Tag Archives: God

Wildfires and the journey of faith

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Labyrinth at Bonnevaux Centre for Peace (photo by Martin Malina, 21 July 2023, Marçay, France)

How could such a beginning
Ringed in water
Come to such an end
Fixed in fire?
(King, 2019)

When I recently read this poetic lament written by Canadian Indigenous historian and poet, Thomas King, I couldn’t help but immediately think about all the wildfires this summer.

Others are calling on us Canadians to get used to the “new reality” (Reed, 2025, August 11) regarding summertime wildfires. 2025 has been the second worst year for wildfires after the record-setting year in 2023.

The average number of hectares that burn over a 5-year period in Canada is around 4 million. This year alone, seven-and-a-half million hectares of land have burned due to wildfires, about 78% more than the 5-year average.

The warmer it gets the more fires we see. It is a stark manifestation of the climate crisis, with temperatures this past spring already two-and-a-half degrees Celsius above average. The hotter the climate the more the atmosphere sucks moisture out of the dead vegetation and the forest floor, creating ideal conditions for fires to start. The warmer temperatures increase the frequency of lightning that sparks the fires. Lightning is a leading cause of wildfires in remote regions of Canada’s north.

Indeed,

How could such a beginning
Ringed in water
Come to such an end
Fixed in fire?
(King, 2019)

How do you interpret this poem? Likely, we can go in many different directions with it. We could, like I initially did, take his poem literally and refer it to creation and the climate crisis.

We could also read it as a metaphor for faith, describing the journey of faith beginning in the waters of baptism and ending in the fiery passion of living in the Spirit?

Whichever way you go, poetic words are meant to call out from each of us – our own hearts and minds – a unique response. Scripture is meant that way, to elicit and evoke something from us.

Like last week’s Gospel, Jesus’ words in the opening verse of today’s reading from Luke leans into this approach: “I came to cast fire to the earth and how I wish it were already ablaze!” (Luke 12:49). Poetic. But is Jesus angry? Is he vengeful?

Recall, Jesus recently rebuked James and John for wanting retribution, wanting to bring down fire from heaven on unwelcoming Samaritans (Luke 9:54-55). Jesus means a different kind of fire. This is not the fire that incinerates. It’s not the fire of judgement raining down from heaven upon the heads of God’s (read, ‘our’) enemies. Let’s be careful about taking these poetic words literally.

Some bible scholars suggest Jesus is talking about the fire he takes upon himself. This is the “baptism by fire” (Lull, 2010, p. 361) that entails his own suffering, his own passion. God’s work on earth is Jesus’ own self-giving, his own sacrifice on the cross. “How I wish it were already ablaze,” Jesus says. How he wishes his purpose on earth was already accomplished. He was passionate.

So, where does that leave us? Jesus does not let his disciples, nor we, off the hook. In this season after Pentecost we continue to be reminded of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, in the church on earth. The fire the Spirit of God brings burns in the hearts and minds of followers of Jesus. “Were not our hearts burning within us?” confessed the disciples after seeing the resurrected Jesus (Luke 24:32). A spiritual awakening, a growth, a movement enflamed by the Spirit’s power continues to burn in the hearts of Jesus’ followers ever since.

So, if the fire in this Gospel refers to the passion of Jesus leading through the suffering of the cross and the empty tomb, the death and resurrection of Jesus introduce us to the paradox of faith. In other words, we cannot bypass the pain on the path to new life. Death before resurrection. Whatever good for which we pray, strive and seek only comes by way of hard, personal work. The good results from the struggle.

At the orientation meeting when I started the Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology over a year and a half ago, the Dean of the program told all of us newbies that, “to learn is to churn.” To churn, like hurricane Erin now does in the eastern Caribbean.

To learn is to churn. I didn’t want to believe him at first. But I can honestly now say that this learning journey, while rewarding and affirming in many ways, has also been a churning, so to speak.

Learning is something we say we are always doing. But the growth and positive change don’t come without the pain of loss. The ‘little deaths’, as Martin Luther liked to put it. This challenge can apply to everything from family relations to politics to community engagement and church work, from caring for ourselves and others to meeting our daily challenges. Solutions don’t come without some churning along the way.

To learn is to churn. On the one hand, churning is about movement. When we confront the ambiguity and nuance and complexity of life, we don’t just give up and stay stuck in this challenging awareness. Churning is about movement. We do something. Our behaviour changes.

At the same time, churning is about a movement that is not rushed nor hastily reactive. Churning turns things over, mixing it all, going deep. We don’t rush the turns of life. We spend time in, embrace, the change as hard as it is. Teilhard de Chardin said, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God” (DotMagis, 2025). Churning.

One highlight of the summer for me happened on the first day of summer, when members of three congregations in this community went for a walk from garden to garden to garden. We ended by walking the labyrinth on the floor in the parish hall at Julian of Norwich Anglican Church.

The labyrinth has a history in the Christian tradition. During the Middle Ages, when Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem were disrupted by conflict, particularly during the Crusades, Christians developed labyrinths as a substitute for the physical journey to the Holy Land. 

These labyrinths, often called “Chemins de Jerusalem” (Paths of Jerusalem), provided a way for Christians to symbolically journey to Jerusalem through prayer and meditation, particularly on the Passion of Christ. The most famous of these labyrinths is in the Chartres Cathedral near Paris, France.

When I walked on the labyrinth at Julian of Norwich, praying and reflecting on the journey of life and faith, these words pierced my heart with renewed appreciation: “There is no wrong turn”. On the labyrinth, there is no wrong turn.

The labyrinth, after all, is not a maze. In a maze you may be tricked or mistaken in taking a wrong turn which leads to a dead end, right? But not so in a labyrinth. There is only the one path, leading to the centre. You just need to follow it.

And be mindful of the turns. Those turns take you around 360 degrees. If you are sprinting, you might overshoot and miss the turn. But by remaining faithful to the slow work, by staying on the path, that is all. You just need to take your time at each turn. On the labyrinth, there is no wrong turn. In a life of faith, there is no wrong turn.

These turns, changes of direction, in life, are not easy. But these turns provide the best learning opportunities in your life. And yes, to learn is to churn.

As I focus on my practicum over the next eight months, I will have an excellent opportunity to learn. It will also be an excellent opportunity for you, the congregation, to learn. To learn together in a new way.

Trust the path. On the way, there is no wrong turn. No decision you make is outside the purview of God’s grace, mercy and love. Because the path you are on, even with all the turns, takes you to the center of Jesus’ heart, into the fullness of Christ’s presence and love. This is the eternal journey that begins now, and in eternity never ends.

The promised glory at the end of the road requires us to take that road, and fully embrace ourselves on the path ahead, one step at a time.

Trust in the slow work of God. And be amazed.

References:

DotMagis (Ed.). (2025). Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin: Patient trust [Website]. Loyola Press. https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/prayer-of-theilhard-de-chardin/

King, T. (2019). 77 fragments of a familiar ruin: Poems. Harper Collins.

