Normally at this time of year, there is already a thin layer of snow covering the ground, in these parts.

When I was walking in the Arnprior Grove last week – a protected conversation area which boasts Ontario’s tallest Eastern White Pine tree – it dawned on me that by now I should be hearing the crunch of snow underfoot. I also would not be scrambling down the steep ravine to the banks of the Ottawa River. The snow and ice on the hill would prohibit such a daring descent.

So, I counted my blessings at being able still to enjoy where my feet were taking me, stepping directly on the ground. With this awareness I noticed the thick layer of fallen leaves blanketing the trail in spots—usually not far from the base of a bare, skeletal frame of a maple, walnut or oak tree.

I reflected again on how these trees must have felt, doing what they do. They are alive, after all, even without leaves on branches. They are alive, after all, creatures like you and me designed by the Creator’s imagination and love.

Something very normal was happening again in the cyclical rhythms of the seasons. Once again, they had to let go of their leaves—the leaves which had been such an important part of their identity, their purpose and function. Their leaves had provided other creatures around them with pleasure to behold their colourful beauty and offer protection and comfort.

The trees had to let go of them. And not just once in a lifetime, but every year.

Letting go of something important is part of the normal rhythm of life on earth. Similarly, it is something important for people of faith, as Christ-followers especially, to learn how to let go as we grow and mature over the years.

What must we learn to let go of, as we age? For each of us, it will be different, as unique as each leaf is to each tree: Certain ideas, attitudes and beliefs that once made sense but no longer help, now; certain goals, dreams, aspirations, desires; certain relationships, social status, privilege; material wealth, employment, security; physical health; etc. Not bad things in and of themselves, even good.

Good news and bad news. Good news is that today we receive the last parable of Jesus from Matthew this church year! (It’s good news because these parables from Matthew are tough! They are hard work). The bad news is that we still have to wrestle with this one, today.

The good news is that again, like last week, there really is some good news in this parable, but not from what appears on the surface. The bad news is that in order to uncover the good news we need to let go of some familiar and easy explanations associated with this parable of the talents.[1] We have to practice letting go, even in our reading of the bible.

To begin, the parables of Jesus, in general, are not easy-to-read policy manuals or employee handbooks on ‘how to live your life of faith’. They are not instructions for good living. It’s easy, admittedly, from a policy-instruction-manual-approach to take-away from this parable that we are to invest aggressively in the markets of our lives to yield a maximum return. Just like the two servants did with their talents.

Those who risk it all and participate fully in the economy of competition and profit-making will be rewarded. And that’s our three-step stewardship program for the year!

But would you be shocked to learn that the parable of the talents is not a lesson in stewardship?[2] So, you ask: If parables aren’t meant to be dissected and decoded for a moral lesson, what is their purpose?

Any interpretation falls short when it overlooks the context of this Gospel, and its Christ-centred meaning. I’m taking my cue from 16^th century reformer Martin Luther who advocated an approach that first seeks Christ in the reading of any scripture.

And I found that this parable of the talents happens to be the last parable Jesus tells, in Matthew’s Gospel, before being arrested and put on trial. The largest section of each of the Gospels for that matter—Mathew, Mark, Luke and John—is the passion narrative. The suffering of Jesus is the longest and most developed plotline in the entire Gospel. Christ’s passion demands our attention in reading the Gospels.

We need to read this parable from the perspective of Jesus’ passion.

In telling this parable, Jesus is first naming the truth that salvation is not about a transaction that takes place in the market economy of our lives. Just hours before the crowds will turn on him, just before Jesus will be arrested, tried and executed, Jesus tells his disciples that faith is not about proving our value to God by our efforts alone, our own good works.

Let’s admit it, money is a powerful symbol of our efforts, our deserving, our reward, our work. Money is a powerful symbol for defining our self-worth, our value.

And Jesus turns this symbol on its head.

Faith isn’t about material accumulation and earning your way to heaven. Faith isn’t about a prosperity gospel that says the measure of our faith is how much money you have. The quality of your faith is not equated with the size of your nest egg.

Faith is about the trees. Living a faithful life is learning, season after season, how to let go of what is important, a letting go whose natural outcome is experiencing the grace and mercy and forgiveness of God. It is God who gives freely, who is abundant in generosity and grace. Before a beautiful, new thing can happen in our lives, we need to let go of that ‘something’ that once gave us much joy and meaning.

So, the second thing Jesus is doing here was preparing his disciples, and us, for letting go. It was the passion and death of Jesus where he let go of all the security and defenses, where he became fully vulnerable to the pain of the human condition which was his. Here, on the cross, Jesus introduced his disciples to embrace a life of what it means to let go[3]—a life of practising forgiveness, a life of sacrifice. Jesus was preparing his disciples, and us, to embrace a God of mercy and faithfulness instead of a God of wrath.

