Tag Archives: epiphany

To whom do we belong

February 16, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

GOSPEL: Matthew 5:21-37

[Jesus said to the disciples:] 21“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. (Read the whole passage)

Ouch, that was a bit rough. Jesus isn’t taking it easy on us. The sermon on the mount that began so gently with “blessed are the poor in spirit,” sure seems to take a turn towards some hard truths today. It is our 3rd week in a row of listening to that familiar sermon from Jesus, and the tone has changed a lot from when we began.

We are on the final green Sunday before we turn towards Transfiguration, Ash Wednesday and Lent. And this season following the Epiphany, the day on which the magi came to honour the Christ-child feels like it was lifetime ago. We have since then watched a grown up Jesus get baptized in the Jordan, meet his first disciples and call them from their fishing boats and now preach this 3 weeks long sermon on the mount.

And this list of things that Jesus talks about today is not so friendly: Murder, judgment, hell, adultery, lust, divorce, sin and swearing falsely. A bunch of things that would make for a really easy opportunity to preach a hell-fire and brimstone, turn-or-burn kind of sermon. You know, one of those sermon that your grandma used you warn you about hearing from the pastor. And to be sure, this part of the sermon on the mount has been used for that kind of preaching, and used to condemn and shame people.

Yet, we haven’t forgotten was Jesus was talking about for the past couple of weeks, the beatitudes followed by salt and light – things that are not so easy to turn into condemnation. It seems strange that within the same sermon, Jesus would go from promising God’s blessing for the poor in spirit, the mourning and meek, the peacemakers and persecuted to condemning people who don’t measure up.

And so of course, we know that this isn’t really about the threat of hell and condemnation that it appears to be on the surface.

So what is Jesus getting at?

After three weeks in the sermon on the mount, there is a theme beginning to emerge in Jesus’ preaching. A theme that only make sense when we unpack the world of the crowds sitting on the mountain listening to what Jesus had to say.

For the people of Israel, religion was a complicated system of keeping righteous, keeping in God’s good books. Follow the law, the laws handed on by Moses to the people escaping slavery in Egypt and wandering in the desert, and you will be righteous. And you will know you are righteous because you will be blessed. Blessed with health, wealth and status. You will be what God has deemed us to be, salty salt, light shining for all to see.

Except that most people weren’t blessed, most people weren’t salty sal or bright shining lights. Most people couldn’t keep the laws and remain righteous.

And so these unrighteous, unclean crowds had to find hope in other places. Hope in the desert listening to hermit preachers like John the Baptist. Hope on the mountainside listening to wandering rabbis like this Jesus of Nazareth.

And right off the bat, Jesus undercuts this system of keeping righteous. Blessed are poor in spirit, the meek and the mourning, the peacemakers and the persecuted. The blessings that you thought were signs of righteous are not in fact blessings — God’s presence is with the people you least expect.

And don’t strive for holiness and righteousness, strive to be what God called you to. If God has you to be salt, you are salt. If God has made you to be light, you are light.

Finally today, Jesus gets into the nitty gritty of the 10 commandments, the very core of the rules that if followed will lead to righteousness. And Jesus begins turning them on their heads too. These commandments aren’t checkboxes that if filled gain entry into heaven. Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t lie or bear false witness or steal. Simply not killing, or cheating or not telling an untruth or not slandering your neighbour is not enough. Each step of the way, Jesus elaborates and explains that these commands are also about loving our neighbour. About maintaining good relationships and caring for the people around us, not just limits on certain behaviours.

And when added up, Jesus’ message is: You are not as righteous or unrighteous as you thought, you are not as holy and perfect are you thought, and you haven’t kept the law as you thought. But more importantly, you are not earning your own salvation like you thought.

Of course, things are little different for us in our world. We don’t operate by quite such a rigid and structured a system as the people of Israel. Salvation and righteousness aren’t understood in such a clear cut path in our world.

