Lutheran

The Pillars of Paris

Grief in Pere Lachaise cemetery      

      Those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to be to Paris are probably all thinking, today, about that place. A lot of us have memories – often very good memories, of being there. It’s such a wonderful city. But it must have been a very dark, a very frightening place, Friday night. I imagine it still is, with lots of fear and anxiety and grief as Parisiens try to recover from something it’s impossible to recover from. I was there just for four days last February, staying near Pere Lachaise cemetery, very close to where the attacks took place.

The bloody murders of so many innocent people give a new meaning to Jesus’ words: Beware that no one leads you astray. …. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.

The news Friday felt so apocalyptic. It feels like the end of everything we count on being stable in a society, when gunmen enter a nightclub for the sole purpose of murdering innocent youth. Yes, I know we’ve been spared what others go through regularly. I know that such violence is tragically the case in too many places in the world. Beirut for instance. That poor suffering city. But not Paris, or London, or New York. Or Montreal, we hope. I was busy texting my daughter on Friday night: “where are you?” “are you okay?” We cannot imagine the fear. We cannot imagine the loss, for those parents and grandparents whose children did not come home that night, who now, because of hate, will never be able to come home.

For nation will rise against nation, Jesus said, and kingdom against kingdom.

The borders of France are now sealed. The army is in the streets. Presumably, soon there will be even more cameras, more checks, more eavesdropping and surveillance. The French, like the Americans after 9/11 and like us last year with the attack at Parliament Hill and Bill C-51, are going to be even more willing to give up freedom in exchange for the promise of security.

It’s that word – SECURITY – where the warnings of Jesus really hit home. Jesus was standing by Herod’s Temple, and his disciples were going on and on about the stones. Yes. They ARE great stones. I’ve been there. The stones in the Temple foundations are, individually, the size of city buses. Can you imagine if our buildings were built on solid pieces of granite the size of a Montreal city bus? Not just one but thousands of them? We’d think ourselves pretty secure. In Jerusalem the stones are beviled and cut so carefully that you would think they’re put together with mortar, the lines are so perfect. It is a feat of engineering and strength. Something you would think would last thousands of years. But in the end, did even such a miracle of engineering offer security to the people of Jerusalem? Not at all.

Do you see these great stones? asked Jesus. Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.

Jesus’ point is about security. Where it exists and where it doesn’t. No matter how hard we try. For one thing, he’s telling us, security DOESN’T exist in or through the state. The Jerusalem Temple was the closest thing that Jesus and other Jews in his day had to a state institution. It was grand. It was permanent. But Jesus points out – it’s NOT going to save you. And it didn’t. All will be thrown down.

When we put our trust, as we will, in cameras and guns on the street, and surveillance, we will be saying at least in part we DON’T put our trust in community, and discussion and peace-building and mutual concern and education. We will become, perhaps marginally safer, but at a cost to ourselves. And that’s always the way it is with our attempts to safeguard ourselves. They injure us. Ultimately, in this changeable and dangerous world, Jesus is saying that all attempts to be secure and safe result in our putting trust where it doesn’t exist – in other words, all such attempts end in idolatry. FALSE security.

It was actually the Temple, and the City, and the State, that eventually put Jesus to death. Because the authority of the state ultimately rests on violence as well, even if that violence is systemic rather than a bomb strapped to some deluded martyr’s chest.

So. Where do we find security? Only one place: the place where, paradoxically, as Jesus showed us, security seems the MOST absent. The foot of the cross. Paul wrote: I decided to know nothing while I was with you, he except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. In other words, I will live with complete insecurity, for the sake of love.

Where do we find our peace? It’s not that complicated. When we depend entirely on Love, especially the love that created and sustains us, that’s Gospel. When we depend on threat and power, that’s NOT Gospel. And so police, insurance policies, borders, weapons, buildings – precisely those things that normally make us feel solid about ourselves, are probably the exact things that put us on shaky ground with our God, and with the community of love we are supposed to be trying to build.

In one sense, it’s always about security – where we try to get it, where it fails, and how THEN, we go out and try to find security elsewhere. Paris is terrible, and right now feels unique. Yet there will ALWAYS be wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes, flood and drought. In other words, we’re chasing a dream. We can do what we can do. No more. Try as we might, security will NEVER actually be “secured”.

Beware that no one leads you astray, said Jesus. Permanence is not something out there, in walls and stone, in guns and fences, but in here, in who and what we belong to. Walls go up – and walls come down. Someday EVERYTHING that we consider permanent, if it’s manmade, will probably be changed. There’s no getting out of life without suffering, or ultimately, without death. That should not make us careless of life, but it should remind us that security comes from reaching OUT rather than walling IN.

Paris has always been known as the ‘City of Light’. That fact reminds of a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness.’ Dr King went on to say, and he was speaking from hard experience, ‘only light can do that. And hate cannot drive out hate. Only LOVE can do that.’

When I was in Paris in February, the last day we stopped by Pere Lachaise cemetery, where so many famous people are buried. The cemetery is within a few blocks of many of the attacks Friday. There are beautiful monuments everywhere you look in the cemetery. One of them in particular is a statue of grief, standing beside the dead person, mourning. That’s the photo here.

That will be Paris for some time. Grieving its dead. Inconsolable. We will pray for Paris and its people. And we will also pray for Beirut, and for the thousands of unknown little villages in Syria and Iraq and in so many places where this kind of hate and violence are a fact of life, the kind of hatred that is causing so many to flee.

This must take place, Jesus said, but the end is still to come. It is the PEOPLE who are the real pillars of Paris, and of our shelter, and humanity is the roof that is over our heads. We pray that these are the bricks and mortar that can be strengthened, in love, in Paris and throughout the world in the coming weeks and months.

All Saints and Some Bones

Kateri painting

Yesterday, as some of you know, a group of us went to Kahnawake. We’ve been told by our last National Convention and also by our Bishops that we Lutherans should get to know our First Peoples neighbours. For us, that’s the Mohawks. So the Montreal Lutheran Council and Dean Jim Slack planned a morning of visits. Yesterday, off we went, across the Mercier Bridge.

Part of our visit was to go see the shrine of St-Kateri. Kateri was – IS, I should say – the first ever Indigenous woman sainted by Rome. A local saint. A lot of the Mohawk don’t go to church anymore and don’t necessarily care that much about it. But there was a member of the parish of St Francois Xavier church who gave us a very nice historical intro to Saint Kateri . Our guide proudly showed us the marble Kateri shrine containing the remains of the Saint. He showed us the painting of Kateri, who it is said, suffered from terrible smallpox scars on her face up to just moments before her death, when her skin miraculously cleared up and was made clean.

Our guide was a nice man, a very kind man, and a generous man. And clearly he was very interested in Saint Kateri. He was enthusiastic. He’d finished his historical intro and we were going to sing a hymn and say a prayer, when he said: “wait – if you’re interested, I have a special treat for you.”

