Tag Archives: Christian Meditation

Life under re-construction

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The re-construction of Victoria Street began in late June. This average-looking, common-place road in the heart of a small town in Ontario was undergoing a radical change for the better.

Something new was going to be constructed that would mean a better, safer and more reliable roadway, both for what is above and below the surface of the asphalt. In short, something good was going to come out of all the disruption, detours, noise and dirt in my neighborhood.

Perhaps your life reflects times of re-construction. These often disruptive experiences can shake us to the core and may initially feel unwanted, uncomfortable. They can also offer opportunities for growth, maturity and — at the end of it all — realizing a better place in your life.

But how do we get from the rough place to a better one? How can we see the work of re-construction not as a negative but as a positive?

Well, the first thing I observe about what’s happening on Victoria Street is that all the planning and organizing is done with the long view in mind. In other words, re-construction takes time. Though the shovel broke the earth in mid-June, it will likely be late Fall by the time the work of re-construction is completed.

To realize this vision of completion (the biblical definition of “perfection”), the workers need to implement intermediary measures. For example, for several weeks they need to ensure portable generators are in place to pump drainage water through long, large rubber hoses laid along the length of the street. Before any new permanent structures can be installed, time is needed to remove the old and ship in the new.

Life re-construction, if it is to be effective and enduring, requires the long view. It is seasonal, and experiences ups and downs, occasional setbacks, like taking two steps forward and one step backward. It may take some interesting twists and turns before you are done.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, he exhorts the people that in order to “speak the truth in love” they must “grow up” (Ephesians 4:15). The phrase “grow up” is often directed at misbehaving children. But this is an directive to adults as well. Growing up in Christ is a lifelong process.

When the prophet Nathan called King David out to confess his sins of adultery and murder, King David found himself at a milestone on his life’s journey (2 Samuel 11:26–12:13a). A significant indication of David’s desire to grow in faith and maturity in his relationship with God and others around him was his honesty; he did not deny his sin but confessed it immediately to Nathan. And it would take a lifetime for David to live out the consequences of his sin. His confession was but a step on this journey of healing and growth.

It is natural to be discouraged by setbacks on life’s journey. But stay on the path. Pray for the gifts of persistence, endurance and patience. Take the long view; transformation is a process not a one-time event.

Another aspect I notice in the re-construction of Victoria Street is the very reason the work had to be done in the first place. Yes, the surface of the road was getting full of pot-holes. But it was more the stuff deep below the roadway that needed a complete overhaul.

You see, Victoria Street runs along the bottom of a ravine. And the road is located in town; therefore this street is connected to all the municipal services, including water and sewer. After torrential downpours anyone living along that street would get sewer back-up and flooding in their basements. Why? Because the culverts and buried pipes constructed half a century ago are not adequate enough to deal with any overflows and demands of the present day.

Huge concrete casings, like giant cement vaults, need to be buried underneath that particular roadway to connect and drain sewer and storm runoff — to solve the problem.

No good talking about the piping and drains under streets up on top of the ravine. No use blaming the rain fall! The problems are on Victoria Street! It’s about the infrastructure underneath Victoria that is the source of the problem, and what needs to be exposed to the hard work. No where else.

In life, reconstruction is about YOUR stuff! No one else’s! In the famous Psalm of Confession (51) where David prays fervently to God for forgiveness and healing, he also confesses something I think we sometimes forget in all our confessing: David acknowledges the “truth deep within me” (v.6), a truth that reveals good things too: wisdom, for one. Confession is not just about opening up to the bad within, but acknowledging the good that is there too.

And we can experience the good when we take ownership of our own stuff. Positive change doesn’t happen until you accept the truth about yourself. As soon as you catch yourself blaming someone or something else for your problems, you are likely missing the opportunity for growth, renewal and transformation in your life.

And that is why it is so important to undertake the journey of reconstruction with others. Reconstruction involves a community. Paul follows his exhortation to “grow up” by offering that famous image of the body of Christ. Growing involves the whole body, “joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped …” (verse 16).

