Who Do You Say That I Am?

It was a time when Jesus' ministry was expanding. There was a 'buzz' - talk, questions, conclusions.
Jesus' question to his disciples is aimed at finding out whether they are listening to him and to their hearts or listening to what others are saying. 

"Who do people say that I am?"

John ... Elijah ... one of the prophets ...

"Who do you say that I am?"

Simon responds, "You are the Messiah. The Son of the living God."

It's an astounding response. Even Jesus is astounded, "Blessed are you, Simon of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." 

To the Hebrews, names and naming defined a person's purpose.  Jesus gives Simon a new name and a purpose: "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church." 

Simon Peter was not the foundation. His confession was the foundation: the truth that Jesus is the Christ... whence we are Christians.

Peter wrote to us, "You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house."   

For two thousand years there's been a distracting 'buzz' ... different points of view, choices, social and cultural changes, new philosophies, new discoveries. In the face of it all, the only important question is Jesus' question to each one of us: "Who do you say that I am?" 

'Flesh and blood has not revealed': Human hands and minds have not created, can not sustain what God is and has and will do with us - the stones being fitted and built together in faith.

Stir Up Sunday

Here's a long-held Anglican tradition that's been largely lost with the change in the church year calendar. Stir Up Sunday, formerly designated the last Sunday before the First of Advent, took its name from the opening words of the day's Collect:

Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing for the fruit of good works, may of Thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Or as some may have chanted on the way home:

Stir up, we beseech Thee, the pudding in the pot and when we get home we'll eat it all hot!

In many homes, it was a day for the entire family to gather from around. To take turns stirring up the Christmas pudding. Each making a wish. Always stirring from East to West to honour the Wise Men. Adding a coin, a ring, a thimble as signs of wealth, love and happiness for the one who found it on their plate on Christmas Day. It was a time when religious traditions were as everyday as families gathering for a meal ...  saying grace; marking rites of passage ... baptisms and funerals.

Silly old rituals. Maybe even superstitious. 

The rituals that we practice day by day have a powerful way of shaping and defining us. The nonsense rhyme may seem irreverent, but it does unpack our piety. Takes it out of the church and onto the streets where we're called to follow Jesus.

Jesus said, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to myself"

Dominican theologian, Joseph Di Noia says that we've been reading something into St. John's gospel text that isn't there. St. John wrote in Greek and for generations, Jesus' words (above) have been translated to read 'I will draw all men to myself'. However, there is no word in the original Greek that  means 'men' or 'man'.

There is only the word pantos which may be translated all, thoroughly, whatsoever or ... everything. 

Everything? Everything. All creation. This planet earth our island home and all God's creatures great and small. All men and women and children of all creeds and colours and religions. 

There is a mystery to the love of God that we can not begin to understand. Sometimes we may admit to ourselves that we don't want to understand lest we find it requires of us something that we're reluctant to give. It could require us to take seriously the evidence of what we're doing to the world that God entrusted to us. It will require us to know Jesus more intimately and faithfully so that while we take our differences seriously, we'll keep our minds open to the possibility that God sees our differences as more complimentary than mutually exclusive. Perhaps the three great Monotheistic faiths of the world  - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - might share the holy city of Jerusalem in peace and show the world that God's love has the power to bring peace where the world's power does not. Perhaps most demanding of all is that, if we want others to appreciate the importance of the cross of Jesus Christ to our faith, we will have to live it. We will have to change.

The poet W.H. Auden writes: 
    We would rather be ruined than changed.
    We would rather die in our dread
    Than climb the cross of the moment
    And see our illusions die.

Of course, change is possible. We can change. We can, if we will, stop pulling Jesus down off the cross into our tempests and raise him up so that he can raise us all up to the Glory of God.

Snow on Snow

It's snowing. Mia hurries out and back in to her mat beside the fire. The hill is impassable but the cupboard is well stocked and the magic of it envelopes me as always ... 

The silence of the morning was a surprise. After a night of pounding rain, first light revealed snow falling as thick as down from a torn pillow. There was no sound. Not just the absence of noise, but a quality of silence like the stillness of a cried-out child secure in loving arms. 

I stood, surprised and delighted, remembering winters past. Silent Night! Holy Night! The coming of Christmas. Light of God revealed in quiet wonder. 