In fact, knowing whether or not we are righteous really isn’t the right question for us as it was for the people sitting on the mountain listening to Jesus preach. For us, the question is more a matter of how… how do we attain righteousness and salvation. And our world has a plethora of answers. If you follow the rules, if you pray hard enough, if you are a good person, if you are enlightened enough, if you buy the next magic solution that someone is selling, if you are secure, protected and powerful enough… You too can be righteous and saved. All for one low cost, all for following the latest trend or fad, all for a little easy work in 20 minutes a day, all for following the simple steps, all for having the right relationships and network.

Righteousness and salvation in our world is about hearing the right voice in the multitude of voices vying for our attention and our dollar, about hearing the right voice long enough to hand over something of enough value to earn our salvation.

Except we know that this is all fake news and false hope too.

And just like the rigid system of rules that Jesus is undermining on the mountain, he is also undermining the multitude of voices in our world that tell us they know the secret to being saved.

Even if our questions are different from the people of Israel, our problem is the same. We are trying to earn our own salvation, trying to be righteous by our own efforts.

It is in the letter to the Corinthians where St. Paul states clearly the issue that Jesus is coming around to.

To whom do we belong? To Paul or Apollos? Will following this guy or that guy, these rules or those rules, this path or path earn you salvation?

No.

No, following neither will make us righteous.

To whom do we belong?

For we are God’s servants working together, you are God’s field, God’s building.

For we are God’s servants

For we are God’s.

To people wondering if they are saved, if they have done enough rule following Jesus says, Don’t worry about that. You belong to God.

To people wondering how to be saved, if we have found the right path, chosen the right thing, Jesus says, Don’t worry about that. You belong to God.

You belong to God.

And it is God who decides if you are blessed, God who comes and searches out the poor in spirit, the meek, the mourning, the merciful, the peacemakers, the persecuted

And it is God who makes you right. God who makes you salty if you are salt, God who makes you shine if you are light.

And it is God who saves, God who makes you righteous. So don’t follow the rules because they make you right with God, but because your neighbour needs your love and care.

God is the one earning our salvation. This is what Jesus has been getting at for 3 weeks.

And this is what Jesus is preparing us to keep at the forefront as we move towards Transfiguration and Lent.

We belong to God, the One who makes us righteous, the One who saves us.

We don’t achieve it ourselves. We don’t find the right path or follow the right rules. We don’t save ourselves.

God does the saving work. And God does it in the one preaching the sermon on the mount, salvation comes to us in the Christ.

You don’t belong to Paul or Apollos. You don’t belong to yourselves.

You belong to God in Christ, the one making you righteous in all the unexpected places, the one making you alive when all there seems to be death.

The One who will meet us on the mountaintop, the One who goes with us into the valley, the One who will be nailed to a cross, and One who is raised from the dead.

You belong to that Christ, you are made righteous and saved by that Christ, and freed to love your neighbour, who is also loved by Christ.

And so on this day, at this end of the sermon on the mount, on the precipice of Lent…

Jesus reminds us one last time… it is not how we follow the rules or how blessed we think we are or how much good we do…

But rather is about to whom we belong.

And we are servants belonging to God, brought to new life in Christ.

Sermon

I will MAKE you fish for people

January 26, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

Matthew 4:12-23

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea– for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (read the whole passage)

As modern Christians, there are a few topics that we often choose not to bring up in polite company. Religion and Politics are always named as risky topics of conversation. But even more taboo and controversial are issues of human sexuality. And perhaps the most taboo topic of all — money, is usually only reserved for very serious and sombre moments of discussion. But today, we broach another issue, one that can make us as uncomfortable as religion, politics, sex or money. We come to the issue of Christian calling, specifically evangelism. What is our role in spreading the Kingdom of God? How many souls must we bring to Christ? How many doors must we knock on? How many bible verses do we need to memorize?

(Are you nervous yet?)