I believe what motivates the workers on Victoria Street over the long haul is that they can envision what it’s all going to look like one day. They can see in their minds eye the final result of all their labour. Therefore, hundreds of people are working on Victoria Street — traffic guides, contractors, town officials, engineers, workers — like busy bees all working together, interdependently.

Whether you see it or not, others can see in you a vision of the new thing God is doing in your life.

Life under reconstruction is not a solitary enterprise, even though our instinct may draw us to seclusion and isolation when bad things happen. Privacy and confidentiality are important to respect; nevertheless beware if these modern ideas provide instead an excuse to hide from others under the pretense of invulnerability. Be open and honest, like David was to Nathan for knowing his darkest secrets. Try trusting others. Find a confidant. Open yourself up to God.

God’s grace persists and perseveres. It may take a long time. Digging deep may even hurt. But the grace and the faithfulness of a loving God mediated through co-travelers will, in the end, bring us to that place of wholeness and healing.

It is also in the poetry of the Old Testament where we read over and over words that communicate what stands out in David’s life: God’s anger lasts but a moment; God’s steadfast love endures forever. The same is true for us.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

Prayer sustains acts of love

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It wasn’t until the tables were cleared that I noticed the large labyrinth painted on the floor.

For three hours the basement of St Luke’s Anglican Church located in the middle of Chinatown in downtown Ottawa was bustling with activity.

The daily soup kitchen and drop-in centre was the venue for three Anglican/Lutheran youth preparing for their Confirmation in the Christian faith. They serve their neighbor who is for whatever reason destitute.

And yet for several hours each weekday the large church basement becomes a safe place for companionship, laughter and support. We are learning the importance of relationship-building in the way of Christ. For “God so loved the world that he sent his Son Jesus…”(John 3:16).

I also was affirmed in my faith when the labyrinth was revealed to me on the floor. Because the Christian tradition of prayer undergirded, literally, all the outward acts of love, service and relationship-building going on above it.

I explained to the youth this ancient Christian form of walking prayer centering on Jesus — a path that one undertakes in faith, and which leads to loving union with God. One need only stay on the path and move forward.

We return to St Luke’s twice more this week. Only next time I will remember that in the faces of the people I serve is Christ himself.

Together we journey in the way of Christ. Though often fraught with danger, fear and want, the journey undertaken in the prayer of Jesus is one where the love and grace of God is experienced along the way.

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Easter 7B – Christian Unity, in the End

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JOHN 17

When they were younger my children used to watch a children’s cartoon entitled “Busytown Mysteries” aired on CBC TV. It’s about these animal cartoon characters – among them a giraffe, a mouse, a pig – who are friends, and are called upon to solve mysteries in their town.

In one episode the bunch of sleuths were called upon to solve a rather peculiar mystery: A pair of ski-tracks in the snow followed an inexplicable course down the mountain – the pair of tracks circumvented a giant boulder, but one track on either side of the rock! Then, the pair of tracks travelled together, side-by-side through a hollowed-out, low-lying log. Who, or what, could have made those tracks? And how?

A tall-legged giraffe could have gone over the boulder easily enough, but how then could it have gone through the log? A mouse could have gotten through the log, but what about the tall boulder? The evidence didn’t add up. Not until the sleuths changed their assumptions – saw the problem through a different perspective altogether, was the mystery solved.

You see, they had assumed the skier was by themselves – one person. Everything made sense when they discovered that in fact there were two mice who were not skiing, but snow-boarding beside each other down the hill. The truth was revealed after they assumed the maker of those tracks was not alone.

Jesus, before he went to his suffering and death, prayed to his God, the Father. And he prayed that his followers on earth “might be one.” In other words, he didn’t want them to be alone – isolated, competing, independent individuals. He prayed for their unity. He prayed that harmony, cooperation, mutuality and collaboration would characterize the Church on earth.

But sometimes the evidence just does not add up. What we see on the surface is the opposite: We see division. And we can’t always and easily explain the “mystical”, invisible, spiritual union we claim we have whenever we celebrate the sacrament of unity during Holy Communion.

