Monthly Archives: March 2024

“The power and glory are yours, now and forever. Amen!”

Posted on by
Reply

Do you know why we’ve come to associate an Easter egg with a rabbit?

The tradition of the Easter Bunny is a German tradition dating back to the 19th century. German Anglican immigrants to North America brought their myth about an Osterhase who gave gifts of candy and colored eggs to good children. Sort of like a tiny, hairy, Santa Claus.

Then, the Orthodox Church used to have a tradition of fasting from eggs during Lent. So, the colored hard-boiled eggs were used as a way to celebrate breaking the fast on Easter morning.[1]

But, according to a much older tradition, the Easter egg was associated with Mary. After all, Mary Magdalene was the first human being to whom the risen Jesus appeared in the garden outside the empty tomb that first Easter morning.

In Robert Lenz’s icon of Mary[2], Mary Magdalene is pointing with one hand at an egg held in her other hand. She’s staring straight at you with a gaze that pierces straight into your heart.

It’s like she’s saying to you, “Can you not feel it within you, this nudging from God’s Spirit, this tugging of God’s love at your heart? It starts inside of you. How can you not know this?” It is in the heart where love begins to grow. Love expands like the universe. Literally.

In modern cosmology, it is believed that billions of years ago the entire mass of the universe was compressed into a gravitational singularity, the so-called cosmic egg. And from that singularity, the universe has expanded ever since to its current state. And it continues to expand at this very moment we celebrate Easter and shout, “Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed!”

How does the new day start? The new day starts by going from inside to outside. Whether it’s clambering out of a tent as the sun rises over a pristine campground lake. Whether it’s stepping out of your house to go to work. New life begins inside and moves from there to the outside. The new day, the new thing is marked by expansion. Could love be calling us out again this Easter?

We speak of a mother’s love which, physiologically, starts within her. I read a marvellous description about this from Meggan Watterson’s book about Mary; she writes, “All the eggs a woman will ever carry, form in her ovaries when she’s a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means, our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spend five months in our grandmother’s womb.” New life and new love, to say the least, begin inside of us.

There’s more to this tradition about Mary and her egg. A legend that few know about.

“The Eastern Orthodox tradition holds that after the resurrection, Mary Magdalene traveled to Rome, where she was admitted to the court of Tiberius Caesar because of her high social standing. She told the court the story of her love for Christ, and how poorly justice was served under Pontius Pilate during Christ’s trial. She told Caesar that Christ had risen. And to help explain his resurrection, supposedly, she took an egg from off of the feast laid out before them, and said:

“An egg, like a seed, contains the end at the beginning. The seed already has the bloom held within it. The egg holds safely inside whatever new life its precariously fragile shell is meant to protect. And if that new life is going to emerge, it has to come from within.

“You can’t break a shell and still expect a little beak to one day peck its way out and into the world. You have to let that tiny creature with wings within the shell arrive at the day of its own birth. You have to remain in this trusting, quiet unknown, as every mother or artist knows, and let that life declare its existence not when your ego says it’s time, but when that new life is ready.”

A person, like an egg, has life, has spirit, a true self. Sometimes we’ve called it the soul. Inside of us is this seed, the presence of God in spirit. And this life waits to emerge from the womb, the dark within. This life is there at the beginning and at the end.

Birth is meant to happen before we die. Ideally, many times over. But we have to die to our ego compulsive ways of thinking and doing. We have to have Good Friday before Easter, to let new life emerge over and over again. This inner spirit is all we are when we come into this world and it’s all that we’ll be when we leave it.

And what brings this new life to come out is love. It’s the only way new life happens. Without love, none of this is possible.

“Then, according to legend, Caesar was like, ‘Hah, yeah, right. A person can no more resurrect than that egg in your hand turn red.’”

And the egg immediately turned red.

And that’s why I would say we have coloured eggs at Easter: To remind ourselves that with God anything is possible, even bringing new life to a situation, a person, the earth, a church that appears to have died of all hope and promise. That’s resurrection. That’s Easter.

The resurrection of Jesus says that God has the last word. Easter reveals that there are no dead ends, that ultimately nothing is going to end in tragedy and crucifixion. Yes, when we look around us into history and in our daily lives in the moment it seems that it can’t be true; like Caesar we say, “Hah, yeah, right. A person can no more resurrect than that egg in your hand turn red.”