There are many reasons that we come and worship Sunday morning. Some might say they like the music, others the teaching, still others might say the morals and values, or the community and friends, or it is simply somewhere to be Sunday morning. But probably none of us would say that the reason we come is that we are given the job of telling others about Jesus.

And if sharing our faith with the world, wasn’t part of this whole church thing, there might be a few more bodies in our pews. If faith was only about following the rules like no stealing or swearing or killing, the promise of heaven might be drawing more people in.

But as we discover, being a Christian, or following Jesus is not really just about following the rules. Instead we discover, along the disciples, that following Jesus is full of surprises.

Peter and Andrew, James and John were all fishermen. But not the hobbyist kind of fisherman. This is not the quaint and serene fishing that is done on a lake or pond with a single fishing rod, nor weekend warriors sitting in ice fishing huts. This is commercial fishing. Fishing in order to make a living.

As these four soon to be disciples set out to fish today, they would be focused on the job at hand. They would know how many fish they need to catch to feed their families, to maintain their boats and repair their nets. This kind of fishing is about risk and reward. And as they prepare for another day of long and hard work, Jesus comes walking down the beach. He simply shows up and calls out from the shore. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people”.

It is laughable. It is insanity. Can any of us truly imagine jumping off the boat and immediately giving up everything to follow Jesus? Certainly not.

Here is this wandering carpenter turned preacher calling gainfully employed men away from their lives and families. Maybe fishing isn’t the most glamorous job, but it puts food on the table and it provides a living. It is safety and security. Have you ever seen a tractor sitting abandoned in the middle of a field during harvest with no one to drive it, or a classroom full of school children in the middle of the year, with no teacher or a half cooked meal in a restaurant waiting to be finished and served but no cook to complete the job? Jumping off the boat is simply not done in our world, and in reality that is not our style of faith. No surprise work-place visits from Jesus, thank you very much. We want our faith to be comfortable, and manageable. Nothing too extreme, especially if it involves giving up security or risking looking foolish.

But the disciples may have seen things differently. The insanity and foolishness of Jesus’s call from the shore may not have been in jumping off the boat. Throughout the Gospels, people often identified Jesus as a Rabbi. And it wasn’t everyday that a Rabbi wandered by and asked to be followed. To the disciples, it might have been like a rock star rolling up in a tour bus and asking for a guitar player, or a politician knocking on the door looking for a campaign manager, or that phone call that every red blooded Canadian boy is waiting for — that call from the local NHL team looking for a player to skate in a pinch.

The insanity and the foolishness of Jesus’ call is truly about something more than our first reaction to this story, of our hesitation at dropping everything and following Jesus.

The disciples are willing to follow because they should have never been picked in the first place. Any other Rabbi would only choose the best of the best. The best student, the best debater, the disciples who had memorized the Torah, the Talmud and the Mishnah. But these 4 fisherman are not the best students. While the best candidates for discipleship have been studying the faith, these men have been studying the art of fishing.

The insanity isn’t jumping off the boat, the insanity is who Jesus picks to be disciples. Jesus picks the least likely, the ones without the skills or talents that a normal Rabbi would be looking for. And it forces us to ask that deeper question. Not the question of whether we would drop everything and follow, but the question of “Is God really calling me?” The craziness of leaving everything behind shields us from the truth. It shields us from admitting to ourselves and to the world, that if God were to come knocking and calling out to us, that we would have nothing to offer. “What can I say about God? Won’t my family and my neighbours think I am crazy? Who am I to pretend that I have any words worth hearing?”.

But we are who God chooses. We are the ones into whose lives Jesus walks. We are the ones who are called and it is not because we have something to give or to offer as disciples. We are picked because God is the one doing the calling, no application forms, no pre-requisites, no interviews.

This is the way God works in the world.The ideas and possibilities that we imagine as successful — God avoids and ignores. The ideas and possibilities for which we can only see failure — God uses those to work in the world.