At the same time I suspect we would have a hard time making Christian unity a central aspect of our witness to the world, a world that dwells only it seems, on the schisms, controversies and in-fighting in Christianity.

How is this unity experienced in reality? Are we willing to change some of our pre-conceived assumptions about how the world works and how the church works? Like the Busytown buddies, would we be willing to solve the mystery by realizing unity means we are not alone in this world? How can we celebrate our unity “on the ground in our daily lives when the world wants to tell us we are on our own, competing, survival-of-the-fittest?

Or, do we even care? Are we satisfied and comfortable to remain entrenched and cocooned in our defensive posture?

Paul MacLean, highly esteemed and successful rookie head coach of the Ottawa Senators said after the Sens were eliminated from the playoffs a few weeks ago, “You win a Stanley Cup not by defending; you win a Stanley Cup by scoring goals.” How can our “offence” become our best “defence”? In other words, how being united in Christ become our best “offence” in the world bent on rugged individualism?

We advance Christian unity when the world sees that we care for one another in our weaknesses. In verse 11 of John 17 Jesus prays, “Holy Father, protect them … so that they may be one as we are one.” Jesus’ prayer for unity among his followers is linked to God’s protection and provision.

Now, the translation from Greek to the word, “protect”, may make us feel like God needs to protect us from all that is bad and evil and scary in the world – as is the case, literally, at the end of the passage (v.15) when Jesus in fact does pray for this.

But in verse 11 when unity is at stake, the Greek word for “protect” – tereo – carries overtones of “pay attention” to one another, or “attend to carefully”, or “take care of”, in the same way parents care for their children.

The truth is, we can’t do mission in the world effectively if we’re always fighting each other. But when the world sees how Christians care for one another in their needs – how a community of faith supports each other in the work of the Gospel – this leads to enhanced Christian unity.

Continuing the hockey analogy, this is called “puck support”; it’s not about only the star player going in to score, it’s about everyone “supporting” one another in moving the puck forward. It was only when Alex Ovechkin had less ice-time in the latter part of this season that the Washington Capitals experienced greater success as a team. When the level of play increases for all the players can the team be at its best.

God cares for us and will provide for our every need, no matter the circumstances of our lives. No matter how dire or conflicted or heavy the burdens of our lives and the challenges we face, listen to the promise of God, here: God will care for us. God will give us what we need to endure, to live, to prosper.

How did God the Father care for Jesus? How did God the Father care for Jesus? Even though Jesus endured suffering and brutal death on the cross, the Father held Christ through that terrible experience of death and brought him to new life and resurrection.

Resurrection is the end-game, the destination of all we experience. Not death. The power of death has no strangle-hold on our life, in Christ. Because baptized into the Body of Christ we know that nothing will separate us from the care, the love of God.

And God continues to care and protect us. We can therefore live confidently, caring for one another. We can live confidently and compassionately for others through it all, showing the world that in Christ we are united as we care for one another and the world that God so loved.

On one level our unity is a mystery, like the experience of Christ’s real and true presence in the Sacrament. But on another level, Christian unity is not a mystery. It is rock-solid, visible truth. We are not alone. We are not by ourselves on the journey. Just look around you. What unites us is greater than whatever may divide us.

Whenever we notice in another their unique gift and presence in the community – and tell them! – with a kind, generous and encouraging word, we affirm that what unites us is greater than whatever may divide us.

Whenever we work shoulder to shoulder in any outreach to the community as, for example, we will next week in the book sale & community BBQ for supporting LAMP,  we affirm that what unites us is greater than whatever may divide us.

Whenever we pray together, reflect on scripture together, and celebrate the Holy Meal together, we affirm that what unites us is greater than whatever may divide us.

Whenever we visit with one another and care for one another in the love and light of Christ Jesus within us, we affirm that what unites us is greater than whatever may divide us.

The living Lord Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

Amen.

 

Beyond Words? Who, then, Shall Lead Them?

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“No one was able to give Jesus an answer” (Matthew 22:46a).

