Tag Archives: Jesus

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Who do we say that we are? – Pastor Thoughts

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“Who do people say that I am?”

Jesus poses this question to his disciples this week in the Gospel of Mark. It marks a significant transition in Jesus’ ministry. After this moment, Jesus stops wandering around the Galilean countryside and begins more intentionally moving toward confrontation in Jerusalem which eventually lands him on the cross. 

You could argue that this moment’s narrative significance becomes what the Gospel of Mark is about. In fact, you could say that Mark’s gospel is about revealing to the reader who Jesus truly is. 

Amazingly, the essence of this question remains as puzzling today among Christians and followers of Jesus as it was to the disciples in the 1st century. It isn’t that they didn’t know, it is that they had several answers and perhaps weren’t totally certain which one was the right one. Among colleagues, versions of this question keep coming up when we gather in ministerial meetings. Who do we say Jesus is? Who are we as communities of faith? What is the difference between a church, a country club and a museum? 

Certainly, much of the current state that Christianity finds itself in today has to do with being unable to address this question in recent decades. Not that many church leaders have been shy about loudly telling people who they think Jesus is. Rather, the thing we haven’t done well is what Jesus does in the passage of Mark. He invites conversation. He opens up space for the disciples to consider the many, many answers that were swirling around them and to settle in on a response that comes with a more solid grounding. The church has not been very good at doing that, inviting conversations, making space for honest wonderings and questions, for half-baked ideas and partially formed thoughts. 

We haven’t been good at simply talking about who Jesus is. Talking about what church and faith are all about. Talking about why we keep showing up to worship, for choir practice and bible study, for council meetings and confirmation class etc… 

Who do people say that I am?

As I walked around Wittenberg this May, along with many of the other cities we travelled to, I was reminded how just omnipresent Christianity is in the fabric of European society. Large church buildings dominate cityscapes, reliefs and frescos plastering many walls, music and art with biblical imagery all around, and church bells that toll the hour day and night. We may think we have beautiful churches and cities, but they are nothing compared to centuries-old church buildings that are ubiquitous in Europe. 

One evening, we had dinner with some folks local to Wittenberg who were active members at St. Mary’s Town Church – the congregation that Martin Luther served. I asked the Wittenbergers felt tension with Lutherans from all over the world showing up and acting like their home belonged to us too. The answer surprised me: No. Most Germans know very little about Martin Luther. Most Wittenbengers only know Luther vaguely as a historical figure, if at all. Surrounded by the symbols, history and artifacts of Christianity, the church there has done no better a job at talking about who Jesus is than we have here.

In fact, our habit of not talking about the faith may have come from across the ocean (but that is a topic for another day). 

Now, I am not sure I know what the solution is to our habit of not talking about the faith and not articulating who Jesus is through conversation and wondering. Being surrounded by Christian stuff doesn’t seem to help, nor does observing more Christian holidays either. 

I don’t know the solution… except to start doing it. To start making a point of not just assuming that we know who Jesus is, or why we come to church, or why church is different than a museum or club, but to talk about it openly. 

We need to practice making space for questions and wonderings, to allow that we might be coming from different perspectives and experiences, yet arriving in the same place to follow Jesus and to do it together. 

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Learning from our past – Pastor Thoughts

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This week has been a big week for my Doctor of Ministry studies. For a good chunk of the winter, I have been working on a course on the Gospel of Mark, a lot of learning which I incorporated into my preaching (and will continue to) and into our Lenten study. I handed in the paper for that course early (something the 22 to 26-year-old me never achieved in Seminary). Our class cohort was also informed of our thesis project advisors, which is a big deal. My project advisor is the professor who will be walking with me through the development of my fully formed research question and proposal, through actual research and into the writing phase. All of that starts this fall and will take me through to the winter of 2026. So, very exciting indeed! 

This week I completed another smaller paper on the ‘Invocavit’ Sermons of Martin Luther, the most famous of his sermons during the Reformation. This paper was the first for a class where the bulk of the “class time” will happen in Germany for two weeks in May. I will be travelling on a study tour with world-renowned Luther scholar Rev. Dr. Gordon Jensen, who was also a much-beloved seminary professor of mine. We will visit Wittenberg primarily, the town where Martin Luther lived when he was doing much of his Reformation writing. We will also see several other Reformation places and other sights in East Germany. 

We will get to do things like see (and maybe hold) Martin Luther’s very own Bible, see the church he preached in, and the university he taught at. We will also go to Leipzig to see one of the places where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked.  It is all very exciting for this history nerd. 

As I was preparing the first paper for this class, I was surprised (even after studying Luther in seminary) to learn about Luther’s approach to dealing with change. His ‘Invocavit’ sermons were eight sermons he preached in eight days to the people of Wittenberg after months of unrest and conflict over how to go about making changes together to their lives of faith. They were arguing over how to worship and what church rules they ought to follow. 

It all sounded so very familiar. We are still negotiating and sometimes arguing over very similar things today. Ironically, it also sounds like what we will read in The Book of Acts about the early Church as the new Christians sorted out how they would be a community, too. 