And yet, ever and again, here and there, more than we expect, new life breaks forth, when we are willing to notice and see new life as if for the first time.

Love is what opens our hearts and minds to see new life. New life begins with a newfound love, coming from our hearts and expanding towards ourselves and for God, for others, the earth and all that is in it. God’s gift of love gave Jesus to us. And God’s gift of love finally brings us back to life this Easter.

“The power and glory are yours, now and forever. Amen!”

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

[1] Paragraphs in this sermon are cited directly from Meggan Watterson, Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & The Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet (New York: Hay House Inc, 2019), pp. 98-100.

[2] Read about Robert Lenz’ icon of Mary Magdalene here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2013/07/the-icon-of-the-magdalene/

“Deliver us from evil …”

Posted on by
Reply
photo Martin Malina

We read today the Gospel from John’s account. As we learned last night, John’s gospel has a different emphasis compared to the other gospels who also tell the story of Jesus’ Passion.

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus took long journeys throughout Israel and the surrounding region, all of which ended in Jerusalem. However, John’s gospel is located almost entirely in Jerusalem and its Temple. The city itself is a thematic focal point even for the Passion of Christ (Shaia & Gaugy, 2021).

During one of the midweek Evening Prayer services this past Lent, we prayed for the victims of both sides of the violence in Gaza. Soon after this war on Gaza began last October, an ecumenical group of Palestinian Christian leaders sent an open letter to the Western Church. Here are some excerpts:

“Words fail to express our shock and grief to the on-going violence and war in our land. We deeply mourn the death and suffering of all people. We are also profoundly troubled when the name of God is invoked to promote violence and religious national ideologies …

“We find courage in the solidarity we receive from the crucified Christ, and we find hope in the empty tomb. We are steadfast in our hope, resilient in our witness, and continue to be committed to the Gospel of faith, hope, and love, in the face of tyranny and darkness. In the absence of all hope, we cry out our cry of hope.”

A working group from the United Church of Canada, the Mennonite Central Committee, The Presbyterian Church in Canada, Roman Catholic groups, the Anglican Church of Canada, and other ecumenical groups created a response to the Open Letter from the Palestinian Church.

In addition, Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) wrote a letter last week to Bishop Azar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Lands (ELCJHL). Here is an excerpt from that letter:

 “I write to you today on behalf of the bishops, clergy and lay members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. As we approach Holy Week, we want you to know that you are in our thoughts and prayers. As we follow our Lord’s journey from the table to the cross, we think of his suffering, and we remember your suffering, and the suffering and deaths of so many in Gaza.

“May we together be strengthened by the joy and hope that is found in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and his assurance that he still walks with us all – in Jerusalem, in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Canada and indeed around the world.

“In the meantime, please know we accompany you, we are your partners, we pray for you, we advocate for peace in Gaza and the West Bank with our government and we continue to collect funds for your need.….” (Johnson, 2024).

Our advocacy for the victims of violence transcends divisions we have justified. Both sides. The Germans in World War One wore belt buckles with the inscription on them, Gott mit uns [God with us]. But God is in the foxholes of both sides. Both sides in every war. God is with all people crying out in their pain (Rohr, 2023 July 21).

“Deliver us from evil …”

When religion is used as a political tool for aggression, sin happens. Dividing people, separating them, forcibly by walls and using religion as a tool of war, that is evil. Evil is the result of division.

“Deliver us from evil …” we pray every time we gather as a church. The Cross of Christ, today’s focus, is the primary symbol of Christianity, a reminder of God’s victory over evil by becoming a victim of it. Evil, sin, violence, division—separation from God, separation from each other, separation from the earth — is overcome by the Cross. The Cross is the answer to our petition: “Deliver us from evil …”

In traditional Christian baptism the candidate answers three questions of renunciation: First, “Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?” Second, “Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God?” Third, “Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?” (ELW, 2006, p. 229, emphasis mine).

Notice that only the last of the three questions focuses on individual sins. And yet, when we pray in the Lord’s Prayer for forgiveness of sins and deliverance from evil I suspect we tend to focus mainly on individual acts of sin. But the individual is only part of how evil is expressed.

Saint Paul himself spoke of “principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12). He equated sin and evil with systems in the world, ways in which we operate, things we take for granted, cultures and behaviours that we hardly notice half the time but which affect us immensely and even defend.

