What if...?

 

We are now one week into our pre-Easter reflection period known as Lent.  I trust this is a season of meaning and blessing for you as you reflect on our approach to Holy Week, 2014.

As we consider Jesus’ intention to undertake the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, it is interesting to reflect on what he might have decided to let go of or leave behind.  We know he was a thoughtful planner, so it is unlikely he would have undertaken this trip without deliberate preparation.  What did he decide he would need for the journey ahead, and what could he do without?  Matthew tells us he made his home in Capernaum by the sea (Matt 4:13).  Did he cancel the lease on his residence?  Did he give away his household goods? 

In our personal spiritual journeys, we look to Christ as our model.  During the Lenten season, we consider what habits or elements we too should lay down and do without.  What if congregations were to do the same?  What if our worshiping, fellowshipping communities also undertook a Lenten season of reflection about how we will be faithful together in our calling to be about the Mission of Jesus?  What should we lay down?  What could we do without?  How would that help us be more on task?

Please note that I am not talking about cleaning out the back classroom where 30 years of old lesson books and craft supplies have accumulated, now all yellow with age. Rather, I am wondering what “programs” we might do without in order to be  more faithful. 

What if the program we needed to let go of was (deep breathe) the Sunday morning service?  What if the congregation met together on Sunday morning, not to sit in a sanctuary but to walk the neighbourhood, sit in the coffee shop, or meet the neighbours?  What if we did that prayerfully asking God to let us really see and understand what is going on in the area where the church is planted?  What if we prayed and fasted as we went so we could learn what God’s children who live on our block are going through?  What if we found there were homeless people living behind that apartment building?  What if we learned that the neighbourhood had become multiracial, multicultural, multireligious, how could we open our doors to that community?  What if we learned that our traditional programming was not what the people we are called to serve even needed, would we be willing to set it aside? 

Just a few questions for reflection on our Lenten journey in 2014.  

Posted by Carman

Sit

Meanwhile, let's revisit Lazarus' story here.
I suggested yesterday that we need to "sit" with this story a bit longer, not rushing ahead to the happy ending, much as we might want to.

This is a family story. Martha and Mary are really important to the early Christian church. They show up in two of the gospels.You'll remember the story in Luke where Jesus was being entertained in their home. Martha was being the good hostess, slaving away in the kitchen while Mary listened to Jesus, chatting in the parlor and not remembering her proper place as a good Jewish woman. There was no mention of their kid brother Lazarus in that story. Lazarus arrives in John's gospel.

Commentaries suggest the sisters must have been important. John introduces Mary as "the woman who anointed Jesus" but if we're reading carefully, we might notice that hasn't "yet" happened in Jesus' story. And yet it is such an identifier that the gospel writer can't help but mention it now. Followers of Jesus knew who the woman was! She's one of those women who don't do what they're supposed to. An "uppity woman"!

Now we find the family in mourning for their brother who has died. Our modern ears hear the story differently than those first century ears heard it. Their brother has died. It is four days after has was buried; the good Jewish family is "sitting shiva" and grieving. We may have wondered about the crowds around. Of course there were people. They are coming to provide for the women who must do nothing for themselves for seven days. They can't leave the house. It is the required mourning ritual.

That is what Mary does. She stays inside as is proper. This time it is Martha who rushes our to meet Jesus. This time it is Martha who is "uppity" as it is entirely improper for her to leave the house to meet this visitor, no matter how close a friend he is. She is the one who is behaving unconventionally. She is the one to speak bluntly to Jesus and then to return and bring Mary into the conversation.

It is Martha who is the first woman in scripture to identify Jesus as the Messiah. But she is the practical one who suggests it may not be such a good idea to open the tomb. Yes, she believes, but really is this possible?

And Jesus? What does Jesus do? He weeps. He too for a time sits with the grief that has come to this family he loves.

There is just so much more in this story than these few words can tell. Let us sit with it for a bit and let us change us as it will.

Posted by Marion

Horror

I've never been a fan of the horror genre; I never read horror books or cared for horror movies. I appreciate that there is value and even classic literature in the horror genus, but it’s not been my preference. Horror appears to come and go as other styles do, and just now we do seem to be in the midst of an up-wave as movies, television, pop culture explore horror themes.

This week’s lectionary readings take us right into this ever-so-human fascination for themes horrific. I recall doing the research a few years ago into the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones. It occurred to me that Ezekiel was a man before his time—one might even call him prophetic! As I read the text, and others from his book, I imagined he would have made an amazing producer of modern film or video images. What might a Spielberg do with an Ezekiel text of flaming chariots, wheels within wheels, and rising armies of dry bones!

This week’s preacher then turns to the gospel and finds there the images of the Lazarus story. No wonder we wish to cast our thoughts quickly ahead to new life and resurrection, quickly putting aside the descriptors of the sights, the smells, the gut-wrenching emotions in that story.