Looking at the world can lead us every easily to embrace a false image and perception of God. The master in this parable is not God. The master demonstrates what the world values and how the world operates. So, who does the master represent, specifically?

This parable was written to the Messianic Jews after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70AD. The Christian minority was being persecuted by the Roman Emperor Vespasian. They were violently forced to let go of all the symbols of their religion and literally the building blocks of their identity.

This parable displays for its original listeners in the first century how destructive and wrathful the “master” of the Roman Empire was, where there was indeed “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

And in Matthew’s Gospel this wrathful image is set alongside the image of a suffering Christ. Early Christians had to make difficult decisions. Who were they going to trust? Who were they going to follow? The master of the world, or the suffering servant? They were encouraged to embrace the new reality with hope, trusting that as Christ suffered loss and found new life, so too their loss would lead to a joyful new beginning.

Which is it, for you? Which image and perception of God dominates your imagination? Because how you perceive God is very likely how you respond in your life of faith.

If God is vengeful and retributive in judgement, then we will, like the servant, “be afraid”. If, on the other hand, we know God to be a God of compassion who is faithful to the end even through all the letting go, how will our actions demonstrate this quality?

In the Epistle for today from First Thessalonians, we read “For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing!”[4]

Jesus showed us to let go, and trust God to do the work of salvation for us. Our job, in every season of life, is to learn and practise letting go as painful and difficult as it is. Because on the other side, there is a great promise. On the other side, there is joy indescribable. Even during our lives on earth, as it is in heaven.

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[1] Matthew 25:14-30

[2] Erik Parker, The Millennial Pastor blog (2017)

[3] See Philippians 2:6-11; and, Joyce Rupp, Praying our Goodbyes; A Spiritual Companion through Life’s Losses and Sorrows (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 2009), p.34-35.

[4] 1 Thessalonians 5:9-11

For me, the parable of the “foolish bridesmaids” sounds almost like an anxiety dream I’d wake up from in a panic.[1]

It feels like Jesus is saying the Kingdom of God is like a bad dream where I’m supposed to go pick up someone famous at the airport, like … Keanu Reeves.

But, in this nightmare, I forget to fill my gas tank and then I’m idling in the cell phone parking lot for so long I doze off and then when Keanu Reeves finally texts that he’s arrived, my car starts beeping that it’s nearly out of gas.

But then I realize the guy beside me has a gas tank strapped in the back of his monster truck and I ask if he can help me out but he just points to the overpriced gas station outside the airport. And in a panic I use the fumes to get there.

But then when I’m filling up my Volkswagen I see Keanu Reeves drive off in the passenger side of that guy’s F150 and he doesn’t even return my wave—like he doesn’t even know me.

So, stay alert! The kingdom of God is like that. So, where is the good news in this parable?

We receive this story nearing the end of the church year. We are also approaching the end of 2023. I don’t think I’m alone in saying 2023 was a tough year, to say the least. For many, personally, dealing with losses; and, in the world—all the wildfires, floods, droughts, the wars in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza with millions fleeing and dying from brutal violence.

We are like those bridesmaids waiting for the groom to come. Perhaps we can feel their desperation. Waiting is hard and is often tinged with uncertainty and anxiety.[2] We all have to do it.

We may even be praying for the Lord to come. And come now. We may feel that there isn’t enough oil in the world can keep our lamps lighted in this long, dark night. No matter how hard we try, we may not feel we have enough proverbial gas in the tank to endure it all.

We need some good news.

The usual interpretation is not good news. The “wise” bridesmaids, though I’m not sure “wise” is the word, refuse to help those without enough oil. Are we to conclude that we should not rely on others? That we should not give to those who ask of us?

I mean, that would be strange wouldn’t it, if Jesus just suddenly took back everything he said about generosity and self-giving and instead gave us a parable about how we should be stingy and self-reliant?

This parable doesn’t sound like most of the other stuff Jesus said. Here is a smattering of three other sayings of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel:

“Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:42)

“If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor.” (Matthew 19:21)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces!” (Matthew 23:13)

No, the good news in this parable isn’t about reiterating a Boy Scout sentiment of always being prepared. Because I think if we peel off another layer of meaning, there is some really good news hidden underneath all the surface drama going on in this parable, good news that actually helps us claim who we truly are in relationship with God.

So, what is the good news that Jesus has hidden for us in this parable?

Sometimes in approaching a difficult biblical text, we need other stories from scripture to release for us the good news.

Three, I want to relate to this parable: First, the snake in the Garden of Eden; Second, the Light in Book of Revelation; Third, The Feeding of the 5000.

