Futurefitting the Church: Part One

Over the past two years during the season of Lent, St. Mark’s has hosted a series of talks on the ‘Church of the Future’. The speakers were from a variety of religious backgrounds and diverse perspectives. The speakers were both ordained and lay, female and male, gay and straight. We also heard from important voices outside the Church, people who once identified as Christian but now identify as agnostic. These people represent the youngest, most creative and innovative voices in religion and spirituality on the North East Avalon area of the province:

Kevin Hoddinott – Pathways Community Church

Tony Bidgood – St. Theresa’s Parish and Redemptorist Order

Jason Normore – Local Church St. John’s

Rebecca Pike – St. James’s United Church and The Go Project

Katherine Brown – Bethesda Church and Generous Space LGBTQ+ Group

Miriam Bowlby – Cochrane Street United Church

Ashley Ruby – St. Mary’s Church Organist

Andrew and Ainsley Hawthorn – Secular Humanist

Dave Drinkwalter – Reunion St. John’s

They were tasked with reimagining the church of the future. What should the church of the future look like? What must the church of the future look like? They were asked to go beyond the hand-wringing, naysaying and despair that usually accompanies such conversations. Their goal was to move beyond the talk of decline and loss and the dismal future of the Church, to the possibilities and opportunities of the church of the future.

This re-visioning of the future church is what author Michael Allan Beck calls “futurefitting” in his book Deep Roots, Wild Branches: Revitalizing the Church in the Blended Ecology. It plays on the urban planning concept of retrofitting, which is the adding of new technologies and infrastructure to older, long-existing systems. In the church, futurefitting has to do with sustainability and revitalization. It means striking a balance between creating space for new emerging models of church, while at the same time restructuring the inherited or established church for a sustainable future. It’s what Beck calls a blended ecology – one that plants and nurtures the emerging and, at the same time, cultivating (growing and sometimes weeding out) the traditional expression of church. As Beck says, “Remember, giving birth and raising the dead are equally reflective of the triune God.”

Most of the talks were recorded and can be viewed on our YouTube channel. Here is part one of a brief breakdown of what they had to say to us.

Story, Ritual, Tradition

These three things are core to what it means to be church. The stories we tell about God, the world and each other are central to any religious tradition. We identify ourselves by the sacred stories we share. These stories shape our political, moral and economic choices. The church has taken for granted that everyone knows the story and reads the story in the same way. That’s simply not true anymore, if it ever was true. But as Tony reminded us, there is still a spiritual hunger. People are still looking for a story in each around which to orient their lives. The stories of scripture, in particular the stories of Jesus, still resonate with people. It’s just that we have to scrape away the years of religious and cultural baggage that have been heaped on them, to see the lasting relevance and beauty of these stories.

The power of story was illustrated in the fact that Jason, Rebecca, Katherine, Miriam and Dave all started their talk by telling us their story. More importantly, how their story intersects with God’s story or the story of the church. Even Andrew and Ainsley, who are no longer a part of the church, felt that it was necessary to tell their story of leaving the church. Story helps us make sense of our experiences, both religious and non-religious. Again, as Tony said, it is of the utmost importance right now that the church listen to people’s stories – stories of faith, doubt, pain, loss, rejection, questioning. It’s also important that the church find new and creative ways to help people connect their story with the divine story, which is a story of meaning, purpose and love.

Another way that we tell stories and find our place in bigger narratives, is by participating in rituals and traditions. In the sacraments we tell the story of our salvation and sustaining in the love of God and God’s people. We mark the rhythms of the year and seasons through the keeping of a different calendar through Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Ordinary time. We mark the movement of our lives through birth, maturing, love, sickness and death in the rituals of the church. Again, for so long in our Christendom culture, we have taken these rituals and traditions for granted. Now for so many they seem empty and meaningless. Even in our own parish communities we are left wondering what the role of these practices is anymore.

We must, though, be careful not to jettison these rituals in pursuit of some newfound relevance or cultural cache. Our secular humanist speakers, Andrew and Ainsley, pointed out that these religious traditions and rituals are one of the most important contributions that churches make to the wider community. They wonder who or what will take on these roles as churches continue to decline.

Our speaker that spoke the most clearly on tradition was actually one of our youngest. Ashley reminded us of the importance of our inherited traditions. They are a gift of the past from our ancestors, those who have walked the road of faith before us. Tradition is their collective experience of God passed on to us in the form of story, ritual and tradition. Tradition is the container in which faith is passed from one generation to the next. But Ashley also cautioned that we not confuse the container with the content, not confuse tradition with faith it seeks to transmit. She also reminded us that as lovely as a gift can be, if it serves no further purpose or has no practical use, what good is it? The challenge, then, is to keep the best of our traditions, while dealing gently and lovingly with those traditions that need to be discontinued. At the same time we need to find new rituals, traditions and expressions of faith that speak truth and meaning into our modern world.