The Pharisees are stumped again! The conversation with Jesus ends in silence. No one will dare ask him any more questions. When it comes to the big question of faith, words are not enough.

A prayer I often offer during worship at funerals is, “that we do not try to minimize our loss or seek refuge from it in words alone.” Indeed, words cannot do justice to our life and death. Have we stood with someone in grief and did not know what to say? I think we are often too hard on ourselves. Is the problem that we do not have the right words? Or, rather are we not aware of the value of being with another in silent love?

When called by God both Jeremiah and Moses protest, claiming that they “cannot speak”. Some have interpreted this as evidence that these famous prophets toiled under some kind of speech defect. I was surprised to find that in the development of early Christianity in Russia, stuttering was considered a sign of a true prophet. Then again, Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that the priority of God’s witness is found in human weakness (Eberhard Bethge, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, New York: Harper & Row, 1985, p.374).

“Preach the Gospel always,” goes the proverb, “use words if necessary.”

Over time I am learning the value of non-verbal communication in getting a message across — my body-language, behavior, touch, presence and attitude.

Because faith is simply beyond words.

A Parable of the Lenten Journey

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An ancient proverb is told of a servant whose duty was to draw water from the river at dawn when it was still mostly dark, and carry a bucket-full up a winding, rocky path to the mansion where his master lived. Alas! His bucket had a crack in it. And each time he brought water up the path he lost most of it.

Curiously, the servant noticed his master standing at the door of the mansion watching him every day carry this water up the path, spilling most of it. And yet, the servant was able to see a broad, loving smile on his master’s face. Daily, the servant would drop to his knees when he reached the top. At his master’s feet the servant would express his remorse at failing to do his job, bringing only half a bucket-full of water each time he climbed the path. The master listened lovingly, invited him inside for breakfast, and encouraged him to try again the next day. Which the servant did, faithfully, for the entire season.

When the river froze over, and the last half-bucket full was brought up the path, and once again the servant expressed his shame, sorrow and regret, the master invited him inside to share in a special feast to mark the end of the season and beginning of a new one. On the table spread with the finest breads, vegetables, cheeses and meats, he found bouquets of flowers of the most wondrous varieties and colors.

The servant gasped at the heavenly sight and asked his master, “From where did you find these beautiful flowers?”

“Come, follow me,” the master said, “and see for yourself.” The master led the servant back to the front door just as the sun was rising, illuminating the pathway down to the river. And on both sides of the path the flowers were growing, able to do so because of the water that had daily leaked out from the servant’s cracked bucket.

Advent 2B – Waiting to Give

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Please read Isaiah 40 and Mark 1

A six-year old girl asked her father, the pastor, why before preaching a sermon he always bowed his head in a moment of silence.

“Well, my dear,” the pastor answered his daughter, “before I preach I ask God to help me preach a good sermon.”

“But Daddy,” the daughter responded, “You’ve been praying that prayer for a long time already. Why hasn’t God answered it?”

Indeed, why do we pray? What kind of answer are we looking for? Praying is often what we do when there’s nothing left for us to do. When we have to wait.

Advent is about watching and waiting. During this season of anticipation, we say we wait for Christmas to come. If you’d ask a child, this means looking forward to presents, toys and the fun of getting more stuff wrapped up under the Christmas tree.

I suspect to a large extent even we adults never really outgrow this kind of waiting. We look forward to the next thing we can get for ourselves — an education, a job, a spouse, a child, a house, a vacation, more stuff. As we age we wait to be rewarded, to receive accolades, fame, the latest toy, whatever it may be …. Waiting is basically motivated by self-gratification; that is, obtaining something more for ourselves.

But time soon runs out on us. Our lives progress to a point where if we are going to wait, and wait well, waiting must soon become something else. Our waiting needs to be transformed into a self-giving motif rather than a selfish one. If it isn’t our natural ageing and nearing prospect of our death that propels us towards this maturity, than it must be the grace of God, regardless of our age.

