Category Archives: Pastor Thoughts

Pastor Thoughts

“We wish to see Jesus” – Pastor Thoughts

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“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 

As we come to the last part of our Lenten journey, we hear this striking request in the gospel reading for the 5th Sunday in Lent. It has not been an easy journey to get ourselves here, Lent has not been hard on us. Week after week what has been revealed is just how much and how deeply we do not understand Jesus and the work of proclaiming the Kingdom. It has been a process of uncovering our inability to see, hear and know Jesus as we ought to.

So there is no small amount of irony in hearing a gospel lesson that begins with foreigners coming to the disciples, asking to see Jesus and the disciples not knowing how to respond. I think we know that there is a disconnect in our current understanding of Jesus (read: what this faith business is all about). We know that we are in a strange place these days as mainline Christians hanging on to whatever we can, yet also feeling distant from and uncertain about our own faith commitments, feeling unsure if all the stuff we profess to believe is true and trustworthy. 

I am pretty sure many of us would feel ill-equipped to handle things if a visitor came to us and asked, “We wish to see Jesus.” 

In the online spaces I roam about, I am connected to a lot of other pastors and clergy from all kinds of denominations – mostly mainline or progressive. As much as folks in the pews might be wondering and wrestling with what role faith and faith practices have in our lives, the same wrestling is happening among clergy. If someone were to ask a group of pastors, “We wish to see Jesus” the number of Jesuses that would be pointed to would be as many as there are clergy present. 

Like the folks in the pews, pastors and clergy have wonderings and questions too. Often how we see and understand Jesus has less to do with what we know and understand from the witness of scripture and our ancestor’s faith as it has to with whatever concern, issue, hobby horse or question seems to be occupying our attention. There is gun-toting Jesus, social justice Jesus, moral purity Jesus, prosperity Jesus, correct theology Jesus and so many more. 

It is almost as if we shape Jesus to fit whatever thing is front of mind for us, whatever issue of our own is most important at the moment. 

So as rough as this Lent has been, unraveling the ways in which we don’t understand has been something we needed to do.  Something we need so that the revealing of the Jesus we truly need can begin. And when those folks come to us and ask, “We wish to see Jesus” we might pause and consider. Rather than the version of Jesus we want to show, who is the Jesus they need to meet? Who is the Jesus being revealed to us this Holy Week and Easter?

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Taking a break from the discipline of Lent

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As we enter the back half of the season of Lent we are near to Laetare Sunday or ‘Rejoice Sunday’ which occurs on the 4th Sunday of Lent. It is meant to be a Sunday to celebrate – in the middle of a season of solemnity – as we approach Easter. 

It kind of feels like a lot to unpack. Lent itself is meant to be a time that breaks us off from our usual rhythms and patterns of life.  It is a time to pull back from all the usual things that occupy our attention in order to make room to focus on the promises of God, on our baptismal call to take up the cross and follow. Lenten discipline is about doing things that help us to see God, to see what God is revealing to us in and through Jesus’ journey to the cross. 

But maybe it is a bit weird that after only 3 Sundays of Lent, there would be a Sunday where we pause the solemn and sombre reflection to celebrate. Surely five weeks of Lenten discipline isn’t too much to ask of us, too hard for us to follow.

While sometimes it can feel like the Church has a million rules, especially when it comes to worship and liturgy, the practices and traditions that we follow come from generations of Christians previously forming and shaping them. Maybe all the faithful siblings in faith who came before us understood what human beings are really like. We need shifts in pace, big and small, to help us along the way. Taking a moment to celebrate that we are nearly through our Lenten journey is a way to help us mark the passing of time, to keep us from getting too weighed down by Lent. 

Though it seems like five weeks isn’t that long, we are creatures who need signposts to help us along the way. We are not meant to do the same thing over and over; rather we live according to rhythms and cycles that mark and make meaning of time. Even though we live by patterns of annual and seasonal repetition, we need things to change day to day, week to week in order that we can locate ourselves in time. We need things to change to keep us engaged and present in the here and now. 

At four weeks into Lent, we anticipate the end of our Lenten journey, knowing what is to come in Holy Week. We look with even more hope to what is coming at Easter, and it is this hope that allows us to finish the journey of Lent.

So this week we take a moment to celebrate that the promise of resurrection is just and always around the corner. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Only half way getting it with Jesus – Pastor Thouhts for Lent

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Our Lenten journey has taken us from the wilderness where God waited for God’s people for 40 days. And when we didn’t go out, God came to find us. 

The next stop of Lent is the hustle and bustle of Greek Caesarea Philippi. A busy tourist stop where Jesus gathers his disciples to teach about what the Messiah must endure. Just before Jesus has asked them who people say that he is and who they say he is. Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah. 

Then moments later Peter seems to forget and scold Jesus for talking about the Messiah dying. 

It seems that Peter only kind of got it, he only halfway saw just who Jesus was. 

