fortunate to find several key people who not only took his questions seriously, but refused to give any pat answers. Instead, they modelled a way of being Christian whereby the questions led to a much larger, more profound relationship with God, to “a second naiveté” of faith (to borrow a term from Paul Riceour). For the young Hall, Miller stands out among this specimen of Christianity, perhaps even rarer in the ‘50s than the present day.
Miller exemplified other qualities that also made him an incredible mentor. He offered the young Hall advice and direction without imposing his views. He was honest, but affirming and gentle, and he took the time to ponder every response to Hall. This attracted Hall not only to Christianity, but to the ministry as he saw it modelled in Miller. The other quality of Miller’s that Hall found astonishing was his humility. He had an authority but of a kind very different than so many of the clergy around Hall at the time. Miller’s kind of authority was earned but never imposed. In fact, Miller often shared his own questions and doubts with the young Hall, and showed him how asking the right questions and being honest before God and with others about one’s own uncertainties only deepened one’s faith, hope and love in the largest sense. A keen Barthian, Miller always knew he had to deal with “the totally Other” (Søren Kierkegaard/Karl Barth).
The relationship continued as Miller along with others helped Hall through his initial studies in music, and then the discerning of a call to ministry and studies in theology. Miller and this small group were there for Hall through all the key events of his life, those times of grief and of celebration. Hall tracks Miller’s own soul searching from the time Miller returned from graduate studies in Europe to find his way as national secretary of the Student Christian Movement, to his unjust and humiliating termination, but also to his incredible grace toward those who were against him. He was forced to let it all go and start over again with nothing and he did so without animosity or bitterness. Miller was a “book steward” and eventually opened the Bob Miller Book Room on Bloor Street in Toronto, which became his mission field.
In the last chapter, Hall offers more in – depth reflection on human character and the nature of core relationships, and such reflection provides some profound insight to anyone searching for a mentor with the right qualifications. He describes Miller as someone who didn’t readily talk about his feelings but was rather private. While some might have described Miller as lacking in the ability or willingness to disclose himself emotionally or spiritually, what Hall discerns is a certain personality different than his own or that of others. Miller was sensitive and an attentive listener, but was not someone who would jump in easily talking about his own stuff. And this was not about a lack in him, but more, perhaps a “Canadian” moderation or modesty that was genuine and spiritually profound, and in another sense, was more than many would expect. When he did speak, one would listen because the words and ideas had been sifted through very deeply.
What is fascinating about friendships, and even more so of mentorship relationships, is that those who become key people in our lives are not necessarily those we would have chosen or expected to serve in this capacity. We discover wonderful differences in humanity and this enlarges us and expands our way of looking at ourselves, our world and our way.
It’s been a few years since Miller died, but his legacy in Hall’s life and in the lives of others is something for which Hall is forever grateful. Would that we all have Bob Millers in our lives. But whether we do or we don’t, this book provides us with some wonderful personal and biographical tools for discerning our way.

posted on February 1, 2012 in News, The Other Six Days

Share :

Canadian Music
The band Downhere was founded by Marc Martel and Jason Germain when they were roommates at Briercrest Bible College in Caronport, Sask. For a Canadian Christian band they’ve made a pretty good name for themselves, having released 11 albums, and winning 28 GMA Canada awards and four Junos. But they’ve recently become famous for something else. Martel recorded an audition tape for the role of Freddie Mercury in an upcoming “Queen Extravaganza” live touring band organized by Queen’s drummer, Roger Taylor. His version of Somebody to Love was watched on YouTube 3.5 million times its first week.
marcmartelmusic.com

Website
Pop Culture Christ: What Would Jesus Blog? is run by Joel A. Moroney who is the associate minister at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Liverpool, Australia. He writes articles, podcasts sermons, reviews movies, music and comic books. Most importantly, he does everything with an odd sense of humour which helps him get through those tough theological quandaries like: “Do all dogs really go to heaven?”
joelamoroney.com

Unintentionally funny
Christian music seemed to take on a life of its own in the 1960s. Then, between 1980 and 2000 in particular, Christian bands tried to mimic the style of popular bands yet always managed to get their music out just as the sound they hoped to copy became unpopular. Christian bands “answered” popular bands with “sounds – like _______” charts so teens and parents could appear culturally involved while still praising Jesus. Listening to Christian music was sort of like buying a knock – off Rolex watch from the back of a van. Out of this genuine attempt to be in the world but not of it comes some of the most unintentionally hilarious music the world will ever know. Topping the list is Sonseed’s Jesus is my Friend. I don’t know if it’s wonderfully awful or awfully wonderful, but I love it!
youtube.com. Search for Jesus is my Friend.

