Sermon on Ft McMurray

This is another one of those sermons where you start to write one sermon and events in the world invite you to write another one. You may recall that I was going to finish a two part sermon on peace, but instead I am going to say a few words about the terrible events in Ft. McMurray. I could say a lot of different things, but as I prayed about what to say I found that what has really struck me are the scenes of amazing fortitude, scenes of generosity and scenes of courage. Today I just want to point to those and say that what we are seeing in those actions are glimpses of the Kingdom of God.

But first a prayer from the Iona community:

My those without shelter

be under your guarding 

this day O Christ.

May the wandering 

find places of welcome.

O son of the tears, of the wounds, of the piercings,

May your cross this day

be shielding them. Amen.

I am speaking as one who has no street cred here. I have never lived in Ft. McMurray; I don't have any family there; I have never even been there. All of my experience of this event has just been the horror of watching it all unfold and praying and praying for the people getting out and for the first responders fighting the fires and keeping order. Like everyone here I am guessing watched all of this unfold. Terrible scenes of cars sitting bumper to bumper in unmoving traffic with blazing fire on both sides of the road; family homes burning. Stories of getting out with little to nothing. People banging on neighbours doors to get them out. Scenes of burning embers coming down like snow. On the CBC on Friday night, one resident saying that if it looked like hell on TV, it was much, much worse driving through it. News stories of whole neighbourhoods burned down, gas stations exploded, hotels burned down. People just not knowing if they have a house or not. And now worried about the future. Jobs, income, place to stay, what is left to go back to. No electricity, is the water any good?

And it all happened so quickly. I read that one of the Anglican priests in Ft McMurray was at his church that morning, the sky was blue and it looked like the flames were going the other way, and by that afternoon he was heading north to a camp and not knowing what was going to happen next. All in all, I was sick to my stomach watching it, and I wasn't going through it. I couldn't even imagine of course what that hell would be like. Just offering prayer after prayer for people and waiting to see what we could do. 

But the terrible events were not the only news that was coming out. On the CBC I listened to an interview with the mayor of Wood Buffalo, Melissa Blake. She was answering criticism about the evacuation and I think handled that well. But then it turned to her own experience of running and going north. And she broke down. She said that she felt like a refugee and Ft McMurray had been a community that welcomed refugees and she said that now she knew what it felt like to need someone else to take her into their home, and that she was so grateful for people's kindness and generosity. And that kindness and generosity has been the other side of the story. Please don't miss hear me; I have no interest in playing down tragedy here. I will not ever say it is just stuff, when it is not my stuff that was lost. I recognize that a person's house and belongings are the story of a lifetime. But I have been deeply moved by stories of goodness and generosity.

It started when I heard stories of people filling jerry cans full of gas and packing trucks full of food to rescue people who had run out of gas. A principal who loaded a bus full of kids at the school and went north to get them out of harms way. Neighbours going from door to door making sure people, especially the vulnerable get out. It moved me when Don Iveson opened up Northlands as a place for Ft McMurrayites to come and sleep and get a place to just breathe for a moment. Anzac, Lac la bishe and so many other towns opening places to welcome people running with food, beds, children's toys. People signing up, bringing things. Little kids selling lemonade, teens washing cars, volunteers giving hours.

A friend of mine from Ft Saskatchewan volunteering at the local legion said: "I don't think this old heart has even been so full after witnessing the sharing that I have in the last 24 hours at the Fort Saskatchewan Legion as the community comes together to respond to needs of Ft Mac evacuees...humble padre." And the most articulate about all of this was Rex Murphy. If you didn't see his piece just google Rex Murphy Ft. McMurray. It is worth watching. For three minutes he illustrated the truth that while tragedy grinds the soul, it can also provide inspiration and that is what we have seen. He said, "If you want to know what it is like to be a neighbour in hard times, go to Alberta. It's the prairie code."

I want to suggest that it is more than the prairie code; I want to suggest that these good and generous things that are happening are glimpses of the kingdom of God. Not the kingdom in all of its fullness to be sure, not the whole of the Gospel, but nevertheless I would suggest a part of the Gospel. In seeing all of this neighbourliness, I sincerely thinking we are seeing something of God's vision and desire for the world. Being a good neighbour was always an important concept in the Old Testament. In fact, they expanded the understanding from the nations around them. In the ancient world, it was assumed that you loved your neighbours and wiped out or enslaved your enemies. You also assumed that your tribe or nation was greater than the others. The Old testament opened up the concept of being a neighbour to not just your ethnic or geographical neighbour, but to even the foreigner in your midst had rights and deserved compassion. There were laws about providing for your neighbour's welfare, for having fair courts of law to settle disputes, to refrain from violence and to limit punishments and stop vendettas. In the New Testament, Jesus takes this idea and then takes it even further to point people to God's hope for how neighbours treat each other.