Lull, P. J. (2010). Luke 12:49-56: Pastoral perspective. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor (Eds.), Feasting on the word: Preaching the revised common lectionary, year c volume 3 (pp. 359-362). Westminster John Knox Press.

Reed, B. (2025, August 11). Canada wildfire season already second worst on record as experts warn of ‘new reality’ [website]. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/11/canada-wildfire-season

On the lookout

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The Sentry (photo by Martin Malina)

In the Star Wars movies, occasionally we come across the sentry in the tower. You know, the guy wearing the long helmet standing in a narrow pod high up in the trees?

The sentries in Star Wars play a vital role in the Rebel Alliance’s defense strategy, acting as a first line of warning against the evil Imperial forces. They use hand-held scanners to check transponder codes and get eyes-on weapons status of incoming ships.

But I have a problem with that image.

With all the high tech involved in Star Wars, including hyper-speed travelling spaceships, light sabres and tractor beams, you’d think that the radar and other digital visual systems should be enough to identify incoming threats from afar. Why do you need someone standing atop the trees outside? It seems a bit odd, given the science fiction genre of the story. After all, wouldn’t it be too late if enemy fighters came zooming in from outer space at high speed when the sentry first identifies them?

The argument is that the sentry’s position is hard to spot nestled among the trees, presuming the location of the Rebel Alliance’s base remains a secret. Good point.

I realized I needed to go beyond what was an initial, critical reaction or response. I needed to engage in a dialogue with someone else, which I did on a discussion website.

There is also something odd I find in this Gospel text for today (Luke 12:32-40). The general theme of the parable is about what we value, and about being alert. The logic fails a bit in this last part. For me, the parable ends by floating a bit off the ground of reality, like one of those hovercrafts in Star Wars.

It’s like captain obvious. Everyone needs sleep. Therefore, it’s impossible to prevent theft. Obviously if the house owner knew when the thieves would arrive, he would stay up and wait for them. Is Jesus setting us up for failure? Surely he’s not saying we need to stop sleeping or never rest.

The friction in my mind made me move. I dug a little bit into the way Jesus taught. Maybe Jesus set up the story in this way in order to evoke a reaction, a response, so that the reader or listener participates in the meaning-making exercise?

We have to remember Jesus’ role as a teacher in his Jewish lineage. To understand Jesus as a teacher is to remember that even those with great authority teach within a long line of communal interpretation (Bass, 2021).

When Jesus preached, he didn’t give sermons from behind lecterns and pulpits. He engaged his listeners so that together, in their dialogue, they would create the message (Nabhan, 2021). He would evoke from the listener the relevant meaning for them.

So, if you are like me, maybe we have to start with our initial reactions or responses to the parable, then engage each other and God in prayer to uncover, discover and appreciate God’s message to us today. In this way we encounter a living text, reflecting that we are the living body of Christ today in this world.

So, with this understanding of our union in Christ, let’s start with the themes of being prepared, of staying alert, of paying attention; and, of where our treasure is, what are our values.

Let’s contrast the world’s values with the way of Christ – the kingdom of God. We live in that tension all the time.

Are “being on high alert” and being “asleep at the switch” our only alternatives? Like I said, I don’t know anyone in the history of humanity who never slept or rested. So, maybe it isn’t either/or. A better question to ask, then, is how we pay attention.

Imagine a dial whose needle leans one way or another.

So, what would being alert look like according to the ways of the world? Being on high alert may push the needle towards the ‘control and certainty’ side of the dial. Being on high alert means being fixated on something clearly and unequivocally defined. As the sentry in the tower does, we look for a specific threat and what that clearly, unquestionably looks like: An Imperial ship – the bad guys, or an X-wing – the good guys. We are on the lookout, especially for the bad guys.

Over time, we develop a way of looking – a perception – that imposes our deliberate will, and projects our unconscious fears, on whatever we encounter. We begin to believe that the world is a dangerous place, and we proceed to view anything we meet as threatening and dangerous.

In the end, perhaps the house owner is asleep at the switch when the thief arrives precisely because he has been looking for that thief for so long and so hard (Schlafer, 2010).

On the other hand, what does staying alert and awake look like according to the values of the kingdom of God? Rather than ‘certainty and control’, the needle leans towards the other side of the dial, towards ‘anticipation’. Our watchful waiting cultivates a kind of peripheral vision.

We’re not so much on the lookout for something specific. Leaning towards ‘anticipation’ means we develop a sixth sense, an awareness of what is good.

And so, we can sit loose with what we are naturally disposed or conditioned to see as the enemy. Because thieves come in all manner of shapes, sizes, forms and means. Saint Paul wrote, “the devil comes disguised as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). On the other hand, the good will sometimes come to us not in ways we expect. In short, we cannot predict the future no matter how prepared we are.

This kind of vision translates into a different way of growing in faith. We may consider counter-intuitive ways of dealing with problems and challenges in our life. We curate a more creative approach. For example, in taking a break, we encounter a breakthrough. Fresh insight comes not when we are looking (for something specific), but rather when we are not looking (for something specific). Counter-intuitive.

I think it starts when we are honest with our sacred stories, the sacred scriptures. It starts when we pay attention to the reaction we have when we read something that doesn’t initially make sense. We honour that. But then we need to stick with it so we can go deeper and discover sources of wisdom we never expected. It’s best not to do this alone, but with one another.

Perhaps we too will be surprised by the answers God gives us when we can let go of our preconditioned responses, can loosen our grip of control, and can practice trust in the midst of the world’s uncertainty. Just because we live in uncertain times does not mean we are far from God’s graces.

We can notice the beauty in moments that would otherwise rush us by. We can see the good where in haste we would dismiss. Our developing sense of awareness notices the glimmers of love and goodwill from strangers, neighbours and everyone in between.

Perhaps this Gospel today reminds us that it’s ok to stop. It’s not just ok, it’s vitally important that we do take breaks, that we rest, that we slow down and loosen our grip on things. It can be scary to let go.

But on the other side is a newfound joy, purpose and a life that is worth living because God’s grace, love and mercy are bigger than anything we can ever ask for or imagine.

Let’s be the lookout. Because there is always something good to find out there.

References:

Bass, D. B. (2021). Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as friend, teacher, savior, lord, way, and presence. HarperOne.

Nabhan, G. P. (2021). Jesus for farmers and fishers: Justice for all those marginalized by our food system. Broadleaf.

Schlafer, D. J. (2010). Luke 12:32-40 Homiletical perspective. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor, Feasting on the word: Preaching the revised common lectionary, year c volume 3 (pp. 335-339). Westminster John Knox Press.

A fish story: Because we don’t know

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photo by Martin Malina (July 21, 2025, Big Rideau Lake)

The picture here is a photo taken last month on the Big Rideau Lake. This carp weighed in about 45 pounds. Paul Francis has been fishing on that lake for the last 70 years and he says it’s the biggest fish that he’s ever seen come out of the Big Rideau.

Thanks to his 17-year-old nephew Jack who heroically pulled this injured fish out of the lake.