We are usually surprised by silence. There is so little of it in our lives. So little time, as the poet said 'to stand and stare' that when silence surprises us our first response is often to shoo it away with activities and distractions. But, once in a rare while we find ourselves at peace in some quiet, tender moment and we know instinctively that the darkness and noise of the world will not overcome us. Christmas will come. Lives will be gladdened gain. 

From Grampa Told Me a collection of writings by Esther North 

Goin' Home
Remembrance Day

It's Remembrance Day - the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. They're singing Goin' Home and I remember. 

I  was eight years old. My mother wore high-heeled shoes and a new blue dress. I wore my white First Communion dress, white stockings and shoes, but not the veil. My mother and I were dressed up to meet my father. 

Three months after the Second World War had ended in Europe, the Royal Canadian Engineers who had remained to work on the clean-up and rebuilding, were coming home. They had come from England, Italy and Holland by ship and across Canada by train. They were scheduled to arrive at 5 p.m. sharp.

Mother had us at the Regina Armoury early enough to stand right behind the rope in front of the platform where soldiers would march and important people would make speeches to welcome them home.

The train was late. The brass band played marches for a while then switched to popular songs. We all sang along to Over There and There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover. Right in the middle of Lili Marlene the band abruptly stopped and snapped to attention. Everyone leaned forward. I was pressed hard against the rope. Mother fussed with the ribbon in my hair. The band leader raised his baton. There was a crashing of symbols and the doors flew open. 

A sea of khaki-coloured soldiers, eight abreast, marched in. Every left-foot, right-foot keeping perfect time. Voices rang out. My mother's - "Tom! Tom! We're here." 

The train-weary, war-weary troops suddenly erupted. After five years overseas, five minutes more was too long. I was scooped up from behind the rope and the breath hugged out of me between my mother and a huge soldier in a scratchy, sooty uniform. This was my father whom I scarcely remembered and really only knew from pictures and the reading-aloud of blue airmail letters. For a while the officers let the melee unfold - as it was bound to whatever they had planned. Finally whistles sounded and military order was restored. There were snuffles and nose-blowing honks, tear-stained faces and broad grins. Peace on earth. Peace. People kept saying the word over and over again as though it tasted as good as chocolate cake. 

My pristine white dress was black with soot but all my mother said was, "It will wash out".

Others will remember that day differently. Perhaps more accurately. But, that's how I remember it. We were part of history in the making but the only thing that mattered was that the war was over. Husbands and fathers and sons and daughters were home from the war. I would get to know my father. We would be a family. The whole world dared to imagine that all families would be families again - forever. 


Celebrating St. Francis of Assisi, October 4

Francesco di Bernadone was the son of Pietro - a successful importer and merchant of French fabrics and one of Assisi's burgeoning middle-class. 
During the bloody 1198 uprising of the middle-class in Assisi, Francis undoubtedly learned the skills of a stone mason while working on building the city walls. He would employ these skills in restoring abandoned chapels following his conversion. 

But, in his youth, Francis was no saint. 

He was educated. He spoke fluent French, went to festivals and about the countryside like a French troubadour of the day, singing both bawdy and beautiful songs in an exceptionally fine voice.

He was indulged. Francis bankrolled extravagant celebrations for his friends and, in splendid battle dress, rode confidently off with them to Perugia.

They were defeated. Francis spent the next year chained to a wall in an underground cell while his father negotiated his ransom.

He never wholly recovered his health and, during his convalescence, an inner struggle was awakened: attempting to recover his old lifestyle whilst being drawn irrevocably towards a sense of Jesus calling him to a new and radically challenging way.

It happened that, when he was at last strong enough to leave his sickbed, he made his way to the edge of the hilltop town of Assisi. He looked across the valley and forests as though he was seeing for the first time what had always been ... the wide-open wonder of the love of God for all creation. Francis took to heart what Jesus said and it changed his life.

"Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 
Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to your stature?
So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? 
Therefore do not worry, saying 'What shall we ate?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'. Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you."   Matthew 6: 25 - 33

Francis did preach to the birds and negotiate with the wolf ... but, those things for which he is most widely known and loved, are only moments in a life devoted to seeking the righteousness of God for all.