Rev. Robert Cooke is the Rector of St. Mark’s

 

Jesus is Not a Tame Messiah: A Sermon for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 12:49-56
12:49 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

12:50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!

12:51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!

12:52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;

12:53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

12:54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens.

12:55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens.

12:56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

One of my favourite books when I was a kid was the C.S. Lewis classic The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. In the days before Amazon and easy access to books, I checked out this book from my school’s library. I had no idea that it was a part of a whole series of books. I didn’t know until later in my teens that it was such a popular book, and that it had been turned into a series of films in the late 80’s. We lived a very sheltered life way back then in outport Newfoundland.

I was overjoyed when the book was brought back to film screens in the 2005 re-adaptation. I was excited that my kids would now get to experience this great story that meant so much to me. If you’re not familiar with it I will try to summarize it without giving too much away. Four children from wartime England are sent away from the city to the safety of the countryside home of an eccentric uncle. There they find a magical wardrobe and stumble into the Land of Narnia. Narnia is populated by talking animals and mythical creatures like centaurs. Narnia is ruled by a lion named Aslan, but Aslan hasn’t been seen in quite a long time. In his absence, Narnia has fallen under the control of the evil White Witch. She has put Narnia under her despotic control and permanent winter. As the children arrive in Narnia there are reports that Aslan has been spotted. Aslan is on the move!

In what is one of my favourite scenes from the book, the children find themselves in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Over a meal and cup of tea Mr. Beaver is trying to explain to the children just who Aslan is:

Mr. Beaver said, “Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion…”

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver …”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you… He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

Aslan is definitely not safe or tame, but he is good!

Anyone who has read the Chronicles of Narnia series knows that Aslan is a type of Christ. It was Lewis’ way of imagining Jesus the Christ active in another world. As I read this story as a youngster it really resonated with me. I was making my first steps in making sense of all this Jesus stuff. I had my hermeneutical training wheels on, so to speak. As I made my first attempts to read the Gospels what I read were the stories of a wild, dangerous man. What I witnessed in church was a safe, docile Jesus. The Gospels presented a Jesus that upset the status quo, hung out with sinners and prostitutes, touched unclean women and men, seemed to play fast and loose with religious laws and ticked off religious people in the process. The Jesus they preached about in church seemed to be a white washed version, clean and sanitized. Jesus looked and sounded an awful lot like us. I was drawn to the Jesus I read about in the Gospels, even though he made me really uncomfortable and said very challenging things. The Jesus I was given in church was boring and seemed more like a prop for the pastor to rail against whatever sin he was trying to scare out of us. Aided by Lewis, this was my first inclination that Jesus wasn’t tame, but he was good in some new and exciting way that my young brain could not quite grasp just yet. I’m not sure I grasp it even yet, but I am still drawn to this Jesus character.

Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is one of those passages that turns upside down our image of the meek and mild Jesus that wants us all to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. It comes towards the end of Chapter 12 of Luke’s Gospel where Jesus has grown increasingly agitated in his words to the crowd gathered around him. The passage begins with the inflammatory, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” You can almost hear the gasp in the crowd. If they had been sitting in pews they would be squirming. This is not what we have come to expect from Jesus, who we have turned into a type of motivational speaker. He’s supposed to make us feel good about ourselves. But Jesus seems to know his death is near and it’s stressing him out. He refers to his death as a baptism, one that he just wants to be over and done with.

He goes on to ask, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” And we, with all the gathered crowd, could answer, “Well, yes…yes we did!” You know, the peace on earth and all that good stuff that the angels promised at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. Peace, yes; fire, no.

Peace, though, does not come without a little discomfort for someone. In Jesus’ Kingdom message, his gospel, things have to be made right before there can be peace. The fire Jesus talks about is not a fire of apocalyptic destruction, but one of purifying. It’s a controlled burn to let loose the nutrients of the kingdom in earthly soil, so that the fruits of justice, equality and, yes, peace can take root. He gave us fair warning of his mission in his opening statement in Luke’s Gospel:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
      to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (4:18-19)

Not everyone will welcome this fire. For some it will look like destruction, an undoing, not a renewing. It’s hard for us to comprehend just how divisive this gospel was. We live in a world still steeped in the Christian tradition. For the early Christians for whom Luke’s Gospel was written down, they knew all too well the division that Jesus and his message brings. Kicked out of their synagogues, shunned by family and friends. Branded radicals, heretics, and enemies of the state all because they named Jesus and not Caesar as Lord, clung to faith and love as the only ways to God’s favour. What does my Christian faith cost me? Maybe a snarky comment on Facebook? Maybe a raised eyebrow when I disclose that I work for the church?