What could he possibly mean? We wondered. He disappeared and came back with a small woven basket, with something in it. “Since you’re interested in Saint Kateri,” he said, “This may be for you.” There was something white in the basket. “If you’d like to have a special moment of veneration,” he went on, “we have one of the wrist bones of St Kateri. You can pray with the bone of the Saint right here.”

We all smiled. Several people nodded their thanks. Then our guide left. And we Lutherans just sat there, a bit stunned.

As a good Roman Catholic, it was perhaps the most gracious thing our guide could have done. It was incredibly generous. In one way, it was very thoughtful. But did our guide miss the memo? Did he not know that the group who were visiting the shrine yesterday was a group of Protestants? Not just that, but Lutherans? And visiting on, of all days, Reformation Day, the very day commemorating Luther, who railed against relics?

            Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, says the book of Revelation, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘see, the home of God is among mortals…and then the clincher: God himself will be with them.’

There’s something special when you can remember with ALL your senses. I don’t know about you, but when I smell certain smells – maybe a birch forest, or the smell of fresh bread, or the smell of grass right after a rain – memories just come flooding in. Touch is the same. I have a beautiful Bavarian sweater given to me by some friends in Germany. Every time I put it on and feel that rough wool, the memory of my visit with them comes back to me as if it were yesterday.

So I guess that’s what a saint’s bones might do for a person. That is, the right kind of person, in a tradition receptive to it. Which is not, to be honest, my tradition. I suppose that bones can be a symbol of what the prophet hears in Revelation, when he hears the comforting words God will be with the children of creation, not in idea only, but right there. Not having grown up with any kind of feeling for relics, I must admit that mostly, I found the sight of a wrist bone a bit off-putting. It was, for me, bizarre. I’d prefer to remember Kateri in my mind than to look at her actual enamel and marrow.

But does my discomfort mean there’s nothing to learn, or to be blessed by, in that situation? I don’t think so. Sometime we who are Protestants are too quick to dimiss the physical nature of memory, and the physicalness of the Creator’s love toward us.

On this mountain the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast, says Isaiah. And it won’t be a feast of ideas, but of real, solid things we know and treasure – the kinds of things we can taste and touch and smell: A feasts of rich food, of well-aged wines. It IS true that certain aspects of our faith are far, FAR more than intellectual. It’s true that some blessings need to be received that way: we taste the eucharist, we feel each other’s hands, or cheeks, when we pass the peace, perhaps we wipe tears from our eyes when we hear a hymn or a passage that touches us deeply. For me, and I think for others, one of the most powerful moments of the deconsecration service for Good Shepherd and for the Finnish church home was when we reached out and physically touched the walls with our fingers while thanking God for the shelter those walls had provided. Our Creator sometimes speaks most strongly to us through our senses.

There’s some talk that now-former Prime Minister Stephen Harper – who is, of course, very much alive – will be honoured by naming the Calgary airport after him. If that happens, it will be like Pierre Trudeau airport here in Montreal – a memorial that lasts long after the person is gone. Memory is inevitably connected to what is physical.

All Saints’ Day is a day for us to participate in this MORE-than-just-thinking, but-also-feeling kind of remembering. It’s a day for recognizing the ways in which, by means of much more than bones, those whom God has called saints have left us their witness. Physically. In bricks and mortar AND in bones AND in all kinds of other ways. This is what is sometimes called the “deposit of faith”, or Tradition. The witness of those who have died still lives on in ways that might surprise us. In our bank accounts in our churches, for one thing. In the hymnbooks in our hands. In our gestures. That witness might be in the very DNA we carry from faithful parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, all the way back to the apostles themselves.

Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. The scriptures want to tell us that this isn’t just the future and it’s not just the past. New life, in love, is what can be beginning, in hope and in the spirit, in our lives, right now. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says God in Revelations. The beginning and the end, the constant source of love and the memorial that can outlast each and every change, even the grave.

I watched what happened at the Kateri shrine after our guide went back to his office for a minute. Some of our little group of Lutherans wandered this way and that in the church. Some looked up at the frescoes. Some prayed quietly where they were for a minute. A few lit candles. Most went straight to the museum and the gift shop. Only a couple went to look at the bone. But nobody seemed all that bothered by it, one way or the other.

The most lasting memorial is love, however it is expressed. It can be expressed by a Roman Catholic guide who offers the best witness he has at his disposal, from his Tradition, to a group of strangers whom he wants to welcome. Love, says the Bible, endures. It is stronger than books AND bones, stronger even than the grave. Death will be no more, says the Lamb on the throne. But love goes on. Behold, I make all things new.

As we remember our loved ones with the sound of a bell and the smell and light of candles, and as we celebrate the faith that made those we remember saints, may these bones we inhabit really live. May the words of the prophet call forth the Spirit from the four winds, into our lives. And may the Almighty and the Ever-Gracious, the Lord of life, someday grant us, in our turn, the best, most real, and most lasting, memorial of life – a love that is remembered, physically remembered and lived out, even in, past and through, the grave that awaits but cannot contain us, God’s saints.

our guide

The Old Man behind Young Man Luther

Frederick the Wise

Every year, on Reformation Sunday, I feel a bit silly. You know how every now and then you hear that it’s “pet appreciation day” or “national wildflower day” or something like that? Well, Reformation Sunday feels a bit like that for me. It FEELS made-up. Reformation Sunday is a celebration no one but Lutherans knows about. Frankly, nobody seems to care that much about it, either.

If you were to walk over to the grocery store after church and ask people who Luther was, you’d get blank looks. Maybe a few folks would know something about Martin Luther King Jr. But no one remembers the 16th century monk after whom our church is named. Except us. And even us, not so much.

Just in case you think I’m being cynical, I’m not. Clearly, there IS a place, if not for Luther, at least for Reformation. This week we Canadians voted out one majority government and voted in another. We voted out one prime minister and voted in another. Overwhelmingly. A lot of people must have thought there was a need for reforming things. And that’s just the way life goes.

In his world, Martin Luther was a great beacon of change, a fighter for the common person. But today I’m interested in someone else, someone who was there with Luther, but very much behind the scenes. If Luther is not that well known, this person is even less. He was Elector Frederick the Wise, of Saxony.

I think we should aim to be someone like Frederick. Maybe not with quite so big a stomach….

Frederick was the Duke who sort-of, from behind the scenes, helped Luther. The reason I’m interested in Frederick is that he was old. Like most of us. He was also quite happy with the way things were. He didn’t need change. Probably was suspicious of it, a bit. He was basically comfortable. Again, like most of us. And, at least until Luther came along, he was likely pretty invested in keeping things the way they were.