The bible for teens
Sixty – Six Books is a project out of Sydney, Australia, set up by a youth minister hoping to make the Bible easier for teens to understand. His aim is to create simple overviews and reading plans for each of the Bible’s 66 books. Everything on the site is put into simple, contemporary language. You’ll find outlines for each book presented more like a play or a movie performed in acts. It also includes summaries of sections, simple explanations for who wrote each book, as well as side notes to highlight how what happens in one book affects what’s happening in another. Everything on the site is free. sixtysixbooks.tumblr.com

Vacation
The Holy Land Experience is a kind of Christian museum/theme park located in Orlando, Florida. It’s owned by the Trinity Broadcasting Network who purchased the park for just under $40 – million and it was featured in Bill Maher’s film, Religulous. Once inside, you can visit replicas of the Damascus and Jaffa Gates, walk through an elaborate Jerusalem market place, and enter a tabernacle and listen to the high priest. There are also Qumran caves, the world’s largest indoor model of ancient Jerusalem, and a six – story temple plaza based on Herod’s own. You can also see a bloody reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus that would make Mel Gibson proud. Some of it is terribly inaccurate but if I’m honest, I’d go there for sure if I lived nearby!
holylandexperience.com

posted on February 1, 2012 in Features, Renewal

Share :

As Presbyterians, we have a strong heritage as a people of the book. That is, we are a people whose sole authority in matters of faith and life is the word of God revealed in Holy Scripture. This has kept us on track, for the most part, in being faithful in living out our lives in integrity according to the revealed heart and mind of God. By being rooted in the word we have been challenged along the way by a voice other than our own in discerning what God desires of us. This is not unique to us but was standard in the ancient practice of the early church as well. William Webster noted that the early church fathers (Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement, the Didache, and Barnabas) taught doctrine and defended Christianity against heresies. In doing this, their sole appeal for authority was scripture. Their writings literally breathe with the spirit of the Old and New Testaments.

In the writings of the apologists such as Justin Martyr and Athenagoras, the same thing is found. There is no appeal in any of these writings to the authority of tradition as a separate and independent body of revelation. Our own Presbyterian confession, Living Faith, places the same emphasis on the authority of the word when it says: “The Bible has been given to us by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life. It is the standard of all doctrine by which we must test any word that comes to us from church, world, or inner experience. We subject to its judgment all we believe and do. Through the scriptures the church is bound only to Jesus Christ, its king and head. He is the living Word of God to whom the written word bears witness.”
The confession correctly goes on to say that the Holy Spirit, who both persuades us of its authority and empowers the word to come alive in and through us, must accompany the Bible. This has always been our Presbyterian heritage (though sometimes neglected) begun by this same strong emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit in the writings of John Calvin.

N.T. Wright, in a lecture, said, “Somehow, the authority which God has invested in this book is an authority that is wielded and exercised through the people of God telling and retelling their story as the story of the world, telling the covenant story as the true story of creation. Somehow, this authority is also wielded through His people singing psalms. Somehow, it is wielded (it seems) in particular through God’s people telling the story of Jesus. We must look, then, at the question of stories. What sort of authority might they possess?”
In Romans 15, Paul says, “That by patience and encouragement of the scriptures you might have hope,” because scripture brings God’s order to God’s world. He goes on to say that the stories of the Bible are transforming words.
It isn’t enough that the Bible be seen as a ‘rule’ book telling us what to do. We must ourselves enter the story and have a worldview that reflects the reality that calls us to act in ways we never thought possible. As we tell the story to others, they too will be taken hold of by the words and the Spirit and be changed. What I am speaking of is so much more than mere stories that change people’s thinking. It is the living and active God moving in and through His word that empowers and changes. These are changes of eternal consequences. It is Jesus who made an important distinction when he said that the letter of the law kills but the Spirit gives life.