God gives up power to be born as a baby in order to save the world.

God preaches to and teaches crowds who do not listen and disciples who do not understand in order to show us the way.

God suffers and dies on cross in order to bring New Life and a New Creation into being.

God calls the least likely and most ill equipped to be proclaimers of the Good News.

“Follow me, and I will make you fish for people”.

It is not a command to knock on doors, or to memorize the bible or convert our neighbour. When Jesus calls the disciples, and when Jesus calls us, it is a declaration of who we are — we are God’s chosen. Jesus chooses us — no questions asked. Jesus picks us without reservation, without hesitation. Jesus grabs hold of us whether we have the skills, or gifts or talents or not.

And then Jesus promises that he will make us fish for people. Jesus will not teach us, not show us, not suggest to us.

Jesus will Make us.

That is the insanity.

We have been chosen to follow Jesus. Chosen to be the ones that God works in and through. How and when will this happen? That is up to God. That is part of the promise. Jesus will do the making, we are the ones simply being made, shaped and formed.

And maybe that is the scariest part of all. Maybe that is why we don’t like to talk about evangelism. Because being called by Jesus means we will jump from boat and it won’t seem crazy. Because being chosen by God means we are changed and transformed. God makes us into disciples, followers, into fishers for people.

Sermon

What are we looking for from Jesus?

January 19, 2020 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

John 1:29-42

…When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” (Read the whole passage)

John the Baptist just won’t go away. He showed up for a couple weeks in Advent, took a break over Christmas and then showed back up last week. John, is here today and he receives a brief mention next week too. And the whole time, John is pointing to Jesus, and proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. John steals the show, with his flowery words and big sermons.

With all John’s bombast and puffery today, with his front and centre kind of attitude, Jesus’ subtle actions pass by hardly being noticed. What John rambles on and on about, Jesus expresses in only a few words and it all begins with a strange and humorous conversations with the disciples.

As Jesus walks by John and John’s disciples, John reminds all who can hear, that this is the Lamb of God, the Messiah. And two of John’s disciples decide to check Jesus out, presumably they are looking to see what the fuss is. Jesus notices their interest. So he stops to ask them, “What are you looking for?” It is an open ended question.

Maybe the disciples simply want to know what all the fuss is about or to see a show in case Jesus decides to perform a miracle. Or maybe this question has deeper meaning.

“What are you looking for?”

Perhaps we should consider the asker. Jesus, the one whom John has proclaimed to be the Messiah, the Lamb of God is asking. Jesus, the one who we believe to be God, the second person of the Trinity is asking. And where one person is, so the other two are also. So the God and King of the universe, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is asking, “What are you looking for?”

So, what is there to answer? What would you say? Happiness and Wealth? Love and family? A Long life? Peace in a violent and sinful world? Food for starving children? Cures for cancer, AIDS, Leprosy, yellow fever and heart disease? An upgrade on your room in heaven?

Maybe we would ask Jesus to keep passenger planes from being shot down by countries posturing at war. Maybe we would ask Jesus to keep more people from dying of the flu in our city. Maybe at Sherwood Park we would just ask Jesus to keep people from dying.

Well, the disciples don’t ask for any thing like that. Instead they are stumped. So they mumble something, anything that comes to mind. Not a brilliant question that provides food for thought but something mundane, maybe even ridiculous. Something that if we were asked in our modern way of speaking might sound like, “So, uh, where are you staying man?”

(Pause)

St. David’s was an old church, a big beautiful stone building inside and out. Every few years, someone asked to use the building for commercial purposes. Sometimes orchestras recorded music there, a couple fashion magazines had done photo shoots, even some TV shows had filmed there. Now, a movie studio wanted to do some filming in the church. The congregation was asked to come on a Saturday to be extras, to just sit in the pews all day long with pretend worship services. Marlena and her friend Alice had been among the first to volunteer, they loved the idea of being in a movie.