And yet, we are not there yet. We are still in the midst of the Lenten season. We need to spend a bit more time considering the evils that brought us those images I think. Ezekiel well knew where those dry bones came from. He had lived through and with the choices that created them. Two years of siege by the armies of Babylon leading to the exile of himself and his people must have created conditions not unlike some of the conditions we’re watching on our televisions every day. One of those Middle East wars not unfamiliar to us created for him that valley of despair and, yes, of horror.

Is it not the role of the church to examine the systems, the choices, the patterns that create despair in our own surroundings, our own world? Have we made choices, or failed to make them, that have contributed to the despair of our own neighbours? We write often about community in this blogspace. Mostly we write the good news that’s happening in that loving community. But don’t let’s forget that we have neighbours without hope. When the scriptures send us to stories that hold the horror in front of us, we are obliged to look and then to offer better.

I must think about it; how will I respond to that call?

Posted by Marion

Potholes

One sure sign of spring, along with the emerging grass, the puddles and dirty snowdrifts, seems to be the abundance of potholes! Whatever shall we make of that?

I’d love to wax poetic about the returning of the geese, the twittering of the little birds in the little shrubs round about. I see the swelling buds on the trees, the golden haze appearing on the patches of willow. Flocks of birds are gathering in the hedgerows at the bottom of my garden—the cardinals, the chickadees, the sparrows, all with that unmistakable spring-time bustling and chirping signaling the season.

I’m missing the familiar first eruptions of green buds I know are emerging in the garden I left behind last autumn. I wonder how my forsythia is doing. But soon we’ll be seeing what the new garden has to offer. And we’ll be putting our stamp on it before too, too long. Even the prospects of that new garden are fun and hopeful.

But what of all these potholes?

There really is water running everywhere. All those big piles of dirty snow get noticeably smaller every day, virtually every hour. Stand still, somewhere outside, anywhere and you can hear water running, snow melting, ice becoming water.

Driving through open countryside the other day I noted broad stretches of water. Fields that someday, not too far off, will need to be planted, are just now great flooded expanses. All that water is going to go somewhere. It’s going to sink into the ground, run into the water table, find its way via drain, ditch, creek, stream, to the nearest river. Some of it is going to travel under the asphalt. It’s going to freeze and melt a few more times and when it does, it’s going to create potholes.

Advising, ever so gently from the passenger seat, the new young driver dealing for the first time with the ridiculous succession of potholes in a back country road in rural Quebec, I found myself offering up my familiar Lenten message.

“You can hit those potholes without too much damage if you just take it slow. Slowing down gives you a chance to avoid the ones you can and won’t totally wreck your suspension or ruin your tires when you have to hit one.”

Who knew that the coincidence of potholes with Lent was another of those interesting happenstances? If you’re on the road today, watch out for the potholes. They are inevitable. But if you slow down you have a better chance of a positive outcome.

Posted by Marion

Simmer

We used to frequent a nice little Hiway 7 restaurant that had a sign over the cash register that read “We serve good food not fast food!” And indeed they did. If you were stopping in there for a meal you’d better have time and inclination to sit awhile. Burgers were cooked from raw. The turkey roasted on the weekend was now being served up à la king over homemade biscuits or a nicely simmered turkey vegetable soup just like grandma used to make. The pies were to die for! But they weren’t frozen. If you arrived after the last piece came out of the pan, you were too late.

There’s an official Slow Food Movement that advocates for traditional cooking methods, along with all the associated benefits of taste, sociability, support of positive agricultural and economic systems. Check them out here if you’re interested.

I’ve been thinking of the notion of simmering as I’ve considered the Lenten journey time of waiting I wrote about earlier this week. What does it mean to just wait? I liken it in some ways to simmering.

Very often the thing that recommends a recipe is that it can be “ready in twenty minutes” or “just nuked” for even less time. Families rushing in from work or school and out to practice or meetings want something quick. From freezer to table in less time than it takes to change into your sweats—that’s what we need.

And yet, there is so very much to be said for the long weekend, the extra day to cook up a batch of chili or spaghetti sauce, or to pull that turkey carcass out of the freezer and let it simmer in the stock pot for as many hours as you like. Simmering has just so very many advantages. The house fills up with good smells while the toughest sinews relax and tenderize in the broth. Given enough time and lovin’ a pot of bones and roots and a little handful of herbs and such can emerge as something truly wonderful to warm the heart, fill the belly and pull a family together in ways that no micro-waved pizza pocket can.

What do you think? Are you with me in this period of reflection and introspection, coming out of a long and (for some) dreary winter season, but not yet quite into spring?

“God is doing a new thing” Carman wrote in his Barns blog post recently. I thought I detected a bit of impatience there. What is that new thing and where is it rising up?

Maybe God has us on at a simmer just now, in this waiting time. It doesn’t mean nothing is happening; it’s a different kind of happening.

Like any metaphor, this one doesn’t work totally. Even as I’m reading over what I’ve written I can think of exceptions. If that “new thing” is going to happen, someone needs to be doing the spade work, ensuring the relationships are built and the preparation done to enable it to be.

I feel fortunate to be one of the ones who has the luxury to follow the instruction to “don’t just do something, sit there!” Sit there and simmer.

Posted by Marion