If we believe we are keeping faith with Presbyterians and others of faith who have gone before us, how do we respond to this unique book that shares both concrete script and life – giving Spirit when it is read or heard?
Wright suggests that we “soak ourselves in scripture, in the power and strength and leading of the Spirit, in order that we may then speak freshly and with authority to the world of this same creator God.”
They offer, as all genuine Christian storytelling does, a worldview that, as someone comes into it and finds how compelling it is, quietly shatters their own worldview. Stories determine how people see themselves and how they see the world. Stories determine how they experience God and the world, and themselves and others.
It isn’t that we simply figure things out for ourselves—we are a people of the word who are led by the word. It is with alarm then that I see whole congregations that seem to ignore the word and in decision – making fail to be guided by the word.
Let us, in this month that focuses on love, make a resolution to be faithful, to lovingly respond to the One who has given us His word in scripture by valuing this gift of love as we commit to having it guide and transform us in our personal and corporate life as the church.

posted on February 1, 2012 in Features, Reflections

Share :

Without a doubt, the day my wife and I were ordained into the ministry of Christ’s church remains a most unforgettable highlight. I remember it well as many relatives and friends had gathered with us in the country church where we had served as student ministers. It has been a joy and inspiration for us to serve several congregations since that special event. Back then, candidates had to accept a two – year appointment to serve a congregation arranged by the synod superintendents of the Board of World Mission. With our experiences as student ministers and our new black gowns, we moved to Burnaby, B.C., near Vancouver. Upon arrival we found only a handful of people, the few who had remained after a vacancy of seven years. We felt God’s presence and strength, and during our four years of serving, the Lord blessed His work with challenge and growth. 
After many years of service with several more congregations, the time came to retire. We moved away from our last congregation to a larger city, where we had purchased a home. The time of relaxation had arrived. I attended my first presbytery meeting in our new area, and as usual my name was placed on the appendix to the roll because I was not active in a charge or other ministry. During that meeting, it was announced that due to an urgent issue, presbytery would move in camera. Much to my surprise, ministers on the appendix were told they had to leave along with the visitors. In all my years of ministry, including my time as moderator, I had never experienced such action. And there we were, standing outside the meeting. A number of ministers went home, and I never saw them back at presbytery. What a loss. There were 25 ministers and diaconal ministers on the inactive roll. If you take a low average, that is more than 600 years of experience, knowledge, leadership and understanding. 
Because of a strange ruling in our denomination, the issue of equality came about. For example, if there are 20 ministers in a presbytery on the constituent roll, there must also be 20 elders on the roll. This sounds like a democratic way to deal with the business of the church. In reality, it is only a theory, and a most painful experience for ministers who are inactive. After all those years, has the church ever taken a serious look at this situation? We all know that equal attendance practically never happens. 
For some years now, my wife and I have left in October to spend the winters in Florida, returning home in the spring. Attending presbytery meetings is hardly possible for me. But what about all the other retired ministers? Some of them may end up on a committee of presbytery. But if they happen to be the convener they are not allowed to make a motion, second it, or vote on the issue. The same applies if a retired minister is named interim moderator. He or she has to find others to make motions as well as someone to second them. 
Over the years, retired ministers have told me they don’t want to attend presbytery meetings anymore because they find it too humiliating. How unfortunate is that? Yes, we often use the words of the apostle Paul (although he spoke these words not for the benefit of a presbytery): “We like to have things done decently and in order.” We have often heard it being said: “We have always done it this way,” which sounds rather pious. 
I have checked the above issue with clergy from the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Church in Canada, and the United Church. They find it hard to believe that this is what happens when a minister retires in our denomination. A Christian Reformed minister told me that their retired ministers are often chosen to be delegates to their General Synod meetings. Why are we different? The apostle Paul writes, “We have different gifts, such as preaching, serving, teaching, and leadership.” Does that not also apply to our denomination?
When home again in the spring, I am privileged to preach in many different congregations. One may retire, but the gifts we receive through the Holy Spirit do not. When a servant of Christ retires, why must they lose their status as an active person, and why only in our denomination? Are we not all part of the Reformed church? Can someone explain to me where we find this ruling in scripture? 
Our declining denomination is in crisis. Has the time not come for the General Assembly to take a hard look at this outdated ruling? Some years ago, a minister who was moderator of synod retired one month prior to the synod’s annual meeting, and was told he would not be allowed to open the meeting. How callous is that? 
I pray God will give us enough grace and understanding to bring retired ministers back into action. ”‘Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for the harvest’ … and because of [Jesus'] words many more became believers.” (John 4:35, 41).

