Tag Archives: God

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.

Gifts from above

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I often joke that I’ll let God wash my car. After a long winter when the salt-infused grime cakes on the outside panels, I wait until the pure rains in Spring give the car a good rinse.

Indeed, the rains fall from heaven, often unbidden, to cleanse the earth, to cleanse us. Notice the direction of God’s grace, God’s new thing, God’s vision of our future in the text from Revelation today. The holy city, the new Jerusalem, comes down from heaven to earth (Revelation 21:2). Direction, downward.

Just as in the Inuit language there are about 50 different words to describe various forms of snow (The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2015), the British boast several words and phrases to describe rain’s multiple personalities:

There’s a basking – which is a drenching in a heavy shower; a drisk – which is a misty drizzle; a fox’s wedding – sudden drops out of a clear blue sky; a hurly-burly – thunder and lightning; a slotting – which is rain so hard it bounces up off the ground; and a thunner-pash – which is a heavy shower with thunder (Mahany, 2023). Have you heard of these terms? Most of these, I haven’t. There are different ways the rain comes down.

No matter the form it takes, rain has a way of catching my attention. “One minute it’s barely pebbling the windows, the next it’s making a joke of the downspouts” (Mahany, 2023, p. 90). On the one hand, we pray for it. On the other hand, we roll out tarps to stop it.

No matter the form rain takes, we feel the water-drop touch our skin. It is invasive and so often our first instinct is to get out of it, to find shelter or cover. Rain seeks to grab our attention not just by touch alone, but by smell as well.

There is that unforgettable, indescribable just-after-the-rain earthy smell. There’s a name for that scent – petrichor. It’s caused when rainwater mixes with certain plant oils in dry soil – compounds to which the human nose is highly sensitive. Add to this cocktail of smell ozone which is released if lightning is in the mix. All of this wafts into the air, and we “smell rain” (Mahany, 2023, p. 91).

Like I said, rain has a way of catching our attention in more ways than one. Likewise, there are different ways we experience God’s grace, and not always is it what we want nor expect. But it always catches our attention. Somehow, God’s presence and life touches us, our hearts, our intuition, our perceptions – even subtly.

I joked that I let God wash my car. We also joke, “We’re not made of sugar,” implying that we won’t melt in the rain. Earth and all that is in it is not destroyed, obliterated nor eradicated by rainfall.

When the author of Revelation speaks of “the first earth passing away, and sea was no more” (21:1), it is not the extinction of the earth at the end that we’re talking about. God’s grace, God’s promise of resurrection does not cancel earth, our humanity, our senses – what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell.

Instead, new life is embodied and transformed on earth, from the earth. The direction of grace may be downward. But the reason the promise and vision come down to earth is because God will use the stuff of earth, and embody it. The goal of resurrection is earth’s transformation (Carey, 2009).

Rain, yes, is invasive. But it renews, refreshes and generates growth and life. Out of the old emerges the new.

I was given two Hosta plants last year which I planted on the side of our house that receives a lot of sunshine. But these Hosta plants were designed to thrive in more shade than sun. They didn’t look so good by the Fall time. They were sporting large brown spots which covered their large, limping leaves. Honestly, I didn’t expect them to come back up this Spring.

But out they came a week ago, bursting through the less-than-ideal soil and location for these particular plants. The young shoots already showcased their green, lustrous leaves reaching upward to receive the gifts of rain and sun. Coming from above. Downward.

There’s a path on that side of the house, a ravine at the bottom of which the deer will follow. Deer love to munch on Hosta plants. But the Hosta plants will live, I do believe, despite the deer. Despite the hail. Despite thunner-pash, slotting, hurly-burly and basking rain falls those plants will surely endure this summer. I believe!

New life, new beginnings, the promise of resurrection, is not without its difficulties, challenges and little deaths. We may not understand yet its deepest mysteries and paradoxes, death and life, life and death.

But those raindrops will continue to descend from above. Even if we can’t understand it, or when we come up against our own limitations. Despite hearth’s and humanity’s imperfections, God’s work of reviving, renewing and enlivening the earth will not stop. Easter is a forever-promise.

Those raindrops will always be awakening us to the wonderful mystery of God. Those raindrops will remind us that even though we may suffer disruption, and painful transitions in life, the rain of God’s love will continue to nourish us and enliven us to reach forward into the unknown future with trust and assurance.

References:

Carey, G. (2009). Exegetical perspective: Revelation 21:1-6. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor (Eds.). Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year C, Volume 2 (pp. 463-467). Westminster John Knox Press.

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

The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2015). Inuktitut words for snow and ice. The Canadian Encyclopedia [Website]. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inuktitut-words-for-snow-and-ice

Nearer, my God

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Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27). He doesn’t say, “My sheep see me.” In this Gospel, belief is equated with hearing and listening, not seeing.