It all sounds quite familiar. Frederick was NOT a young revolutionary. But somehow, despite all that, when the moment of decision came, when God’s moment to shake up the Church came, Frederick had the courage to be the old man behind the young man Luther. He knew what he knew. He could see with his own eyes that things needed changing. And he risked his own comfort to help make that happen.

I think that’s our battle. Not to be Luther. We’re too old, and probably most of us too comfortable. But to be – at least – Frederick. That takes courage too.

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will NOT be like the covenant I made with their ancestors…

Yesterday Bishop Pryse came to Montreal for his regularly scheduled visit. He told us what we already know: you’d have to be blind not to see that the church is changing. Our pews are emptying out. Young people are not coming in. The old days of big church picnics and full programming and not enough space for all the people are gone. The average age in our congregations is, at least, in the 70s. The days of a full-time professional, paid pastor for every church are gone. What does that tell us? The old ways of doing things aren’t working.

But are you and I going to be Luther? Really? Do we have the energy and the vision to nail our thoughts to the public doors, to debate against the powers of our world, and to take them all on?

I’m not sure that’s our battle. I’m not sure it’s who we are. So perhaps, being older Lutherans, from older, established congregations, congregations that are facing the end of things as we know it, congregations that often have more money than vision, we need to look out at our world and say: okay, maybe I’m not the one to actually bring the changes. But. Maybe I’m being called to support, to pray for, to guide, to help pay for, to protect and cheer for. Or – at the very least – not to stand in the way.

I will make a new covenenant, it says. Emphasis on the word NEW. It will NOT be like the covenant I made with their ancestors…

The Bishop told us that the very model of what it means to be a church has to change. The structure of our Synod and committees goes back to the 1950s and 60s. It was based on the corporate model, on companies like GM. Well, look at what happened to GM! We’re behind the world, not ahead of it.

The needs are just as great as they always were. Luther fought against oppression and ignorance and slavery. Those things are still, very VERY much, with us. We still have the hucksters. Like in medieval times, our leaders still try to use fear to control us.We’re STILL offered fake salvation, this time in bank accounts, in what we call ‘securities’. Our Creator still needs courageous disciples to speak out for freedom, and dignity, and respect for a gracious and free gift of life in our days.

The struggle is happening. So what role will we play?

Frederick had to swallow a lot from Luther. For one thing, Luther taught and preached against relics. Ironically, it was Frederick, Luther’s protector, who had the biggest relic collection in all of central Europe. Luther’s JOB – his professorship – was paid for by the very person and relics he was attacking. Do you know what kind of courage it takes to take a public stand against your own paycheque? But then imagine the courage it takes to let an employee speak against you, just because he or she may be right.

Reforming an institution isn’t easy. When we tore down the old church at Good Shepherd, it was not easy to see the walls and ceiling we had worked hard on, come down – I remember sitting on that roof myself. But the walls HAD to come down, in order for a new way of being church to be born. Just like Frederick’s relics had to become useless so that the good news of God’s love could be told in a new way.

You will know the truth and the truth will set you free, Jesus told his followers. We still need to hear that, and to share it. And since we now live in a world and a time where people are not flooding in through our doors, we need to find ways to go OUT through those doors. To be the church out THERE, in the world. Like for Frederick, it will mean supporting others, if we don’t have the ideas ourselves. It will mean seeing a Luther, and giving up something to make their gift of change happen.

            I know how sad I was to leave my last house. I’d spent so much time and money to make it just the perfect kind of space. I’d designed it to be perfect. But the time came to move. And I remember how STRANGE my new apartment seemed when I first moved in, and how odd the neighborhood felt.

But now, I can hardly imagine being anywhere different. I’ve discovered joys I didn’t know before, of being able to walk to work, of cleaning a smaller space, of a neighborhood with so many good restaurants. Things I would never have known without moving.

One thing is certain in our churches: we need to change. As the Bishop has said, it won’t always be easy. Probably, like Luther, we’ll make some spectacular mistakes. But if we don’t try, we won’t be faithful to this day, Reformation Sunday.

It still feels a bit, to me, like a made-up day. Our version of “adopt-a-caterpillar” day. But if Reformation Sunday seems a bit odd, perhaps we could call it Be-Like-Frederick day. And we could remember that, even old, and settled, and stuck in our routines, and happy with our lot in life, God might still be calling us comfortable Christians to support the winds of change blowing through our church. That way, we too might play a part in bringing the good news of love and life in a new way, to a new world.

Erfurt Luther statue

Why Religion and Politics should Mix

Eagle Ottawa national monument

A friend of mine was recently riding his bicycle when he was pulled over by the police. He was on the sidewalk, which is illegal. But. He was also going through the Atwater underpass, where there is no bike lane, and LOTS of scary traffic. In some spots there are just inches to spare between you and the cars. A driver swerves slightly, and they’ll knock you down. Not to mention the potholes. You may remember that a cyclist died not long ago going through an underpass like Atwater. After that, the mayor of Montreal, among other people, has told cyclists that they should take the sidewalk on those small stretches in underpasses where NOT to do so would be dangerous.

Apparently the Montreal police haven’t been listening to the mayor. When my friend came through the underpass on the sidewalk, the police were waiting. They pulled him over and hit him with a fifty-dollar ticket. As it turned out, however, that was only the first of his problems.

Give us your ID, the police said to him. Now. My friend is a nice guy. In his fifties. Grey hair. Clean-shaven, riding his bicycle home from his job downtown. Maybe even wearing his dress shirt, and a tie. But he knows the law, and so he said to the police: “I’ll give you my name and address so you can send me the ticket. But the law states I don’t have to give you my ID. No Canadian has to surrender their ID on demand to the police unless they’re being placed under arrest.”

He was right.

However, right isn’t always what’s important, apparently. Within seconds the Montreal City Police had my friend handcuffed, his hands behind his back. They marched him into the back of a police van. They started yelling into his face. Telling him he would be thrown in jail for obstructing justice. Telling him he was going to get a police record and never be able to cross the border into the United States again.

They searched his pockets, pulled out a USB stick that he had, and then, right in front of his eyes, broke it in half. All because he wanted his legal rights.

They say religion and politics don’t mix. Whoever said that didn’t know the Bible. My friend is not religious. But I’m saying that faith has something to say to what you and I should think of a situation like that. In fact, religion and politics mix ALL THE TIME.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together, it says in the Bible, and they came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him: appoint for us a king.

Samuel tried to tell them.

            You don’t WANT a king, the old prophet said to them. Rulers are a BAD idea. Rulers will do what they do best. They’ll tax you. They’ll form a police who will oppress you. They’ll make you slaves. They’ll take your children and put them in their armies and then your children won’t come home. A government will take your money, your food, your security and eventually, sometimes, your life. And they’ll do all this, just because they’re rulers, and you’re not. Are you sure you want a king?

And the people of ancient Israel said: Yes.