posted on February 1, 2012 in For the Record

Share :

The young woman followed the guide’s hand to where a passage from Psalm 132 was mounted high on the wall. She read it, then dissolved into tears, knees buckling as she dropped to the floor.
We were in Elmina Castle, built by the Portuguese between 1482 – 86 to defend their slice of the Africa Gold Coast. They used it as a trading post, first mostly for the gold. Soon, however, local tribes began bringing captured enemies whom they sold to the Portuguese as slaves for Brazil and the Caribbean.
In 1637, Elmina (“the mine”) was captured by the Dutch, as they extended their global power. At Elmina, they used the same chapel as the Portuguese had, whitewashing the Roman Catholic paint and gilt in favour of Calvinistic black and white—and a passage from the psalter in Dutch:
For the Lord has chosen Zion;
He has desired it for His habitation: 
‘This is my resting – place for ever;
here I will reside, for I have desired it.’
The room beneath this chapel resting – place in Elmina is where the female slaves were packed; stacked vertically so tightly together like cordwood on end that if they slept at all, it was standing up. With little water and no food, many starved to death or suffocated—a few “losses” apparently just the cost of doing business for their captors.
Eventually, 30,000 slaves a year were being forced through Elmina’s Door of No Return for the wretched journey to the New World. In all, between 11 and 15 million slaves arrived alive. How many more millions died is simply unknown.
For the young Dutch woman trying to absorb all this history, the feeling of guilt at the inhumanity of her forbears was just too much.
At least she felt guilt and knew her fortune owed much to the past misfortune of others. Perhaps our glowing pride blinds us to our own dark moments in history.
How often have I heard about how Canada welcomed black Loyalists after the American Revolution in 1776 and how different this liberal attitude was from the racist policies of the U.S. that became entrenched in the ensuing decades?
Many free blacks did come to Canada; so did many slaves of white Loyalists. In all, about 3,000 black Loyalists ended up in Nova Scotia in the early 1780s, their names recorded in the Book of Negroes, recently made famous by Lawrence Hill’s novel of the same name.
Promised the earth (literally), few if any of these refugees received their land grant. After a decade of racial tension and broken promises, in 1792, exactly 220 years to the day that I am writing this, on Jan. 15, almost 1,200 men, women and children sailed for Sierra Leone where they founded Freetown, now that country’s capital.
But black history in Canada is not just about slavery. I remember as a child driving through Africville on the northern tip of the Halifax peninsula.
What I recall most of all were the vibrantly coloured houses.
Africville is one of Canada’s dark events. Denied proper civic services such as water and sewer, the community was expropriated and bulldozed in the 1960s to allow industrial expansion in Halifax and to provide the ramps for the second bridge to Dartmouth.
Crammed into a terrible housing project and deprived of their church—the anchor of the village—the community descended into violence, drugs and crime.
Only now is it beginning to pull itself out of a mire not of its own making, while the citizens of Halifax and Dartmouth have prospered.
The history of Africans, free and slave, in North America cannot be reduced to a month each year, but perhaps it is a way of reminding us of events our otherwise selective memory would prefer to forget.
Presbyterians have an extraordinary opportunity to learn more of the past and connect with modern Africa through the Presbyterian Church of Ghana’s relationship with the Ghanaian congregations in Toronto and Montreal. Recently, the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria established a mission in Toronto which provides another connection.
We may not all be as overwhelmed as the young woman in Elmina, but we could use a little more learning and a lot more humility when it comes to our complicated past.

posted on February 1, 2012 in Features, Theology 101

Share :

Our Feature on The Solas
The 16th-century Reformers—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox and others—were derisively nicknamed, “the Sola-ists.” They distilled the essence of the gospel into five Latin slogans using the word sola, meaning only, solely or exclusively: sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura, solo Christo, soli Deo gloria (grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone, Christ alone, to God’s glory alone).