There is much about this fish’s story we don’t know. How was it injured? What happened? Assuming it got into the lock at the south end of the lake, from where did it come? We will never know its complete history, its story.

The fish symbol is a prominent symbol in Christianity with roots in the early church. The symbol comes from a Greek word (Ichthys) that translates to “fish,” but also functions as an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” in Greek (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ). 

The symbol’s use is believed to have originated in the 2nd century, becoming popular by the late 2nd and 3rd centuries, especially during a time of Roman persecution of Christians.

Why the fish as a symbol for Jesus? Perhaps because he called fishermen to be his first disciples? Perhaps because he multiplied the loaves and fish in the feeding of the five thousand? Perhaps because in one post-resurrection account, Jesus fed fish to his disciples for breakfast on the beach?

The important thing here is to understand the symbol of the fish was associated with the name of Jesus.

When I read again Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians this past week, I found it odd that in the entire letter, the name of Jesus is mentioned seven times (1:1; 1:3; 1:4; 2:6; 3:17; 4:11; 4:12) but in five of those seven times the name Jesus is paired with “Christ”. Only twice in this Epistle does the name of Jesus stand alone.

Contrast this with the number of times the word “Christ” appears all by itself in Colossians: Some twenty-four times. What is Paul up to here? At very least, it may explain why a few centuries after Jesus died and rose again, our religion was known as “Christian”, not “Jesu-sian” (Shaia, 2021). Scripture calls our attention to distinguish between the meaning of Jesus, and the meaning of Christ. They’re not quite the same.

We read in the first chapter of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John speaks of a reality existing in a time before Jesus walked on the earth. John uses the term “Word”, “Logos” in Greek, to express the same eternal reality that Paul means when he intentionally uses just the word Christ, or the Christ.

But, that “Word” also “became flesh” (John 1:14). Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer understood “the Word” to be Jesus. So, the eternal reality is Christ. And, the particular, historical reality is Jesus. The same, but not the same.

Why do New Testament writers Paul and John make this distinction? Perhaps we who identify as Christian may be encouraged in our faith to not just focus on the biographical details of a brief human history in ancient Palestine that can never be completely known.

For example, there is nothing the Gospels mentioned about Jesus’ youth, from about age 12 until he appears near the beginning of his ministry at age 30. As one scholar puts it, “there will never be enough bones or papyrus or analytical wisdom” to fill those gaps in the history, and meet our needs today (Shaia, 2021, p. 209).

So, why did Jesus come? Two thousand years ago in the Middle East, Jesus came so that we, today, might enter into the greater truth of the Christ – the truth that encompasses the reality of all things in the universe for all time. Again, using Saint Paul’s language in the Epistle today: “Christ is all and in all!” (Colossians 3:11). For all time and in every place.

God, in Christ, is just as much in the daily, common, ordinary, material concerns of our lives as Christ is present in our praying, singing and humble service to the world. In Christ, there is no separation between Sunday, and Monday-through-Saturday. In Christ, there is no separation between sacred and secular. All of it matters. All of it belongs. All of our reality concerns God.

That is why we read stories in the Gospel about barns, possessions, money and wealth (e.g. Luke 12:13-21). How we are with our possessions has a lot to do with how we are with our faith in Christ.

The distinction Paul makes is really pastoral. The wisdom of our Christian forebears, the writers of scripture and the truth of the Word, is that Jesus the Christ is with us today. Christ is present and has something to say to us.

Christ is with us, in us, around us, connecting it all, now and forever. If this is the presence that we come to know today, then we don’t need to fear tomorrow.

And that is why we don’t live unto ourselves alone. That is why we can’t ignore the cries of the world. That is why as Christians, today’s problems in the world matter in a life of faith. It is a truth for today. It is the hope for tomorrow.

With this perspective, we can catch ourselves when we interpret scripture with our ego in the driver’s seat, which places us at the centre of it all, which makes eternity dependent on us and what we do or don’t do.

Which is nonsense, precisely because we don’t know everything. We are not God. We don’t have the whole and complete picture.

We need to read this passage from Colossians the same way we read German. In German, before reading a whole sentence written in the past tense, or containing a subordinate clause, you need to first go to the last word in the sentence or clause, which is usually the verb. Once you get that, then you can make sense of all the rest of the words that precede it. Where you start your thinking makes all the difference in how you interpret.

It’s the last verse in this scripture from Colossians that informs our interpretation of what comes before. Notice in verse 10 of Colossians 3 the passive construction of how we are renewed in Christ. So, it’s because we are renewed that we can do all the good things implied in this passage: We can tell the truth, we can engage others with calmness, gentleness, peace and respect.

It’s because “Christ is all and in all” (v. 11) that we are generous and live with moral integrity and in unity with others who are not like us. The gift of Christ in us and through the Holy Spirit generates compassionate behaviour and a loving orientation to life and community. It all matters. Everyone belongs. God’s love is for all.

And it starts with God’s gift of Christ present with us, in us. Out of this eternal reality and perspective flows a grace-filled way of life today.

Reference:

Shaia, J. A. (2021). Heart and mind: The four-gospel journey for radical transformation (3rd ed.). Quadratos.

Telling our story

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National Bishop Susan Johnson (ELCIC) listens to words of gratitude for her 18 years of service as national bishop (July 12, 2025, Winnipeg, http://www.elcic.ca)

The Mary-and-Martha Gospel story (Luke 10:38-42) reminds me of what sometimes happens when family and/or friends gather around a table on a holiday or to celebrate some special occasion. Over the meal, each person has a different take on the subject matter at hand. Everyone has their own opinion.

After years of regularly encountering this Gospel in the lectionary, and preaching countless sermons on it, I have concluded that there are at least three characters sitting around our table today. These three characters represent my own evolution of understanding this Gospel story. They are the Literalist, the Rebel, and the Peacemaker.

The Literalist is the first to speak. The Literalist reads this Gospel and concludes that Mary is the person that we all should model: the one who is quiet and listens to Jesus and doesn’t worry at all about the practical aspects of hosting Jesus and his entourage. While the mundane activities need to be done, we are called instead to aspire to the true, higher, spiritual gifts.

The Rebel, as you might guess, jumps right in. The Rebel resists the Literalist’s interpretation and declares their objection. They see it in the opposite way. Martha is the true hero, and Jesus is unfair in admonishing her. After all, the practical aspects of hosting a party are vital in healthy relationships and community building, not to mention how dominant cultures have tended to diminish and marginalize women who traditionally did these more active, practical things.

Finally, the Peacemaker quietly interjects. The Peacemaker will argue that both roles, or postures, are important to balance in any community or within any individual. Jesus isn’t taking sides in this debate. Rather, he directs his comments to the way Martha goes about her task, “worried and distracted by many things” (Luke 10:41). Whether we are active all the time and busy in our service to God, or praying in silence and resting in stillness and holy presence, distraction is the real culprit.

If you were invited to this table, and you came, where would you sit? And with whom? The Literalist? The Rebel? The Peacemaker? Or … is there yet another voice that needs to be heard?

