September 15, 2024
Pentecost + 17
Friends, please be seated.
One of the difficulties faced by preachers in the middle of September is that there is just so much going on in our world, so much going on in the church, so much going on in the Scriptures that it’s hard to know where to begin. Our day-to-day lives are being shaped by school reentry, that corridor in time between now and Thanksgiving, the turn of the seasons, and by whatever plans make our worlds unique to each one of us. At the same time, our calendars beckon. Labour Day. Season of Creation. Holy Cross Day. National Peace Week. Orange shirts. Stewardship. Thanksgiving. Dates and causes enough to render the watchful weary. Our Prayer Concerns insert is full of important and timely options.
And our scriptures! We’ve been reading from the Letter of James: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” James quoting Jesus. But also, “Faith without works is dead.” I no longer try to reconcile James –he of expansive metaphors –and Paul– of narrow definitions. If your faith doesn’t make a difference, how can you be a follower of Jesus? Well, I wouldn’t judge you. Much. And today’s Gospel “take up your cross.” Why your cross? Do we each have our own cross? Yikes.
And today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark has brought us back to Cranky Jesus. Remember how Jesus gets when he gets depressed or tired or just plain fed-up? Today, he dismisses his whole generation as “sinful and adulterous.” He’s in a bad mood but that’s the context for “If any want to be my disciples, let them take up their cross and follow.” As I’ve mentioned before, I used to use the expression “follower of Jesus” instead of a denominational tag –Lutheran, Anglican– when working in multi-faith circles. Still, I’m not sure about this “taking up my cross” business. Jesus’ shortness has the same ring as James’ “Faith, without works, is dead.” Faith and works. Cross and following. Hmm.
Yesterday was Holy Cross Day in the Church’s calendar. When I imagine the cross in my head, I think … not so much of the tortured visage of death, a corpse on wood, as of the outstretched arms of resurrection welcome as in Christ over the Andes in Rio De Janeiro. So, there’s cross and there’s cross, and all of this stuff is bubbling, simmering, percolating, competing for attention.
Some years ago, my boss –Bishop Susan– quoted an American Lutheran Bishop who was interested in the question asked by the lawyer when Jesus invited his people to love their God and to love their neighbour. In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus teaches that we are to love God and neighbour, the story ends there. Not so in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke, the lawyer offers a rejoinder — “And who is my neighbour?” — and Jesus goes on to tell the story of the Good Samaritan.
Anyway, the bishop’s name is Guy Erwin. Born in Oklahoma, mixed race, he’s a member of the Osage (Oh-saj / Wa-zeh-zee) Nation, and so the first Native American bishop in our sister Lutheran Church in the US. He was ordained two years after the church dropped its ban against LGBT clergy. So he was also the first openly gay bishop among American Lutherans. He’s now president of our Flagship theological school in Philadelphia.
Anyway, back when, Bishop Guy offered an interesting take on the question “And who is my neighbour?” His answer “all creation is my neighbour.” He didn’t parse out humans, or particular humans. In the story of the Good Samaritan, neighbourliness is defined in showing mercy. The stranger of a different faith –the Samaritan– who took care of the man overtaken by thieves was “neighbour” to the injured man. “The one who showed mercy.” But Bishop Guy takes all of the qualities of mercy that might bind humans together and brings them into the tension between God’s human family and the whole of God’s creation: the world around us; our Turtle Island travelled by ancient peoples for some 23 thousand years following three great migrations from antique lands; the land beneath my home where I shelter my family and tend my garden. These are all neighbours and worthy of every mercy anyone might accord any member of our human family.
That was some years ago … that Bishop Guy talked that way. Of course, other First People talked that way. They did and they do. But his witness made an impression because I realized that it was also the language of St. Francis. Brother Sun. Sister Moon. Persons. Kindred. Like Holy Wisdom in today’s First Reading. She. But it’s more than literary personification. If you listen to our contemporary church leaders, it’s in their language, too! Francis, Roman Catholic; Justin, Anglican; Anne, Lutheran. When we hold ourselves out to be followers or disciples of Jesus, we may need to reframe what it is to be neighbour in the astonishing realm which is the playground of the Creator. Humans are only part of God’s created goodness. And humans are by all accounts newcomers to the neighbourhood.
And we are migrants by nature. 23 thousand years here; 50 thousand to Australia; a couple million out of Africa. So, the question “Who is my neighbour?” is bound to produce some unlikely answers like Samaritans and rivers, like the Grand, and the land upon which we stand, and all of the consequential diversity, astonishing diversity, that is this blue sphere in the heavens. And God called it all “good.”
Pope Francis speaks of a “pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home.” When Francis writes, it’s in a language more akin to that of the other Francis — “Brother Sun” Francis. And in his writing, quoted in our Prayer Insert, you can hear words evolving around the relationship between First Peoples and settler peoples and Christian peoples and other peoples on this fragile earth. “Pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home.” To be in a “pilgrimage of reconciliation” in this Season of Creation. Pilgrimage with is not about Lording it over. No more subduing, as our ancient forebears had it.
Christians, when we parted ways with our Jewish kin, demonstrated ourselves to be capable of new, different and varied understandings, about God and God’s world. The Holy One of God, Son of Man, this human one, is Messiah. That claim was a deal-breaker. And we could hold Paul’s ideas about faith in tension with those of James. And we can decide that we are not into subduing the Earth –or any of her peoples, for that matter– anymore.
Our relationships with our neighbour humans, and even with the entirety of Creation, can be understood as worthy of our love (think, Jesus), worthy of our mercy (the favourite word of Pope Francis), our kinship (a favourite word of Rector Preston), of our grace (the Apostle Paul) and faith with good works (James). And the governing image, I think, in the lea of the Feast of the Holy Cross, is of the Christ — his arms open wide to honour the world he loved so much.
Silence.
And may the church say “Amen”. Amen.
André Lavergne CWA (Pastor)
Honourary Assistant,
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.