Luther’s message to the people of Wittenberg amid all the chaos was to remain committed to the Gospel. Like the folk then, we have challenges and difficult waters to navigate ahead. Also like the folk then, I think Luther’s message applies to us. Whatever challenges come, we too, are called to remember the Gospel, that the whole reason we are doing all this church stuff, the reason we are being a community together, is because of our call to proclaim the Gospel to one another, to our siblings in faith and to our neighbours and the world around us.

It sounds like a good lesson to learn from our own history. 

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Easter Surprises – Pastor Thoughts

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I know that Easter Sunday is supposed to be a day of surprise; the empty tomb is a reality that changes everything. But I didn’t expect the Easter surprise I woke up to on Easter Sunday morning this year. 

Knowing that this is the time of year when snow mould and spring allergies are beginning and that colds and cases of flu are going around, it should not have been surprising that I tested positive for COVID on Sunday morning. 

So, thank you to Bishop Jason for stepping in to preach and preside at the last minute. 

Also thankfully, my course of illness hasn’t been that bad, with the primary symptoms being very low energy and a very runny rose. 

So, my first week of Easter has been spent in the basement of our house, isolating from my family, working when I can, and napping when I am tired. 

While certainly COVID isolation isn’t the same as an experience of the empty tomb and the Resurrection, it does occur to me that there are some similarities to that of disciples. 

As I stared down at my positive test result at about 7:30 on Sunday morning, it was hard to process what I was seeing. Part of me didn’t want to believe it and part of me knew that all the plans I had made for that day and the days ahead were about to come crashing down. Still, it took me time to sort out what was going on in my own mind and then to begin to respond outwardly. I needed my wife to come and see the test, as well to confirm what I was seeing. 

In a similar way, with the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples and then again to Thomas, it is clear that they did not know how to process the news of the empty tomb either. I have been hiding in my basement; they hid in the upper room. 

Thankfully, my COVID will probably go away soon enough. In contrast, the Easter morning surprise of the disciples changed them all for the rest of their lives. It is easy to overlook that part of the story. As we sing and praise with Alleluias, we can miss the mind-blowing experience of seeing something totally unexpected (even if Jesus regularly told his disciples he would rise on the third day).

That empty tomb moment changed everything for the women who went to bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body. Jesus appearing in the upper room changed everything for the scared disciples. From the moment of not quite being sure what they were seeing, Jesus’ Resurrection meant that all other plans, all the thoughts and sense of the future that anyone had had just a moment before,  came crashing down. 

The world became an Easter world in the blink of an eye and those who first saw the tomb and then witnessed the risen Christ firsthand were now responsible to live new lives because of it. 

Though we have known our whole lives that the Resurrection happened over two thousand years ago, the transformation of our world and our lives is still going on. Jesus is still ushering us into ways of being and living this Easter, too.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

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?

Theology & Culture

The case for Palm Sunday of the Passion – Pastor Thoughts

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We are at the mid-point of the season of Lent. Jesus has come from the wilderness to meet us where we are. Jesus has addressed our fears along with Peter’s fear.

Now the lectionary turns from the Gospel of Mark to the Gospel of John, we hear the story of Jesus clearing or cleansing the temple. This story is one that needs care and attention to address it properly, particularly as it can be taken as license to condemn Jewish religious practice more broadly as if Jesus is condemning all of Second Temple Judaism by clearing out the market vendors. 

This scene takes place in the Gospel of John early on in chapter 2. But in the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) it happens following the triumphal entry… the story that we hear on Palm Sunday of the Passion. 

This week at our clergy gathering, we had some good conversations around Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday or as I call it: Palm Sunday of the Passion. For many, it can feel like a weird day, with two different stories jammed together. Are we talking about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem or are we hearing the passion story? And do we hear the passion story for all those folks who might not make it to Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services and end up going straight from a street party with Palms to celebrating the empty tomb? 

But there are reasons why this seemingly contradictory day actually makes a lot of sense. 

Liturgical reason:
There are four versions of the Passion story but each year on Good Friday we hear the Passion according to John. So on Passion Sunday, we hear the Passion according to Matthew, Mark or Luke or the Synoptic Passions. These are meant to contrast John, to be heard alongside the usual Good Friday Passion. 

Scriptural reason:
In John’s gospel, the clearing of the temple happens 3 Passovers prior to the triumphal entry. But in the Synoptic Gospels, it is the event that comes right after the Triumphal Entry, it is the thing that Jesus was on his way to do as he processed into the city to the crowds shouting Hosanna. After Jesus clears the temple of the money changers and animal sellers, the religious authorities decide to kill him. 

Now, there is a lot more to the story that gives reason to the meaning, purpose and symbols of this event. But what is important is that the triumphal entry story paired with the Synoptic Passion helps us to understand how it is we get from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, and why the crowds that cheered for Jesus have changed their minds by the end of the week.

Without the Synoptic passion, we jump from something that feels like a street party to crowds demanding Jesus’ death and it might not be clear why. 

So as we hear the story of Jesus clearing the temple and prepare to move to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, remember that these stories are connected and help us to understand the Passion of Jesus.