In the farewell tribute and celebration of outgoing national bishop Susan Johnson at the national convention of the ELCIC last week, a speaker and close friend of Susan’s, Willard Metzger from the Mennonite Church and current director of the Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) talked about the strengths in Bishop Johnson’s ministry (www.elcic.ca).

He spoke about how Bishop Susan knows who she is. She is strong in her personal identity. In other words, she has an abiding love of self despite all the challenges she had faced, both personally and professionally, in her 18 years as bishop.

Willard went on to say that our love for God is affirmed when we love ourselves. Why? Because God created each of us. Each individual is created out of the love of God. It is fundamentally crucial as Christians to continually work at loving ourselves because God created you, made you, fashioned you in God’s image. We would then compassionately correct any messages we might tell ourselves, or the world might tell us, to the contrary.

Here’s another voice, another way of interpreting the Gospel. What shall we call this character? The Lover? It’s not about whether it’s better to be active and serving, attending to others and being hospitable in practical ways. Neither is it better to be contemplative, and reflective and sitting at Jesus’ feet. It’s not either/or.

It was that Mary knew who she was, was strong in her own identity, and loved herself enough to know that she just needed to do the one thing she was about and be who she was, at that point in time. The “better part” that she had chosen was that she chose to be herself without trying to be someone and do something she was not. She didn’t need to please someone else or fulfill their expectation of her. Jesus said it: Who she was and what she was about could not, “will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).

This year, the national church has embarked on a restructuring process. During the convention the facilitators of the restructuring process engaged convention delegates, visitors and staff in an activity which I would like to practice here today, with you.

To begin with, the activity had us pair off. So before doing anything, turn to one person sitting beside or close to you and introduce yourself to them. It’s best to break the ice before diving in to do this exercise. If you are watching online with another person, you can do this with them at home.

The aim is to tell a story, together. I’ll start you off by saying, “Once upon a time ….” Then one of you will start telling your story by saying just one word. Then the other person will respond, but with just one word. And back and forth you go, taking turns but with just one word at a time.

Before you begin we need a general theme that will govern all our stories. So, what country or place in the world would you like to visit? …. What activity would you like to do there? ….

Ok, the story you will create together with your partner will be in this place and revolve around this activity. But remember, you say just one word when it’s your turn. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to do this, ok? Ready? “Once upon a time …” Go!

Time’s up! What was one challenge you may have encountered in the exercise? You may have had an idea about where the story should go. But then your partner would say a word that totally threw you off. They, obviously, can’t read your mind. And they might very well rather take the story in a different direction.

For the exercise to be productive, both partners need to get past themselves, listen carefully, and join together in telling a story that emerges from both, without preconception. You are co-creating in the moment. And hopefully having some fun along the way.

The exercise taught me that there is a difference between my story, and a story. There’s a difference between my story, and our story. And it’s not that my story is bad, or lacking, or not good enough. Refer to my earlier point about loving ourselves.

Each of us is beloved and has value and worth and beauty. You and I need to know who we are as individuals. We need to rejoice and celebrate in our particular, unique gifts that each person brings.

At the same time, we need to share and engage each other in relationship, and work together, respecting each other’s gifts. We co-create a new story, an emerging story. This can be exciting, and scary at the same time.

However your close relationships are organized, however community happens for you, despite and maybe because of our differences, the family still gathers around the table, as we will at the Holy Meal shortly. We reach out to make meaningful connections.

And perhaps this is the grace. Even though the people sitting around the proverbial table may be very different in their outlooks and interpretations and politics, we still gather and hear each other out. We practice being in community. And God continues to love each one of us, and the church.

Let us rejoice and give thanks in the story that God tells through us.

Thanks be to God!

The harvest is plentiful

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photo from http://www.elcic.ca (July 2025)

I started by searching for coastal scenes, and ocean waves crashing on pristine beaches. Over time, as I would scroll through these short reels, the images became more extreme, and I saw larger waves sometimes amplified with AI – surfers riding thirty-foot giant whitecaps crashing off the coast of Portugal. Then, boats capsizing in North Atlantic storms. Then, tsunamis plowing through Asian sea-side villages. And, just the last day, it was a beach scene, to be sure. But the folks on the beach witnessed a volcano violently erupt not far from their Pacific Ocean-side setting.

What happened to the serene, coastal, picturesque scenes at sunset?

Unfortunately, a quirk of human behaviour is that on average we will stare at something negative and outrageous for a lot longer than we will stare at something positive and calm (Hari, 2022). We call it negativity bias.

Our attention is captivated more by the gruesome details of an airplane crash than someone handing out flowers on a street corner, even though flowers are better for you to look at than mangled bodies. Social media knows this and capitalizes on it, because the business plan is to get your attention on screen for as long as possible, which increases the chance you will buy something.

These social media algorithms capitalize on our negativity bias at best, radicalization at worst.

A major study found that for every word of moral outrage you add to your social media feed, your retweet/share rate will go up 20 percent. Specifically, the words that will increase your share rate most are “attack,” “bad” and “blame”. In YouTube, for example, words such as “hates”, “obliterates”, “slams”, “destroys” will get picked up more frequently. If you fill your Facebook posts with indignant disagreement, you’ll double your likes and shares. So, the social media algorithms will prioritize outraging you and angering you. “If it’s more enraging, it’s more engaging” (Hari, 2022, p. 131).

Should we be surprised, then, that when we read the bible, our negativity bias is already disproportionately stoked. What do we pick up first? What words or phrases do our eyes or ears dwell on? Which parts of scripture do we focus on?

He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2).

I caught myself lingering on, “The labourers are few.” We often kneejerk into seeing the negative, don’t we? And then from that negativity bias we believe that there is something wrong with us. “I am not good enough when I’m not labouring in God’s harvest,” we self-talk. “What’s wrong with me?”

The problem, we conclude, are individual flaws whose only solution requires individual tweaks. We are individually broken, and the solution is bucking up and doing the right thing. Each of us have to do this, individually.

Of course, each one of us can indeed do our part and improve our self-control and discipline. But that alone isn’t going to solve the problem. It’s like trying to run up a downward-moving escalator.

Sure, there are always the exceptions, individuals who will heroically sprint to the top. But the vast majority of us will never make it, even though we may be giving it all we’ve got. There are larger forces at work, mostly against us.

Regarding our screen addiction, the problem about saying we need individually to be more disciplined is that there are a thousand engineers on the other side of your screen working against you.

Yes, we should take out our phones and turn off our notifications. Yes, we need to figure out our individual triggers and get help. But the human family is up against an environment designed to invade and raid our focus and which, to put it kindly, is negatively affecting our social and political culture.

“The answer is individuals making better choices” is the cruel optimism the dominant culture dishes out. Cruel, because, in the end, it doesn’t change anything. We are still getting more distracted, and our brains are being adversely affected despite all the effort we dedicate to individual self-improvement.