Today, the solas of early Protestantism run up against other realities and claims: What does it mean to say “Christ alone” in a multi-religious world? How does scripture alone square with contemporary thought about biblical interpretation? And so on.
So, are we still sola-ists today?

Marina and I were driving in the southeast of France near the city of Albertville. It was the early ‘80s and we were a young and adventuresome couple. There, clinging to the side of the mountain, we spotted the ruin of an old castle with a derelict trail beckoning us to follow our noses. An old gate was hanging open and we swung up the path and drove as far as we would dare. As we clambered through the old ruin I found myself in a kind of dungeon with a small slit in the stone, shedding a bar of light on the wall. Could this be true? Did the ancients indulge in graffiti? Indeed, there were two lines of text labouriously carved in the rock wall. I traced them with my finger. “En Dieu seul ma confiance” (in God alone I trust), and then, just below, “soli Deo gloria” (to God alone be the glory). I stood for a long time as emotion flooded over me in the ancient dungeon illuminated by a slit of morning light. You see, many of my forbears and those of Marina confessed these things; some paid with their lives for it. The Therons, the Nels on my side, and the Lombards and De Villiers on Marina’s side fled this land as refugees because they held these confessions so dear and lived them out. These are not mere religious platitudes, theological proposals, or propositions to be used against detractors. These are words of the Way—the Way of Jesus Christ—the Way of the Reformation.
There were five “solas” (Latin for alone or singular or only), that acted as markers of the way of the 16th century Reformation. The two lines of graffiti hint at two of those solas. The first speaks of what became known as sola fide (faith alone), the second is the exact phrasing of the Reformation confession—to God alone be the glory. The other three solas were sola gratia (grace alone), sola scriptura (scripture alone), and solo Christo (Christ alone). It is about this last one that I am writing today. The thing about these five solas is that you cannot live or speak one without the others. And, indeed, they are more about a way of living—a dangerous way—than simply a way of speaking. That, after all, is what a confession is. A confession is not just something we affirm, it is something that can get us locked up in dungeons or turn us into refugees. A confession is a way—and particularly, as we speak of Christ alone, the Way of Jesus Christ.
The five solas are not five statements vying against each other for supremacy; they make up five singular commitments that act as markers on the Way of Jesus Christ. Therefore, if we confess Christ alone, we confess the whole Way of Jesus Christ. In this the five solas teach us that we access the Way through faith (trust, confidence) in God—sola fide. This faith is given to us by God through grace—sola gratia. We know it through the scriptures that reveal to us who God really is—sola scriptura. The gospel story shows us the Way of God in Jesus Christ—solo Christo, and all of this is to be about our thankful praise and glory of God—soli Deo gloria. To say Christ alone, or to say that we are in Christ, or to say that we are saved through Christ is to commit ourselves to walk the costly way, following in the footsteps of Jesus.
This means we commit ourselves to walk in the shadow of the cross even as we sing thankful hymns of glory to God. Walking this way means that Christ made the way possible through his death and that his resurrection gives us hope that all things in all creation will eventually glorify God. It means we are free to be his followers. It means we are free to do as he taught and demonstrated. We are free to love our neighbours, to embrace the ugly, to heal creation, to resist evil, to feed the hungry, and to stand with those who suffer most and are trampled upon by our exploitive consumer culture. It means we will be unpopular, we will be resisted and it means we might end up in dungeons scratching out the truth of the scriptures on prison walls.
Be careful before you confess “Christ alone,” it just might come true for you…

posted on February 1, 2012 in Pop Christianity

Share :