He told three stories to illustrate this point. The one story has a man traveling down a road when he is ambushed by robbers, beaten and left for dead. Ironically the religious leaders are the ones who ignored him, but it was a foreigner who showed him mercy, bandaged him up, and paid for his lodging and doctor's bills. Jesus told the lawyer who was asking who is my neighbour that he should go and do the same. He told another where there was a rich man and a poor man outside his door. The rich man does nothing to hurt him, but he does ignore him and this is the reason that when he dies he goes to hell. Jesus tells another story where he imagines all of the nations of the world coming forward into judgement and the criteria for coming into the kingdom of heaven is if they fed the hungry, gave a drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, took in the stranger and visited the poor. For Jesus, being a neighbour is a central value to the kingdom. Again, it is not the whole Gospel of course, but if I am asking what does Jesus hope the church will look like in the world, I think it would look a lot like we are seeing around the generosity given to those fleeing Ft. McMurray. Of course, many if not most of the people doing all of this are probably not Christian. They are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts or from another religious commitment. We have seen the Muslim and Sikh communities turning out to help in great numbers. It is beautiful to see. But what I hope you see is that this is not just about being nice. This is about being disciples of Jesus, about tapping into God's vision for all of creation. The point of all of this is that we don't have to wait for an emergency. As Christians we are called to pray that we would lead lives of such quiet generosity everyday. This is the good stuff of life; this is where we really find our meaning and joy. We don't have to be perfect; that is not our calling. Our calling is to follow Jesus our master and teacher. Jesus who says love one another as I have loved you.

But this one of course is not over, it is only beginning. What do we do? First we pray, for rain and cool weather. For Ft. McMuraay to rise again and let life get back to normal. Over the next several months as a Diocese we will be working closely with the Diocese of Athabasca, and we here at St Thomas will be invited to be a part of that. Our bishop has been in close communication with Fraser Lawton, the bishop of Athabasca, and I will end by reading a letter sent to all the Anglican churches in our Diocese from our Bishop.

Sermon on Inner Peace

So the other day, I had a hugely busy and stressful day. Normally I try to schedule some open bits during the day to catch up email and makes some phone calls and breathe between meetings, but not this day. For whatever reason it was packed with meetings all day long, with one downtown and a visit to the hospital. Some of the conversations were difficult and that takes a lot of energy and so I was bagged by the end of the day,  but luckily I had no evening meetings. So I was really looking forward to coming home for dinner, visiting with my family and having a cup of tea. That post dinner cup of tea is one of the great joys of my life. It is hot and steamy, and I sit on the sofa lengthwise, so that I am taking up the whole loveseat. And it is next to the window which lets in fresh air. And I sit there and enjoy the breeze and my cup of tea and I read the paper or a book or just visit with Stephanie and see how her day has been. It is one of my peaceful moments of the day. I was so looking forward to that end of day, post-dinner, relaxing cup of tea. I sat on the sofa. And my children thought this would be a good day to get out the roller blades and skate inside the house around and around. One was okay. Then the other one. And then the little one on a scooter and they started laughing hysterically. So I asked them to keep it down. Then one wrecked, and another started crying and another started arguing that it wasn't her fault, and then the one hurt wanted a story and I wanted my tea and the other one got grumpy, and the third was upset because now the game was over, and I just wanted my tea! I wanted them all to go away, so I could have my tea!

I think a desire most parents want from time to time, and sometimes a very legitimate one. We want peace in our lives. I think this is a universal desire. We are crazy busy and so we look forward to the next day off, that often doesn't feel like a day off, or to the next vacation, but that never runs perfectly as the brochures picture them, and peace seems to be very illusive. We can catch glimpses of peace, but we might wonder if it is really possible to get to know peace well or if it is just an ideal. And then we read Jesus words from the Gospel this morning "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." and we wonder if that is just some nice thing Jesus said, but not really for us.

Here is my suggestion: when the world, i.e., the non-Jesus way to do things. When the world talks about peace, it means the tranquillity, distance from the stresses of life where we can let everything go. What I call the Calgon understanding of peace. Calgon is a maker of bath salts and other products and the slogan is Calgon take me away! Let me shut the door from the crazy world and let me have peace. It is a very attractive and even common sense understanding of peace. Peace is what happens when you turn every thing off, stop doing every thing and get away from it all. It is very attractive; I know. I wanted the tea. But it is oddly not the Jesus way of understanding peace. At first glance, his way of peace doesn't seem very inviting at all. In this passage Jesus is giving a long talk to his disciples about things they need to know before he goes and when he says Peace I leave with you, he is not saying I am taking away all of the trouble in your lives so that you can have peace. No, he says things are going to get terrible. You will have tribulations and sufferings and he ends the whole thing by saying, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." A beautiful verse, but one might ask, Jesus, could we have the peace without the side of tribulation please? If we have to have the struggles and difficulties, then we think we don't really have peace. How do they go together?