Jesus chides the people for being able to read the weather patterns, but not the signs of the time. They do not see the kairos, the divinely appointed time that Jesus inaugurates. Don’t you see what’s happening? Don’t you see the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom? You get ready when weather approaches, so why not prepare for the changing times? This is a dig at their unwillingness to repent, literally to change their mind and actions, in the wake of the Kingdom announced by Jesus.

In the church we’re not comfortable with any of this. Fire? That sounds too revivalistic! Division? Can’t we all just get along? Change? We’ve always done it this way! Sounds like mixing politics and religion. This is a Jesus we’re just not comfortable with. Give us the Jesus that promises eternal life and speaks comfortable words. Give us the Jesus that offers us an easy yoke; the Jesus who looks like me, sounds like me, and meets my checklist for what a messiah looks like; who reinforces my ideas of who is in and who is out. We want the tame Jesus, who makes it clear who are our enemies and who protects the status quo. But then in passages like this we are reminded, to our horror, that Jesus is not a tame messiah – but he is good, and his way is good.

Jesus refers to fire, literally setting the world on fire. For this fire to come, it must first set our hearts ablaze, set the church ablaze. For others to have, maybe we have to go without out. For this world to be just, peaceful, clean, perhaps something needs to change in us. For us to name Jesus as Lord, not the political leaders and systems of this world, means that we do not live according to the values of these old, dead, decaying systems. To follow Jesus as his apprentices means we learn from his way of forgiveness, reconciliation, gentleness, generosity, love.

This is why I think baptism is still a radical, counter-cultural practice. We tend to get warm fuzzies when we think about baptism. The oil of chrism marks the newly baptized as Christ’s own, forever. The light of the baptism symbolizes the light of Christ that shines in the believer. But in rethinking baptism in light of today’s gospel reading, we glimpse just how radical baptism is. First, remember that baptism symbolizes the joining of the newly baptized in the death and resurrection of Jesus; the old dies and a new person emerges. Second, the little light of Christ is actually a burning fire, setting our hearts and the world ablaze. Finally, baptism unites us not just to the meek and mild Jesus, but the wild, unpredictable Christ. The call of baptism is to follow this untamed messiah out into the world. The question remains: will we leave the safety of our churches to follow him?

 

A Curmugeony Gospel: A Sermon for the 8th Sunday After Pentecost

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,^*
   vanity of vanities! All is vanity. <!– 12 –>

12 I, the Teacher,^* when king over Israel in Jerusalem, ¹³applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. ¹⁴I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.^*

18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me ¹⁹—and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. ²⁰So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labours under the sun, ²¹because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. ²²What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? ²³For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.                   Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 12-14; 2:18-23 

Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ ¹⁴But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ ¹⁵And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ ¹⁶Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” ¹⁸Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ²⁰But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’          Luke 12: 13-21

There are pros and cons to getting older. On the con side your body starts to turn against you. I find I’m at a stage in my life where I have to take off my glasses to read anything. I have to increasingly be vigilant over what I eat. Gone are the days when I could easily drop ten pounds just by cutting back a little. My stomach constantly reminds me of my age when I consume the wrong things. My joints and muscles are not happy with me when I do any activity that is even slightly out of the ordinary. Yes getting older is no joke.

There is, though, a bright side to getting older. I find in my 43^rd trip around the sun that I care less and less what other people think about me. There is a liberation in getting older. Life experience slowly starts to translate into wisdom. I’m starting to realize that the things that matter most in life are not things at all. Things like status, wealth, and material possessions are fleeting at best. The things that we spend the first half of our lives chasing, when we find them, turn out to not be what we needed at all. As the fires of idealism and youthful naiveté burn out, we are left with the burning embers of pragmatism. If we learn to be content with the heat they provide, we will see that there is plenty of fuel left for the second half of our lives.

Along with this our tolerance for BS goes way down. We know that life is too short to waste on trivial matters. Personally I see myself getting more and more curmudgeony every day. I have a constant urge to tell whippersnappers to turn down that racket, pull up those pants and get off my lawn.

