Christ Church Cathedral Vancouver, Thursday June 14, 2012 @ 7:00 p.m.

Kai Nagata is Writer-in-Residence at the Tyee, a Vancouver-based online news source. After working in radio and television at the CBC, he took up the post of Quebec City Bureau Chief at CTV, covering politics. He resigned last summer after losing faith in the potential of TV news to effect meaningful social change. Now he develops documentaries, leads workshops, and plays with new models for web-based journalism and political engagement. Kai was baptised at Christ Church Cathedral and describes himself as a ‘lapsed Anglican.’

The Province’s Sunday edition Faith section (on May 13th) featured an interview with Dean Peter Elliott and some great facts about Christ Church Cathedral.

Did you miss the print edition?

Click Here to read The Moral Question: Dealing with Stanley Cup Rioters

Click Here to read The Faith Profile

Click Here to listen to an audio MP3 of the sermon

We are made by love for loving. We are made by goodness for being good. We are God carriers, and so each of us are VSPs, very special persons; God’s viceroys, God’s representatives. God blesses us all. Amen

I attended a remarkable conference 10 days ago in Cincinnati called Connecting for Community. http://connecting4community.wordpress.com/ You may recognize some of the names of the main speakers; Peter Block, John MckNight, Walter Brueggeman, and Peter Koestenbaum. This conference may just have changed the world.

For some time I’ve been wondering what God’s Shalom, God’s Kin-dom might look like here on earth in 21^st century, and very importantly what we are called to as children of God to do and be to make God’s Shalom a reality. And we hear once more of what we are called to be and do as children of God to bring about Shalom, in our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus says, ¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15 12 – 13) Not to put too fine a point to it, God’s Shalom invites each of us to love one another as God loves us. And a question then arises, who am I to be differently, and what am I do differently, to love others as God loves me? To be perfectly frank, if you want to tune me out for the rest of the sermon, and simply reflect on that question; ‘who am I to be differently, what I am to do differently to love others as God loves me, that’s great.’ Go for it!

And if you’d like to keep journeying a little more with me, please do so.  So, I keep wondering what God’s Shalom might look like in 21^st Century language. And then at this Connecting for Community conference I met a fellow participant, a pediatrician by trade, by the name of Victor Garcia. Victor said, “we have the possibility to bring peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime.” I’ll say that again, “we have the possibility to bring peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime.” And I’ve been thinking, is that perhaps a 21^st century vision of God’s Shalom. “we have the possibility to bring peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime.” And, again, if you want to tune me out for the rest of the sermon and reflect on Victor’s line “we have the possibility to bring peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime,” please do so.

Now, for the 2 or 3 of you who are still with me, let’s forge ahead.  If “we have the possibility to bring peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime,” then we need to ask ‘who am I to be differently, what I am to do differently to love others as God loves me.’ And I’d like to offer just two learnings of the many I had at this conference in a moment or two. First some context. The world is changing while I speak. In their very interesting new book, Canuckology, (that I learned about at another conference this week here in Vancouver), Darrell Bricker and John Wright note that 39.6% of the people who call Vancouver home were born outside of Canada. 45.7% of the people who call Toronto home were born outside of Canada. That makes us one of, if not the, most ethnically diverse parts of the world. In contrast, New York City, “the melting pot of the United States” shows only just 21% of the population as born outside of the United States. Marshall McLuhan was right, we live in a ‘global village’ and a microcosm of that global village is this city, right here, right now. So we can get it right, right here, right now. We can lead the way in forming new communities, new ways of being together, so that it is possible to have peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime. Right here in Vancouver. So let’s consider just two of my learnings from the Connecting for Community conference.

First, we are called to inversion. Our sacred texts are wonderful examples of  inversion. For example, a few weeks ago we heard from Pat Dutcher-Walls (and incidentally echoed by Walter Brueggeman) as she talked about Elijah and the King who comes to be healed of leprosy. The awesome power of the King, and Elijah doesn’t even answer his door, but sends instructions dismissively, ‘go and bathe in the Jordan’. Or we might consider the image of the Messiah being born in a manger, literally the place where animals eat. Or from this morning’s Gospel, the image of God’s love for us, being about giving up ourselves, letting go of ourselves, our own egos, for our friends, all of these are inversions. The world as we know it, the present economy, the present forms of governance, the idea that we are safer by building more prisons, or buying fighter jets, or gambling in the casino that is the equity market; these are all fantasies. If we want to less crime, if we want peoples to live together peacefully, if we want healthy and abundant economies, we need to invert the model. God’s Shalom is not about fear and greed. God’s Shalom about love and generosity. One of the most important moments for me at the conference in Cincinnati, was a quiet conversation with Peter Block after I had told a story about having my wallet, and computers stolen the weekend before. He looked at me and asked, ‘so did you feel afraid? Your safety was at risk?’ I replied, ‘yes, at some level, my safe little world was broken into.’ He pointed outside of the hotel in the direction of inner city Cincinnati and said, ‘why should you feel any safer than the guys living out there?’ Friends, God’s love is for all people, not just the ones who look and live like me. Not just the one’s who look and live like you. We need to work together, to challenge our own assumptions about what is ‘out there’ in this city. In the words of the great Solomon Burke song, “None of us is free, one of us in chains, none of us is free.” Any sense of freedom and safety you and I might have is at best limited, if not denied by the fact that thousands of God’s children are not free nor safe in this city right now. And so we return to the question, Who do I need to be differently, what do I need to do differently, to love as God loves me, to enliven the “possibility to bring peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime.”