At this time of year, the birds are finally returning to our feeder. And when I go for my walks around the neighbourhood I know where the cardinals live – in a stand of old growth trees near the Algonquin Trail in Arnprior. Almost every time I walk through there, I first hear the cardinal’s distinct song.

photo by Martin Malina (Aug 6, 2023)

The point is, I know the cardinal is there. I will scan the trees, fence lines and roof tops from whence the song comes. Rarely will I first observe the bird nestled deep in the foliage, despite its catchy red coat. But because I can’t see the bird doesn’t mean it’s not true, doesn’t mean it’s not there. I know it is nearby. I believe, not because I have seen it with my own eyes but because I hear it close by.

When I was in public school, at Halloween teachers handed to us students those orange UNICEF boxes. We strung those boxes around our necks and carried them with us trick-or-treating. Some of you may remember those boxes. So, when we went to each house for candy, neighbours would also have the option of dropping some coin into those iconic boxes. All the proceeds were then donated to the United Nations Children’s Fund, originally labelled the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (https://www.unicef.ca/en).

I value that experience of learning. I learned that what I did for myself was not enough to be a good human being. I also had to do something for other children, especially those who were suffering hunger and persecution in faraway lands. Just because I couldn’t see these children with my own eyes, just because these were not my personal friends, didn’t mean I wasn’t called by God’s voice to do something to care for them in their suffering, their hunger, their pain.

Today it’s unfortunately fashionable to openly admit that if some situation that others suffer doesn’t impact me directly, I don’t care and I don’t want anything to do with it. We shy away from taking on the responsibility, collectively, to teach by example younger generations the vital importance of working together to care for those who are not our own, so to speak. If the problem is far away, far removed from my or our reality, then forget it.

My wife Jessica talks about a cherished memory of family friends whose parents created a home environment in Ottawa where neighbourhood kids felt comfortable dropping by at any time of day or night. Not only did those parents care for their own children with fierce love, but their home also became grand central for all the kids in the neighbourhood to hang out and even eat meals together.

Jessica has often remarked how influential that early childhood experience was in forming the desires of her own heart in wanting to be open to others and engage those outside the family with caring acts of compassion, generosity and respect. In response to a need.

God’s voice, God’s call – the root of the word vocation – doesn’t come from far away. God doesn’t come to us from some celestial, otherworldly heaven removed from our day to day. God’s presence is near to us, in fact born in the nitty-gritty of our lives. The call is to live out from our Christian values of compassion and love.

Jesus assures his disciples of two things in the Gospel text for today. First, that he and God “are one” (John 10:30). So, if Jesus will never allow anything or anyone to snatch us away from his care and protection for eternity, neither does God. For Jesus and God are one. In other words, we are never, ever out of the scope, the field of belonging to God’s loving care and attention. Ever.

The second assurance flows from the first. God and Jesus are not only faithful and loyal to us – as a shepherd is to their flock of sheep, using a biblical metaphor. God’s loyalty and faithfulness means that God perseveres. God does not give up. Even if for just one out of the hundred in the flock (Luke 15:1-7). No matter how awful and terrible the human circumstances can get for anyone. No matter how lost one can get. God keeps at it, keeps loving us, finding us, embracing us, forgiving us, protecting us.

That ‘snatch’ verb repeats twice in the conclusion of this Gospel’s short eight verses (in verses 27 and 28). That should draw our attention to the persevering God we worship. Nothing will snatch us away from God’s perseverance.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer translated the word perseverance to mean, literally: “remaining underneath, not throwing off the load, but bearing it” (Barnhill, 2005, p. 72). Bearing it.

How do we recognize God’s voice, today? God’s voice emerges from human suffering and loss.

Bearing the load. God bears the human load. The cross of Jesus indicates the kind of God we worship. We worship a suffering God who knows our pain, our hunger. We worship a God who is revealed to us most poignantly in the lives of those who persevere in their suffering. Bearing the load.

From the UNICEF website (https://www.unicef.ca/en/blog/seven-inspirational-stories-about-mothers-around-world), I read about a brave Mom, named Neveen Barakat, who kept her family strong in the midst of war. Neveen’s husband died in a blast that hit a UN-run school in Gaza. The blast wounded three of her children and left Neveen with a permanent disability. A photo from the webpage cited above shows Neveen comforting her six-year-old daughter, Rosol.

The mothering love of Neveen is bearing a huge load. And that is why we must care with the mothering love God reveals to us in Jesus. Because while God’s revelation comes to us daily in our human suffering and pain, God’s grace calls us to care for others in the way of Christ who bears their suffering, too.

We can care for others close and far because God is never far away. God doesn’t care from a distance. God will hear our voice when we call out, just as we know and listen to the voice of our loving God who will never give up on us. Even if it’s just a whisper under our breath, God is near and hears us. God is close and will help us persevere.

References:

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

UNICEF. (2025). Seven inspirational stories about mothers around the world [website]. https://www.unicef.ca/en/blog/seven-inspirational-stories-about-mothers-around-world.

A gateway at the edge

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Photo by Martin Malina (Kalaloch Beach, WA, August 16, 2022)

Today, we stand with the women and disciples at the foot of the cross. We have arrived at the end of our Lenten pilgrimage. Or so we may feel.

We have come now to the base of the hilltop of Golgotha. We have come to the edge. We’ve made it.