First, remember that wily snake—the devil—in the Garden of Eden, from Genesis? The snake tempted Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of life. Consequently, Adam and Eve became self-consciously ashamed.

Filled with shame, they tried to hide from God. When God finds them, they say they are naked and afraid. And God says, “Wait, who told you that you were naked?”

My money is on the snake.[3] Adam and Eve listened to the false voice of the snake. They believed that voice more than they believed God’s voice.

Which brings us back to the bridesmaids. The foolish bridesmaids weren’t foolish because they didn’t bring extra oil. Or because they fell asleep. I think they were foolish for listening to the other bridesmaids tell them what to do.

And they were certainly foolish for doing it. I think they were foolish in the exact same way we are foolish. They were foolish because they listened when voices other than God’s tried to tell them who they were. They listened to those whispering voices telling them that they can only approach the groom if they have already met all their own needs first.

Because in the last book of the bible, Revelation, we read: “In the city of God, they will not need the light of a lamp, for the Lord God will give them light.”[4]

Think about it. If at midnight the guy who was on watch said, “Hey, wake up, the groom is coming!” the groom must have had a lamp or torch of some kind, right? How else could the groom have been seen coming from a distance at midnight?

The foolish bridesmaids weren’t foolish because they didn’t bring back-up oil. They were foolish because instead of trusting that the light of Christ was enough to shine the way, they wasted all that time and energy and money trying to get their own. Someone shamed them into thinking they could never approach the Lord with what they lacked.

Rather than just trusting that the light of those around them and the light of the groom was enough, they assumed they had to provide their own—and then they were so consumed by the shame of not having and being enough, they busied themselves trying to fix it—so much so that they missed the wedding banquet, altogether!

They missed everything.

Of course, the bridegroom said, “I don’t know you” because they hadn’t come to him in their need and lack and want. But Jesus knows us not by our independence from him, Jesus knows us not by showing our resourcefulness. No. Jesus knows us by our need of him, for which we should never be ashamed.

They, perhaps not unlike us, mistakenly assumed that all God is interested in is our strength, our preparedness, our exceptionality. When what God really asks of us is to know our need for him.

When Jesus asks the disciples on the remote mountainside what they have with them to feed the crowd—do you remember? He asked, “What do you have?” and they said, “Nothing – nothing but a couple loaves and a few fish.” They said it like it was a problem.[5]

But do we not have a God who created the universe out of ‘nothing’?[6] Do we not have a God who can put flesh on dry bones ‘nothing’?[7] Do we not have a God who can put life in a dusty womb ‘nothing’?[8]

‘Nothing’ is God’s favourite raw material to work with! God looks upon that which we dismiss as ‘nothing’, ‘insignificant’, ‘worthless’, and says, “Ha! Now that I can do something with.”

So, all that is to say, the Kingdom of God is not like an existential anxiety dream.

Maybe you are sitting here today having listened to a voice other than God’s: That we have to be better than others. Our church has to be bigger and more entertaining and attractive. Maybe you are thinking, “I have to bring my best to the Lord for God to take notice, etc., etc.” And maybe the story that voice says is so familiar that you think it’s the truth.

But consider that maybe you’ve been listening to the wrong voices all along. Listen and maybe you can hear God saying, “Wait, who told you that you were naked? Who told you that you have to lie to be loved? Who told you your body is not beautiful? Who told you that your only value is in your excellence, and how much you have accomplished in life? Who told you that what you have done (good or bad) is actually who you are? Who told you that you don’t have enough? Who told you all that?

My money is on the snake. And he’s a damned liar. Always has been.

So, when snakes and well-prepared bridesmaids start talking blasphemy, don’t listen. You don’t have to show up with everything you need. The light of Christ is bright enough. Always has been.

And always will.

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[1] Thank you, to Nadia Bolz-Weber, for her brilliant take on this Gospel. It’s her sermon I basically preach here. Read it in its original:  “Listening to Snakes and Bridesmaids: A Sermon on How Self-Reliance is Overrated” (Substack: The Corners, 26 February 2023). Read also Matthew 25:1-13.

[2] David Lose, “Pentecost 22A: Hope and Help for Foolish Bridesmaids” in Dear Partner (www.davidlose.net) 3 November 2014.

[3] Genesis 3.

[4] Revelation 22:5.

[5] Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:1-14.

[6] Genesis 1:1-2.

[7] Ezekiel 37.

[8] Genesis 15-17, Luke 1:7-24

A couple invited some people to dinner. At the table, the wife turned to their six-year old daughter and said, “Would you like to say the blessing?”

“I wouldn’t know what to say,” the girl replied.

“Just say what you hear Mommy say,”, the wife answered.

The daughter bowed her head and said, “Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?”