Personally as I have meditated on the Jesus way of doing things I have realized that there is a profound realism here, because if peace mean the absence of difficulty, then we will rarely find peace if ever. And even more difficult as I had an insight after my small tea episode, if peace is the absence of noise and clutter and chaos, then my children are the enemies of peace. My life is the enemy of peace, and I can easily grow to resent all of it. That is not what I want. I want to find peace in the midst of my life, my kids, my family, my friends, my community. I want peace to be integral to my life. So if peace in Jesus' understanding is not the absence of struggle, what is it? Quite simply, peace is a whole way of life. Because our vocation as Christians is not to retreat from the world, but to enter deeply into the world and infuse the world with the spirit of the Gospel. And we do that best by embodying peace. Again, peace is a way of life.

I recently got a fitbit. Many of you have them. For those who are not familiar with it, it is a glorified pedometer which counts my steps and several other heath related data. I am trying to get in shape again and what I like about it is that if I achieve my goals everyday all of the lines are green, and so I try to get all of the lines green. But the thing about health, is that we realize that it is a daily practice. I can't just get the lines green and say that I am healthy, it is a discipline that is practiced every day, some more, some less, but the point is that it happens over time as a result of working on it, and the opposite, health slips the more I neglect it. I would like to suggest that peace is similar. It is not something that passively happens; it is something we have to fight for, something we have to practice and struggle with everyday, and then like health, we find we have peace, not just here and there, but in the midst of all of life. But it is not easy. C.S. Lewis has a great description of this in his book Mere Christianity: “It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

So what does that look like? 

I think peace is like a muscle. If you exercise it, it will get stronger; if you neglect it, it will get weaker. But there is no exercise machine for peace, so how do you exercise it? One could write a whole book here, but let me simply point our four aspects. 1) we center ourselves in Christ, 2) we live deeper into the truth that we beloved children of God, 3) we live intentionally and 4) we grow stronger and stronger in embodying peace for the sake of the world.

The first and most important is daily centering of yourself in Christ. I can't recommend highly enough a daily practice of connecting with Christ. Prayer in this sense though is not asking for a gift of peace which we passively receive. That I am suggesting is not the Jesus way. Rather, it is spending time with Jesus, both meditating on the scriptures and sitting in silence. Because when we sit for a time everyday in the presence of Christ and bring him our troubles, our perspective opens up. I don't know how to explain this other than when we centre on Jesus good things happen; we learn things about ourselves and the world. Like Jacob we wrestle with God, and in the wrestling we grow. Brian Zahnd puts it like this: "To live a peaceable life, patience is needed. Impatience instills a permanent agitation in the soul, an agitation that makes peace impossible. Prayer is the slow process by which patience replaces agitation. Learning to pray well has acquainted me with patience. Praying the ancient psalms and the centuries old prayers of the church cultivates an appreciation for patience. I’ve come to realize that the main purpose of prayer is not to change the world, but to change me...and I am under the assumption that this will take a lifetime."

The second aspect of peace that we have to practice is regularly reminding ourselves that we are beloved of God. In God's eyes, we don't have to prove ourselves. Jesus has won the victory. Our job is to live into it, and it makes all the difference inside when we know ourselves to be loved, accepted. Whatever failings we have or whatever we have done wrong, there is forgiveness and grace. Grace is the foundation of peace but we forget. And so part of the daily discipline is the daily reminder and meditation on this great truth that you are a child of God.

The third is the daily choices we make. We either live intentionally or fragmented, and fragmented is a lot easier to fall into. But we are constantly making decisions around the simplicity of our lifestyle, the way we spend our time, how we live in community. I think a large part of peace happens when our lives are focused on priorities, the things we know are important and are not frittered away in a hundred and one things that are not really important. Jesus said don't spend time worrying about things like what we will wear, and eat and sleep. First and foremost, focus our lives on the kingdom of God, and the rest will fall into place.

And finally, and crucially, we have to practice that peace in our lives. Years ago, what I hated most was conflict. I would avoid it, work around it, do almost anything than having a conversation with the person I was having trouble with. I would be racked with anxiety about picking up the phone and talking with them. But I learned that if I was going to have peace, I needed to deal with this. So I prayed about it, and read about good ways to do conflict, but the real issue was picking up the phone. The first time was horrible, so was the second, then the third went better and so on. The other day, I picked up the phone almost right away and had a great conversation and it resolved beautifully. I had such peace in my heart. It is not that the struggle wasn't there or that Jesus delivered me from it. He walked me through it; I grew stronger, and centered in Christ I can find peace in the midst of it. To my mind, this is the peace that passes all understanding.