So, why will we wait? Perhaps the answer to this question lies in response to another question that may be a tad easier to answer: For what do we ask this Advent time in which we wait for the coming celebration of “God with us” — Emmanuel?

When I was about ten years old my parents asked my brother and me to think about a special request to bring to the manger, to the baby Jesus. I was instructed NOT to ask Jesus for a toy or any “stuff”. It was a challenge for me to think of a prayer that was a bit more substantial than asking for some ‘thing’ for myself.

For what do we ask from our Lord this coming season? More stuff? More money? More material blessings? Or, are our prayers more focused on our health, protection and safety? Whatever it is, our prayers are key to understanding the true desire of our hearts.

The Lord’s Prayer is a good place to start for guidance on how to pray, for what to ask, and how to wait. When the disciples didn’t know how to pray, they asked Jesus to teach them. And he taught them. If you look carefully at all the petitions of the Our Father, most of the verses have to do with who God is, what God will do, or what we ask of God. Except for one line.

In the most beloved prayer of Christianity, the only thing we say we will do, is forgive others. “…. as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Of all the things we want to do, of all the things we think we need or must do as Christians, forgiveness is fundamental here. Forgiveness is what we wait for. Forgiveness is what we do. Forgiveness is what we give.

Why will we wait this Advent? We are given this time to contemplate the state of our hearts. Because forgiveness starts as a quality of the inner life. We are given this time to reflect, affirm and practice our God-given capacity to give forgiveness, to receive it, to be generous with our lives, in the love and grace of God. Especially where there is need.

The Attawapiskat community on the shores of James Bay in northern Ontario has been in the news recently when the town government declared a state of emergency. The deplorable conditions in which the people there live look a lot like what we see in the developing world, and would never at first think this could happen in our own backyard — in Canada!

We’ve heard much analysis and argument about how this came to be. So many reasons that only justify our inaction: the government is at fault since they knew about this for a long time; the first nations people can’t take care of themselves and modern infrastructure; the economy does not support their way of life and vice versa; cultural disconnects; ongoing abuses — you name it. We can sit here and argue about it while human beings hundreds of miles north of this very place will die this winter.

The only real solution right now, is grace. We need to give. Our relatively rich society in southern Canada needs to give so that they in the north will not suffer any more.

A quality of forgiveness and grace — indeed the Christian life — is “letting go”, releasing the other person from your anger, releasing yourself from whatever binds you. The quality of letting go of controlling the outcomes of our efforts to manage life for our own benefit, on our own terms.

Richard Rohr writes about the Cherokee chiefs who said to their young braves, “Why do you spend your time in brooding? Don’t you know you are being driven by great winds across the sky?” Rohr continues to write: Don’t you know you’re part of a much bigger pattern? But you’re not in control of it, any more than you would be of great winds. You and I are a small part of a much bigger mystery. (Everything Belongs, page 120)

Father Jack Costello, a Jesuit priest and President of Regis College in Toronto said about the work of the Holy Spirit — often described as a great wind — “the Holy Spirit gives us freedom, peace, and makes us courageous and reckless people.”

I often imagine John the Baptist an exemplar of the above description of someone “reckless” in God’s grace and Spirit. John the Baptist came announcing the coming Lord and repentence for the forgiveness of sin (Mark 1:4). He came proclaiming that he and the powers of the world were not in charge. Our lives are not governed by human history. What we experience in our lives – good and bad – is not the work of our hands alone.

Rather, our lives are part of God’s history, God’s story of salvation. The world and history is governed by God, who will make in “the rough places a plain”, the “uneven ground level” who will “lift up every valley” and make “every mountain and hill low” (Isaiah 40). Our lives are in God’s hands.

The true message of Advent is a shock to the system: The message of Advent is about God’s decision to let go. God decided to release His Son into the world. God decided to self-disclose. God decided to make God-self vulnerable by becoming fully human. What a huge risk! What a divine letting-go!

What if waiting this Advent was NOT motivated by the prospect and illusion of what more I can get for myself? What if waiting this Advent was about what I would let go of this Christmas. What can I give of myself and let go of? — for the sake of my family, my community, my church, my nation, my world?