In Matthew’s version of the Gospel story about the wedding banquet, the invited guests don’t come.[1] Why not? Who wouldn’t want to go to a wedding reception that includes a five-star dining experience? The King even sends out his staff to cajole those invited to show up. But to no avail.

They make excuses not to come. In our terms, they’re about being married, being busy, having a job or occupation. You can fill in the blanks. These are not bad things, but just “busyness with many things.”[2] Things we can control, direct and of which we can manage outcomes. Things we might prefer, actually, compared to the ambiguous uncertainties in the realm of grace.

Could it be the invited guests know deep down that when they respond to the King’s invitation, they will have to change? Could it be that when we enter the realm of grace, we also enter the realm of risk-taking, vulnerability? Could it be that grace is too much? Too hard?

The Gospel story of the wedding banquet throws all kinds of theological conundrums onto our path. Even when the King shifts gears and invites everybody and anybody, “good and bad”, we encounter an unwelcomed plot twist: One unfortunate guest who accepts the invitation, makes a mistake. He doesn’t put on the appropriate coat for the occasion and suffers the dire consequence.

Can grace, freely given, be too much for us to handle? And, so, it’s easier to say ‘no’.

The marvelous short story, “Babette’s Feast”, was made into an award-winning foreign film. It is set in a tiny village on the coast of Denmark. The people there are good people, but they’re living inside an isolated and lonely town, a sort of “sparse and sour” place.[3]

It’s a little world of laws and pettiness and religious rigor where the main characters—two elderly, spinster daughters of a deceased Lutheran minister—live a pretty Spartan lifestyle. They eat the same food every day, the same bowl of soup and the same codfish. They dutifully share their food with the disadvantaged, carrying on a ministry of their father. In fact, ‘joyless duty’ might be the key theme in their lives.

The movie version depicts a dark and cloudy, not-so-inviting environment. The place is bland, the food is bland, and it’s all in service of some sense of obligation. They’re not bad people. It’s just that you get the sense that deep down there is something important missing. They live a not-so-desirable life, not referring to material things so much as their spirit, their attitude.

Into this village comes Babette, a French woman, a cook, it turns out, who has lost her family in the revolutionary war in France. She runs away from France to save her own life and is sent by a friend to these sisters. She offers to be the sisters’ cook, in return for room and board. For fourteen years she dutifully cooks ale-bread soup and codfish, every day, just as the sisters wish. Because that’s what they like.

Then, Babette wins the lottery, ten thousand francs! After some negotiation, she talks the sisters into allowing her to prepare a fine banquet to celebrate their deceased father’s one hundredth anniversary. First, the sisters ask what kind of food she would serve. Babette replies that she wants to give them a French dinner, the way they eat in France.

They have a major meeting, among the remnants of their father’s Puritanical flock, to see whether they even want a French dinner. There’s also a lot of talk about whether or not they can allow alcohol, and the sisters, to humour their faithful Babette, go along with it. But they resolve to themselves only to fake their enjoyment of it. “It will be as if we did not taste it,” they promise.

Course after course, Babette lays on the table an enormous, beautiful, sumptuous feast. The guests’ eyes just widen, but as they drink a little bit more and more of the wine, they loosen up.

One of the guests, a general, is visiting his aunt, a member of the congregation. The general, who had eaten at the finest tables, knows better than anyone present the quality of the feast that he is experiencing.

The general is a man who has seen the larger world. He has been hurt, has gone through success and failure. He had obtained everything that he had striven for in life at this point. He was admired and envied by everyone. The general was a moral person, a good person, loyal to the king, loyal to his wife and friends. He was a good example to everyone in the village.

But as the conversations open up, he confesses that he was not altogether happy. Something was wrong somewhere. During his stay in the village, he is carefully feeling his mental self all over as one feels a finger to determine the place of a deep-seated, invisible thorn. And still, he had not yet put his proverbial finger on it.

Now, after the sixth course all the guests are starting to forgive one another, for in the years since the pastor’s death they have degraded into petty rivalries. Into the fourth glass of wine, they actually start enjoying it all, laughing and relaxing even into the unsolvable mysteries of life. They take pleasure in the gift of the feast despite all that has troubled them. They learn, finally, to enjoy this banquet that they never thought they could possibly enjoy. It was a world into which no one had ever before invited them.

“Babette’s Feast” first describes religion without grace. Of course, Lutherans are supposed to be the very ones who championed grace – but even those pious, Norwegian Lutherans could forget. Just prior to Babette’s feast, their Christianity had been a resented banquet, where as Christians “they were more afraid of the Risen Christ than even the crucified one.”

Grace is always too much.

At the end of Babette’s feast, the general stands up to give a speech. He begins by quoting the Psalms, “Mercy and truth have met, righteousness and bliss have kissed.”[4] Notice that often we would consider mercy and truth as opposites. Righteousness and bliss are supposed to be opposites, too, no?

