Category Archives: Sermon

Left Over Corners, The Sin of White Supremacy, and The Doctrine of the Trinity

June 7, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

GOSPEL: Matthew 28:16-20
16Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The high school I attended in Edmonton was one of the biggest senior high schools in Canada, with a diverse population of 2500 students. A 60s building experiment with no windows, it looked like the mixture between a shopping mall and a bunker. In the middle of the school was a large square sunken-in indoor courtyard called the rotunda. On the four sides were the main office, the cafeteria, the doors to the school theatre, and the the wall of trophies.

With so many students, it was often crowded in the hallways. The rotunda was a place that students naturally congregated during breaks. One particular memory I have is how student separated themselves into groups. In the four corners of the rotunda, groups would gather often according to the colour of their skin. In one corner the black students, another the Asian students, another the students from southeast Asia and the other the Middle-Eastern students.

And in the hustle bustle of breaks and lunch, these groups would throw pennies and mock others students walking by. Yet whenI walked by, these corner groups left me alone. Even as every students walking in front of me had a penny thrown at them, I wouldn’t. I always passed by unbothered.

I always assumed it was because I was a football player, often wearing my jersey or football jacket. I thought was big and tough, too risky to bother.

It wasn’t until relatively recently that it dawned on that me that this wasn’t the whole story. I was left alone because I was a white kid. A white football player. They knew that if I reacted and fought back they would get in trouble, a phone call home, a detention or a suspension. While I would only get a slap on the wrist.

When I finally realized this truth year later, I then wondered why these students were harassing people in the first place.

To answer that question, you need to first ask where all white students were. And the answer is everywhere. The white students filled the tables and chairs in the cafeteria, they sat along the walls of the rotunda to each lunch, they were on the steps down, they were in the middle where you could sit on the ground. But the corners, the corners were the worst place to be. They were busy intersections where you couldn’t sit and eat without being tripped over, where you had to stand and hug the wall.

The white students took up all the good space, and left the scraps to the racialized students.

This is what white privilege looks like. This is white supremacy. My prominent memory was of the students in the corners, grouped according to their skin colour but not the fact that the white kids took up all the good spaces. For years, I conveniently overlooked the white students taking up all the good space while being annoyed and offended by students of colour occupying leftovers.

And even though I try to be aware of my biases, this makes me I realize that I need to go back and review the ways in which I am regularly participating in the systems and structures that privilege my white body over the the bodies of people of colour.

As protests in Minneapolis, across the United States, here in Canada and around the whole world continue night after night, the reality of the inequalities and suffering of black people, of indigenous people and people of colour all around us have been brought to our attention.Our blissfully oblivious world as white people has been rocked this week by the cries for justice of our sibblings of colour. We can no longer pretend like we don’t know what is really happening any more.

And so we recognize that the systems and structures and attitudes that exist in us and around us uphold white supremacy, even as we may try ourselves, as white people, to distance ourselves from it. Even as we try to be good people who don’t hold malice towards or hatred for anyone. We recognize that we benefit from a world that privileges us because of our skin, and that even though we face struggles and hardships in our lives, one of them isn’t the daily obstacles of racism and discrimination.

So today, we name White Supremacy as sinful.

But not sinful in the sense that it is something that gets you on Santa’s naughty list… rather something deeper. White Supremacy is a sin in how it separates and divides us, how it is a distortion of our relationship with God, with others, with creation and with ourselves. We recognize and then confess that white supremacy is a sin because it elevates some people above other people for arbitrary reasons. It attempts to claim that some (white people) are more fully human, while others (people of colour) are less human.

Now you might be asking by this point why the pastor is talking about racism, white supremacy, and the protests for Black Lives Matter and George Floyd on Trinity Sunday. What do they have to do with the Trinity?

Well… they are in fact deeply interconnected.

Trinity Sunday is often filled with cute, yet borderline heretical examples and descriptions of the Trinity such as: God is like an apple pie, or God is like the three states of water.

Yet, the doctrine of the trinity is ultimately about relationships. The trinity is a doctrine of community.