This is kind of the way I see the Book of Ecclesiastes. It’s a book of aged, second half of life, curmudgeony, practical wisdom. Now we don’t hear much from Ecclesiastes in the lectionary. This Sunday’s reading is only one of two appearances. Most of us have probably only heard the famous “Time for everything” reading either at a funeral or in the Bird’s famous folk song rendition. There was some doubt about whether the book should even be included in the Hebrew canon. It finally was included thanks to its association with Solomon, although Solomon very likely had nothing to do with it. When you read Ecclesiastes it’s easy to see why it was so hotly contested. Its biting realism, disillusion and skepticism make it an unlikely candidate for a holy book. It makes it an unlikely candidate to get much of a reading today either, with our culture’s fixation on happiness and positivity. But it’s a wonderful thing that it was included because real is where most of us live our lives, with a healthy side of disillusion and skepticism.

In our Christian Canon Ecclesiastes is placed between Proverbs and Song of Songs. Literally stuck between do-this-and-all-will-be-well wisdom and burning, erotic passion. One we know does not quite work out the way it promises and the other we know does not last (I leave it to you to figure out which is which). The book takes its name from the Hebrew and Greek words (feminine I might add) for one who gathers the assembly. So basically this is the preacher or teacher gathering and addressing the assembled faithful. It could just as easily start off with “Sit tight y’all because I’m about to give it to you straight.”

Instead it starts with the words, “Vanities of Vanities! All is vanity.” My dear old grandmother, God rest her soul, quoted this line anytime anyone talked of possessions, wealth or the lack thereof. “Vanities, vanities, my dear, all is vanity,” she would say as she rhythmically tapped her lap with her closed eyes and grinning face turned towards her maker. What follows is a good sampling of the portions of pragmatic wisdom that the Teacher will dole out in the remainder of her address to the faithful:

B’ys I’ve given this a fair bit of thought and I have come to the conclusion that life is hard. Most of what we do in life is vanity, fleeting, As Dylan said you might as well try and catch the wind. Why work hard to build up riches when you’re just going to leave it to some stunned relative who will probably waste it. What a waste! Why spend time, even lose sleep, worrying about getting ahead in this life. What a waste!”

If you think you’re the first one to see things this way, then go talk to your dear ol’ granny. If you think you’ll be the last, just hang around for a bit longer. There’s nothing new under the sun my son! You know what I’m talking about, the more things change the more they stay the same and all that jazz!

Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, so get over it!

The Teacher goes on to tell us other hard truths. We will all die, regardless of whether we are rich or poor, saint or sinner, wise or fool. Yes God has a plan for us, is even active in our lives, but sadly it remains hidden from us, a mystery. All we are left with is today, right now, to live our lives and make the best of the path we choose. As the writer Frederick Buechner (pronounced Beak-ner) says in summing up the teacher, “Often people are closest to God when they need him most and that sometimes they know him best by missing him.”

In our Gospel reading another teacher makes an appearance. He is renowned for teaching with authority. Unlike the religious elites he speaks directly to the needs of the people. They love his practicality and honesty. He has shades of the old Teacher from Ecclesiastes in him. He pulls no punches, telling it like it is. He is wise beyond his years. In fact he seems to embody Sophia, wisdom in the flesh.

In chapter 12 of Luke’s Gospel a crowd has assembled around Jesus. A voice cries from the crowd for Jesus to settle an argument about a family inheritance. Jesus warns the crowd against the dangers of greed and materialism. He tells them a parable of a rich man whose life centers on just that. When he dies, like everyone else, what good are his riches to him. You can hear the echo of the old Teacher in the words of Jesus: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” Vanities of vanities! What a waste!

But what does it mean to be rich toward God? The key comes later in verse 31: “But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.” The Message translation expands on this passage:

“What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.

Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can’t go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bankrobbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.”

This is another of the great lessons that age teaches us: we can’t do it on our own. We need the help of others and we need to be help for others. We know all too well how raw, even cruel, life can be. In the face of loss, pain, rejection, injustice, inequality, and struggle we learned that life is unfair, often ugly. But hopefully it has also shown us beauty, especially when we open ourselves up to others. If the old Teacher shows us of the vanities and fleeting reality of the things of this life, Jesus teaches us a new twist. This life is not just lived for ourselves, but for others. In the Kingdom of God, in God’s economy, we are all interconnected and responsible to each other. Yes we need to hear the stark reality and hard truth of Ecclesiastes but we also need to hear the truth of the good news of Jesus. We are all precious to God and we are in this together. Our lives and all that go with them are not our own, they are from God and because of that we are responsible to each other. This is basically what Saint Paul, another great teacher, is saying to the Colossian assembly when he says “but Christ is all and in all!’ If I may take the liberty of rewording the Beuchner quote from above: Often people are closest to God when they need him most, that sometimes they know him best by not missing him in the needs of others.

Rev. Robert Cooke is the Rector of St. Mark’s.