What the general is getting at is acknowledging something beautiful that happened during the feast—great opposites overcoming their opposition and kissing one another, embracing one another. By love and grace, the world full of contradiction, tension and opposites is made one.

Grace is a free gift from God, yes. Yet, the gift places upon us a choice, a choice to respond and live through that gift. We will not resolve anything, ever. In the end, it is the King in the Gospel story who makes the final judgements.

In the end, it is God’s mercy and God’s truth that come together, in Christ’s love for us all. God invites each of us into a life of grace, abundance and joy. And no matter how we respond—since responding somehow, we will—God will continue to send, won’t stop sending, us invitations to attend a gracious meal, praying us to accept.

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[1] Matthew 22:1-14

[2] Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Ohio: St Anthony Messenger Press, 2008), p.175.

[3] Rohr, ibid., p.180-183.

[4] Psalm 85:10 King James Version

“By what authority are you doing these things ….?”

The chief priests and elders question Jesus’ authority.^[1] They ask Jesus a question in order to trap him. Jesus answers not in the way they anticipated or desired, by asking a question himself.

In the Gospels, Jesus asks many more questions than he answers. Answering a question with a question was the norm. In the four Gospels of the New Testament Jesus is asked 183 questions of which he only directly answers three. How can they believe what Jesus says, especially if he doesn’t answer their questions directly? On what is his authority based? What is the nature of Jesus’ authority?

While I was attending the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) assembly meeting in Krakow Poland last month, I met Lutherans from all over the world. The LWF is a global community consisting of 150 member churches.

And I enjoyed informal conversations with other pastors, advisors and bishops from countries who will soon hold elections. For example, Poland, Argentina and India will be electing governments in the coming months with all of them teetering towards hard-line approaches.

Governments are not our only authorities in life. Parents, doctors, police officers, school teachers, by-law officers, pastors–these are other authorities in our lives. A couple of months ago when Pastor Jennifer Hoover facilitated conversations with the council and other members of our congregation about the church today, we reflected on our attitude towards authority, in general. Our response to anyone in authority is one factor that has changed since the 1960s.

On the one hand, there is this sense today of not listening nor considering any voice of authority. Earlier this year I read a contemporary young adult fiction book similar to the Harry Potter series, in which young students attended a special, magical school.^[2]

But there were no teachers in this school, at least not in the traditional sense. Contrary to what we might expect, teachers were not embodied persons interacting with the students. Instead, the magical building itself was the teacher, thus removing people from the role of having authority. This novel reflected a current-day attitude toward authority — that we don’t easily accept the authority of others as we did a century ago.

On the other extreme, and especially under stress and anxiety, some yearn for an iron-fist rule. With the high cost of living these days and inflation rates soaring worldwide, people naturally knee-jerk towards seeking a strong voice of authority that will enforce strict rules, as if forcing everyone to follow the same rules and being of the same mind will make things better.

These varied approaches suggest to me that authority needs to be redefined for our time. And while a total disregard for any authority on the one hand and those strong voices in politics on the other may be tempting, what the world needs today is the strong voice of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On one of the days during the Lutheran World Federation Assembly in Poland, the entire delegation visited Auschwitz and Birkenau—the death camps of the Nazis. The experience of seeing the remains of the gas chambers and shooting walls was deeply impactful. Hearing the stories of survivors and seeing pictures of a few of the one million people who violently died in these death factories was humbling, to say the least.

One story has stayed with me, of Father Maximilian Kolbe. He was a Catholic priest, himself a prisoner at Auschwitz who sacrificed his life in place of another person chosen to die. Eventually succumbing to the brutal horrors of Auschwitz and Birkenau, Kolbe maintained his belief that even in the midst of hell, God is present in the smallest act of love for another. “Don’t ever forget to love” was his undying testimony of faith.^[3]

Facing his own prosecutor, Jesus told Pilate in no uncertain terms that the reign of God does not reflect the world’s definition of authority and power. “My power is not of this world,” Jesus said.^[4] So, on what is Jesus’ ‘kingdom’ grounded?

After we returned from Auschwitz, we received a special guest who addressed the Lutheran World Federation Assembly. One of the few living survivors of Auschwitz, Polish historian and journalist Marian Turski, urged the LWF Assembly “to combat hate speech and turn fear of strangers into empathy for the other.”^[5]

His presence and words challenged and moved me. After all, he was speaking to a large group of Lutherans and a church which was complicit and identified with the German church of the 1930s and 40s aligned with Hitler.

But what really touched my heart was why he decided to come to speak to us at all on that day — September 16. A Jew, Turski confessed that he debated whether he should join us on the first day of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah. Normally he would have considered going to the synagogue to participate in the prayers and celebration there among his own.