The Trinity is a community, three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, one Body, one Community.

At a time when the divisions and separations, the community splitting realities of racism and white supremacy are being revealed to us daily… the Trinity both models to us relationships and community as they ought to be.

Relationships of mutuality and sacrifice, relationships of give and take. In the the Trinity, the 3 persons are co-equal, and yet there are times when on member steps forward while the others step back. It is the Father’s voice that speaks in creation. It is the Son that is the Word of God enfleshed. It is the Holy Spirit’s breath that blows through the disciples and into the world at Pentecost.

And so this week, as the Pentecost spirit lifts up the voices of Black Indigenous People of Colour, it is our turn as mostly white siblings in faith to listen.

It is our turn to step back, to make room for voices that have been relegated to the left over corners of the world. To wonder why we have been content to stand by as our brothers, sisters and siblings of colour have pushed to margins to suffer.

And then it is our turn to follow our siblings of colour into the work of justice.

And yet…

And yet on this Trinity Sunday, we are also reminded that our world will not be fixed by our own power. And we are reminded that it is our imperfections, our flawed humanity that got us here, and so our flawed humanity will not save us.

But rather, this Triune God – whom has been revealed to us in the Word passed on from generation to generation – that this Triune God is already at work among us transforming us and the world in ways we could never imagine on our own.

That on this Trinity Sunday during the middle of a pandemic,
surrounded by protests for justice and change,
we are reminded that this triune God,
this community God,
this God of relationships…
that THIS God is the One
who will work in us the new thing
that will bring the world to right.

That the God,
who died as a brown human body on a cross,
is the one who is ushering in a new creation,
new life revealed in the same brown human body
that walked out of the tomb 3 days later.

We are reminded today, that God will do and is already doing what we cannot, breaking hearts open for the sake of our brothers, sisters and siblings who are suffering.

Opening our eyes to truly see our neighbour calling for justice,
opening our ears to hear the pleas of voices so long silenced by our indifference.

No, we cannot fix this broken world on our own.
No we cannot bring justice and peace by our own power.

Yet, the God who walks with those on the margins,
the God who makes room for the other
rather than taking up all the space,
the God who has suffered with humanity in human flesh….

The Trinity will do
in and through us
that which we cannot do by our own power.
The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
will extend the loving community
of the divine three-in-one to all creation,
and especially to those most forgotten and excluded.

The Trinitarian God revealed to us again today,
will bring us to new life,
new resurrected life,
new resurrected life found in the One Body,
the One Community,
the One family of the divine one-in-three.

And so, on this Trinity Sunday, on this day when our suffering world cries out again and again for justice… we are reminded that God the Trinity is bringing to life in us the very thing we have failed to be…

yet, the thing that the Trinity is preparing us to become – the Kingdom, Community and Body of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Body of Christ.

Amen.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

“I can’t breathe” and the Fires of Pentecost

May 31, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker 4 Comments

GOSPEL: John 20:19-23
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” (Read the whole passage)

“I can’t breathe”

If you have been paying attention to the news at all this week, you will know that this is a quote from George Floyd. George Floyd was killed by a police officer kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes as Mr. Floyd was being arrested by Minneapolis Police. The officers involved were fired and one has been charged with murder.

It is another incident to add to a long list of black men and other people of colour being killed in encounters with police. While at the same time our news has also been filled with images of white protestors congregating at state capitals, in masks and brandishing assault rifles who are allowed to “protest” without police engaging.

This past week protests have grown violent in Minneapolis and around the United States. Cities on fire and protesting crowds have been flooding our news feeds.

Breath, fire and crowds.

These are the images of Pentecost. Pentecost 2020.

Once again, we arrive at another significant church festival, and things aren’t the way they usually are supposed to be.

Pentecost at home and social distancing is a something we never imagined as a way to mark this moment… at least not until just a few weeks ago.

Like Lent, Holy Week and Easter this year, the Pandemic has imparted a certain authenticity to the moment. Lent required an unusual amount of sacrifice this year. Our Easter confinement to our homes was more like the original Easter than we ever imagined. And just last week, as the disciples wondered when things were going to go back to the good ol’ days, we too have been wondering when things might return to normal, or at least return and open up at all.