I was just a boy in Pakistan when Mohammed Ali fought Joe Frazier through 15 grueling rounds for boxing’s heavyweight championship in the spring of ’71. That fight dominated the schoolyard conversation, because Ali, having converted to Islam, represented the good guys against Frazier who was Christian, or at the very least, non – Islamic. Ideas of religion and faith were mixed in with cultural concepts and that fight was to represent the dominance of one Abrahamic line over another.
In North America the fight had different metaphors, equally absurd: Ali had rejected the Vietnam War draft, rejected the culture into which he was born, changed his religion from the dominant and was seen as the voice of the youth movement which by then had begun its fizzle. So much was placed on two men pounding themselves into oblivion. (Both men spent time in the hospital afterwards with rumours flying of Frazier’s death.)
This wasn’t the first time in history that a cultural event had taken on so much weight. But it was the first I participated in through speculation and posturing. As a Christian I secretly wanted Frazier to win to prove that Christians were better than Muslims; but, as a Pakistani I wanted Ali to knock Frazier out seconds into the first round.
Watching a Saturday Night Live skit (last year) in which Jesus visits Tim Tebow, the Denver Broncos quarterback who led his team to six consecutive victories last November and December, I was reminded of Frazier – Ali, and our constant search for idiotic metaphors. Tim Tebow’s public displays of faith had led to much chattering in the media about the role of religion in sports. Should there be, how much should there be, how blatant should it be, and other such manglings. The SNL Jesus addresses some of these.
Jesus tells Tebow and his teammates he can’t be saving each game for them every week; he asks them to “meet me halfway out there,” and to stretch before the game and read the playbook. Sage advice.
The Broncos lost that weekend’s game and the headlines the next day are telling: “Tebow … run(s) out of miracles,” is one from the Globe and Mail. The subsequent article states, “Tebow, the most famous evangelical Christian in the United States, exists at the intersection of sport and religion, money and violence, playing the quintessential position in the quintessential American game ….
“The Tebow phenomenon emerges as a deeply religious country grows less religious year by year—and Tebow strings together wins in seemingly the unlikeliest of ways, injecting a confounding element of faith ….”
Really? Tebow and the Broncos are winning because of Jesus? And when they lose, will that mean Jesus is a loser? Conflating faith with culture bastardizes both.
As you read this, you will know how well the Broncos have done in the Super Bowl run, but this I can predict from my mid – December perch: the Broncos’ future has nothing to do with Jesus. Our faith is not dependent on Tim Tebow’s arm. Joe Frazier’s ’71 win had nothing to do with the supremacy of Christ over Mohammed. Saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” has nothing to do with the baby Jesus. The number of people in the pews on Sunday morning has nothing to do with the power of the gospels.
Like the 10 – year – old me, we want to see the thing we believe as dominant; we are not content to nurture our faith, to weave it into every second of every day, to learn how to pray and read the Bible and act accordingly in the world. We are lazy and want more: We want signs of power; which, and I don’t claim to be a studied reader of the Bible, may well be the exact opposite of what Jesus preached.

posted on February 1, 2012 in Features, Progressive Lectionary

Share :

February 26 / First Sunday in Lent Mark 1:9-15
Suggested alternative first reading: Daniel 4:28-37