And who were we to him – the other, the representatives of those who were his enemy eighty years ago? But, after speaking with his wife that morning, he decided to break the rules of his religion in order to meet with us. It was more important for him to follow the rule of love. “God is love,” our scriptures claim.[6] And God is our authority.

The Gospel reading today includes Jesus’ teaching on authority—the second part of the reading when he talks about two brothers who do opposite things; one doesn’t do what he says he’ll do, and the other does what he says he won’t do.

In the end, the action is more important. The critical measure is not what you say, but what you do. Any expressed belief, intention or doctrine means little if it is not paired with a behaviour and action that communicates a heart of love.

Compassion is the unique characteristic of true spiritual authority.^[7] A compassion modelled by Jesus, by Maximilian Kolbe and Marian Turski. Compassion for others who are different from us. Compassion that results in loving action.

Celebrating Rosh Hashanah, Jews dip apples in honey to symbolize the hope for a sweet year to come. Turski invited the Lutheran Assembly to do the same later that day. It was to be a sign of the hope we all share that despite all the hellish, fearful, violent, divisive things going on all around us in the world today, God is present in acts of love for others outside our circles. Wherever love is practised between people, there God is. That is our sweet hope.

At lunch following Turski’s speech, we found plates of sliced apples with honey on all the tables in the dining hall. It was one of many cherished meals shared with others who were different from me, during my time abroad. God comes to us in the stranger who shows us love.

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[1] Matthew 21:23-32

[2] Naomi Novik. A Deadly Education: A Novel (The Scholomance Book 1). New York: Del Rey, 2020.

[3] “Love in the Midst of Hate” Theology of the Heart – Life of the Saints

[4] John 18:36

[5] Marian Turski addresses LWF Assembly 2023

[6] 1 John 4:7-21

[7] Richard Rohr, “With Compassion We Change Sides” Compassion (Daily Meditations: www.cac.org, 22 September 2023)

You want to start a fire. It’s cold. It’s wet. You’re outside. You need to eat. You need to stay warm. You need to start a fire.

But this fire is in your heart. It may only be a shimmering ember right now, or a small flame at risk of being snuffed out by the winds of despair, depression, disappointment, anxiety, fear or grief. You may feel you never even had that spark in your heart to begin with.

But you want to start. You are willing to try. You want to start up that fire again. But you don’t know how. What are you going to do?

How do we start over? What is our first move on the journey of transformation?

On a backcountry canoe camping trip, my fellow campers and I needed to get and keep a fire going—to cook our meals, to keep warm and to provide the ambiance we all cherish around a campfire. But we did not haul enough wood in our canoes for five days. We needed to start a fire with what we could find on our island site smack dab in the middle of the large Cedar Lake in Algonquin Park.

When campers go looking for firewood, we normally look for hardwood branches, twigs, dry bark. We look on the ground near the campsite for fallen trees and branches. Some campers will even bring saws to cut down trees and chop the wood themselves.

But that strategy was not going to work this time. August, as you may recall, was a wet month—lots of soaking rain. So, most of the wood and trees around us were water-logged, literally. Moreover, it was a very popular spot with the beach—we were fortunate to get it. But that also meant there were precious little scraps of firewood leftover in the immediate area around the site.

We did find something — a kind of combustible material that was plentiful. It’s called fatwood. Stumps from fallen trees covered the island. And some of these had roots still drawing water from the ground up towards the top of the stump. The build-up of sap in fatwood creates chunks of resin. This resin burns like turpentine.

When you burn fatwood, the fire crackles and pops and you don’t get a whole lot of smoke. But best of all, a small piece of fatwood burns for hours, longer than any other kind of firewood! It’s perfect!

Normally we wouldn’t look for dead stumps littering the forest floor to find the combustion we need. The fat wood does not look on the surface like good, burning wood. It is ugly, dirty-looking, wood. Campers usually ignore it, discard it, don’t even see it.

But it was the best thing ever to start and keep a fire going.

To start solving the problem of how to start a fire, we first needed to realize the limits of our usual strategy. We first needed to confess that the way we have normally done things will not work in the present circumstances. They may have worked well in the past and in other contexts. But no longer. The first step towards positive change is to admit we need to approach things differently at the start.

Where are we going to look for a way forward, when we confess the old ways of doing things in our personal lives and in the church no longer work today? Where are we going to look?

The Gospel of Matthew can help. It was written to Jewish Christians who also had to start over. This Gospel was written at the end of the first century right after Roman Emperor Vespasian completely destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. Those Jews who survived the brutal purge were demoralized and uncertain about how to move forward. “There is no known equivalent to what Rome did that day,” one scholar claims.[1]

The Jewish remnant escaped to Antioch in the north. Among them were the Messianic Jews who believed that the Messiah had already come in the person of Jesus, himself a Jew. What help does Matthew’s Gospel offer in a time of upheaval and dramatic change?

