Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - Holy Week

“Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with such scum?’ When Jesus heard this, he told them, ‘Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.’” (Mark 2:15 -17, The Living Translation Bible)

                 If there is anything which I miss about conducting a worship service it would be leading the communion services, the commemoration and re-enactment of what happened on the first Maundy Thursday. Celebrating the Jewish Passover, Jesus and his twelve disciples gave us a rich, poignant, deeply symbolic expression of the Love of God as embodied by Jesus himself. If anything speaks to the fellowship of being in a Christian community and what it means to come together in Love, it is the Lord’s Supper.

                Back in the 1800’s, Baptists argued vigorously about who was eligible to “take communion” – only those who had been baptized or could any believer come to the Lord’s Table? It caused great rifts. Eventually, in Ontario, the Free Baptists won the day for a more open table. But there are still Baptist churches in the world who practice a strict, rigid protocol of who is eligible for Communion. Sometimes it is even a members-only policy.

                But as I watch, via the Gospels, how Jesus practiced his ministry in his world and times, I am struck by the extreme level of openness he had for all people, no matter who they were. Our story above is but one significant example as to how Jesus broke the rigid codes of religious etiquette and instead broke bread with sinners, tax collectors, outcasts, the unfit and the misfit – “scum” as our translation puts it. It drove the religious purists and strict religious legalists to be very judgmental of this particular practice of Jesus dining with anyone and everyone. They accused him of being a drunkard and a party-animal because of the company he so often kept.

                In one church of mine, I introduced the use of common loaves to be passed around, so that each participant could tear a good piece off the loaf. “Because there is one loaf, our many-ness becomes one-ness—Christ doesn’t become fragmented in us. Rather, we become unified in him.” (1 Corinthians 10: 17, The Message Bible) But we had a number of street people wo regularly worshipped with us – not the cleanest, not the most hygienic, not the easiest to be around, aromatically speaking.  A few of my well-groomed, well showered, well-fed members complained that they did not want to share from the same loaf from which a street person had just handled. I found that to be sad but rather than argue I made sure that the usual, safer(!) tidbits of bread were provided along with the common loaf.

                Why does he eat with such scum? There’s the question we must answer.

                Why does Jesus host a supper with those from the highways and by-ways? Why does he not check their eligibility to sit at His Table? Why does he have such “low” standards about who gets to celebrate a meal with him? Why does Jesus not give any thought about the types of people who have gathered at His Table. Perhaps it is even the grimier, the dirtier, the more sinful, the more broken, the hungrier, the more uninvited they are everywhere else, the better and more likely it is that Jesus includes them on his own personal guest list and openly, lovingly welcomes them to his Feast. If not Jesus, the Saviour of all humankind, then who?

                On Good Friday, the world crucified the gracious Host of God’s banquet of Love.  But even then, the religious snobs and the legalistic interpreters of the scripture couldn’t shut down the Banquet Hall. “One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” (2 Corinthians 5:15, The Message Bible)

            Pass the Bread please.

Pour a Cup of Wine.

And, oh, by the way, do the same thing for my brother and my sister.

 

Dale

               

 Wednesday, March 24, 2021 – Preparing for Holy Week

“When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight… Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other. If you choose to speak, you’re also responsible for how and when you speak. When we worship the right way, God doesn’t stir us up into confusion; he brings us into harmony. This goes for all the churches—no exceptions.” (1 Corinthians 14: 26 -33)

                 One Palm Sunday, during my Ottawa days, I handed out palm fronds to the children and we paraded around the church auditorium, singing a Hosanna song. I don’t remember the words but I do remember the tune: “What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor?” Sure enough, after the service I was taken to task for using such a bawdy tune. My defense was that I had read somewhere that Martin Luther himself had sometimes used “bar tunes” with Christian words. This song was lively, easy to sing and the words were great. My hymnary purist was not mollified.

                If we can say anything about the modern practice of worship, it is anything but dull. The old excuse that going to church is boring doesn’t apply in most cases. Worship services are amped up with drums, guitars, saxophones and much of the contemporary  worship music is almost daring one to sit still and on your hands  when rather, one should be clapping along, tapping your feet, raising your hands and getting involved in the experience. Even the stodgiest of churches has had to struggle with this modern style of religious entertainment. It has to be done right and done well or it is disaster to experience.

                Likewise, churches are using screens, the internet, video clips to enhance and enrich their worship services. During this covid year, churches have discovered the use of the Internet to broadcast their services. I have admired their ingenuity and creativity and am very glad that I am not still pastoring during all this. These ain’t the worship services of our grandparents!

                Worship should elicit our joy, our praise and our hosannas, “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts.” (Ephesians 5: 19, The New Living Translation) In the Old Testament, “David and all Israel were celebrating before God with all their might, singing songs and playing all kinds of musical instruments—lyres, harps, tambourines, cymbals, and trumpets.” (1 Chronicles 13:8, NLT) I wonder if there were a few who complained how disrespectful and undignified such a display was.