On Good Friday we read from the Gospel of John. The Cross joins two cross beams, two opposing directions. It can be a metaphor for the struggles we must endure, the divisions within us that we confess.

A clue to reconciling the paradox in the Cross of Christ lies in John’s unique emphasis in writing his Gospel. You see, by the time the Gospel of John was written, Jerusalem had become desolate and deserted. It had been largely abandoned after its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE.

However, it’s significance was not lost on people of faith. It continued as a symbol—one of the most powerful in biblical lore. After all, it was King David’s great accomplishment. In short, Jerusalem represented the historical, emotional, and spiritual centre of the Hebrew faith. It was the location of the First and Second temples.

The name of the city, too, has enduring significance. Jeru-Shalom translates as the City of Peace. However, the peace of shalom is complex, differing greatly from our normal English sense of the word.

Shalom comes from a root word that means “wholeness” (Shaia & Gaugy, 2021, p. 240). In the Hebrew language shalom has the connotation of joining opposites. That is the reason shalom is used as a greeting when meeting as well as leaving someone—occasions that contain both beginning and end, coming and going. Shalom unifies opposites, brings them together.

Jeru-Shalom, in its deepest meaning, is the preeminent symbol for “communion”—a place where all tribes, not just Jews, could live in harmony. Jerusalem is a place where opposites can reconcile and a new vitality reign.

A lasting impression that Jerusalem made on me when I visited the City of Peace many years ago was how close together, physically at least, peace-abiding Jews and Muslims and Christians actually lived, worked and worshipped. I witnessed a peaceful co-existence.

I met Palestinians who were Christian, and Israelis who didn’t agree with their government’s occupation of the West Bank. Not all Muslims are extremists. Just like not all Christians are extremists. Because there are peace-loving Muslims, as well as peace-loving Jews and Christians who continue to make the vision of peace a goal and a way of life not only in the holy lands but everywhere.

Jesus’ sacrifice was one of love for all people, on every side of every division. Jesus’ sacrifice breaks the oppressors rod because Jesus does not play by that game. He introduces a third way, a new way—a way for peace, hope and new life for all. A way of unconditional love. Thanks be to God.

References:

Evangelical Lutheran Worship Book. (2006). Augsburg Fortress.

Johnson, S. (2024). https://elcic.ca/2024/03/20/elcic-national-bishop-writes-pastoral-letter-of-support-to-elcjhl/

Rohr, R. (2023, July 21). God is on the side of pain. Daily Meditations. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/god-is-on-the-side-of-pain-2023-07-21/

Shaia, A. J. & Gaugy, M. L. (2021). Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation. Quadratos LLC.

Broken and beautiful

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight is not just about the meal. Yes, we strip the altar at the close of the service, so our attention is naturally focused on the Last Supper.

However, the Gospel of John is not overly concentrated on details of the Last Supper when compared to the other Gospel writers. A mere four verses describe the meal itself (John 13:1-4). So, John is obviously trying to emphasize another overriding theme in the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection through the events of Holy Week.

You may have noticed that the baptismal font has lurked inconspicuously in the chancel area throughout Lent. In some churches it is completely removed. But it has stayed with us, this Lent. For a reason.

The Gospel of John which we read during Holy Week and the upcoming Easter season was originally used for baptism and preparing candidates for a life in Christ (Shaia & Gaugy, 2021). The Passion of our Lord is presented in John as a graphic picture of the baptismal movement down into the water and rising up out of it (Philippians 2:5-11).

Of course, Christian baptism uses water to express the elements of death and rebirth. “In the early church, deacons performing baptism were instructed to grasp the candidate around the chest from the back, lowering the individual under the water in such a way that a ‘startle response’ was triggered, thereby providing an experience of near death” (Shaia & Gaugy, 20221, p. 242). It was a visceral reminder of this spiritual movement.

Arising out of the water, the baptized was then blessed and announced to the community as moving forward into new life with Jesus.

It’s the dying and the rising that John is interested in keeping together — that pattern is indivisible in a life of faith. You can’t stay under the water forever; eventually you have to come up. Conversely when you are in the water you can’t keep your body above the water; eventually you immerse yourself in it.

As people who have and are travelling this journey of faith today, how do we move from the old into the new? How do we resurrect into new balance and move forward in Christ? Those are the questions John wants us to ask.

In the Gospel for tonight, Jesus demonstrates the inner posture out of which authentic service happens. Not from a place of dominance, self-righteousness or privilege. But, rather, from a servant posture of humility in the presence of another.