Today, the Easter story is now bringing that community of disciples to an important moment. A moment of transformation and change. All the preparing that Jesus has been doing, helping his followers for what comes next, for their life as an Easter community comes to fruition as the spirit pushes them out into the streets and through them proclaims the gospel to all the nations.

As we hear the Pentecost story each year, it is easy to get focused on the well known details of the story. It is easy to think that it is all about the disciples having tongues of fire landing on them (what is a tongue of fire anyways?), about going out into the streets and preaching in all different languages, about the accusation that they are drunk and finally the 3000 people that were baptized. Those details that lull us into thinking that Pentecost is all about the rapid expansion of the church, a model for faithful church planting and growing, a sign of the Holy Spirit’s blessing that good ministry is happening.

Yet, this year amidst lockdowns and quarantines, we cannot even offer up our merger reproductions of that Pentecost experience by gathering for our small neighbourhood outdoor worship services and BBQs that we usually celebrate with.

All the while, just down the road from Winnipeg in Minneapolis, the images of fire and crowds, protests and anger speak to another version of pentecost this year.

And they remind us of police involved shootings of indigenous people here in Winnipeg. We are forced to recognize that pandemic has locked down many things, but not the complicated (and often racist) relationship with police that people of colour have both in our country and just across the border to the south of us.

And so despite the lack of tongues of fire, speaking in different languages, and 3000 baptisms… despite not having our usual pentecost celebrations and observances… and with the unmistakable pentecost images flooding our news this week… we might be wondering what is the Spirit actually up to among us? What does Pentecost mean for us today in 2020?

In John’s gospel we are given a clue.

As the disciples are hiding out after the crucifixion, hiding in fear from the outside world, Jesus appears in their midst, speaking peace.

Nothing else is familiar in this moment, but peace – shalom – is something they know. The greeting of the faithful, the peace of God shared between the people of Israel in the synagogue, in the street, in homes, wherever they are – Shalom Aleichem.

And then Jesus breathes on them the spirit, the sign of life itself, the breath of God, breathed into Adam and Eve, now breathed again into them.

Peace and breath given by the Word of God.

The Word who was there in the beginning, speaking all of creation into existence.

The Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

The Word who rose from the dead on the 3rd day, transforming the life of creation itself, detaching us from death.

And now the Word whose breath came upon the disciples, and 7 weeks later, whose breath and fire drove the disciples out into the streets to proclaim the good news to all nations.

The Good News of resurrected life found in the Word of life.

This Word brought the disciples to the Pentecost moment.

But Pentecost, this story central our identity as church, is not the destination.

Pentecost was not and is not the new thing.

Even as this community of disciples had gone from following Jesus for 3 years, to the experiences of Holy Week, and the re-orientation of Easter and resurrection, even as Jesus prepared them to be the new Easter community…

Pentecost was not the destination. Pentecost was temporary, a transitional space, a moment of disconnection. It was unlike anything they had experienced before, nothing like offering sacrifice in the temple, nothing like learning the Torah in the synagogue.

And Pentecost, big spirit filled gatherings, full of converts hearing the good news and being baptized… is neither what this Easter community would become.

Pentecost is a moment of disruption and disconnection. The moment that separated the disciples from the baggage they carried from before. The desire for the return of the Kingdom of Israel that they were still asking for just last week. From their desire for power and control, from their desire to shape and contort the spirit into their image.

Pentecost instead was making them leave the old things, the old ways behind.

And soon the early church became small communities of faith spread throughout the Empire, communities of 15 or 25 or 40 gathering around the Word and the shared meal of the Eucharist.

And yet through all of it, the thread that connected this new Easter community to the faith that birthed them, to the ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, to Pentecost and then to the early church… the thread that connected them was the Word.

The Word of God speaking from the beginning of time and still speaking to them now.

And just as this pandemic world is unfamiliar to us and we don’t know where we are going, it is plain to see the we are living in our own Pentecost moment. The Spirit is not necessarily showing us the new thing that we are about to become, Pandemic church is not our new future.