It’s easy to despair. It’s easy to shrug our shoulders and conclude that there is nothing we can do about it. And complain about how bad the world is getting, how everything is just falling apart. And give up. And continue doom scrolling.

“So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

Let us persist in doing what is right. What does that look like? Doing the right thing?

“There’s the old metaphor that … villagers are at the river one day, and they notice a dead body come floating down the river. So they do the right thing. They take it out and they give it an appropriate burial. The next day two bodies come down the river and they do the appropriate thing and they bury the bodies. This goes on for a while, and finally they start to wonder – I wonder where these bodies are coming down the river [from], and if we should do something to stop that? So they go up the river to find out” (Hari, 2022, pp. 236-237).

The Gospel is not pouring pink on reality. It’s not pretending everything is fine when it is not. It’s not a cruel optimism the world dishes out, full of distraction and pretence. Nor is the Gospel about a doom and gloom, giving-up kind of despair for the world. Instead, the Gospel is about an authentic optimism.

That is where together, as a community, we build a solution that deals with underlying, systemic problems. That is where the church bands together to do the hard work, to go upriver.

In a few days, the ELCIC national convention will meet in Winnipeg. Among important tasks such as electing a new national bishop and vice chair, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women. We will commemorate some of the first women, such as Pamela McGee who was the first in 1976, to be ordained in the ELCIC (Riachi, 2025).

The mid-1970s witnessed a huge change in our church, and in society. Think about how it was for women in the 1960s, in contrast. In 1962, for example, there were no women in the British cabinet, the U.S. cabinet or the Swiss government at all (Hari, 2022). In Canada, the statistics are only slightly better. For example, Grace MacInnis was the only woman elected to Parliament in the 1968 general election. What changed?

The advances made happened not because individuals self-improved and overcame their personal, private hangups. The advances made happened because of an intentional, organized community doing the right thing for a better world.

The church took scripture seriously, such as Paul’s words to the Galatians we have heard in the last few weeks: “There is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). And “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14).

While we may celebrate 50 years of ordaining women in the ELCIC this year, so much sexism and misogyny remain, women still face huge barriers, and many of the advances that have been made continue to be under threat today. The work must continue.

Making a wrong right happen by a people working together to advocate and put pressure on the powers that be. The advances are made by a people who refuse to capitulate to the despair that nothing can be done about it. They don’t “grow weary”, as Paul’s words to us today encourage.

Why?

Because the harvest is plentiful. Because grace abounds. Yes, the world is a complicated and dangerous place. Yes, we face challenges to our wellbeing and health, every day.

But there’s another story in town. God’s presence fills the earth with beauty, light, life and love. There’s no stopping the goodness of God for all people. God’s persistence, God’s perseverance, God’s faithfulness never ends for all people. God doesn’t ever give up on us. God grants us what we need when we need it. And God’s gifts overflow.

The harvest is plentiful! That’s the truth. Thanks be to God.

References:

Hari, J. (2022). Stolen focus: Why you can’t pay attention – and how to think deeply again. Random House.

Riachi, M. (2025, June). Rejoicing in hope: A preview to the ELCIC national convention. Canada Lutheran, 40(4), 10-14.

Caring is not caring?

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Photo by Martin Malina (July 2020, Galilee Retreat Centre, Arnprior)

The theme since Pentecost Sunday has been relationships. The tone was set on Trinity Sunday, when we again emphasized that God is revealed in relationship – one God, relating in three distinct persons: Creator/Father, Redeemer/Son, Empowerer/Spirit. If God is a relational God, it follows, then, that our faith is expressed in relationship.

The focus then shifts to human relationships among us, on earth, specifically in a community of faith. This is fundamental in Christianity. Our faith is not lone-ranger stuff. Relationships are key. And the quality of those relationships is our focus.

Last week we underscored what connects us all, like roots systems and unseen fungi networks connecting all trees deep underground. What unites us, what ultimately gives us life, protects and keeps us, empowers us and grows us may not be immediately apparent and visible unless you dig a little deeper.

Today’s sermon can be part 2 from last week’s part 1. Because whenever we take a closer look in matters of faith, we often run into a paradox. On the one hand, we are united, bound together in God’s love and grace. But on the other hand, there are spaces in between us that we need to respect.

There are differences that differentiate us one from another. Not honouring those natural boundaries that make us a diverse community violates the very nature and purpose of God’s creation. A beautiful, diverse creation. There are no two exactly-the-same elements, neither between two snowflakes nor between identical twins. I know this to be true, because I am one. An identical twin, that is! My identical twin brother and I are not the same, despite the apparent similarities.

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other”.                                                             Rainer Maria Rilke

Even among family members. In the Gospel for today (Luke 9:51-62), Jesus concludes by offering what sounds like harsh words implying that relationships within a family should withstand separation and leave-taking. Admittedly, this side of the paradox can be as difficult and for some even more difficult to practice than the unity part.

Is Jesus advocating for the split up of the family for the sake of the Gospel? How do we resolve the paradox of faith between strong bonds of unity in any family however defined, and a healthy differentiation among members of that family? Unity and diversity.

There is a clue at the beginning of this text to help us navigate the contours of healthy spiritual relationship and resolve the apparent contradiction implied here.

Jesus’ face is set to Jerusalem. “His face was set to go to Jerusalem” is a phrase that is repeated in this Gospel text (Luke 9:51-52).

Jesus had an ambiguous relationship with Jerusalem. His focused attention to go to Jerusalem comes from knowing what he had to face in Jerusalem: the cross, death, and the divine yet challenging purposes of God.

In Jerusalem he would be arrested, tortured, and killed. And, in Jerusalem he would be hailed king and then rise from the dead. It’s a mission he was bent on fulfilling despite the cost.

Jesus grieves. Not only was he accustomed to grief – weeping at the death of his friend Lazarus (John 11:35). He weeps for the city that would kill him. Before the torturous events of his last days, he weeps and grieves lovingly over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-42). Jesus knew that he needed to let go for him to find new life again. His face set towards Jerusalem reveals his anticipated grief that he will experience within those city walls.

This insight helps me put into context what follows in today’s Gospel about relationships, especially implying family and those closest to us. Jesus’ words speak of a loving detachment.

In Genesis 2:18 after God created Adam, God did not want Adam to be alone. So, God created a “helper”. This verse is taken to be the foundation of intimate relationship, of marriage. The Hebrew word here is usually translated as helpmate. But the Hebrew word more accurately translates, “someone to help you by standing opposite you” (Brous, 2024, pp. 35-36).

It means someone to face you. When someone faces you, they stand opposite you, not shoulder to shoulder, not beside you. For someone to face you, there is always a gap, even a small one, between two people facing each other. A helper positions themselves opposite another. There’s a gap in between them.

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone. Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of [God] can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow” (Kahlil Gibran).

Kahlil Gibran’s “Let there be spaces in your togetherness” is a famous passage from his book The Prophet, specifically from the section on marriage. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining individuality and personal space within an intimate relationship.