You know what they say: be careful what you wish for. Because now what are WE, and most people in the so-called developed countries asking for? Security. And we’re being asked if we’re willing to pay what that dream might cost.

True faith has never been particularly comfortable with governments. Now – for me to say that is controversial. It’s not an opinion everyone shares. But there’s a reason why the Bible says: “God is a jealous god.” and “You shall have no other gods.” It’s idolatry to mix up our faith with nationalism. The Kings were NOT good for Israel. Similarly, there’s a reason why Jesus died the way he did. Jesus did NOT die helping plague victims. Jesus was killed by a state, and in the name of law and order. Jesus was executed, as a troublemaker (remember my friend) by a legal government. A government, by the way, that was promising peace, prosperity and security.

Hmm.

Just before Jesus died something else happened that was interesting. The Gospels say that Pilate led Jesus out onto the pavement in front of the mob: “Would you have me crucify your King?” Pilate asked. And the crowds, although they didn’t know it, echoed the ancient Israelites. Jesus stood right there, in front of them. And they shouted back: “We have no king but Caesar!”

In other words, one more time people picked a man over their Creator.

The point here isn’t any specific government. The point is about giving up what the Creator first gave us – ourselves. This whole issue is about sovereignty. According to the Bible, we human beings are created in the image of God. We were given sovereignty over ourselves, in order to freely serve our neighbors, including animals and the natural world. And yet, rather than think like saints, rather than act as agents of love just a little lower than the angels, rather than risk uncertainty, most of us quickly give ourselves up voluntarily to corporations or parties or whatever else tends to enslave us. We trade ourselves for convenience.

But the prophet says to us: We do not have to be like the other nations.

This last week the Truth and Reconciliation Commission publicly released its report in Ottawa. Whatever else you might think about this or that provision, the BASIC thing that’s being asked for, the bottom line, is simply one thing: justice.

Governments – of ALL stripes – have been very bad at giving that. Apparently the Conservative minister of Indian affairs refused to stand with others when it came time to applaud the call for changes in legislation. If the prophet Samuel had been in Ottawa, he’d have said to us, ‘well, what do you expect?’ Power doesn’t help the weak. Power tends to serve power. Which is precisely why if we are children of faith, we need to act in a DIFFERENT way from rulers and governments. We need to be COUNTER-cultural. We need to take a stand for others, and with others. We need to identify and then help overcome what every state, of every political persuasion, will do to thwart justice.

Be careful what you wish for says Samuel. It’s good advice. Think about your democratic vote as a theological choice. Do we really want security at any price, including losing our own freedom? Do we really want a slightly better income at the cost of poisoning the environment? Do we really want to save a few dollars at the cost of historic injustices to the First Nations that can and should be overcome?

My friend sat in the police van for about 45 minutes. Other cyclists would come by, get their tickets, and look at him sitting there, handcuffed. “They looked scared,” my friend said. Like they were thinking: ‘what did HE do?’

But harassment didn’t win out over justice. Eventually, my friend said, a policeman came back to see him. It probably didn’t hurt that my friend had no record, and had never been in trouble with the law. The officer took off his handcuffs. When my friend asked what he was supposed to do next, the officer told him to get lost. The irony is that in the end, he didn’t even get the ticket.

Our Creator asks us to look beyond ourselves to a better world. A world that doesn’t depend on peace and security from Ottawa – or anywhere else. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed says Paul, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands. So we do not lose heart.

There have been, and will be wrongs. That’s the world’s system. But our faith tells us that we are to stand, as Jesus did, with those who need justice. Religion and politics SHOULD mix. It’s time for us to get over wishing for a king. We can wish for justice and for peace, instead. And then do what we can to help make it happen.

Professional Prayer, by David Slater

This is a dangerous profession,
breaking bread and proclaiming it Body,
opening the Word and calling it Life,
sending infants to a watery grave,
and calling it resurrection,
asking those with a 50% chance of regrets
to promise “forever,”
burying the dead in the sure and certain
hope of eternal life.
Trading in words and acts that can, and often do,
transform is unnerving.
You ask yourself: did my eloquence, my sincerity,
my understanding nature produce this?
Of course,
Not.
But the Almighty has few untainted saints on either
side of the pulpit.
And so, for the sake of the other sinners,
chooses to work through the likes of you.

Ribera's St Peter

The Pregnancy We All Have to Go Through

veiled in Chicago three

Do not be afraid Mary, said the angel Gabriel, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb…

Now: I’m a man. And if I’ve learned nothing else, in my earlier years, from having spent quite a bit of time around pregnant women, I’ve learned that for a man to talk about what it’s like to have a baby is a dangerous thing! How can ANY man really know? I’ve been fortunate enough to rub pregnant bellies. I’ve watched bellies grow, put my ear to a belly and listened to heartbeats, put my hand out and felt a belly kick while a tiny little arm or head or bum inside is moving around. I’ve done all that.

But I’ve never ever owned that belly that’s full with child. I’ve never ever had all that blood and amniotic fluid sloshing around inside me, never felt the water retention, the sore feet, the growing breasts, the relaxing ligaments, the stretching and pulling and fatigue and hormones. I’ve probably been almost as close as most men can get to a pregnancy. But I’ve CERTAINLY never been pregnant.

The fourth Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of pregnancy, and I am a man. What’s more, it’s the Sunday of the Virgin Mary, what the Church Fathers called the Theotokos, and I am a Protestant.

But despite that, I believe there’s something for all of us in this story of a conception and pregnancy. It’s no mistake that the last Sunday before Christmas is the most pregnant Sunday of all, not just literally, but also figuratively. Somehow, this particular day in the church’s calendar, just a few days before the most brash and crazy and hyped and frenetic and overadvertised and overstressed and yet somehow, we hope, one of the most holy – of all festivals, you and I are supposed to sit for a minute, like pregnant women who have to put their feet up. Today we’re supposed to consider what it means to be growing, like Mary, the Christ child within us.

In one sense, the story of Mary, placed as it is right now just before Christmas, is a call for some common sense about all births, but this Birth in particular. You can’t have a baby without a pregnancy, the Bible is saying. Right? Right. Of course! And we shouldn’t expect to have a real, meaningful Christmas without something growing and developing in us, either. In our world of instant everything, there is no disposable Nativity. I can hang out my Christmas lights at the last minute, but not my spirituality and my faith. If we think we can pull out love and joy, peace and goodwill like pulling the Christmas ornaments out of a box in the basement at the last moment, we’re sadly mistaken.

Babies don’t come from nowhere (now there’s a line!). They take nine months – sometimes awkward, sometimes difficult, sometimes joyous, sometimes frightening, sometimes even painful months, to develop. The same is true of a real, meaningful celebration of love and peace and justice.