Instead, the spirit is stripping us of our baggage.

Stripping us our of attachment to the old ways that we believed being faithful was all about. Of our attachment to culture and traditions that may not be helping us anymore, stripping us of our attitudes and assumptions that contribute to prejudice, racism and white supremacy that allow for a world where Black Indigenous People of Colour can be killed in broad daylight with almost no consequence, even as they cry out, “I can’t breathe.”

Stripping us of all the things that we thought we so important about being church, with the hopes that we will discern again what is essential.

Yet, Pentecost is not our destination.

This moment is one of transition for us too, the way are as community in this pandemic world is not the new way are going to be forever.

But as we await the new thing that we will become, Jesus is still speaking peace to us.

Speaking peace in our homes, behind our locked doors, tying us to the thread of the Word that has been with us all along the way.

The Word that centred the Church from before the time it was the Church.

The Word that birthed faith in us, in well-traditioned church communities that knew how to be church in their time.

The Word whose resurrection and Easter story has been gathering us for generations, and will continue to gather us, even if it is in new ways.

The Word who breathes the spirit in us, even in our socially distanced Easter, even in our homes at Pentecost.

This Word is the constant all the way through, while the fires of Pentecost seem to be burning the rest of the world down around us.

This is Pandemic of 2020 is our Pentecost moment when we know everything is changing while we still don’t know what we are changing into.

But Pentecost this year is also the reminder that the Word of God has not left us, nor sent us into this new word alone.

Instead Jesus is coming again into our midst, speaking Peace to us, bringing us that familiar wind of the spirit, that familiar Word that gives us life.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

There Is No Going Back To Normal Or the Glory Days – This is the Beginning

May 24, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker 3 Comments

GOSPEL: John 17:1-11
1After Jesus had spoken these words [to his disciples], he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you… 11And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (Read the whole passage)

Today, we arrive at the seventh and final Sunday in the season of Easter. Easter 2020 must be, without a doubt, the most memorable Easter in our memories. “We are living through history” has been an oft’ repeated phrase of the pandemic era. And our Easter journey as people of faith has not been that far off from our lived reality. Hiding out in locked rooms for fear of the outside world is an essential Easter experience. Having no frame of reference, no experienced story to tell that makes sense of our new world is an essential Easter experience. And being prepared as disciples of Jesus for an unknown future is an essential Easter experience.

As we prepare to the flip the page on Easter with Pentecost Sunday next week, we slide between Easter realities. In John’s gospel we slide back to Holy Week where Jesus prays for his followers just as he is about to go the cross. In Acts, we hear Jesus and the disciples having a conversation about what happens next to this fledging Easter community.

The disciples come to Jesus with a request to go back, to return the Kingdom of Israel. To a specific dream of the“glory days.” A vision that requires a deep dive into the history of Israel. A specific moment in time, after Moses, after the promise land, beginning with King David but before foreign nations began threatening their borders and before they were exiled and occupied by the Romans. And of course not during the reign of one of the bad or mediocre Kings, but one of the greats! Of course they forget that even during the best of times, God was still sending prophets into their midst telling them to repent and get their act together.

After all the disciples had seen, from following the call of Jesus from their fishing boats to witnessing the resurrected Christ appear behind locked doors, and their burning question is “are we going back?”

Sound at all familiar?

If you have spent any time reading, watching or listening to the news, you know that the world is wondering when things are going to reopen: from sports to shopping to public spaces – including places of worship. In fact, in many cases, Christians have been at the forefront of the demand to for political and public health leaders to loosen restrictions on gatherings.

And you would think of all the people demanding that things go back to the way they used to be, we would know better.

Because we have been longing to go back to what we remember as the glory days, long before this pandemic hit the world. But of course, nailing down what we think we want to go back to is not as easy or straightforward as we think. It was only a matter of weeks ago that we were concerned with declining resources and aging populations and shrinking congregations. Is that what we want to return to? Or is there a more specific place we want to go backwards towards? Do we want to go back to the days of church buildings full of worshippers and bursting Sunday Schools? To a time when women, people of colour and LGBTQ2SIA+ people were prevented from holding positions of leadership in the church? To the time when many churches were homogenous cultural enclaves? To the time when pastors were paid in the chickens and made pastoral visits in order to shame members into handing over their offering?