So, and notice the baptismal imagery employed by John, Jesus after supper “poured water into a basin …” (John 13:5). Imagine now the reversal, the paradigm shift: The divine presence strips down practically naked and presents himself to his disciples in a way that would have been appropriate only for marriage partners or a servant before their master. And Jesus washes their feet! “There could have been no more perfect exemplar of both the intimacy and selflessness of Spirit in service” (Shaia & Gaugy, 2021, p. 243).

Intimacy means vulnerability. Being exposed for all our weaknesses. And accepting them. Loving even the fact that we are fragile, insecure human beings. True service comes from that heart-place of letting go of our ego pretensions.

It strikes me that when we wonder how to love others who do not accept our efforts to love them, when we wonder how to be faithful servants of Christ in the world today with those whom we are called to reach, when we wonder how to serve others in Jesus’ name, when we wonder how to move from the old to the new, we need to start by allowing our vulnerability to show.

We receive Communion tonight. From a cup. Maybe the cup you use at home for Communion has a chip in it, or a crack or has some history. Maybe tonight is the night to use that cup with the chip or crack in it.

Listen to this poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer who illustrates the divine beauty expressed in and from a broken cup. It’s called, “What’s in a Broken Cup” (Wahtola Trommer, 2022):                

Not everything broken need be fixed. Even the loveliest cup, the one that seemed perfection, the one that fit just right in the hand and held the favorite wine, even that cup is only a cup, and, being fashioned out of breakable clay, it was, we could say, made to be broken. The fact it was fragile was always a part of its value. In shattered fragments, the cup is no less treasured–perhaps even more treasured now that its wholeness isn’t taken for granted. There are some who would throw the pieces away. There are some who would mend them with glue or even with gold in an effort to repair. But there are some who will cherish what is broken, hold it even more tenderly now, trusting its use– though different– is no less valuable. Trusting a fragment is sometimes more than enough. Trusting in every end is a beginning, and we might now sip our wine straight from the Source.

References:

Shaia, A. J. & Gaugy, M. L. (2021). Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation. Quadratos LLC.

Wahtola Trommer, R. (2022). What’s in a broken cup. https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2022/01/10/whats-in-a-broken-cup/

When meals go awry: A recipe for a grace-filled dinner

Posted on by
Reply
Accommodating (photo by Brian Wirth, 20 March 24, Faith Lutheran Church Council pizza party)

In the next week or so families, friends and communities will be gathering for meals in the observance of Holy Week and Eastertide celebrations. Not unlike the Christmas holidays, for some, these dinners can be stressful and anxiety filled.

It gets complicated. A simple meal, and all of a sudden there’s more work to be done than you might have thought. I include here a picture of a pizza one of our members made for the council meeting last week. It’s made on gluten-free dough, half of it without dairy cheese. Like I said, enjoying a simple meal with others today is not clear cut and straight forward.

One of Holy Week’s focal points is the Passover celebrated by Jesus on the night before he died. On Maundy Thursday this week, we gather to reflect pointedly on this last night Jesus spent with his disciples.

But that first meal suffered various disruptions: One of the invited guests stormed out ready to betray Jesus and precipitate a series of events leading to Jesus’ arrest, sentencing, torture and death on the Cross. There were arguments about who’s the best among them and lamenting about thwarted expectations of the Messiah. Then, after the meal, Jesus got down on his hands and knees to wash the dirty feet of his friends.[1]

It was not a picture postcard dinner even though famous artists painted famous paintings about it. In truth it was kind of messy and unscripted.

Holy Communion which we celebrate every week is founded on that meal. As such, Communion is not a performance of perfection with perfect people. It is an honest, authentic gathering of vulnerable people. The mood around that last supper was heightened by anxious and confused disciples.

Elements of that first holy supper Jesus inaugurated are descriptive of any meal that gathers friends who want to be there, and who nevertheless know they are welcomed at the table with all their foibles and imperfections.

Meals with friends and family are real, ordinary and sometimes messy, not unlike Pastor Carolyn Lesmeister’s telling of a very special – yet messy – meal she once experienced beginning with an unanticipated horror[2]:

She recalls: “Guests were due to arrive in less than three hours when I walked into the kitchen and noticed it: the faint but unmistakable smell of decay.