What is vital for healthy partnership is not becoming completely intertwined, enmeshed and losing one’s sense of self. When our inner lives seek to merge with another’s, and we adopt another’s emotions for our own, we lose our sense of self. Enmeshment is not a sign of loving, caring, godly relationship. It is the opposite.

Kahlil Gibran’s words, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness” highlights the need for healthy boundaries and personal autonomy within a relationship. That beautiful metaphor, “And let the winds of the heavens dance between you” suggests allowing for freedom and personal growth in the other. And finally, “Love one another, but make not a bond of love” emphasizes that true love is not possessive nor restrictive. Instead, it is a force that allows for individual expression and movement according to the Spirit of creation that forms each person in unique ways.

Loving relationship, in the way of Jesus, is an ever-changing connection, like a sea between two shores. It is not a static, unyielding bond. True love involves respecting the other person’s need for space and independence. 

Jesus helps by standing opposite another, facing us, encouraging in us a capacity to care deeply without becoming overly entangled or controlled by the emotions or actions of others. Jesus helps us by giving others freedom to make their own choices and deal with the consequences of those choices themselves. This form of detachment, often referred to as “detachment with love” (Martin, 2023 January 31) is seen as a way to foster healthier relationships and personal well-being. 

From this perspective, Jesus’ challenging words make more sense to me. “Let the dead bury their own dead,” and, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60-62).

He is not advocating for hating your family, abandoning them, running away, being disengaged and isolated from them. Jesus is rather emphasizing the importance of a mutual care whereby people can stand “opposite” each other because they respect the space in between and permit the loved one to pursue their own life.

In this way, healthy relationships whether in a marriage, a family, a community, a nation, hold space for each other, hold space for our differences, hold space by facing each other in mutual respect and love. In so doing we honour the love Christ has for each person as a beloved, uniquely created child of God.

References:

Brous, S. (2024). The amen effect: Ancient wisdom to mend our broken hearts and world. Avery.

Gibran, K. (2022). The prophet. Peter Pauper Press.

Martin, S. (2023, January 31). Detaching with love is good for everyone: Distancing yourself from other people’s problems isn’t selfish or cruel [website]. Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/conquering-codependency/202301/detaching-with-love-is-good-for-everyone

Rilke, R. M. (2002). Letters to a young poet. Dover Publications.

Divine fireworks

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July 1, 2019 (photo by Martin Malina)

For Father’s Day, I received an upgrade on our backyard fire pit. This set includes stone bricks, a metal insert and a three-foot diameter pit. A couple weekend ago Mika and I spent the afternoon laying down patio stones on which we assembled the bricks and poured in the river stones for the base. This new fire pit will be a central feature in our backyard, hopefully for years to come.

In the memorial service for Byron last week, his brothers wrote about special memories. They highlighted a particular memory outside, around a fire pit. This time together served to strengthen their brotherly bond.

They wrote, “One time when the whole family was up at the farm, we had a great campfire … The jokes never ended. Pretty sure the rest of the family [who had already gone inside] was laughing at us staying by the campfire [so late] but we were having a great time under the stars.”

Their words support what studies have shown, that family relationships are forged outdoors when camping together, whenever families gather around the fire (Jirasek et al., 2017). Summer-time campfires will make memories for friends, families and all who pull up a camp chair or picnic table to sit around the fire.

I love watching a campfire, watching the sparks rise upwards, towards the heavens, “under the stars”. The brothers quoted above had to have looked up at some point during the campfire.

Looking up at the stars.

We don’t look up anymore. Especially at night. We don’t look up anymore, when times are tough and we become lost in the darkness. We don’t look up anymore, when we can’t directly see the sun shining.

We don’t look up anymore because we are distracted, because we are in pain or we have suffered some loss and are hurting inside. We don’t look up when we’ve lost a job, failed in a relationship, make a huge mistake and are weighed down by shame, guilt.

We look down. We spend most of our time not looking up towards the sky.

1 O Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! —
 2 you whose glory is chanted above the heavens …                           

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
  the moon and the stars you have set in their courses … (Psalm 8)

We need to look up more. Fathers need to look up more, to see that the world is much more than their failures and shortcomings. Men need to look up more, to see a reality beyond the world of their own creation.

All of us need to look up more, and beyond to the great mystery the stars represent, the great mystery of God. We need to appreciate God’s limitless, expansive universe. Just because we can’t see the sun shining when we find ourselves in the dark, doesn’t mean it isn’t, somewhere on the earth. Doesn’t mean there aren’t trillions of other suns shining in the universe.

Admittedly Holy Trinity Sunday has often got us stuck in the quagmire of analysis. We try to dissect God into different autonomous parts, like disassembling a machine. “How can God be one person in three parts?”

But we lose our way going down that reductionist rabbit hole.  Ours is not the purpose to comprehend the fullness of God. That’s an exercise in futility if there ever was one.

The purpose of Holy Trinity Sunday, rather, is to encourage followers of Jesus with the knowledge and awareness that God’s Spirit has been poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5). That Jesus and the Father are one. And that Jesus lives in us through the Holy Spirit (John 14-16) who will “guide us in all truth” (16:12-15).

God’s Spirit didn’t just come to us at one time in one historical event. God’s Spirit conveying the real presence of Jesus continues to come, to fall, to be poured into our lives.

Consider star light. Every minute on each square mile of earth one ten-thousandth of an ounce of starlight drizzles like gentle rain (Mahany, 2023). Stardust sprinkles down upon us. And not only on us.

We are made of actual stardust. All the atoms and elements in us come from generations of stars burning to dust and filtering down literally from the heavens. We have a small part of the divine in us. Just like the stars.

Origen of Alexandria, the third century theologian and truth seeker, argued there was a star-like quality in each and every human being. He wrote, “You must understand that … there is in you sun and moon and stars … You to whom it is said that you are ‘the light of the world’” (Mahany, 2023, p. 132; Matthew 5:14). Indeed, we should reach for the stars!

We belong to God. We belong in relationship with God. We belong in relationship with God’s people, united in Christ, and in the love of God for all. A contemporary scholar who writes extensively about God revealed in nature, wrote: “Love alone is what shows you the face of God. It’s what makes the stars shine” (Lane, 2019).

Maybe the very reason the stars were shining so brightly on the night the brothers were having so much fun around that campfire, creating memories that will endure forever, the reason they noticed the bright stars above them, is because of the deep, great love they had for each other.

May the light of stars shine brightly in our hearts, O God. May this world be transformed by the power of your love, O God – in, through and around us – in the name of God the Creator/Father, the Redeemer/Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

References:

Jirasek, I., Roberson, D.N., Jirásková, M., (2017). The impact of families camping together: Opportunities for personal and social development. Leisure Sciences, 39(1), 79-93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2015.1136251

Lane, B. C. (2019). The great conversation: Nature and the care of the soul. Oxford University Press.

Mahany, B. (2023). The book of nature: The astonishing beauty of God’s first sacred text. Broadleaf Books.

Seeking kin-doms: a funeral sermon

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Byron was born at the beginning of the Easter season in 1974, on Easter weekend in fact. Byron died on the last weekend of the Easter season in 2025. His life, from beginning to end was held and embraced in the life of the resurrected Jesus. 