Our desire may be to go back to the good old days, but which good old days might be hard to answer.

It is normal to lament what was. Especially when we don’t know what is or what will be. But we have to admit it is strange to long for something that most of us can agree wasn’t that good… something that, if we’re really being honest needed change?

So when the disciples ask their question, Jesus not so gently tells the disciples that they have no clue what is coming next for them, and it isn’t their job to know. That is up to the Father. Instead they are just along for the ride, they are simply witnesses to the activity and plans of God in the world.

The disciples had no clue that they were about to preach the gospel in all kinds of languages to all kinds of people baptizing them by the thousands. Nor did they know that most of the early church communities would small groups of 12 or 25 people spread throughout the Roman Empire and would be ministered to by a former Pharisee and murderer of Christians who liked to write letters. They did not know their little group of followers would spawn generations upon generations of faith communities proclaiming the gospel to all the ends of the earth.

They had no idea what their path would be as Jesus ascended to the Father.

Yet as John describes to us, Jesus knows that his followers don’t have a clue what is in store for them. They are dreaming of the return of rose-coloured glory days, of going back to some imagined time of greatness that is certainly better in their imaginations than the real thing.

They cannot help but look back with nostalgia and hope for the glory days again.

And yet as Jesus prays, he names the ways in which his disciples belong to each other, that their life together is a reflection of Christ, peek into the Trinity, the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All along Jesus has been stitching this rag tag group together, shaping and moulding them for the next phase, the next chapter. Transforming them into this newly birthed community of the gospel. A community defined by the life of Christ, a community tied into the very death and resurrection of the One sent to save.

That even as they have no idea where they are about to end up, Jesus has been preparing them to be what God needs them to be.

A community of faith,
of imperfect and flawed people
who may not know where they are going,
but who proclaim that the risen Christ
is their way, their life and their truth.
That the cross and empty tomb have changed them
and all creation
for the kingdom that has God envisioned.

And so here today, what does this mean for us?

We who long to return to normal, even as we begin to recognize that life as we knew it will not, cannot to be the same as it was. We come to the end of Easter, in the midst of this time of global uncertainty longing for comfort of the past.

And we too are just as clueless about what comes next for us as the disciples were. No matter our desire to go back to normal, to go back to the glory days, to restore the kingdoms of our imaginings… there is no going back. And more importantly, we aren’t the one steering the ship anyways.

Yet, Jesus’ reminds us today, with Pentecost on the horizon, that our future is known by God. And that we too are being prepared for what comes next for us.

That Jesus is sticking us together into One Body,
preparing us yet again to be new communities of faith,
birthed into the story of Christ’s death and resurrection.
That the cross and empty tomb redefine us,
even in a world of declining churches,
even in a world of pandemic closures…
God is transforming us into the very body
that will proclaim the Good News to the world,
through whom God will proclaim
forgiveness of sins and salvation in the waters,
in whom God feeds the world with God’s own Body – the Body of Christ given for us.

And so yes on this 7th Sunday of the most memorable Easter we have known, we are reminded again that God has the regular habit of setting us off in new directions when we least expect it. And that the destination is not for us to know, nor what things will look like when we get there. But only that God is the one leading us, that we belong to one another in Christ and that the sprit goes with us. And that Christ has been preparing us for this moment long before we even had a clue.

The season of Easter may be coming to an end…

but Christ promises us that this new resurrected life in this Easter community is only beginning.

Amen.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Imagining The Destination and Not Knowing the Way

May 10, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

GOSPEL: John 14:1-14
Jesus said to the disciples:] 1“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4And you know the way to the place where I am going.” 5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Today we enter into the second half of the season of Easter. We had been staying still, soaking in the the moment of resurrection, the stories of Easter beginning with the women at the tomb, then the disciples hiding away in the locked room, and then the two walking down the road to Emmaus. Coming back to that resurrection day because of its singular significance for us as a touchstone of faith.