After all, it is God’s church, God’s community, God’s nation and God’s world to begin with!

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Why We Need Not Be Afraid – Part Four /Pentecost 11A – The Cross

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Matthew 16:21-28

The late Canadian federal politician, Jack Layton, in his final words written in a letter to all Canadians, wrote: “Hope is better than fear.” He wrote those words less than 48 hours before he would succumb to the cancer that was killing him. One thing about Jack Layton, you couldn’t fault the man for being genuine, passionate and from-the-heart in his communication. In other words, he wasn’t just saying, “hope is better than fear” just because it was a good thing to say; He really meant it.

How could he rise above his fear enough so to make that statement, genuinely? Hope is better than fear. How could he maintain optimism amidst his suffering and even in the face of impending death?

I must confess my reaction would echo Peter’s: It is not right for our leader to suffer and die! For that matter, let’s not talk about suffering and dying at all. Conversations like this have no place in the corridors of power, amidst the expectations of greatness and glory! Yeah, Peter’s reaction makes more sense than Jesus’ morbid talk!

I am not someone who has suffered greatly – especially as I consider some of the stories of you sitting in this room today. I suspect, nevertheless, that suffering comes to us all at some point in life, even when we don’t seek it. It is a natural part of life. So, I wonder, how can I prepare myself for the inevitable?

“How can there be a God,” sceptics ask, “when there is so much suffering in the world today?” I suspect the answer is, because people of faith discover hope and wholeness not be denying their broken places in life, but by embracing this reality, in love.

Perhaps another quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson can help set the context for our discussion this morning: “The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear.”

Perhaps it’s not the circumstance itself that is the issue, but our response to it. Because I believe we’ve heard of many people who have faced incredibly desperate cirmcumstances in their lives, and yet were able to maintain and hold a high level of hope despite their circumstance. How do they do it?

Why we need not be afraid? Today’s reflection zeroes in on the Cross. Not the crucifix — we’ll save that image for Holy Week and Good Friday. No, let’s start with a plain, empty Cross not denying the suffering it has caused as a 2nd century instrument of torture and capital punishment but suggesting there is something hopeful beyond the suffering.

How can we learn to live in hope, not fear? Here are a couple of biblical insights that emerge from the assigned texts for this day:

1. Jeremiah 15:15-21 “Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?” (v.18)

Jeremiah complains bitterly to God, in the first half of this text. He even has the gall to describe God as a “deceitful brook” and “waters that fail” (v.18)

But God is not offended by Jeremiah’s accusations. That’s because Jeremiah’s protest, uttered amid his suffering, falls safely within the biblical tradition of “lament”. You can find other laments in the Psalms, for example, such as Psalms 22, 42, 44 & 89. Challenging God’s apparent unreliability in this manner is “fully spiritual” (David Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., Feasting on the Word Year A Vol 4, p.5). Why?

This language and style of communication presumes a relationship of faithfulness. The Lament is language of fidelity. It assumes that God values relationship and is open to being affected personally by a believer’s suffering. It is reminicent of the way Job challenged God. Anger expressed towards God is a more faithful act than complacency and a fateful, passive resignation fueled by self-rejection.

The first strategy for finding a way beyond the fear is grounding ourselves in a real, relationship with a God who is willing to be affected by our very own suffering, who is willing to hear our pain, who is willing to walk with us in the woundedness of our life.

The Cross symbolizes Jesus’ sympathy with human suffering. Because Jesus suffered and died on the Cross, God is no stranger to the depth and breadth of human suffering, including our own. He knows it. He can take it. Let him have it. And God will respond. How? God’s response to Jeremiah’s vitriol is a loving promise for redemption.

The Cross stands at the intersection of divine interest and intervention, and our own personal and corporate suffering. At the very least, we are not disconnected from God in our suffering. Therefore, we need not be afraid.