“At first, I was unshaken. Produce often remained in our ‘crisper’ drawer long after its time of freshness had passed. I opened the fridge door, and—sure enough—the smell intensified. I set about tossing wilted lettuce and locating the lost apples that had gone to mush and removing cheese that wasn’t supposed to be furry. Gross, but normal—at least in our household.

“To my dismay, the stench did not go away—or even lessen—despite the newly cleaned-out refrigerator. In fact, it got worse.

“With an hour to go before people started coming over, we had the fridge pulled out of its nook and partly disassembled. Tools were strewn all over the kitchen floor. My husband was desperately trying to get the heavy-duty vacuum hose far enough up into the fridge’s mechanicals to remove the mouse carcass we had discovered to be the source of the smell. 

“Any normal person would have already canceled that night’s dinner party by this point. But we were not normal people, and this was not a typical dinner party.

“So I sprayed an unhealthy amount of air freshener, lit every candle I could find, and wrestled with whether or not to warn guests that if they were sensitive to artificial scents or stories about mice they might want to sit this one out.

“The gathering we were having that night was one that had become a monthly tradition we affectionately called ‘crappy dinner’.

“As a new parent with an infant son and no family in the area, I feared becoming isolated from community and losing connections with friends. 

“Then I came across a blog post by Kelley Powell called, “How to Host a Crappy Dinner (and See Your Friends More Often).” In it, she encouraged people to let go of unrealistic expectations around immaculate houses and elaborate menus, and instead embrace inviting people as they are to come to your house as it is. Low expectations and low stress …

“One of the first and most important ‘rules’ of hosting crappy dinners is that you don’t do a lot of prep work. You’re technically not even supposed to clean. At all. Because once you enter the rabbit hole of needing your house to look a certain way, you have abandoned the ‘low expectations and low stress’ ethos of the event ….

“But I didn’t worry about the fingerprints all over the windows, the dust on … every flat surface, or the fact that our house looked like it was home to an active family with children and pets. We invited people into our home — and into our lives — without trying to make any of it seem like it was nicer, fancier, or more put together than it actually was.

“In that spirit, the menu for crappy dinners is meant to be simple: Quick, easy, and generally well-liked are the top criteria.

“We chose to make it the same almost every month: gluten-free spaghetti from a box, marinara sauce from a jar (with added spices if I felt fancy), seasoned ground beef for the meat-eaters, and a giant bowl of mixed greens with various dressing options. Beverages were water, wine, milk, and maybe juice if we had some.

“That’s it. I literally invited people over and fed them pasta from a box. We served everything a la carte to easily accommodate a wide variety of dietary needs and preferences. … If it’s not something you’d ever make for a weeknight family dinner, then it shouldn’t be on the menu for crappy dinner.

“For our first crappy dinner, I was tempted to only invite ‘safe’ friends: the people who already knew my life and house were a mess and who I knew wouldn’t judge me for that.

“But, again, in a state of courage or sleep-deprivation, I decided that wouldn’t be much fun, so I invited every single person that lived in our area and was friends with me on social media. Literally everyone. Neighbors. Colleagues. Our realtor whom we adore. People who took the same fitness classes at the gym. Folks I’d met at trainings and events but not kept in touch with. If they’d had the [mis] fortune of crossing my path, they got invited. …

“We were surprised by the variety of people that turned out and the connections that were formed and deepened. Casual acquaintances of ours became real friends. Mutual friends discovered common interests and passions and became friends with one another, outside of their relationship with us. It was a beautiful thing to cultivate and witness.

“As you can tell, the point of crappy dinners is not to create Pinterest-inspired table-scapes or cook meals worthy of Instagram. Instead, it’s to foster connections between people – real, authentic, messy, vulnerable connections between real, authentic, messy, vulnerable people.

“In her speaking and writing, Brene Brown talks about how imperfections are a gift and how embracing our own imperfections eases the pressure on those around us, allowing us all to feel more deeply loved and connected.

“Lutheran theology emphasizes God’s grace: that God loves and accepts us exactly as we are — struggles, frustrations, failures, imperfections and all.

“Crappy dinners provide a tangible experience of these dynamics. By lowering the standards for hosting people, we take dinner parties from being stress-filled events that happen only on special occasions to being monthly occurrences we look forward to with joyful anticipation. 