First, notice the tone of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel. Several times in the Gospel of Matthew we hear this paradox from the mouth of Jesus—this tension between apparent opposites of “loosening” and “binding”, of “losing and finding”. It’s not just in our Gospel reading for today, but in at least three other places where we dance on fulcrum of both/and.^[2]

Jesus says opposite kinds of things all the time—both comforting AND challenging: “Come to me all ye that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest”^[3]; and then: “I have come not to bring peace but a sword.”^[4] This Gospel like no other is full of paradox and seeming opposites. Why? To acknowledge the time of transition among first century Messianic Jews: from the pain of loss to the challenge of new beginnings.

Jesus seems to describe a life of faith as one in which we are always leaving something behind and starting something new, letting go of past strategies and learning new ones. It’s admitting that there are times when I have to look elsewhere and not necessarily where I’ve looked before in order to face a challenge.

Then we see Jesus in action as he encounters people on his travels. He meets, for example, the Canaanite woman. She persists and is relentless against Jesus who is rude to her and quite insulting. Because of the woman’s courage to challenge a rabbi, Jesus grants her what she asked—the healing of her daughter.^[5]

The old strategy of reaching out only to Jews with the message of Christ needed to change. Our Lord Jesus himself models for us inner transformation, which is the starting point for our journey of faith towards healing and wholeness.

The biggest help Matthew offers, however, is the framing of the Gospel—how it begins, and how it ends:

Matthew begins with the story of Jesus’ birth. And Matthew is the only Gospel of the four that includes the visit of the Magi.^[6] These wisdom-seekers from the far East were not Jews. They were Gentiles—using the language of the New Testament.

And, the Gospel concludes with the famous words of Jesus, the great commission to his disciples to go “to all nations” with the news of God’s love and saving promise.^[7] “All nations” refers to the Gentiles. The term Gentile refers to people who were outside the pure, Jewish religion.

In the midst of a devastating loss, the Jewish Christians in Antioch were encouraged to engage and be with people outside their tradition. They were called to a journey that Saint Paul would later pick up and emphasize, a journey to include Gentiles in God’s loving embrace, making an ever-widening circle.[8]

Where do we look on the start of our journey of transformation, when we admit old strategies no longer serve us well? The Gospel of Matthew suggests we look beyond the bounds of our own perception which will often blind us to what is right in front of us. The Gospel of Matthew, in modelling for us this shift, suggests we confess our bias, and embrace a new path as yet untrodden.

There’s also a holy part to this journey that yields the warmth, radiance and beauty of a good-burning campfire. And we will discover that, too, along the Way.

The fatwood ain’t pretty. Yet God calls us to this journey of transformation not in spite of but because of the unattractive, broken parts of our lives. There’s something immeasurably valuable about fatwood. The journey will include all of it.

Thanks be to God.

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[1] John Alexander Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation (Sante Fe New Mexico: Quadratos LLC, 2021), p.74-75

[2] Matthew 10:39; 16:19, 21-28; 18:15-21

[3] Matthew 11:28

[4] Matthew 10:34

[5] Matthew 15:21-28

[6] Matthew 2:1-12

[7] Matthew 28:18-20

[8] Read Paul’s letter to the Galatians, for example. See, also, Matthew R. Anderson’s “The Purists: Laphroaig Single Malt Islay & The Gospel of Matthew” in Pairings: The Bible and Booze (Toronto: Novalis Publishing, 2021), p.89-98

²⁷“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. ²⁸Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:27-28)

The early church expected and hoped that Christ would return to earth in their lifetime. Christians have called this expectation: ‘the second coming’.

After the complete destruction of the Jerusalem temple by Roman armies in the late first century, the early followers of Christ found comfort in the promise of the glorious return of Jesus to earth. The last two verses of today’s Gospel reflect their belief and hope.

But what about us? How do we respond to these verses, two thousand years later?

I wonder if the passage of time and history has affected our understanding of God. I wonder, therefore, if we hear the Gospel for today[1] as threatening or punitive, as if Jesus is saying, “I’m coming back so you’d better watch out! You’d better do it right, or I’m going to get you.” Such a reaction reflects a God of vengeance, of punishment, does it not? Is that our dominant image of God—as someone who is ready to pounce on our every misdeed and mistake?

Peter, in the verses just preceding this Gospel for today, made a bold statement of belief in Jesus as the Messiah. And he got it right. But then he gets it wrong. Over and over again. Jesus even calls Peter “Satan” at one point.