This last week has been more horrific than most. The gunman in Australia who held hostages, resulting in deaths, in a Lindt café in Australia. The poor children murdered in Pakistan. North Korea hackers cause the shutdown of a Hollywood film, jurors deliberate in the Luc Magnota case right here in Canada.

Can you and I celebrate peace in the next few days? That depends: have we made a commitment in a hundred small ways to living peacefully and in justice from day to day with our neighbors and our family and children or whomever, throughout the year? Have we felt the growing pains of peace?

The same is true of love. Can we celebrate love born in the manger? That may depend on whether we’ve been willing to go through the hard slogging of loving each and every day, fulfilling the joyous commandment to love even those who do not love us.

It’s always seemed to me, as a man, that pregnancy is partly the baby starting to make its presence felt with the parents even before it’s out of the womb. At the very moment of the annunciation, Gabriel is already saying to Mary what kinds of things to expect: you will name him Jesus. And he will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

I find several things illuminating about this passage. It’s also more than a little strange that the angel Gabriel shows up in Mary’s private apartments. During that time, and in that society, for a young woman of Mary’s age to be caught with a visitor in her private space would be extremely scandalous. And dangerous.

And so: I’ve always wondered if, especially for a woman, there isn’t just a touch of irony in what Gabriel tells the young woman: Greetings, favoured one. The Lord is with you.

To be a thirteen year old, scandalized young child, pregnant and under suspicion? Some favour, and we who are Christians should keep this in mind when we think that we want to be God’s favoured ones. God’s favour is a difficult road. By the way, notice that it’s a woman who hears first the “good” news of the incarnation, and a woman who bears the pain.

This is God’s favour for Mary: she was about to become pregnant out of wedlock, risking losing her future husband and with him her chances for survival. She was about to live, for her whole life, the stigma that Jesus was an illegitimate child. She would never live down the accusations, and then when Jesus got old enough to go on his own and teach, he would almost deny her by saying that whoever listened to him was his mother and sister and brother. And then, finally, she would see her own Son, the one for whose sake she had already suffered so much, nailed between his wrist bones to the wood by the Romans for a crime he did not commit, there to die a most horrible death.

And Gabriel says that this is good news.

Mary seems much more realistic. She was much perplexed by his words, it says, and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

In these last few days before Christmas, we would do well to ponder the message that we are also hearing this morning in these lessons. Because I believe that the Gospel writer wants us to consider Gabriel to be talking to us as well.

God would like us to be messengers in our world. But think of Mary – pregnant and unsure of what would happen to her. We are to be a new type of messenger – not just communicating with words, but also by growing a new way of life, a more Christ-like way of life, within our very bodies and homes.

Some people cannot have children of their own, but what this Gospel talks about is the kind of life we can all bring to term, whoever and wherever we are.

Being a man, I don’t really know ‘from the inside, as it were’ what pregnancy is all about. But even from the outside, I can tell you one thing for sure – clearly, even when ultimately it’s joyful, it’s never easy!

May you and I, wherever we find ourselves this blessed season, learn from Mary to be realistic about what God wants to do with our lives, and still have the courage to say: “May it be done with us according to your will”.

My One Measley Talent

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When I was in high school, I knew almost nothing about basketball. My friends played. I didn’t. I played other high school sports, but not that. My friends were mystified.

“You should come out and play,” they said. “No, I couldn’t”, I’d answer. “You should try out for the squad!” they told me. You’re on the volleyball team already. Just come out. You’d have fun.

No, I can’t, I’d tell them.

            I’m too busy. Too much homework. Too bored. Too tired. Too this, too that.

But really? Just too SCARED.

It looked like so much fun. But I was worried. Worried I’d get out there and look like an idiot. I don’t remember now, but probably I still remembered when I was in grade two, playing some kind of elementary school basketball. I’d been sent out on the floor when I was still a child and had been so mixed up I’d been passed the ball and had gone the wrong way. As a six year old I’d scored against my own team. It was one of the most humiliating moments of my childhood. Maybe it was the laughter still in my ears over a decade later in high school. It looked like too much. I was scared.

But my room-mate persevered.

“Okay,” he said to me. “Tell you what. You want to stay in shape, right?”

“Right.”

“It’s easier to stay in shape when you’re working out with others, right?”

“Right.”

“The basketballers are in training. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then…”

“Then?”

“THEN, just come out and run with us, and do the training. You don’t have to try out for the team. You don’t have to do anything. Just come out and run and maybe shoot some hoops, and then when the team is picked you leave. Okay?”

“Okay.” I was nervous. But I agreed. I didn’t say yes because my confidence level had gone up. I said yes for one reason, and one reason only. My friend had asked me. And I trusted him.

Once there was a propertyowner, says Jesus, who went away on a journey. And before he went he summoned his slaves, and to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one.

If you and I think about this story at all, which we probably don’t, usually, we think that this is a story about how we Christians DO or DON’T use whatever talents God has given us. And that’s true enough….as far as it goes. But maybe this parable is even more about how, with whatever talents we have in our hands, we do or don’t do what we do as disciples, precisely because of the way we’re already predisposed to see life, and love, and the God who gave us both.

In other words, maybe this parable isn’t so much about talent as about trust. Like me and the game of basketball. I didn’t have talent. But I had trust. Trust in my friends, who told me they’d help me out on the court.

Notice what the slaves say when the Master returns. The slave who had received five talents says: Master, you handed over to me five talents. See? I have made five more. And the Master answers: Well done, good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your Master. The same happens with the slave who had been given two talents.

But interestingly, the slave who had been given one talent is the only one of the three who is listed as having an emotional reaction. Maybe that says something. Listen again: Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew – notice that word, because it implies judgement – I KNEW that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’

Maybe what’s being judged here isn’t really the slaves’ success rate. That would be too easy. Maybe what’s being judged here are the relationships, that is, the fear or the lack of fear, and the trust or lack of trust of those three servants. In the end, this parable is not so much about our talents, as how much we trust ourselves to the One who calls us to use them, and the community in which we might use them. The slaves who feel confident, who feel secure in that relationship with their Master know they can go out there and invest, and risk, and possibly lose, but also possibly gain, for their Master. The slave who is afraid and insecure behaves exactly as you’d expect. What happens if you’re all nervous when you go to tee-off in golf? You duff the ball. What happens if you’re all nervous just before you sing? Your voice cracks. What happens if you’ve been given love and support and you trust yourself to the people around you, even if you have no lessons and no experience? You dance anyway.

As a result, perhaps before we ask the “what” question – what to do in life, maybe we need to ask ourselves the “why” question: why should we risk ourselves? Are we accepted, and encouraged, and loved unconditionally?

Someone could say that this is dangerously close to preaching a God who is really just a mirror to us – and I’m not saying that. But the bottom line, just about everywhere in the Bible, is love. So our Maker doesn’t just reflect our presuppositions. BUT. There’s still a huge truth to the fact that in faith, like in so much of life, we create some of our own realities.