“We take the risk to invite people in and show them that we are, indeed, worthy of love and connection even if our house is a mess and our culinary skills leave something to be desired. And if WE are worthy of love and connection—even with our toy-strewn floors and dusty shelves and pasta sauce from a jar—then perhaps our guests will realize that they, too, are worthy of the same.

“As appalling as it was, there was something special about opening the door to welcome guests on The Day of the Incident with the Dead Mouse. I recall greeting people something like this: ‘Hi!! Welcome!! Come on in!! Um, sorry that the place reeks of air freshener and the windows are wide open even though it’s only … [10] degrees out. See, we had this gross little situation with a mouse, but it’s handled now and the food is ready and we’re here. No judgment if you want to leave … we know it’s disgusting…’

“Every single person stayed. We had a delightful—albeit chilly—evening full of laughter and stories and food and fun. Maybe they stayed out of politeness, but I like to think that it was one of those times that put people at ease, because when someone greets you at the door like that, you know that whatever imperfect things are happening in your life, you and your mess are truly welcome at the table.

Recipe for A Crappy Dinner Party

  • Generous scoops of confidence & vulnerability 
  • Sprinkle of humor (more, to taste)
  • Table(s) and chairs: as many as you can find, matching sets not necessary 
  • Food: quick, easy, cheap, adaptable
  • People: whomever you have contact info for

Directions:

1) Choose a location. Formal dining rooms are great, but feel free to set up a table and some folding chairs in your living room, basement, or backyard — wherever you have the most room. Borrow tables and chairs from the neighbors if necessary.

2) Invite as many people as you can. The more the merrier! Be clear about the low expectations for the gathering and that it’s about getting together, not having a fancy experience.

3) No more than 30 minutes before guests are due to arrive, start cooking. If your meal takes longer to make, then it’s probably too fancy for crappy dinner! Scale it back. Simplify.

4) Welcome people into your home. Give them whatever disclaimers you need to about the meal, the toys, the children, the pets (or don’t). Wave in the general direction of the beverages and food and tell them to help themselves.

5) Enjoy building relationships and seeing way more of your friends than you normally would.

6) Repeat as often as you like.

Let us pray. Thank you, God, for welcoming us at your table including all our imperfections, weaknesses and failures. Amen.

[1] John 13

[2] What follows is cited directly from Lesmeister, C. (2022). Recipe for a Grace-filled Crappy Dinner. FaithLead.

“Give us today …”

Posted on by
Reply
Calm energy in facing it all (photo by Martin Malina on March 1, 2024, Ottawa River)

The petition from the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread”, is a prayer built on trust. Trust in God’s creation and God’s universe. Trust that it is all “tilted toward enough, toward abundance, and ultimately toward our flourishing.”[1]

That’s a grandiose dream, you might say. How is it that God’s universe is tilted toward enough, toward abundance, and ultimately toward our flourishing when life seems anything but? And yet, we continue to pray to God, week after week, “Give us today our daily bread.” And when we pray, “Give us today our daily bread” we expect that God will provide. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer built on trust.

Today, the church commemorates Saint Patrick. “According to his Confessio, Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates as a youth and spent six years enslaved, tending sheep in the Irish wilderness. During this time of isolation and deprivation, Patrick writes that he often prayed hundreds of times a day, asking for God’s [provision and] protection.”[2] You don’t pray hundreds of times a day unless you expect God will somehow provide. Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, trusted God in moments of desperation.

How can we build this trust that God gives us enough? How do we get from deficit to surplus? This is a question that preoccupies many of us on Annual General Meeting Day. How do we get from scarcity thinking to an abundance mentality? This is a question that preoccupies those who want to grow spiritually and deepen their faith.

First we need to acknowledge how we have been conditioned by our early life experiences. And, acknowledge the powerful influence of current day media and marketplace messaging—that we always need more, and that we don’t ever have enough. ‘More’, of course, is a relative concept.

Most of us only need to look in our closets, garages and storage pods to recognize that we are a “stuff-drunk culture”[3]. Having acquired more than we can handle, our vision, our thinking, is so much formed by these crammed spaces in our minds and our homes.

In some ways, the people of Jesus’ day were no different. What is enough and what is more are, again, relative concepts.

And Jesus taught a reshaping of those stories, the narratives, the images and memories they told. Jesus taught a reshaping of the narrative to produce a vision of abundance for all. This is what Jesus was up to when he said, over and over again: “You have heard it said … but I say to you”![4]

“Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus says in the Gospel for today, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”[5]

The picture Jesus paints, the narrative he is reshaping for his followers, suggests a pattern we have heard, as Christians, time and time again: Death and resurrection. Not death alone. Not resurrection alone. But, from the perspective of life on earth, both.