At the beginning of the Easter season, the beginning of Byron’s life, it is about the promise fulfilled. After months of waiting and expecting, your baby is born. New life has arrived, upturning regular routines, upsetting comfortable sleep patterns and shocking the family into a new, delightful part of life.

But at the end of the Easter season, at this unbidden moment, when the one we’ve grown to love and know and see in the flesh, leaves us. This is the difficult time for the disciples of Jesus, who now that Jesus is resurrected will leave them. They will no longer see him in the flesh. What will they do without him? This crisis of faith hits them like a gut punch.

Byron’s sudden and unexpected loss hits us like a gut punch. And we may very well still be trying to get our breath back from the shock of it.

The Easter season frames Byron’s life both in the promise of life and in the loss of it. Every funeral service, arising from the pain of death, is an Easter service no matter what time of year.

Loss is part of life. In his lifetime, Byron’s favourite team, the Indianapolis Colts only one the Super Bowl once, in 2007 under Payten Manning’s quarterbacking. For all the years that Byron was faithful to his beloved team, he endured all those losses, year after year – except for that one.

Losses and death can dominate even in the season of Easter, except for that one Win. Hope and faith stay alive despite the losses. The hope of life still to come, against all the odds. The colour of Easter is white, the colour signifying life ongoing, life eternal.

Hockey and football, two of Byron’s passions, are seasonal sports. For the most part, they happen during a defined season of every year. But I think there is something deeper going on here.

Notice in both cases we are talking about team play, with others. Football, like hockey, is a team sport. In few other sports do the players need to connect intuitively with everyone else. The better a team connects that way, the greater chance they have to win. Football players will often talk about their team-mates as family.

Byron, at heart, valued kinship. He was dedicated to family and to the network of people that made up his life. He never missed a family gathering, at Christmas and at Easter. In fact, this past Easter weekend was the last time some of you saw Byron face-to-face.

When Jesus counselled his disciples, prepared them, for his departure, he promised them he would always be with them, in them, through the Holy Spirit. He promised them that they would not be alone, and that they would always have access to him in their hearts, and in the world (John 14).

How so?

“It is God’s pleasure,” Jesus says, “to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). The phrase, “kingdom of God” is mentioned some eighty times in the New Testament. It is what Jesus says is the goal, purpose and aim of the Gospel – the good news. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33).

But kingdom doesn’t mean empire-building, evoking images of might-makes-right, power-seeking kings that we have witnessed throughout human history. To help us get the true gist of the word, biblical scholars are now suggesting the word kingdom should drop the ‘g’. In other words, wherever we see the word ‘kingdom’ in the New Testament what we should be reading is ‘kin-dom’ (Butler Bass, 2022).

The reign of Christ is really about our kinship with God, with creation, with one another and with ourselves. The reign of Christ is really about valuing relationships over things. For wherever your treasure is, there your heart is also. Whatever you value, your treasure, what is most important to you, your heart will follow suit.

Put another way, whatever you value, you pay more attention to. Whatever you pay attention to, you love.

Jesus says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33). Which means, pay attention, draw your attention, to what is already in front of your eyes, to what you have in your relationships. There you will find love. And there, you will find Jesus.

Because it’s not that we don’t already have access to the kin(g)dom. It’s not that we don’t have it and we have to somehow acquire it, possess it. It’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. We already have it. It is God’s good pleasure to raise up before us the value of our relationships.

For Byron, despite the challenges he met, or maybe better yet through the challenges he faced he remained true to his values of supporting his children and valuing those relationships more than material things. He didn’t live to amass wealth and prestige. He didn’t live to accumulate material resources and build investment portfolios.

He lived for his family. It wasn’t a perfect kinship all round. Like for all of us, relationships aren’t easy. And sometimes we fail. Yet, in all his humility, simplicity, and yes even in his passion where he found his juice and motivation, underlying all of that was his commitment and dedication to his kin.

God will not stop expressing pleasure in giving us the kingdom, despite and perhaps more because of our tendency to slip up and fail. God takes pleasure in giving us the kin-dom, offering us relationships where love and grace abound.

Connecting to the life of Christ, we all live in relationship. May the kinship of God, as it did and does for Byron, surround us with grace and fill our lives with love, forever.

Reference:

Butler Bass, D. (2022). Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as friend, teacher, savior, lord, way, and presence.Harper One.

Closer to the light

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Card crafting by Jasmine Hawley; Image from ‘Creative Stamping Magazine’ (Issue 147, p. 16, 2025)

As the days lengthen and the sun shines higher in the sky, so much more is exposed to the light, and for longer. The journey of the seasons can reflect our own personal, spiritual journeys with God. And one truth becomes clearer at this glorious time of year:

The closer we get to the sun, to the light source, the more of our shadow we see. We get closer to God, or God gets closer to us. And one of the first experiences of this nearing, is exposure to what we’ve wanted to hide, what has embarrassed us, what we’ve kept hidden from view. Nearer my God to Thee, and more of myself I and others see.

It’s like two opposite movements in tension. On the one hand, towards the bright glorious presence of God. And, on the other, towards the revelation of our own truth good and bad.

This can discourage us, and we might rather turn away from getting closer to the light.

Another natural reaction is to blame others. At every level of human interaction – from geo-political affairs to national debates, to community groups, families and inter-personally – it’s easier to locate the source of the problem outside us. It’s much, much harder, to admit the problem at home, in us.

Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it beautifully: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

“But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of [their] own heart?” (Solzhenitsyn, 1974, p. 168). Jesus himself says that good and evil come from within us, from the heart (Mark 7:20-23; Matthew 12:34; Luke 6:43-45).

So, what does this mean? First, as Solzhenitsyn implies, it is impossible to purge that evil side of us. Jesus in the parable of the weeds, implies the same. “Don’t pull up the weeds because you might uproot the good wheat as well. Let the weeds and the wheat grow together …” (Matthew 13:24-30).

And, in truth, there is more to this than mere tolerating it, or putting up with the less-than-perfect ideal. Because, in truth, therein lies a key, working with both sides in your life, a key to growing and becoming stronger.

Holy is this tension between good and bad within us, not to be spurned. So, spiritual wisdom from the ages has taught: “Pray in the moments light and darkness touch” (Mahany, 2023, p. 125). Pray in the moments when the nearness of God’s light exposes the tender vulnerabilities in you.

The problem, really, are the untruths we believe – the ideals fuelled by perfectionist, purist expectations. When we set up those expectations, it is our vision we seek, rather than God’s. The problem starts when we dream up a vision of the church, for example, as an ideal we have to realize, rather than a reality created by God.

Because when it doesn’t go our way, when reality bursts our bubble, we think we are a failure. When our idealized image is shattered, we see the church falling to pieces. And then we blame others in the church, then we blame God, we blame culture, and finally we blame ourselves (Barnhill, 2005).