But then last Sunday we heard about the Good Shepherd, the Christ who leads us through the dark valleys, who shows us the way to the other side of the dangers that await us in this world, and it wasn’t just a comforting image to think about. Good Shepherd Sunday moved us from the immediacy of the first Easter morning and the immediacy of our pandemic lockdown, moves us onto the next step of this collective journey were are on as citizens of a pandemic world and as followers of Jesus.

This middle Sunday of the Easter Season moved us along the story, and put us into the second half of the Easter Season… to the part of the story of faith about becoming an Easter community and Easter people… it sounds great, but just like for the disciples, it is also scary for us.

Today, we hear a familiar passage from John, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…” This conversation between Jesus and his disciples comes to us from Maundy Thursday. Jesus has already raised Lazarus from the dead, and rode into Jerusalem hailed as a conquering Messiah. This conversation is first heard in moments before Jesus is eating the Last Supper with his disciples and friends. He is about to be arrested, put on trial and sentenced to death. This conversation happens in the shadow of the cross and just around the corner from the resurrection.

And yet, Thomas (who will later demand to see the resurrected Jesus for himself) is wanting more information. He remembers following Jesus for the past 3 years, not really knowing where Jesus was going or what surprises might befall them, where the end goal might be. He is certain that he and the others won’t find their way on their own.

Philip then comes out with it, he wants Jesus to show them the way, to fast-forward to the end and to show his followers the Father.

The disciples, even after all they have seen of Jesus, all the miracles and healing, the exorcism and his preaching… they still have no idea where Jesus headed. They don’t know what Jesus is up to. They don’t know where they are headed, and they certainly don’t know how to get there.

And yet the disciples seem to keep imagining the end goal, the destination, the point of arrival. They watched Jesus being greeted by hungry crowds wherever they traveled and they imagined celebrity. They watched Jesus debate and argue and put the religious authorities in their places, and they imagined power and influence. They see Jesus ride into Jerusalem like a king, and they imagine a throne room, a general commanding armies to victory.

This whole time, the disciples have been thinking of the destination, imagining that possibilities of what this journey following Jesus bring them to, reward them with, change their fortunes to.

This coming Friday, it will be 2 months since we last gathered in person for worship. Back then we were hopeful of being back together by Easter Sunday. How naive we were. We are now 5 Sundays on from Easter, and even with lots of conversation in the news and on social media about re-opening our world, we know that things aren’t just going back to the way they were before. The way ahead is mostly unclear with a lot of ideas and possibilities, but little certainty. Might we be still be tuning into the worship on Facebook for Canada Day? Will our Back to Church BBQ be a zoom gathering? Will will be lighting virtual candles for All Saints? Will Christmas Eve worship involve singing silent night from our respective front porches (if it isn’t too cold)?

We have come into a time where making plans is nearly impossible and every decision we took for granted before is now a calculation about risk and need, about timing and importance. Knowing what will happen and what will be possible for us next week or next month is simply beyond us.

And so we stumble along, day to day, hour to hour, waiting for clarity and a path forward.

But more importantly, we hold onto some idea of a destination. We imagine the world as it used to be, or perhaps an even better version than that. We want to arrive at the moment when public gatherings and sharing public space are normal, unthinking activities again: Haircuts, grocery shopping, visits to the dentist, going to the movies, chats at the office water-cooler, dinner out with friends, backyard Barbecues with neighbours, airline flights where the biggest hassles are crying babies and people who insist in putting their seat back into your knees. And of course we imagine gathering together as a community of faith, greeting one another with handshakes and hugs, singing together again, sharing the peace, gathering at the table of the Lord, sharing coffee and cake after worship.

“Jesus, we don’t know where this is going, how can we know the way?”

“Just show us the vision and we will be satisfied.”

It isn’t surprising that this text is so often used at funerals. There is comfort in our visions of the destination. The great house where there is a room for us, the vision of our loved ones being welcomed into eternity is something to hold onto in the midst of crisis and grief.