And by saying ‘death’, I mean little deaths and losses that you experience throughout life: divorce, job loss, migration, moving, leaving, losing, sickness, ill health, accidents, tragedy, death of loved ones, relationship break-downs – these are all little deaths.

The point is that Jesus, while not denying the pain associated with all these losses, frames them within the larger scheme of life. A life that we begin to see anew. A life that heralds new beginnings, new opportunities, and new-found hope. That’s the promise of resurrection.

In Psalm 27 (v. 13), the Psalmist expresses his faith: “I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” Not just after we die. Not just in heaven. But here! On earth! In this world, in the regular course of our lives crappy as it sometimes goes! “Give us today our daily bread” is a bold statement of faith and belief in tasting something good from God in our lives on earth.

So, is it deficit and scarcity? Or surplus and abundance? That is a question of faith. So, where do we begin in shifting, transforming, the way we understand what is enough and what is more? Where can we start?

Well, I am looking outside more these days, letting my eyes wander over the still-sleeping trees and breathing in that promising air. And it strikes me that creation is not anxious. It is content with its own place, function and possessions. It frets not over hoarding out of fear of not having enough. Some trees rest for hundreds of years in their own sustaining power, receiving and giving over time. The scrub grass doesn’t frantically pace back and forth, catastrophizing whether enough water will soak down to its roots.

We can learn something about enough by gazing at nature. Defining enough in the way of creation means seeing contentment as fluid and flowing: “Sometimes we will have more, and sometimes we will have less. There are winters, and there are springs.” The question is how we approach both seasons.

God’s vision operates in abundance, not scarcity. Life in Christ is rooted in the belief that there is always enough of whatever we need. The picture Jesus paints and the narrative he reshapes leads us to a non-anxious posture toward the world: A calm spirit, a tender heart, open both to receive and to give whatever God has in store. “God invites us to use calm energy and unhurried effort in our lives, fueled with thoughts about a universe where pine trees and sparrows never worry about what comes next.”[6]

Let us not be fish arguing about who owns the water they are all swimming in. Let us not be birds who draw lines in the sky separating who can fly where. Let us be people who share, who are generous—in some seasons of life receiving and in other seasons of life giving what God has first given to us all.

Give us today our daily bread. Amen.

[1] Tygrett, C. (2023). The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons, p. 147. Broadleaf.

[2] Parker, S., Watters, M. (2022, March 17). Who Was Saint Patrick? Diocese of St. Augustine. https://www.dosafl.com/2022/03/17/who-was-st-patrick?

[3] Ibid., p. 74

[4] See, for example: Matthew 5:21,27,33,38,43.

[5] John 12:24

[6] Ibid., pp. 76-77

“Thy kingdom come …”

Posted on by
Reply

Would you count yourself among the half of all Americans—and I would presume Canadians as well—who say they are actively trying to “discover” themselves? And around 40% of adults say they are still searching for “purpose in life.”[1]

Regardless of how you may define purpose, let’s say that purpose is how you evaluate and measure your value in the world.[2] So, what is your purpose in the world?

I believe each one of us here has value and dignity, created lovingly in God’s image.[3] And perhaps our challenge today, personally and in community, is to focus our attention and centre on each other’s inherent worth, value and dignity, amidst all the challenges we face. So, why the confusion about purpose?

We may feel guilty we have this problem today because it wasn’t always like this. We often think fondly of the past. We remember when police officers and politicians apparently protected our interests. “We could rely on what the doctor told us, walk into a store and buy something without comparison shopping, and a handy person could repair their own car without an advanced degree. We feel that formerly we were more able to rely on things, on institutions, and on people in some greater or stronger way than we do today, whether or not that is actually true.”[4]

What may contribute to our confusion about our purpose today is that we are filled with apprehension and mistrust. Fear lurks beneath the lack of trust we feel today.

So, what do we fear? “Is it pain, loneliness, loss of position, loss of respect? Is it possible that underneath all of these fears, real as they are, lies one core dread: the fear of not having love? If we dig deeply enough, will we discover that our deepest fear is, What will I do if no one loves me?”[5]

“Let your kingdom come.” In this sermon series during Lent we look at various phrases from the Lord’s Prayer. Today, we reflect on the meaning of our petition to God: Let your kingdom come. Thy will be done. God’s will be done, in our lives and in the world. That is our prayer, indeed.