But Jesus doesn’t ask us to conform to some perfect ideal. When Jesus says, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) he is not talking about someone who has magically become faultless by their own efforts. Our belonging in Christ is not a race we have to run or some competition to see who conforms to Christ faster or better. Our unity in Christ is not about uniformity based on some ideal to be striven after.

As Bonhoeffer claims, “the church doesn’t need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and of one another. It does not lack the former, but the latter” (Barnhill, 2005, p. 140).

Instead, the Gospel is about Jesus who seeks to be formed in us (Galatians 4:19). What we have trouble believing is, what may appear weak and insignificant to us – the long shadow appearing the closer we get to the light – what may appear weak and vulnerable and shameful to us, may be useful to God. May even be great and glorious to God.

How so?

Every year towards the end of the season of Easter, we receive this prayer of Christ from John 17. This morning, we heard again the words of Jesus praying that his followers for all time “may be one” (John 17:20-26). The passage concludes with Jesus’ statement about how the world will know God. They will know God by the love in them and for each other.

When Jesus says, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” he is talking about the Father’s love. Love others as your God loves you. What binds us together in unity, how we become one in Christ in the end, is the forgiveness of sins we all receive from God. Why what appears weak in us may be great to God, is that our perceived failures open the door to being aware we are loved despite our failure. We are forgiven.

And not just me. But everyone else I want to blame for the ills of church and society and the world we live in. Our forgiveness for what appears to be a long and scary shadow behind us as we near the light of Christ’s presence is what unites us in Christian community. And that reality, that truth, is great!

We don’t need to strive for perfection, or some ideal vision of what it ought to be like. We only need to receive one another, our leaders, our volunteers, our families in the way Christ also receives us – bathed in the light of God’s loving forgiveness, always and forever.

This forgiveness releases us to be who we are, including all our limitations and failures. God’s forgiveness releases us to take the next step, and follow where Christ leads.

Indeed, they will know we are Christians by our love.

References:

Barnhill, C. (Ed.). (2005). A year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily meditations from his letters, writings, and sermons. Harper One.

Mahany, B. (2023). The book of nature: The astonishing beauty of God’s first sacred text. Broadleaf Books.

Solzhenitsyn, A. I. (1974). The gulag archipelago, 1918–1956: An experiment in literary investigation (Vols. 1-2). Harper and Row.

Healing for everyone

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Each and every one of them in the crowd wanted to be healed (John 5:1-9). That’s why they were there, surrounding the pool. Jesus asks the man a rhetorical question, “Do you want to be made well?” Because based on how the man responds, what Jesus may really have been asking was, “If so, why haven’t you already been into the pool?”

Everyone seeks healing, and that’s why they are there. The question really gets at the barriers to our healing, everyone’s healing.

The story ends well, for the man. In this Gospel, Jesus leads the man to new life. How does he get there? The text reads like all Jesus did was snap his fingers and the story is over. But let’s break it down.

To set him on the path to new life, Jesus provides the necessary support that man needed but never got from anyone else, for 38 long years.

Recall, for context, many more people than usual were in Jerusalem for the festival and passed by the pool on their way to the temple to offer a sacrifice.

This is how Sue Monk Kidd describes the scene at a healing pool in her creative telling of the Gospel. This scene is told from the perspective of someone close to Jesus:

“We crossed the valley with the little lamb on Jesus’ shoulders and entered Jerusalem through the Fountain Gate near the Pool […]. We planned to cleanse ourselves there before entering the Temple, but we found the pool glutted with people. A score of cripples lay on the terraces waiting for some sympathetic soul to lower them into the water.

“’We can purify ourselves at one of the mikvahs near the Temple,’ I said, feeling repulsed by all the infirmities and foul bodies.

“Ignoring me, Jesus thrust the lamb into my arms. He lifted a paralytic boy from his litter; his legs were twisted like tree roots.

“’What are you doing?’ I said, trailing after him.

“’Only what I’d want if I were the boy,’ he replied, carrying him down into the water. I clutched the squirming lamb and watched as Jesus kept the child afloat while he splashed and bathed.

Naturally, his deed set off shouts and pleas from the other cripples, and I knew we would be here a while. [Jesus] bore every one of them into the pool” (Kidd, 2020, pp. 169-170). This is Jesus. This is the beloved character of Jesus.

During the Easter season, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. And we see how it is in Jesus’ nature and purpose, exampled by this Gospel text, to lead us to life, beginning in this life. The one you have now, however imperfect, broken, hurting, sinful. Jesus beckons us to new life.

But the path to new life isn’t a solo journey. We understand that everyone is not the same. But that means everyone has different needs. And so, everyone needs everyone else to do their part to help. Interdependence. As the body of Christ in the world today, the church is about following together in Jesus’ way by helping each other.

Jesus models how it’s done in a simple yet vivid way: He acts to remove the barriers that keep others from their path to growth, healing, and new life. Jesus levels the playing field, so everyone at least has an opportunity, like everyone else, to grow and be renewed.

Doing this is not easy and it means taking a risk. Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath. He broke convention and the rules for the sake of the wellbeing of another. Jesus got in trouble with the law for his acts of compassion and healing.

There’s a meme that’s gone around my social media page. It’s an animated picture of the front of a church during a snowstorm. There’s a crowd of people waiting to climb the steps to get into the building. But they are waiting for the lone caretaker to shovel off the pile of snow making entrance impassable for anyone. Amid the crowd is one person in a wheelchair.

The caretaker, before attacking the snow blocking the stairs, begins his work by shovelling the long, switchback ramp leading up to the main doors.

The crowd complains – “Hey, do the stairs first. There’s more of us!”

The caretaker responds – “If I shovel the ramp first, then all of us can enter right away.”

Jesus leads us into new life by removing the barriers. It’s a new life given to us all, not just those in the majority.

Climbing the stairs at St Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal (Nov 2019, photo by Martin Malina)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said we don’t find truth and freedom by focusing exclusively on our own needs and wants. We find God’s truth and freedom by focusing our attention on another’s needs and wants. In doing that, we free ourselves from whatever blocks us on the journey to new life.

He says it best. Bonhoeffer writes in one of his sermons: “God’s truth alone allows me to see others. It directs my attention, bent in on myself, to what is beyond and shows me the other person. And, as it does this, I experience the love and grace of God … God’s truth is God’s love, and God’s love frees us from ourselves to be free for others” (Barnhill, 2005, p. 151).

There’s a beautiful Taizé song we are chanting before meditation these Easter weeks. It announces and celebrates the living Lord who leads us all into life.

Bless the Lord my soul, and bless God’s holy name. Bless the Lord my soul, who leads me into life. (Berthier, 1981).

What are the barriers you face? What are the barriers others face? And how does God invite you to help level the playing field so that all may come to know new life?

References:

Barnhill, C. (Ed.). (2005). A year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily meditations from his letters, writings, and sermons. Harper One.

Berthier, J. (1981). Bless the Lord, my soul [Taizé Community]. Les Presses de Taizé, France.

Kidd, S. M. (2020). The book of longings. Penguin.