Yet, as Jesus speaks over the Last Supper to his disciples about the dwelling place of God with many rooms, he isn’t wanting us to imagine a giant mansion in the sky. In fact, it isn’t about the destination of our imagining at all.

Where Jesus is going is to the cross. And the dwelling place of many rooms is not so much a mansion, but the opening up of creation itself… the opening up of us ourselves. The dwelling place of God will now be among mortals we hear at Christmas and incarnation. It fulfilled at Easter and in the resurrection. The creation that chose selfishness and therefore death in the fall, is about to be reunited with the creator who is making room within Godself. The creation that was once closed to new life will now be the home of God, and we will be welcome into the life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

And the way to get there is not to imagine the destination… But rather through the One who is the Way, the One who shows us the Father, the One who will face separation and isolation, who will go over the brink of sin and death… this One…

This Christ is our Way.

This Christ our Truth.

This Christ is our Life.

This One is where we are going, this One brings us into God’s way.

As the disciples moved on from the day of the empty tomb, they moved into a new Easter world. A world where the Good News of Christ’s death and resurrection defined their community, defined their purpose, and defined their lives. They moved into a world where they didn’t always know what might be next for them, yet where God had opened God’s new dwelling, God’s welcome right there, wherever they were.

And as we wonder what is next for us and when we might get to our imagined destination, Jesus reminds us that God has always been our way.

That the place that Jesus has always been going to has been to us.

Meeting us in the Word and showing us the Father.

Welcoming us into the dwelling place of God in the waters of baptism.

Showing us the way at the table of the Lord, and transforming us into the Body of Christ.

Sure we don’t know when we will get back to work, or school, or shopping malls, or football games. And we don’t know when we might welcome our family and friends again into our homes and to our dinner tables….

But as the Body of Christ we have always been going to the same place… always to New Life in God.

And how do we get here, what is our way?

Today Jesus reminds us again, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Unexpected Shepherds and the Good Shepherd

May 3, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

GOSPEL: John 10:1-10
Jesus said:] 1“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out… (Read the whole passage)

The early church understood the 7 week season of Easter to be like one great day of celebration. Time kind of gets mushy in Easter, unlike other seasons of the church year where we are so often counting the weeks as they go by. And while many comparisons to our pandemic isolation have been to the season of Lent, there have been also similarities to Easter. Disciples hiding out in upper rooms, sticking to small groups and avoiding crowds, time becoming mushy and hard to keep track of. We just might be living the most authentic Easter season of our lives.

Today, we are four weeks into the season of Easter, nearly a month since first hearing about the women going to the tomb early on the first day of the week. And yet, today is the first time that we are moving on from that first day. We divert somewhat to familiar images of the pastoral Jesus. Psalm 23, and John 10. Shepherds and sheep. Comforting images of the love and care of God, poured out for us.

The church that I grew up in had a stained glass window of Jesus the Good Shepherd, a blonde hair blued-eyed Shepherd lovingly gazing at the lamb he is holding in his arms. An imagine imprinted on my mind, that often surfaces on this fourth Sunday of Easter, or when I hear psalm 23.

And there is a certain amount of comfort and safety that we imagine into the image of the Good Shepherd, especially in times of struggle and hardship… such as in this moment in time.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us another comforting image of the Shepherd, who is known by the sheep. The Shepherd who lays down as the gate to the pen to provide protection for the sheep.

Yet, Jesus isn’t talking his disciples or the hungry crowds about the Shepherd, but rather the Pharisees. The Pharisees who have just criticized him for healing the Blind man… a story that we heard only a few weeks in Lent. Jesus is speaking to those who bear responsibility for caring for the sheep, caring for the community. To the religious and community leaders who are balking at any change to the social order, even if it comes in the form of healing a blind beggar in their midst.