The Saturday of the shoot, the two were very excited, they giggled like school girls the whole drive to the church. They didn’t know who the movie stars were, but they hoped they might see someone famous. They arrived, showed their ID to security guards, and entered the front doors. The narthex was full of the film crew, movie shoot equipment, and food tables. As they made their way through the chaos, they came up to Father Angelo and another man standing chatting by the door of the sanctuary. Alice suddenly grabbed Marlena’s arm and froze.

“That’s Brad Pitt!” she hissed. “Brad. Pitt.” she repeated.

Marlena’s jaw dropped.

Father Angelo looked over and smiled, he obviously had no idea who he was talking to.

“Marlena, Alice, what are you looking for?” he asked.

The two women stood there frozen, gawking at Brad.

Brad then smiled too, “What can I do for you?” he said.

Alice couldn’t say thing.

Marlena racked her brain for something to say

“Umm… uh… which pew will you be sitting in?”

(Pause)

We never know when that question is coming. The question that lands on our chest like a ton of bricks. Maybe we are too focused on something else to know what is really being asked, or maybe we do not want to imagine what the answer might be.

For whatever reason, the disciple’s answer Jesus’ question with their own strange question. Whether they are ashamed to admit that they have been following Jesus around to see the spectacle, or whether they really don’t know what to say to the Messiah who has asked them what they are looking for, the feeling they probably had is one we all know.

All of Advent we waited for Messiah. At Christmas we rejoiced at Messiah’s coming. In Epiphany the Messiah, the Christ, God in flesh was revealed to us. But now that Messiah is here, we don’t really know what to do with him. Like the disciples, we find it hard to grasp the magnitude of the Messiah, of Christ being with us, here and now. It is one thing to wait for the guest of honour to arrive, but is another to know what to do once the dinner party is over and the guest is still hanging around.

Even more so, it hard for us to know what to do with God in our lives. Hard to know what this faith business means on Monday morning to Saturday night. What does that mean for us? What do we say? Where do we go? How do we respond?

If John the Baptist had heard the disciples answer to Jesus’ question he might have shamed them not getting it. But that is not Jesus’ way. Instead of correcting or condemning, Jesus gives a simple answer. “Come and See”.

(Pause)

“Umm.. uh.. which pew will you sitting in?”

Marlena couldn’t believe her silly answer. She waited for the movie star to laugh at her.

Brad Pitt just smiled his trademark smile.

Father Angelo, with a twinkle in his eye, simply said,

“Come and see”

And all of sudden, Marlena and Alice felt themselves following after Father Angelo and Brad into the church, without even thinking about it.

(Pause)

Come and See.

Jesus gives an invitation that is more than invitation. Jesus grabs us and brings us close. Jesus pulls us into the story of Messiah, Jesus opens our eyes to the new thing that God is doing in our world, in our lives.

Jesus knows what the disciples are looking for. Jesus knows that they are not really wondering where he is staying, but are wondering about the Messiah.

And Jesus knows what we are looking for. That we are looking for meaning, for healing and wholeness, for answers. Jesus knows that we do not always know what to do next, that we don’t always know what to do with this God business.

Jesus’s words are not condemning or forcing. They are words that carry us. Come, I will take you and I will hold you. They are words that show us God. See, here I am with open arms, here giving all that I AM to you.

Come and See. Jesus promises us that as we journey with him, as he goes with us, that we will see the world changed.

Jesus speaks to us, speaks directly to you and me. Through our shame, through our fear, through our confusion. And Jesus comes to us, seeing us as we are. Not as the unworthy sinners that we see in ourselves, but as the beloved children of God, who Jesus the Christ has named as his own. Jesus doesn’t really need to hear our answer to the question “What are you looking for?” Jesus already knows. And more importantly, Jesus already knows who he is looking for and who he has already found.

So, Come and See.

Amen.