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther in the 16th century offered short explanations for all the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. He begins his explanation of this third petition by stating that God’s will is done even without our prayer, even without our specifically asking for it.[6] That’s because, for Luther, God’s will is about God’s grace, first and foremost, God’s good gift to us in the Holy Spirit.

And long before Martin Luther, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 5th century—John Chrysostom—linked the will of God in us to God’s love in us.[7] From the original Greek, Thy Kingdom Come, therefore means: “Allow love to reign fully.”[8] That is our prayer, indeed.

When Jesus gives the greatest commandment—to love God, yourself, and others with every fibre of your being[9]—we find the singular purpose of humanity: We are loved, and we are here to love.[10] Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.

God is love[11]. And when we exercise love, the world on earth cannot be the same. The order of things is forced to change by virtue of a love that paints a different vision of reality.

When love reigns, we can trust others more, even those in authority never mind our closest family. When love reigns, we can find clarity of purpose for our lives. And it’s possible.

In answering the question about your purpose, did you think about what you did, or need to do? We often inquire into purpose with a task-focused mindset. But we can ask a far more probing question about purpose. What if the question of purpose isn’t at all about what we do but what we truly love? What do you truly love?

To ask the question, ‘What do I love?’ is to reconsider what matters most. When love is the driver, we think differently about money and accolades. Love shapes how we act toward our family, our friends, those we meet every day.[12] Love re-orders our priorities.

They recently renovated our local McDonalds in Arnprior. And, sure, it needed it. The restaurant is now refreshed, clean and all new and high-tech. But they still have to update the big sign outside. Because one important part of the McDonalds experience, from childhood, is no longer there: They removed the playplace.

photo by Martin Malina (March 4, 2024, Arnprior Ontario)

I remember as a kid going for birthday parties to McDonalds. And parents had birthday parties there because of the playplace. We would all dive into the ball pit which we now know as the “multi-coloured petri dish where all forms of bacteria grow and thrive.”[13]

But as children we didn’t really care. We climbed the netting, followed the yellow-tinted tubing, and with arms up down the slide we went only to ascend again.

It was a joyful space, a particular world we pursued with love. But not just for children. It was a place for early risers grabbing a coffee and off to work. It was a place for those down on their luck in need of a cheap meal. And at the centre of this world was an elaborate playground to stoke the imaginations of the gathered children with hope and innocence. We loved it. When we played, we loved it all.

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, I think he was painting a picture of what the world on earth could be like, as in heaven. He was giving us a dream of a place where “everyone knows why they are there.”[14] The purpose, then, is to live out the love of being a part of a joyful space: to play, to share, to laugh, to create.

I think for young people today especially, they need to know as we all do that the kingdom of God is a place of love and purpose for a wandering people. The kingdom of God a space that gathers anyone who wants to come and give energy and focus to what they love. Will we listen? Will we learn and grow? Will we play together?

The Israelites had to lift up the image of a snake, for their healing.[15] Jesus was lifted up on a cross, for the healing of the world.[16] Healing and salvation happen only because someone is loving, caring, acting out of compassion. Healing, reconciliation, forgiveness, renewed hearts and purpose cannot happen without love. Because God so loved the world, Jesus came to us.

Allow love to reign on earth, as it is in heaven. Amen.

[1] Tygrett, (2023). The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons, p. 54. Broadleaf.

[2] Tygrett, ibid., p. 54

[3] Genesis 1:27

[4] Shaia, A. J. (2021). Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation, p. 412-413. Quadratos LLC.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Martin Luther. (2024). The Small Catechism: The Lord’s Prayer. The Book of Concord Online. https://bookofconcord.org

[7] Damian, T. (2010). St. John Chrysostom’s Teaching on Neighborly Love. Columbia University. https://academiccommons.columbia.edu

[8] Tygrett, ibid., p. 147.

[9] Matthew 22:34-40

[10] Tygrett, ibid., p. 55.

[11] 1 John 4:16-19

[12] Tygrett, ibid., 55-56.

[13] Tygrett, ibid., p. 56.

[14] Tygrett, ibid., p. 57.

[15] Numbers 21:4-9

[16] John 3:14-21