We may have been carrying a heavy burden—our own cross. What do you bring? What have you carried? Maybe at this point you realize you can carry it no longer? Because the weight of it is just too much. Because, while at the start of this journey you thought perhaps you could carry it all, you now realize your own limits, your own complicity, your own misguided perceptions, your own sin.

“We come to the edge, when what we hold cannot be contained” (Mahany, 2023, p. 52), when we have to finally lay it down.

Golgotha stood at the edge of the city of Jerusalem. In order to leave the city, or enter it, you had to pass through the place crucifixion, of death. There is no bypass where truth is concerned. Pilate sought refuge in argument and exercising power — that was his bypass. “What is truth?” (John 18:38) he quipped, retreating into abstraction and perceived safety of his privilege and power.

“What is truth?” Jesus’ answer to Pilate? Watch me. Watch what I do. Watch the power of God’s love in the actions of Simon who will carry my cross (Luke 23:26), in the centurion’s cross-side confession (Matthew 27:54). Watch the power of God’s love in those who wait at the edge of the hilltop and witness the day turn to night (Mark 15:33), the curtain in the temple being torn in two (Luke 23:45). Watch the power of God’s love in the grace shown by Joseph to provide a tomb for my body (Luke 23:50-53). Watch what God does, then …

Jesus knew his path. Jesus’ path led through the challenge, the suffering, the cost – not around it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Nazis 80 years ago this year for opposing Hitler, noted in one of his books, how Jesus fulfilled his call on earth.

But in this short reading, Bonhoeffer extended the example of Jesus into our own lives, as his followers, should we seek peace for our souls at edge of our journeys.

He writes, “Our hearts make sure that we only keep the company of friends, of the righteous and the respectable. But Jesus was to be found right in the midst of his enemies. That is precisely where he wanted to be. We should be there too. It is that which distinguishes us from all other … religions. In them, the pious want to be with one another. But Christ wants us to be in the midst of our enemies, as he was; it was in the midst of his enemies that he dies the death of God’s love and prayed: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Christ wants to win his victory among his enemies. Therefore, do not withdraw, do not seclude yourselves; rather seek to do good unto all. Make peace, as far as it depends on you, with all” (Bonhoeffer cited in Barnhill, 2005, p. 31).

This was Jesus’ path, to be in the middle of the tension, the conflict among his enemies. This had always been his way.

For example, Jesus could have avoided Samaria on his way to Galilee. Samarians were in tension and at odds with Jews. Jesus could have gone around. But instead, he travelled through the region, some 150 kilometres on foot. No wonder the Gospel writer reports Jesus as “weary” (John 4:6) when he stops at the well to talk with the Samarian woman. Many others would have gone around. But for Jesus, it is always important to go through even though it cost him. The path is hard.

We have a famous path in Canada. And it isn’t easy to follow. The Path of the Paddle is a series of portages between lakes and rivers from the western edge of Lake Superior into the bush of Northwestern Ontario. The path is part of the Trans Canada Trail. In one of its hardest sections, where in order to travel when the water is not frozen, the trail must be negotiated at the height of bug season, soon upon us. Portaging is not for the faint of heart: each portage means traveling twice – once to carry the canoe, and the other time to carry the gear from one lake’s edge to the next.

This path was first charted by Indigenous people as the Anishinaabe Trail, before it became a major route for Europeans interested in the fur trade. Today, this path is being restored in the hope of re-establishing the original route as it once was.

The 1200-kilometre journey was made by Carrie and John Nolan ten years ago. It involved 120 portages, and it took them 58 days. It was certainly a test of their fitness, endurance and physical and mental stamina (Coman, 2025, April 11).

When we come to the edge, when what we hold can no longer be contained, tears will often fall. Is it any wonder that God turned to water when making our tears? We can go to the water’s edge, when what we hold can no longer be contained. The water’s edge, like at the foot of the cross, is the place to let it all out, to lay it all down, to let it go. The baptismal waters, our place of identity forming in Christ, is sacred, this holy edge. Where we can be honest, vulnerable, and let the tears roll.

I walked only a small portion of the Camino de Santiago in Spain – some 800 kilometres long. It is one of the oldest trails on the planet, dating back over a thousand years to the 9th century. Last year, in 2024, the Camino attracted almost half a million pilgrims.

If you are walking, it could take months to cross the Iberian Peninsula in northern Spain towards the destination. The destination? Pilgrims will say, it is the city of Santiago de Compostella, in the shrine of Saint James.

But increasingly over the years, more and more pilgrims go through Santiago and travel an extra 100 kilometres to a town called Fisterra, whose name literally means, “the end of the world.” This town lies on the coast along the Atlantic Ocean which at one point in history was deemed to be situated literally at the edge of the known world.

Santiago becomes a way point on a journey to a more significant edge where the horizon is limitless and points our vision upward. This extended journey does not end at the Cross but continues beyond the original destination to a more expansive vision beyond the hardship of the trail.

The Cross is not really the end point. That is why Good Friday is good. Because the Cross, while necessary to go through, is merely a gateway to the edge of a new world coming.

References:

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

Coman, S. (2025, April 11). Streams of living justice [Blog]. Lutherans Connect. https://streamsoflivingjustice.blogspot.com/2025/04/day-33.html

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