I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Those who do not trust will not risk. That’s as true of our relationship with God as anywhere else.

There’s a group here in Montreal called the “I Can Dream” theatre and dance group. It’s made up of kids who have autism, or have Downs’ Syndrome, or are mentally challenged in one way or another. Yesterday they had one of their concerts here in Montreal and very nearly sold out the Oscar Peterson theatre. Kids who in many cases would normally be told they have no talent for anything, were up there singing and dancing and playing instruments and repeating lines from memory. The musical wasn’t all good. But it was all good, if you know what I mean. And some of it – one song in particular last night, an Italian operatic duet, was SO good in absolutely every sense of the word, so clear and so emotional and just so cleanly and well sung, so note-perfect and emotionally perfect that five hundred people stood up spontaneously and cheered. It was extraordinary. I wasn’t the only one wiping tears from my eyes at the beauty of what those so-called challenged kids could do, on anyone’s scale.

With love. That’s the key. And acceptance.

Once upon a time there was a young man who was afraid to risk playing basketball, but who trusted his friends, if not himself.

That invitation to play along happened thirty-seven years ago. I really was like that slave who had only one talent. I only really ever had one talent for basketball. Not two. Not five. Just one. But I made the team. And even as a not-very-talented player, for over thirty years I enjoyed that sport. I had the time of my life, even a few moments of beauty, until I finally snapped my Achilles tendon at the age of 52.

It’s a good thing for trust, which of course is otherwise called FAITH. Otherwise all that enjoyment, all those years, would have been lost to me.

The Master in this story is God. We are the slaves. And we are called, like in the parable, to be daring for our faith. No matter if we only have one talent. One talent can be enough. Because we will be loved, and accepted, whether we make it OR we fail, whether we do something beautiful in the eyes of the world, or something that’s just beautiful in the eyes of our Lord.

Once upon a time there was a Master who had servants with varying talents. May God help us to remember who we are, and whose we are. May we be as confident as the slaves who had two and five talents, or like the singers here in Montreal in the I Can Dream project. And then, confident that we are free – free to risk, free to learn, free to grow, and also, free to make mistakes, may we take OUR talents, as they have theirs, and go out there into the world. We’re not just here to BE blessed. May we go further – may we learn, in faith and hope, how, also, to BE a blessing.

The Jesus Wallet

Jesus wallet

When I got home from the airport Thursday evening, waiting for me in the pile of mail, mostly flyers, that had accumulated while I was gone was a small parcel. The parcel was from Virginia. When I picked it up and turned it over, I saw the return address of my friend and fellow Lutheran pastor, Lyndon Sayers. The parcel had a little customs stamp on it saying what was inside. But I didn’t look at that. Instead, I did what any kid with a present would do! I ripped open the envelope and reached inside. And what I pulled out was this:

A wallet.

Now. There are lots of things I can imagine getting from Lyndon and his family. But not that.

Why would Lyndon send me a wallet, I wondered? It was red leather, one of those kinds of wallets I remember from growing up out west. A cowboy-wallet, with stiff, thick leather outers, an soft brown inner liner that smelled of fresh cowhide, and plastic threading winding around the outside. A BIG wallet. The kind you can imagine going with a cowboy hat and 100 dollar US bills. Nice, but not exactly my style.

I turned the wallet around so I could really see it, and that’s when I got the second surprise of the day.

There was the face of Jesus, carved into the leather by one of those leather-working tools and signed “Gene”. On the other side were some intricate flower patterns, and in the middle of them these words, taken from Isaiah 53: “For he was acquainted with grief”.

A Jesus wallet. A real Jesus wallet! Just for me.

When the religious leaders at the Temple in Jerusalem tried to trap Jesus, they did it by asking if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. They thought they had him with that, since whatever Jesus said, he would have been either against the Emperor or against his own faith. But he answered like this: Why are you putting me to the test? Show me the coin used for the tax. And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them: Whose head is this, and whose title? And they answered: the emperor’s.

I LOVE my new wallet. Lyndon knows I’m from the west, since he grew up in exactly the same small prairie town I did. And he knows I like kitsch. But as soon as you put Jesus’ face on a wallet, it seems to me that you’re entering some unusual – and potentially challenging -territory.

Imagine pulling that wallet out at the bar when you’re buying a beer. And there’s the face of Jesus, right there, looking you in the eyes. Now in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that one of the things people criticise him for is being a “wine drinker and a glutton”. So maybe a beer wouldn’t be so bad. But imagine pulling out the wallet when it comes time to buy that fancy new cell phone that I KNOW I don’t really need. Or a meal downtown when I could have made a lunch. Or a four-dollar tea at Starbucks when I have a teapot in my office and Canadian Lutheran World Relief is asking for donations to help the refugees in Syria. I wonder if the Jesus wallet might just make me think twice then.

Jesus slid right out of the trap that the religious leaders were setting for him. He did it by saying that whoever’s face is on the coin is who that coin belongs to. Period. Give therefore to the Emperor those things that are the Emperor’s and to God those things that are God’s. In the ancient world, just as in ours, coins are – technically, at least – owned by the state. We just borrow what is known as legal tender.

But then what did Jesus actually mean about giving to God the things that are God’s? He could have been talking about what is holy enough for the Temple offering. Coins with a human image were considered idolatrous by the ancient Jews, who had to change them for special Temple coins that had no such image. But I think there’s a deeper meaning.

Jesus and his interrogators might have been opponents of each other, but as Jews they all believed one thing: when Israel’s God made human beings, it was in the divine image. Every human being bears the stamp of the Creator. As sure as any coin. Two thousand years later we who are Christians have inherited that belief from the Jews. We still say, at least, that we are made in God’s image. We can argue over exactly what that means – is that divine image in our capacity to imagine, to create, to love, or in something else? But somehow, in some important ways, we are, every single one of us, stamped with the divine.

In fact, a lot of books on spirituality say more or less the same thing. I was reading a Buddhist book this past week that said this:

 

“Science, in its zeal for objectivity, tells us that we are our bodies, the product of Darwinian evolution, originating in a chance combination of molecular gasses, our growth and decay dictated by genetic DNA codes. Thus death is the end. But there is something in the collective unconscious of the human species that intuitively knows that this “objective” definition does not embrace the totality of who we are…” (Levine, Who Dies? viii)

 

That book would not use the phrase, but we can: we are made in the image of God.

When faced with a dilemma, Jesus upped the ante. He’s like the businesswoman who is forced to sell her store to her opponents but then goes out and buys the whole franchise. Give the coin to the Emperor, he says. It’s only a coin. But you….YOU belong to God.