The opening chapters of all four gospels are more important as theology than history. The introduction to each gospel provides the foundation for the authors’ interpretation of the Jesus story. Much of the richness is lost to us if we take these chapters first, and often only, as history. In its brevity our reading from Mark says at least as much as the longer narratives in Matthew and Luke. Yet we often skip through Mark’s version of the baptism and temptation of Jesus because it doesn’t offer the kind of detail we’re looking for.
Some see Mark as a summary of the authorized story of Jesus for beginners. Others suggest it’s for believers far removed from the origins of the story. People who don’t recognize the sources other gospel writers employ so extensively to advance their understanding of what Jesus means for the world. That’s one reason Matthew comes first in the canon. For centuries, Mark was thought inferior to the other gospels. And Mark unfolds with breathlessness, like a story told by an excited child, who just has to tell an adult every detail, or he’ll just die! “And then, and, and, and . . .” Count them in today’s reading.
Jesus appears. From nowhere. And he’s baptized. And the sky opens. And a dove appears. And a voice sounds from heaven. And the Spirit immediately… Mark loves “immediately” almost as much as “and.” The spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness. Immediately. Does Jesus even have a chance to catch his breath after being dunked in the river?
This forward drive continues through Mark’s gospel, until it ends in a broken sentence that leaves us hanging. Or does it drive us into the wilderness? In this year of Mark do we catch the gospel’s energy?
Embedded in the opening chapters of all four gospels are reflections on texts and themes largely lost to us. Matthew sets Jesus up as a new Moses, liberator and law – giver. Founder of the new covenant people. Luke draws lines back to the story of Samuel. Prophet and priest. Reformer. Maker and conscience of kings. The gospels represent an ancient literary form, in which the life story of a famous person begins with narrative that echoes stories from the past. What sources does Mark rely on? He may be thinking of Nebuchadnezzar, of all people! Mark probably knew the narrative of Daniel, with its theme of faithfulness and vindication under oppression. Its story of God at work in unexpected places, through unlikely agents, ultimately toward the release of God’s exiled people.
King Nebuchadnezzar heard a voice from heaven. He was driven into the wilderness. He was even bathed (baptized?) with the dew of heaven. Why? So Nebuchadnezzar could learn who God was and, therefore, who he was. He returned no less a king, but so much more a man of God.
The old story tells of God’s power to change the heart of the very emperor who sacked God’s house and oppressed God’s people. Does Mark want us to wonder what God might do in and through Jesus when he comes back from the wilderness? What will this king bring to the world?
Jesus comes back, goes home, and picks his time to begin his mission. God’s reign is at hand. God’s reign, not the emperor’s, is dawning. And, as Nebuchadnezzar confessed, “all God’s works are truth, and God’s ways are justice; and God is able to bring low those who walk in pride.”
Mark’s Jesus gets to work, fast, proving those words true in all he does and says. Time and again Jesus encounters evil powers and routs them with greater power. He sets captives free. He presses on, to do as much as he can in the time he has on earth.

posted on February 1, 2012 in For the Journey

Share :