Second, we are called to conversations about gifts. The conversations we experience in our consumerist world tend towards the ‘problems’, the deficiencies, the ‘issues’. For example, Walter Brueggeman noted that all of the advertisements we watch, read and listen to remind us of our deficiencies; we are too fat, too poor, too weak, too smelly, our bodies need to be enhanced, lifted. Wherever we turn, we are faced with our inadequacies.  And so, if we are to love one another as God has loved us, we might see that we are loved, just as we are. God does not care how rich you are, God does not care if you have the newest gizmo. God does not care which gym you belong to, or whether you go to a gym at all. God loves you large, small, buff, bulging, white, black, red, yellow, healthy, not so healthy, spiritual, religious, atheist, Christian, Jew, Moslem, Confucian, Hare Krishna, male, female, trans, gay, straight. God loves you inside and out. God loves you because of your gifts. God is not the God of deficiencies; God is the God of abundance! If we are to love each other as God has loved us, we are to love abundantly, and look to each other’s gifts, look to our own gifts. Ours is a tapestry of gifts and our conversations need to change towards uncovering and honouring those gifts, those possibilities.  An example of a change in the conversation from this conference was the challenge to invert how we view people who have done prison time. What would it be like to be a “home comer”, rather than an ex-convict? What would happen if we welcomed people home, rather than continue to punish them by exclusion and prejudice. To honour their gifts, not their deficiencies. And in doing so we might move inexorably closer to the tapestry of peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime.

In a few moments we will share the Eucharist as a community. We will connect as a community, and by doing so change the world for the better. We will share in the constant and sustaining inversion of love over power. We will share in the gifts of God for all people and in the simple and profound gift of each other’s presence at this table. And in the sharing of these gifts may we find courage, may we hold on to what is good. May we return no one evil for evil, may we support those weaker than ourselves, and honour all life. And in doing so may we find our own answers to the question who am I to be differently, what am I to do differently to love as God loves me, to bring about “peace and prosperity for all children, of all species, for all time, in our lifetime.”

Amen

A Service to honour Queen Elizabeth II
and her Diamond Jubilee 1952 – 2012

Sunday, June 3, 2012 at 4:00pm
Christ Church Cathedral (690 Burrard at Georgia)

Festal Evensong featuring the music of Gibbons, Howells, Stanford, and Willan with the Christ Church Cathedral Choir

*Featured at our 10:30am Sunday Service on June 3rd ~ Festal Eucharist ~ Mass in G minor Ralph Vaughan Williams

Image by 10-year-old Katherine Dewar, from Chester

Click Here to listen to an audio mp3 of the sermon

Of all the seasons of the Christian year, I love Easter the most.  I love pretty much everything about it: how the liturgies are punctuated with Alleluias, how the giant Paschal candle is lit and burns every day as a sign of the risen Christ, how, in this hemisphere, the season of spring coincides with Easter offering every day another symbol of how new life rises from what seems dead.  And I love how we get ready for this time of year with the preparation of Lent and then the solemn remembrance, through Holy Week of Jesus passion and death and then, how we gather in a darkened church very early on Easter Day to hear again the stories of our faith tradition, how we go outside to light a new fire, and then bring that light into the church as we sing, and baptize and celebrate Eucharist—and how that day continues to unfold with song and shouts of Alleluia: and as if Easter Day weren’t enough for us, the church gives us 50 days of Easter to live deeply into the paschal mystery of Christ’s life being given for us not just in death but in the glorious resurrection—the raising up of Jesus who is not confined to a memory of the past but—and this is Easter faith—not just a memory of the past but a living presence, with us now.

Through the Sundays in the Easter season we’re led through stories and images from scripture that help us focus on this living presence of the Risen Christ: today it’s amongst the richest images we’re given when Jesus, from John’s gospel, says “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing.”  It’s a mystical vision that’s offered here: the image of the vine has deep resonances within the tradition of Hebrew scripture but here it speaks of the interconnectivity between us and the risen Christ, and between each of us drawn together through him.  It’s an invitation really to live not from our little egos, but from a deep centre that we know as the Christ within.