As Jesus describes the familiar voice of the shepherd, he also describes the voice and motives of the thieves, bandits and strangers… labels he is applying to the religious leaders. Jesus suggests that not everyone charged with the care of the community is tending to that charge as they should. They are instead more concerned with the status quo, with keeping the power and control in their own hands and out of the hands of others…. Whether it is Jesus wantonly offering God’s love and care, or a blind man becoming self-sufficient. These are voices and leaders who are calling the sheep into danger for their own gain, their own selfish purposes.

Does this sound at all familiar?

As we enter into week 8 of lockdown and staying at home, the calls to #OpenforBusiness are starting to get louder and louder. Here in Manitoba, we are beginning the slow yet still ambitious move of opening up some businesses tomorrow – hair cuts and restaurant patios and select other businesses will be aloud to open. Even as public health officers tell us it is isn’t exactly safe yet.

This pandemic moment has taught us a lot about the voices that we listen to, the voices who call us sheep to follow. And what is clear is that there are those in our world too, charged with caring for our communities who might not have our best interests in mind.

And while Jesus declares that the sheep know the voice of the Shepherd, I am not so sure that it is easy for us to recognize. In fact, perhaps what is clear is that most of the voices out there are seeking something from us other than our wellbeing. Our votes, our dollars, our consumption, our attention, our productivity and labour… even our willingness to be sacrificed for the sake of profit and maintaining social order. And all with promises fo green pastures, still waters, prepared tables, and cups running over.

Knowing the shepherd’s voice is one thing, hearing the shepherd’s voice at all is another. And if the Pandemic has made something clear, it’s that shepherds and their voices are not heard as often as they should be.

So as Jesus declares that the sheep know the shepherd’s voice, we might be asking, do we really know it?

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We always hear Psalm 23 on Good Shepherd Sunday, but there is of course a reason far more common for us to hear this most familiar of psalms.

Over the years, as I have presided at many funerals, I have often read Psalm 23 as I lead mourners into worship. Pall bearers and casket, followed by grieving family. And in that moment, we enact that what the familiar psalm describes. We walk together into the valley of the shadow of death.

You see the Good Shepherd does not promise us that everything is green pastures, still waters, and abundant tables and cups. Rather, the Good Shepherd is honest about the world, about the dangers and risks. The Good Shepherd tells us that the there are dark valleys ahead, there is the shadow of death in store. And there is no going back, no staying in the green pastures. There is only forward into our future.

However, the Good Shepherd also promises to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death.

Jesus promises that the sheep know the Shepherd’s voice not because the sheep are good sheep, but because the Shepherd is a Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd whose only concern is the well being and care of the sheep. The Good Shepherd who knows the sheep. The Good Shepherd who gathers and collects the confused and lost sheep, wherever we are going – green pastures or dark valleys.

And as we navigate this shadow valley of pandemic, there have been voices emerging from the fray, voices whose only concern has been our health and well being. Shepherds who didn’t know they were shepherds only a few months ago.

Often in this pandemic the voices of Chief Public Health Officers have cut through the fray of the voices out there calling us to follow. And these unexpected shepherds have surprised us by being singularly focused on our health and well-being… voices that are seldom heard among the leaders of our world. Shepherds that tell us the truth, that do not promise all green pastures and still waters, but who warn of the valley of the shadows of death ahead.

But Shepherd voices who also promise to lead us through.

To lead us through the dark valleys to whatever lies in wait for us on the other side.

To go with us all together.

And this promise is of course the promise of the Good Shepherd.

In this pandemic moment, our whole world feels as though it is gathered at the back of a church about to walk into the dark valley. Yet today, the Good Shepherd promises that we do not go alone, that the Good Shepherd will see us through, that the shadows of death will not be the end of our story, that there is life on the other side.

This is the only voice, the only promise that really matters.

And so on this fourth Sunday of Easter that on the surface it feels like we have moved on from Easter morning, the promise of the Good Shepherd takes us right back to the empty tomb, right back to glimpse of the other side of the shadow of death.

The Good Shepherd comes to us in the middle of Easter because the Good Shepherd is an Easter Shepherd, a shepherd whose voice knows the sheep, whose voices knows us and knows what we need, a shepherd who has been through the valley of the shadow of death and promises us see us through, to the other side and into New Life.