It’s February in the Cariboo. Bleak midwinter—earth like iron, water like stone, snow on snow; cold, howling drifts of the stuff. For those of us who live anywhere north of the 52nd parallel, ice – out isn’t for at least another couple of months, for many of us even longer. As I look out on the wind devils sculpting the snowdrifts on Lac La Hache and try to come up with a reason not to go out into the icy moaning, somehow my mind is dragged back eons ago, to a seeming insignificant conversation late last summer.
“What are you doing with that poor rose bush, hon, trying to bury it?” I asked.
“No, I came to save Alexander Mackenzie, not to bury him,” Linda said. She smiled slightly, stood up straight and pushed a fist into the small of her back, wincing from the chronic pain that is the remnant of a horse incident from her youth.
“Well, it looks to me like you’re trying to torture it by hacking and burying,” I said. “And it looks so green, healthy and full of blooms, too.”
“I do this every year in late summer,” Linda replied. “I prune all my rose bushes hard and early so that the cuts on the stems won’t be exposed to the winter frost until they are well healed. Then, I heap up the soil to bury the root union, water a little bit and a tad later I add mulch to bury the rose even more. We can only grow the hardiest roses this far north and even then we have to take special early precautions to prepare them for winter.”
“You would think roses with names like Alexander Mackenzie, Henry Kelsey, David Thompson and the rest, would have the wherewithal to thrive in a Canadian winter without any special preparation at all,” I commented. And then, with the attention span of a gnat, my mind took a sharp left turn into a well – known Stan Rogers tune about explorers and northwest passages and such. I launched into it with gusto as I continued to work.
Linda just smiled, stooped again and continued to prepare her roses. She said, more to herself than to me because she knew I had moved on, “Some say the Explorer Roses don’t need any special preparation for winter. But I know different, especially when they have to survive the howling winter wind coming off of Lac La Hache.”
That conversation really didn’t mean very much to me in the brightness and warmth of late summer. But now that we are locked in a bleak midwinter storm and I look out on Linda’s rose garden, or at least the snowdrift where it used to be, new questions about God and me are beginning to bloom. In this wicked winter wind, Linda’s whole late – summer rose routine is beginning to wax metaphorically for me. Ruthless pruning, burying and mulching in the goodtime warmth and brightness of late summer seems like a harsh way to prepare for long – away winter. The timing seems off if nothing else.
Why do it when the foliage is still dark and green and the bloom is still lush on the cane? Why not wait until the leaves and flowers have dropped and the canes are seemingly dead anyway, like in late fall or early winter? But Linda has learned the hard way; this far north, if you want your roses to thrive through a bleak midwinter, hard preparation must be done in the easy warmth of late summer.
So here is the God question that has blown in on me with this February storm: Does God ever do anything in life’s easy goodtime to prepare me for the coming bleak midwinter storms? I ask the question metaphorically, of course. And I have to confess, I shudder in asking it. It seems almost masochistic to even consider such a question. But I am pondering Jesus saying to his disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. ” (John 15:1 – 2)
I have never noticed it before, but the picture here is compelling. I am a disciple of Christ, fully grafted into “The Vine.” I am in the middle of the goodtime warmth of bearing much fruit. I want to be allowed to bear my fruit and to celebrate and to enjoy; and then bam, I am pruned? Can’t the pruning wait until my fruit bearing time is over, until the easy goodtime warmth of fruit bearing is finished? Maybe I am wrong, but I see an awful parallel with the book of Job here. Job who groans in the midst of his untimely suffering: “Oh, that my words could be written. Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument, carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock. But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! I will see Him for myself. Yes, I will see Him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought!” (Job 19:23 – 27)
But make no mistake, the text in John 15 says that in the midst of bearing much fruit, God prunes me. Why? The text says, so that I might bear more fruit in the future. Whatever else it is, pruning is apparently a preparatory thing. Does God ever do anything in life’s easy goodtime to prepare me for the coming bleak midwinter storms? It would seem so.
I have been pruned early, untimely hoed, experienced my share of ill – timed suffering, some of it extremely painful and seriously life threatening. With all of that experience, I would not for a moment suggest that I have any real answers or explanations for the reason behind those times. How does a person reason out something like a five – year – old being abandoned by a mother, or a young father being stricken with a fatal disease? I don’t have any answers, but I do have an observation. My life experiences have had an apparent divine continuity to them; something that I really have come to appreciate since Christ surprised me in early middle age and I came to faith in him. This goes far beyond the pop philosophy of, ‘everything happens for a reason.’ Everything that has happened in my life has been inextricably linked to what is or what is about to happen. I am persuaded that God in His grace has hold of my life in a kind of way that no experience is ever wasted and every experience I will have, I will be prepared for.

posted on February 1, 2012 in Called to Wonder

Share :

Click here for the PDF

posted on January 30, 2012 in Columns, The Messy Table

Share :

Lent begins on February 22nd this year – close enough that we might start thinking about it and far enough away that planning is still possible. Last year, I gave you a list of Lent readings and an idea, but this year the plot is a little more straight forward.

posted on January 30, 2012 in Columns, Patricia Schneider

Share :

I wandered down to the basement bedroom and looked at what was left… a messed up bed and a playpen in one corner. But memories flitted through my head.

posted on January 23, 2012 in Columns, The Messy Table

Share :

Society is really good at making us worry. And stressed and depressed and all-over anxious. And, of course, by society I mean all of us. Psalm 111 works against all that. The Psalmist takes you by the shoulders and shakes until you wake up sane.

posted on January 23, 2012 in Columns, Patricia Schneider

Share :

We’ve been neighbours for 20 years. Sadly, I watch her husky sons load the truck as they haul their mother’s furniture to her new apartment.

posted on January 16, 2012 in Columns, The Messy Table

Share :

Sometimes lectionary floors me. The juxtaposition of passages can be brilliant or bizarre – and when I saw what was slotted for this coming week, I had to laugh. From poor old post-whale Jonah to fishers of men…

posted on January 16, 2012 in Columns, Patricia Schneider

Share :

It always amazes me that the children you bear can be so terribly different. Delightful but different.

posted on January 9, 2012 in Miscellaneous, The Messy Table

Share :

I’ve been getting a lot of donations recently from the congregation – crafty things for the Sunday School. Each Sunday, I seem to come home with more plastic bags of squishy things to be sorted through.