One of the games our family played when I was growing up we just called the ring game.  Maybe you played it too.  Here’s how it worked.  You took a long piece of string; maybe 8 or 12 feet long, put someone’s ring on it and then tied it so that it became a big loop.  Then a group gathers in a circle, each person holding a bit of string; one unlucky person is “it” and stands in the middle while the others slide the ring around the string, cupping their hands so that “it” doesn’t know where the ring is.  What’s fun about it is that you have to pay attention both when you’re ‘it’ and when you’re part of the circle, because you need to know where the ring is and be sure that you can receive it and pass it on surreptitiously.   If you’re “it” you watch carefully and touch a hand, when it’s released, if the ring’s there, you get to sit down and play while the person caught gets to be it.

I remembered this game when I was meditating on this notion of the vine and branches, of the interconnectivity between us and Christ and one another because it seemed to be a homely example of interrelationship, of being joined together and how what one does affects the others.  The string is like the vine; the players in the game are like the branches.  Like in the game the players have to have a common goal, so it is in life with the Risen Christ we are called to be connected not just to one another but also to the one who is the source and energy of all life who is the vine.

It’s interesting in this short passage from John’s gospel that there are references to pruning, like when Jesus says, “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.”  One commentator on this passage suggests that we hear this part a little differently, that we shift the language to say, “whatever does not abide in me” rather than “whoever does not abide in me.”  For it is, and I think it’s a fair reading, that whatever does not abide in Christ can be pruned, we know what that’s about.  As we mature in life and in faith we know the importance of stopping things, of putting away childish things as St. Paul put it, of pruning from our lives those things that distract us from our primary task which is to live into the reality that Easter proclaims—that we are united with God in the Risen Christ.  And there are so many things in our lives to prune, to add to that refining fire that God offers so that we can devote more and more of our lives to be in relationship with the living Christ.  For lots of us it can start with something as simple as cleaning out the house, of throwing away those objects with which we have surrounded ourselves in a vain effort to ward off mortality or to cling on to the past.  In a more interior way it can be letting go old resentments, old griefs, old hurts and throwing them on the fire.  In a spiritual way it can be moving away from the notion of a magical universe into a deeper engagement with the beautiful complexity of scripture and the hard but rewarding disciplines of prayer and meditation.  Whatever in your life, within or without, is an obstacle to growing closer to the risen Christ let it go.

What I love about this Easter season is how it focuses us once again on the deepest source of energy and life that we know, the source and energy of life that God gives us in the gift of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Here’s a little personal embarrassing story: when, many years ago, I was joined in ministry by a new priest who came to assist, the priest, in an interview said, “I don’t need to be a star here at the Cathedral, we already have a star.”  Ahh, I thought, how sweet—and my little mind carried on—I’m not that good really but maybe you know, maybe in a small way, I’m a star, God bless me—but then he continued, snapping me out of my little ego distraction—“no, he said, the Cathedral already has a star—it’s Jesus.”  “Right” I quickly said, “Jesus.”  And that’s it isn’t it.  Eugene Peterson in his always-fresh translation of scripture renders Jesus words today in this way, “Live in me.  Make your home in me just as I do in you.  In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.  I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant.”

Here we have obviously the beautiful connection between the journey inward and the journey outward: the more you intimately connect with the Christ within, the more you prune away all that distracts you from that, the more that the way you live and the choices you make will be transformed. Spiritual intimacy with Christ through prayer, through worship, through meditation, through spiritual reading, through times of quiet and reflection lead to a life shot through with God’s transforming grace manifested in acts of compassion and for justice.  I see this at work all the time.  For it is because of their relationship to Christ that some find themselves making or serving soup and sandwiches to the hungry, that others find themselves gathering groups together to learn about social issues and take action for justice, that others find themselves walking closely with friends and family being support and help in times of illness and grief, that others find themselves studying theology and discerning their call to ministry, that still others find themselves engaged in a deeper personal exploration of their history with a view to becoming the person God has meant them to be.

Fruits of the relationship with the risen Christ—manifest in myriad ways, and here’s what’s most wonderful: as the things we do become evident to others they want to know why.  They want to know why do you read those books, why do you care so much about the dignity and rights of first nations, why do you go to church, why do you visit the hospital, why do you offer healing touch, why do you teach Sunday school…. and then you’re given the wonderful opportunity to speak about your Easter faith, about how—and you really don’t understand exactly how this works—but how, for you, Christ is alive, that God brings new life out of death in Jesus and has brought new life to you. You can share how you experience that through the worship of the church, particularly in the sacraments when you sense in a way beyond words that God’s life is given to you again in the simplicity of bread and wine.  You can witness to how you have known healing in your own life as you have left behind those things that distracted you and dug more deeply into a mystical friendship with one who is ever near though not visible, and who leads you, in ways hard to describe into a fullness of life.

I love the hope Easter brings; I love the poetry it inspires.  A Jesuit poet, the late James Janda wrote these words with which I close:

We may learn that
we are
rooted in Christ

that regardless
the atmosphere

regardless our
stunted growth

regardless our
daily dyings

we have the
potential

we are the
potential
to bloom

because of
Christ
our earth

because of
Christ
our atmosphere

we are the seed
from 
the Father’s hand

we are
 the breaking shell
sending
down roots reaching
our shoots
up stretching toward
our Maker