2. Which brings us to the second biblical insight for approaching our own suffering not with fear, but hope and love: The dialogue between Jesus, Peter and the disciples in our Gospel text takes place in the north country, Caesarea Philippi. Remember, the disciples are fishers. They are lake people, accumstomed to life on and around Lake Galilee. Places like Capernaum and Tiberias are their familiar stomping grounds. So, why did Jesus drag his disciples far north into unfamiliar territory in order to tell them that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and die?

In fact, the text reveals that he did not “explain” or “tell” them about suffering, but that he “showed” them. So there must be something he did with them to teach them about suffering. Is it the very action of removing them from the familiar, from the routine, from the perceived safety and security of their “comfort zones” of home and hearth to teach them about the meaning of suffering?

I wonder if their physical displacement represented gaining some distance and perspective on the subject matter. Being far away from home symbolized the inner need for distance and detachment from all that seems to be important and with which they identified their lives.

Which sets the ground for the famous yet difficult teaching of Jesus in this text: “If anyone want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus wants to give his disciples a vision of his mission and kingdom in which we are given hope through our suffering and death. But the path is a way of embracing our losses. The message of Jesus’ stories (called “parables”) is that in losing we will find.

In Luke 15 is a summary of the Gospel — often referred to as the “golden” chapter of the bible. In it we read the stories of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the Prodigal Son (i.e. the lost son). Sometimes I feel the Christians, based on their behaviour, would rather have it the other way around: Would we rather have Jesus tell stories about never having been lost? Why not parables about staying found, with instructions on how not to get lost?

The hope comes when we “let go.” Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel we find a version of the famous Beatitudes -teachings of Jesus – containing a list of “Blessed are those who …” The first one is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

The importance of letting go of, releasing and forgiving are vital qualities in the process of healing. Letting go, first by being honest and angry with God; that is, getting it out. But, letting go of all our pretensions, perceived perfection and glory-fixations so that we discover who we truly are. In the poverty of our being, when we let go, we discover our true selves, not by identifying ourselves with our suffering but merely by relating to it.

And who we essentially are is nothing more, and nothing less, than be-loved, lovable and loving. Love is at the heart of faith. It’s not suffering for suffering’s sake. It’s not suffering for evil purposes. Jesus went to the Cross because he wants to love you and be with you and show you that hope is better than fear.

It’s suffering in full awareness of God’s love, compassion and promise in and through our suffering. And I think the way to that realization is in the art of “losing”: that in losing we will find.

If God is willing to love us in our suffering, perhaps we too can embrace the part of our lives in pain. Perhaps we can love the parts of our lives — mind, body, and spirit — that are hurting.

This week I heard the moving story of an elderly person who at a young age had to give up a baby daughter for adoption. Given the circumstances of her life at the time, and holding a faithful conviction that her daughter was meant to be loved and raised in another person’s household, she gave up something/someone near and dear to her.

She had to accept her loss. And she came to terms with the very real possibility that she might never again meet her daughter. Yet, she moved on in her life to experience many other blessings.

Then in the mid-1980s the Ontario Government passed legislation allowing for adopted children to seek out their birth mothers, if they so desired. Upon hearing of this news, this person called the government office and released her contact information, allowing for the possibility that her daughter, wherever she was, might wish to contact her.

Within two weeks, she received a phone call from her daughter. They planned for a reunion in a neutral city. And what a reunion it was! Even though their lives had gone in different directions and continued so after their meeting, they have been able to enjoy each other’s company and friendship to this day. They meet once in a while and are mutually blessed by their relationship.

In losing we will find. Not a reckless, indiscriminate, unthoughtful, impulsive letting go. But a letting go that is held in faithful, trusting and committed manner. We too can experience new life, healing, resurrection. It is not easy to take this first step. It requires some risk-taking. Yet, the cliche is true and analogous: Better to have love and lost, then never to have loved at all.

When we are honest, real and true — expressing our deepest feelings to God in relationship that will endure all; and, when we practice the art of letting go in so many areas of our lives holding the Cross as a symbol of the hope we have in Christ Jesus, we can be liberated from our fear.

Thanks be to God. Amen.