Only kind of seeing or only halfway understanding feels normal these days. All the chaos surrounding us feels like struggle and hardship swirling around. We try to make sense of our world, of the division, conflict and struggle that permeates our lives. Picking Jesus out of the storm can feel like a futile endeavour. 

Living our faith can seem like a mystery that we just don’t have the time to unpack or another burden added to our ever-growing list of burdens. How are we supposed to take up our crosses and follow Jesus if, like Peter, we only halfway understand who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing?

I think that is kind of the point. Jesus’ invitation to take up the cross is about accepting that the burdens and struggles are part of walking the path of faithfulness. But also a reminder that in the end, Jesus is the one who carries and then climbs up on the cross. 

Living a life of faith isn’t necessarily about perfectly understanding what God is up to in the world or what God is calling us to. But taking up the cross is practicing faithfulness amid the storms and chaos, understanding that hardship and struggle are part of the journey. 

And that ultimately, Jesus is going to be the one doing the Messiah’s work – the work of faith. We are the ones being worked on. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Filling in Mark’s wilderness gaps – Pastor Thoughts for Lent

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Each Lenten season takes its own shape and form, at least in my experience. Whether it is things going on in the world, things happening locally in the congregation, things happening in our personal lives or simply the fact of getting older, each year Lent has a different slant to it. Who can forget the Lenten season of 2020, during which we learned just how quickly the world and the church can adapt to change?

In addition to things happening in the real world, the variety of Lenten stories we hear in the yearly lectionary cycle also adds character to the season. 

Lent always begins with the story of Jesus facing temptation in the wilderness.  This year, in the year of Mark, we hear the shortest version of Jesus’ temptation. So short in fact, that the baptism story is tacked on before, just to give the text some length. Matthew and Luke provide extended narratives between Jesus and Satan or the Devil, describing three different temptations faced by Jesus. 

But Mark simply tells us that Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days, to be tempted by Satan, with the wild beasts and waited on by angels. 

Mark’s version of the story is brief and to the point… at least on first reading. But when you slow down to hear and consider the picture that Mark paints with an economy of words, our imaginations are left to fill in the vast empty spaces. How did Satan tempt Jesus? Who or what are the wild beasts? What was Jesus doing for 40 days? What does it mean to be waited on by angels?

As we come back to the journey of Lent year after year and take the time to reflect on our own journeys—as a society, as a church community, as families and as individuals—the differences can be striking. Some years we get the struggle described in vivid narrative, as Matthew and Luke tell it. But other years we get Mark—a few details that evoke a lot of questions. 

This year may very well be a year for a Markan Lent. We know that we are in the wilderness and we know that the journey ahead is long. But it is hard to identify who or what the wild beasts are. We don’t know what the tempter is up to. The wilderness is hazy and unclear. We are left to fill in the gaps with our imaginations. 

And somewhere in all of that, God has sent angels to wait on us. We cannot always perceive them, but we know that somehow the mercy and grace of God come to us just the same. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

“Dad, you talk about depressing stuff a lot in your sermons” – Pastor Thoughts

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Sometimes being a pastor and being a dad can intersect in interesting ways. Recently, my son was commenting on my sermons. Surprisingly, he seems to mostly appreciate my preaching, but in our most recent conversation he remarked, “Dad, you talk about depressing stuff a lot in your sermons.”

What followed was a good conversation about what kinds of things are important in sermons, and more generally the ways and places that God meets us and gets involved in our lives.

Over the past few weeks, we have heard stories about Jesus meeting people in a variety of places. Jesus was walking along the seashore and calling fishermen to be his disciples. Jesus met them where they were working. Jesus went preaching in the Synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus met folks where they worshipped and gathered as a community. This week Jesus goes to the home of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and heals her there. Jesus meets people in their homes.

There has been a habit among Christians over recent decades to draw distinct boundaries between the places and times where we talk about God and where we don’t. Hence the idiom, “We don’t talk about religion and politics in polite company.” Religion, God and faith have been portrayed as private matters; churches are often seen as exclusive clubs where only members are privy to the content and conversations.

Yet, as we can see from the biblical witness, Jesus didn’t seem particularly limited about where he went and talked about God.

When we limit the places where we are willing to invite our faith into the conversation, it means that many people might never hear about God unless they enter into the right places at the right times. Similarly, because we are neither practicing nor in the habit of talking about God, it can quickly get uncomfortable when it is time for God to be the conversation topic.

But perhaps most importantly, when we limit the places where faith can be part of conversation and lives, we quickly forget that God has something to do with all of life – the places we work, the places we gather, the places we worship and in our homes. 

And in those places, there has been a lot of struggle lately. Struggle globally, locally, and individually. My response to Oscar’s comment was that my sermons have a lot of depressing things in them because the world has a lot of depressing things going on. But just naming the depressing things isn’t the point. Rather, naming them reminds us of the hope found in God’s love, mercy and grace, opening up a way to meet us in all areas of our lives. Wherever we struggle and suffer, God comes to meet us, bringing the promise of new life.