If Jesus was all about judgement and punishment, Peter would not have been given the privilege and great responsibility of being the rock upon which Jesus would build the church.[2]  Would we entrust the fortunes of a new enterprise, company, or business to someone who demonstrates Peter’s kind of immaturity, impulsiveness, and lack of consistent mental clarity?

But Jesus is not talking about judgment. He’s not threatening us or talking about coming to punish us because we’ve been bad and our faith is weak; or, not coming to us because our faith is weak. He is not pointing a condemning finger at those who make big mistakes and who fail in life, time and time again.

Of course, two thousand years of history has proven those early Christians wrong, in the sense of a bodily return of Jesus as Messiah who would liberate them from Roman oppression. Jesus didn’t come back ‘immanently’ in the way they and Christians since the first century expected him. But that doesn’t mean Jesus was not true to his word.

Like reward and judgement, our perception and our image of God needs to change. Our understanding of God’s presence and return to us needs to deepen and grow. Rather than a dominant image of a vengeful God, what about a God who is about forgiveness, mercy, compassion, patience and love? How would we experience the presence of such a God?

At the beginning of this summer I was worried that I would miss out on one thing I love to experience every summer: Being on a sandy beach under the warm summer sun by the lapping waves. Despite all the wonderful travelling I’m doing, a beach was not in the plans.

You wouldn’t think that a backcountry canoe camping trip into the northern reaches of Algonquin Park would render a sandy beach experience. Most of this area is Canadian shield rock and pine. Along the portage routes and shoreline put-ins you’d be lucky to find a narrow space at any campsite to dock your canoe and disembark.

But to my happy surprise the camp site I found with my friends on Cedar Lake had a beach—and a big one—including a gently sloping sandy bottom into the refreshing water. Uncommon and incredible by Algonquin Park standards. And all for us!

So, on one afternoon when the sun was shining its brilliant warmth I lied down on the soft, white sand by the water, covered my face with my Tilley and just rested. I imagined being on a tropical island or resort in the Caribbean or some exotic place we Canadians like to escape during winter.

But something was wrong with that vision. It didn’t coincide with my experience of that moment. On that beach by Cedar Lake, I did not hear any human-generated sounds: no jet skis, no people laughing, talking, no highway traffic in the distance, no airplanes roaring overhead, no jack hammers or construction noise nearby, no background music. Just absolute, natural silence. I experienced reality in a much different way than I routinely do.

Even though at some level that moment was disquieting for me, I felt profoundly grateful for my summer beach experience. I felt thankful for the simple things in my life. I felt the joy of a divine gift and presence. God is in my life always. Even in unexpected places and different experiences.

In the Gospel, Jesus is not talking about a one-time, judgement-motivated coming of God out of the thunder clouds. He’s talking about the forever coming of Christ, the eternal coming of Christ … now … and now … and now.…

Christ is always coming; God is always present. It’s we who are not! Jesus tells us to be awake, to be fully conscious and present to every moment we experience. It’s the key to all spirituality, because we usually are not.  

Most of us just repeat the same routines every day, and we’re upset if there are any interruptions to our patterns. Yet, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who do, will find it.”[3] It’s ironic that to save our lives we need to stop our usual patterns and pay attention to those moments and places and people that take us off our routine and out of our comfort zone. This grace of God often comes to us unexpectedly.

Because God is found in the interruptions, the exceptions, the surprises, the space in-between the noise of our life. God has to catch us literally “off guard”![4]

When we are present, we will know the Presence. It is that simple and that hard. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the last words Jesus spoke to his apostles were, “Stay awake.” In fact, he says it twice.[5] We need to practice staying awake to recognize Jesus with us.

A word of caution: We need to practice being present to Presence, yes. But staying awake does not come from willpower but from a wholehearted surrender to the moment as it is. It’s largely a matter of letting go. We let go of our resistance to what the moment offers. We quit clinging to a past moment. It is an acceptance of the full reality of what is right here and now. Practising this is the task of a lifetime.  

We cannot get there by any willful method or any technical fixes whatsoever. We can only be there. The purest form of spirituality is to find God in what is right in front of us—the ability to accept what the 17^th century French Jesuit Jean Pierre de Caussade called the “sacrament of the present moment.”[6]  

Let’s practice, shall we? Let’s practice the presence of Christ here, among the church, and especially now as we receive the sacrament of Christ’s presence at the holy meal.

Christ is with us. Because God is love. Thanks be to God!

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[1] Matthew 16:21-28

[2] Matthew 16:18

[3] Matthew 16:25

[4] Richard Rohr, “Be Awake” A Contemplative Heart (Daily Meditations: www.cac.org) 29 August 2023

[5] Matthew 26:38-41

[6] Cited in Rohr, ibid.