The point is: we can argue over all kinds of rules and customs. But it’s who and what we are in relation to, that’s important. When we have a baptism, and we pour the water, we say: “So-and-so, child of God, you have marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.” For us that’s yet another of the ways we are first made, and then re-made, in God’s image. And our lives can either be a fractured mirror, broken by the sadnesses and troubles and hurts we all go through, or as we grow in maturity and in thoughtfulness and in peace with our own selves and with others, we can grow more and more into the beings we were intended to be. Our reflections will tell the tale.

It’s not easy, of course. Even Moses, when he wanted to meet God, was told he could only see God “on the way by”. You cannot see my face, God answers. I will put you in a cleft in the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until my glory has passed by, and then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.

Rather than a clear-headed, divinely-ordained clarity about the meaning of life and love, most of us kind of muddle through. We live in a world that looks rather more like God’s backside than anything else. We get flashes of what we think might be the truth. But then we fall back into our routines, where life just passes and our email inboxes are so full we despair of ever answering all those messages and we have too many bills to pay and worries to worry about and occasionally real catastrophes, and most of the time we barely even feel awake.

Luther emphasized what he called the “hiddenness of God”. He called it, in Latin, Deus Absconditus. But the message of Matthew seems to be that while we struggle through the darkness, the clearest thing we can do is to seek that image of God in ourselves, and in serving others. The person sitting beside you right now – that is the image of God – for us Christians, that is what Jesus looks like. The baby brought to the font – he or she is the image of God. The foreigner, the immigrant, the differently-abled, the sick, the hungry, the imprisoned. That is what God looks like, for us.

It does feel just a bit weird, having a Jesus wallet. But it’s not Jesus who had a problem with faith and money being so close together. It’s us. When we realize – really realize – and take to heart the image of God in us and in those around us, then we will see that Jesus doesn’t just show up on wallets. He’s everywhere: calling us to real life, and real service, looking for how we can lift up and honour that holy image wherever we find it.

The Football Party

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Years ago I lived in a high-rise university residence. Usually our residence was very quiet, especially on the seventh floor, where I lived. But occasionally, someone would have a wild party. And that’s what happened this one evening.

I ‘d been working nights, all summer long. So I hadn’t had a good sleep in a long while. Very crabby, very tired, I decided to settle down early.

That’s when the party started. Someone, somewhere on those 12 floors, was having a major bash. And it spilled over. First into the halls, then into the elevators.

I tried putting my pillow over my ears.

Up and down slid the elevator, every floor. The door opening and closing. Young women shrieking and young men yelling in big burly voices to each other. It was like frosh week all in my elevator. The noise was especially irritating since it echoed up and down the shaft. I was already in a very bad mood.

I tried closing all the doors in the apartment. I turned on some classical music.

Nothing. Nothing helped.

Finally I broke. For once and for all, I thought, I am going to stop this.

Grabbed a housecoat. Flipped on the lights. Grouchy and going to do something about it. Fuming. Steaming. Don’t bother calling the cops, I thought, I want to take care of this myself.

Went out to the hallway, to where the elevator was. I could hear the kids partying and yelling and laughing as the elevator went up and down and up and down. Forever up and down.

I leaned hard on the button. Kept my hand pressed down, putting all the frustrations of the day into that grip. Muttering to myself: Come to me. Come to me.

You could hear the noise of the elevator approaching, and with it, the party. With every rising decibal I got angrier. Now I’m going to tell those punks a thing or two, I thought. Angry. Furious.

The car came to a stop with a whine. Finally, finally, I was going to get my say. The door slip open. “What do you think you’re doing!” I started. I looked down. That’s funny. Something wrong. Then looked up. Way up. I was looking into everyone’s chest. My anger started to fizzle.

There I was, in my housecoat, looking at an elevator full to the brim with absolutely huge university football players.

The biggest, beer in hand, looked down, WAY down, at me: “Excuse me. What did you want?”

Conflict.

It takes either courage or stupidity to go into a conflict willingly.

But that’s exactly what our lot in life often is, and the Gospel reminds us that being a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean avoiding conflict at all, but maybe – just maybe – handling it differently. Because it isn’t just late-night parties that need resolving. Usually – I hope – you and I don’t face those situations. Sometimes it’s a matter of justice for those we’re supposed to remember – the outcast, the poor. Often, it’s something closer and more personal, maybe something chronic, and we need to ask ourselves: what ARE we willing to confront?

What about relationships? what about our past? our parents even if they’re gone, our children, even if they’re grown, the things we have done ourselves that have never been dealt with.

If the passage about going and pointing out fault, in Matthew, is about anything, it’s about this: ADDRESSING THE ISSUES AND CARING ENOUGH TO FACE UP, IN LOVE TO CONFLICT.

I wonder how many of us can name a moment when we really cared enough to do that, to confront something in ourselves or others, or in the system. One moment which had the power to change our lives. It takes courage to confront. And perhaps the reason most of our lives are so UNlike that elevator encounter has more to do with our lack of courage than our lack of anger.

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault… says Jesus.

So as far as conflict goes, these words in Jesus’ mouth do not exactly describe a love-in. It’s hard for us to realize that sometimes the better part of love might be to confront something rather than letting it go. In fact, in this particular Gospel lesson we see a way in which conflict is seen as something which can bring people back together rather than driving them apart.

It’s hard to believe, because conflict hurts, and nothing that hurts, our society tells us, can be good. But there, our society is wrong. Sometimes the truth IS painful, and sometimes confrontation which is painful at the time is the only way toward growth in our lives. Anyone who has had a child knows this. There comes a point, with a young child, where the parent has to bite the bullet and put up with the anger. No, your son or daughter CANNOT always have an ice cream EVERY time you go past the ice cream store. If you do that, you’re lost. A little conflict, sometimes, helps to build rather than destroy, relationships.

And the same is true for how we think of the world. In the attempt to see the truth in everybody’s viewpoint, have we lost the notion of truth itself? In the attempt to be fair, have we forgotten that maybe differences can enrich us rather than scare us? That maybe there are actions, and thoughts which are just wrong? Extremism, like we see in ISIS on the news, is just wrong. Greed, that says it’s okay if all the honeybees die so long as I make my stock dividends, is just wrong. Police who are above the law is just wrong. And it takes passion to address such problems, too, in the name of justice, like the prophets did.

It took a lot of anger and fatigue to confront those people. But it takes just as much passion – and a lot more love – to stay connected to people. To build bridges rather than knock them down. To reach out. To go the extra distance. To confront someone and overcome harm and distance and bad blood and bad feelings. To be reconciled, one of the nicest Christian words of all. “God was in Christ,” says Paul, “reconciling the world to himself”.

Conflict – if it is honest, and approached in love – can lead to growth.

We also need to know WHY we confront. “Where two are three are gathered in my name,” said Jesus, “I am there among them.” That’s the key. Our courage is not based – or should not be – on the idea that we are right and someone else is wrong. In other words, we don’t face each other in self-righteousness, but on the belief that when our Lord sits with us, all of us who are human and frail and fallible can work through anything with each other.