                Paul suggested that each of us brings something to the worship experience. His ideas are somewhat reminiscent of his list of gifts from 1 Corinthians 12, verses 4 to 11. Our talents, gifts and abilities contribute to a “successful” worship experience. We are not just passive observers. We may be “just” sitting in the pew, for that matter, but even from there we join in, or can be warm and friendly to others, welcoming, helping strangers to find their way through the service. That is one of the biggest gaps now in our virtual services – human community coming together in harmony, love, fellowship. Oh, for the days we can greet each with a holy kiss once again!  “He brings us into harmony.”

                If we are going to paint on our sign boards that “All are welcome” to join us to worship, then  we should mean it. Everyone should be able to find a seat in God’s House, regardless. No labels, no stigmatization, no judgement, no barriers, no litmus tests for beliefs, no criticisms, no disapprovals. God went out in the highways and by-ways and brought people into his Presence (The Parable of the Great Banquet). We call it a sanctuary for a reason.

                “Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.” (Colossians 3: 16 – 17, The Message)

Dale

 Wednesday, March 17, 2021 – Preparing Us for the Fifth Week in Lent

“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” (Romans 8: 26 -28, The Message Bible)

                 “Prayer – beyond conventional polite prayer – is an act of breaking the silence.” (W. Brueggemann, Interrupting Silence, p.4)

                This is a simple but poignantly powerful statement. Prayer is the human word made flesh and bone, life and death, a flow of spirit and comes from the depths of our souls. Prayer is the one thing that the cultural principalities, the political powers and the  religious authorities have no power over, and cannot ultimately stifle, even though they would try to silence the words of the poor, the outcast, the ostracized, the easily-labeled sinners, and all the ones who don’t fit into their regimes, their rigid moralities, and their need to protect their own status quo. In fact, prayer is something that often shakes up the status quo, sometimes on a personal or individual basis and sometimes on a communal basis.

                Prayer gives voice to the marginalized, the pushed-aside, the broken-hearted, the sorrowful and any and all who need God to make a difference in their lives. Prayer also gives free voice to the words of praise, thanksgiving, hallelujahs, and victory. Prayer is the liberating Spirit which uncorks the human spirit and throws us back into God’s Love, Mercy and Grace. Prayer is the Spirit’s push to permit us to engage God in conversation, confession, intercession, and to express our hopes, our fears, our needs.

                There are no fences when it come to praying. No barriers except our own reluctances. No qualifications for prayer. No rigid rules. No need for someone’s else’s permission although it is always richer when we are praying with someone than just alone – but alone is just fine, too. No coercion. No limits. It gives speech to our soul and spirit’s condition and lays this sacrifice before God in hope that God hears, responds, and enters into the conversation.

                Maybe, there is one condition. “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get.” (Matthew 6:5, The New Living Translation) That could be me or you whom Jesus is talking about. I hope not. But Jesus expects us to be honest, sincere, humble, self-searching, genuine, authentic when we pray.  Prayer is not about piety, pomposity, arrogance, conceit but the simple voice of the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve giving expression to the totality of our humanity.

                Prayer breaks the silence of whatever holds and compels our silences. Prayer seeps through the cracks of despair and suppression of voices that want and deserve justice, equality, fairness, and a share in the prosperity and the generosity of our world.

                We have been virtual-worshipping the last few weeks at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto. The beautiful pastoral prayers have soared and lifted up my soul. It doesn’t matter who is praying. The words are crafted carefully and are rich in grace, blessing, poignancy, even tenderness,  said with utter humility. They are thoughtful and invite me, warts and all, into the conversation and into the community of faith as we gather virtually. The silence of that big, empty church is broken with words that matter and reach out to God. I ride their crest!

                “Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.” (Ephesians 6:18, NLT)

 Dale

               

 Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - Fourth week into Lent

“Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed—keep that dusted off and in use.” (1 Timothy 4:13, The Message Bible)

                 “Hear the word of God for these are the most important words you will hear from me today.”

                This is how Pastor Ross Carkner always introduces his reading of scripture in a worship service. If I was still in congregational pastoral ministry, I would so totally “steal” this habit. I deeply resonate with this idea of the Bible being the “most important words” that any of us need to hear.

We are People of the Book.

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul expands upon his counsel to remain faithful to the Word of God: “Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.” (2Timothy3: 16-17, The Message Bible)

                Through the Word we are put together!

                I have a very high, esteemed, reverent relationship with the Bible. Every time I read or study the Word, I come away with fresh and relevant insights, challenges, nourishment, correction and helpful and often insistent counsel to help me in my growth and development as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus Christ.

                The Bible sometimes is plain and simple, but also sometimes hard to understand. While by no means a word-for-word translation, but more of an interpretive rendering, that’s why I find the Message Bible so often helpful because it so often captures in a more modern way what the spirit of the passage is conveying.

                The Bible is like some vast sacred ocean – deep, wide, with many hidden mysteries waiting to be discovered. Sometime the gentle waves and breezes off the texts can soothe, comfort and calm our anxieties and fears, bringing us a sense of assurance and constancy about the Presence and Love of God. But sometimes, the words rise up into a storm of life-course, life-altering  corrections that we need to make. The words toss us about in our small life-boats, at least until Jesus comes along side and gives us hand and calms the turbulence.

                Traditionally, historically, Baptists have practiced the concept of “soul liberty.” It means that you or I have the freedom, guided by the Holy Sprit, “to choose what his or her conscience or soul dictates is right in the religious realm. Soul liberty asks the believer to accept responsibility for his or her  own actions and not try to force anyone else to do or believe anything contrary to his own conscience.” (Web Source). We have also practiced the precept of “sola scriptura” that the Bible is our sole and final  authority on all faith matters and we need  no other. The two together work for us to keep the Bible “dusted off and in use.”

                The Bible may well be infallible indeed but we mortals who interpret scripture are not. Sometimes, we want to cherry-pick the passage which we think and argue makes us in the right, and everybody else in the wrong who don’t see the text the same way.  I once knew a hospital chaplain who had crossed out all the passages in the New Testament, mostly Paul’s, which he obviously didn’t like. Sorry, we can’t do that. 

Yet, I don’t think Paul knew he was writing scripture when he penned his letters, but we have judged them to be so, so we must take his words with utmost seriousness, all of them not just a few.  But even he said of himself that not everything he wrote “was from the Lord.”  Sometimes, we simply have to sort through the context of Paul’s letters and figure out what caused him to write the way he did and weigh their significance, importance and their place in his whole body of work. To bring his words into our modern context can be very challenging but sometimes his prose and words can be uplifting and liberating, too. It is up to each of us to decide, with fear and trembling, without coercion, threat, compulsion to allow the Holy Spirit to convict us of the truth of God’s Word.

                Of course, we may not always agree about interpretation. It has certainly divided Baptists over our long history. But I still affirm the essential need for God’s Word to shape, crystalize, call forth, and impact the fullness of my life.

                “For the Word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.” (Psalm 33:4, New Living Translation)

 

Dale

 

Wednesday, March 3, 2021 – Third Week in Lent

“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’” (Luke 18: 13, The Message Bible)

                 I didn’t intend that my Lenten writings become focused on a theme about worship when I started with Paul’s words out of Romans 12 in the first week of Lent, “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”  Yet this seems where I am being led this Lenten season. So be it.

                As I encounter Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, which I suspect is based on a personal experience of something which he may have actually once witnessed happening at the temple, I am pulled towards another of Paul’s important declarations: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23, New Revised Standard Version)

                Do you get that first part of the familiar, oft-used quote? Let me spell it out boldly:  FOR THERE IS NO DISTINCTION. ALL are sinners. That means you and me. But it also means the rich and the poor. It means the pastor and the lay person. It means male and female. It doesn’t matter the colour of your skin or the language you speak. It means the straight or LGBTQ. It means the Prime Minister of Canada and the homeless guy lying in an alley. It means the President of the United States and the woman who runs the gas station in Texas. It means the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu or any other religion. It means the religious and the secular person. Did I mention that it means you and me? There is no distinction – all, everyone – falls short of the glory of God.

          Let’s turn back to Message Bible and read more of this passage:
                There’s nobody living right, not even one,
                        nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God.
                 They’ve all taken the wrong turn;
                        they’ve all wandered down blind alleys.
                No one’s living right;
                        I can’t find a single one.
                Their throats are gaping graves,
                        their tongues slick as mudslides.
                Every word they speak is tinged with poison.
                They open their mouths and pollute the air.
               They race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year,
                        litter the land with heartbreak and ruin,
                Don’t know the first thing about living with others.
                They never give God the time of day.”
Ouch!!! To quote the disciples at the Last Supper: “Is it I, Lord?”

                Worship gets lost on the haughty, proud and arrogant. Jesus blesses the poor sinner in this parable over the self-righteous Pharisee. That religious elite may have said and done all the right things but he proudly falls far short of the glory of God. It is the lowly, despised, isolated, ostracized tax collector who gets all the glory and Jesus’ approval: “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.” (Luke 18:14, The Message Bible)

Although healthy, “normal” people surely and rightly may enjoy the fruit of their worship,  my contention is that worship should always be a safe and secure harbour  for the meek, the lost, the confused, the broken, the frightened, the ill, the outcast, the persecuted. Our worship places should be thin spaces between each individual person and the Love of God in Christ; places where one can bare one’s soul, work out their salvation with fear and trembling, and come before God, sins and all, and experience fully the merciful, forgiving, loving presence of God and find his blessing.

“Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.” (Colossians 3: 11, The Message Bible)

 Dale