For me that evening in the student high-rise, standing there all confrontational like that, I probably didn’t look all that frightening in my bathrobe. But somehow, the largest and burliest and ugliest of these football players looked at me, then at the beer in his hand, and said: ‘Sorry about that – we didn’t think anyone was in bed already. We’ll take it easy and clear the elevator.”

Wow. Confrontation can lead to surprises – occasionally even nice ones. May you and I have the same strength that comes from passion, strength enough to confront our pasts, our presents, injustices, even ourselves. May God grant us to learn from the courage and spirit and reconciliation of Jesus, who so perfectly embodied passion expressed in love.

The Man, not the Mushrooms

chanterelles 2014

This last week I was passing by a big downtown church that I’ve walked by a dozen times, when I noticed that, unusually, the doors were open. Not only that, there was a big sign on the sidewalk that said: “come in, we’re open”.

Now, I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that church. So why not, right? Inside there were a few people milling around looking at things and some folks in the pews just sitting. I stood there a second and then a young woman approached me: “I’m a volunteer guide,” she said cheerfully. “Do you have any questions?” Great, I thought – this gets better and better. Not only are the doors open, I get my own personal guide. So I asked her about the stained glass.

She never skipped a beat. Immediately she pointed up to the front. Do you see that panel there? I squinted. Yes. That’s a Canadian soldier, she said, with an air of great authority. And do you see that one there? I looked. Yes. That’s Saint George. And that one there? I nodded. That’s St-Iona. Then she gave me the date of the windows too.

I was so excited at having my very own guide that I almost didn’t realize at first what she’d said. Umm…. Wait a minute, I said, finally, almost apologetically, when it hit me. Did you say “Saint Iona“?

Yes, Saint Iona, she repeated. Again, that air of absolute authority. As if she’d been studying Saint Iona for years and had become the world expert on all things Saint Iona-ish.

The problem is: this is something I actually know a bit about. Iona isn’t a person. It’s an island. Last I checked, pieces of land can’t become saints. Except sometimes towns in Quebec!

Isn’t Iona an island? I asked her. I was honestly confused. Maybe I’d heard wrong. Do you mean St Columba, I said to her, you know, the saint who lived ON Iona?

For the first time her face dropped a little and her voice became just a tad less authoritative. Oh…she said….right. Then she looked away. I meant to say St Columba. I must have gotten my words mixed up. Saint Columba….you’re right. Then she looked up again at the window. But that person there? she went on. That’s a Canadian soldier. And that knight is St George. Her certainty started to come back and with it, her tendency to point.

I noticed, at this moment, that the OTHER woman at the desk, an older woman, had been watching our conversation with a worried look. She came scurrying over. “What did she tell you about the window?” the older woman asked. She was looking steadily, and a bit accusingly, at the younger person. “I just said what it was,” said the younger woman. “Well?” asked the older, looking at me. I hardly knew what to do. All I’d wanted to do was to see the church.

Who do people say that the Son of Man is? asked Jesus.

            It seems like a fair enough question. Who do people say the Son of Man is? But it’s a tough question. One theologians are still trying to answer, two thousand years later.

In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus first asks this, apparently all the disciples have a go at an answer: Some say John the Baptist, says one. Others are guessing Elijah, says someone else. They think perhaps Jeremiah, shouts out a third. Or maybe one of the prophets, adds somebody from the back.

This group almost sounds like one of my classes at the university. There’s a lot of discussion because of how Jesus has framed the question: “who do people say the Son of Man is?”

So long as it’s general, it’s easy to have opinions. I have an opinion about how best to lose weight. Just don’t ask me if I’m doing it. Or if someone says to me: ‘what are people saying these days about how best to help save the environment?’ I have lots of opinions about that, too. I could show you books. But if that same person were an environmental activist, and were to turn to me and say ‘and what do YOU say? What are YOU doing?’ that’s a different thing entirely.

So long as it’s general, a question is just a topic of conversation. But if you read the Gospels, Jesus is never safe. Jesus does what Jesus ALWAYS does: he makes it personal.

Who do YOU say that I am?

On Friday a friend of mine gave me a bag full of fresh chanterelles mushrooms that he’d picked out in the woods in the Eastern Townships. At first when he gave them to me I was so happy I could hardly wipe the grin off my face. What luck! What a generous thing to do! I’ve had pfifferlingen in Germany and was lucky enough to pick some in Sweden last summer with another friend. I didn’t think I’d get a chance this year. I couldn’t wait to get home and saute this batch up with onions and start eating. As I hurried home I could taste them already.

But then while I was walking I started thinking. My friend in Sweden is a mushroom expert, who has taken courses in how and what to pick. My friend in Verdun, so far as I know, isn’t. A nice guy, and probably knows a lot about them. He and his wife had probably eaten from this batch, I was pretty sure. But the words “pretty sure” kept sticking in my mind. I put the mushrooms in the frying pan, sauted them up, and they looked beautiful. But by the time I’d put them on my plate, that bit of doubt had gotten lodged. What if my friend had made a mistake? The wrong mushrooms….well. You know.

The point is: in the end, doesn’t faith always come down to a person? Do we TRUST ourselves to this person? Opinions are cheap. But when someone asks us what we’re really willing to put on the end of our fork, then we realize, even in that little bit, what faith is.

Who do YOU say that I am? asks Jesus. And the response cannot simply be “I believe this and this and this about you.” That’s information. What trust is, is “I believe YOU.” Enough to eat the mushrooms, which I did, and they were delicious. Or in the case of Jesus, enough to follow, and to try to understand how to live under the cross. Enough to take time over years to learn from your living presence about suffering, and hope, and death, and life, and being real, even in pain, and about solidarity and justice, and peace that passes understanding, and a spirit that wants to shout out sometimes from the pure joy of living.

The question who do you say that I am? isn’t to be answered with some kind of proposition. We don’t say to the person who has just unburdened their heart in front of us and broken into tears: I believe you are a friend. Or I believe that once upon a time you must have been a friend. To someone, somewhere. We say: I am your friend. You are mine. Here I am. Here is my hand.

This week in the big church downtown, it turned out that my tour guide really didn’t know what she was talking about. The older guide had to set me straight about just about everything.

Belief isn’t something abstract and it’s not something automatic. It’s not even a thing, really. It’s about people, and what we’re willing to commit ourselves to and test and forge, and forgive, and learn from and grow into. Sometimes, as with my guide, we make mistakes. Belief is taking a chance, because in a relationship there’s always risk. Even with Jesus. But if we DO risk, if we DO trust, then we begin to build the links that can guide us in life AND in death. And Jesus says that if that happens, even “the gates of Hades will not prevail” against such a faith. Pray God it’s true, and trust God it is.