Epiphany 4 Year C |
St James’, Peace River |
|
A couple of weeks ago I was in Montreal attending a conference of people from all across the Anglican Church of Canada, pondering what we need to do to reframe our system of theological education for clergy. It's not that the system is particularly in a crisis – if it is, it's the same crisis it's been in for the last 40 years! - rather I think the conference was part of a whole set of ways in which our church is beginning to respond to the reality of a changing world. We are trying to be the church in a world where most people no longer know the first thing about our message, and that changes everything.Before I go on I should say that the topic of the conference was clergy training, but the focus wasn't on people like me, but rather people like you. What are the challenges you are facing as you try to live and communicate your faith, with the support of the church behind you? What skills, what training, what background, do you need your church leaders to have in order to help you meet those challenges? One of the most significant comments I heard over the three days we met, was to the effect that the church is being called to be prophetic in a new way. Most of the time when I've heard that word “prophetic”, it's been a reference to individuals, like Jeremiah in our first reading, whose role is to tell God's people what message God has for them. Very often that involves standing over against God's people, to tell them God is not happy! And that can be dangerous for the prophet - Jeremiah got himself literally thrown down a well, when the king and the other leaders in Jerusalem didn't take too kindly to his preaching. But sometimes, as with the quote from Isaiah that we heard Jesus use in his synagogue sermon last week, being a prophet is about telling God's people that the news is good, that God is forgiving and restoring them, and wants to bring them back on board to work together for his wonderful purposes in the world. What I heard in Montreal was a different spin on that idea of being a prophet. Rather than one person speaking to God's people, we were talking about God's people speaking to the world. As the church, we are discovering (or rediscovering) our call to be prophetic. We have something God wants us to say; but more to the point, the world around us has some things it needs to hear. When I say that, I wonder what comes to mind. What do you think God is asking us, as the church, to say to the people around us? What message do you think has been entrusted to us? Probably different people have different answers to those questions. Some of us might imagine ourselves more in the role of the earlier prophets like Amos, pointing out the injustices and wrongs that happen in our world, pressing for people – for all of us – to change our ways before we bring disaster down on ourselves. Some of us might even identify with Jeremiah, feeling the disaster is already here in some way, and that we are now at the point where we need to live with the consequences of all the ways we've gone wrong. There's still a word from God even then: a surprising word of hope, as God says to us and to our world – you CAN make it through this, but only because I am still with you. I would guess some of us see our prophetic calling as more positive than that. There are plenty of warnings in the Bible about prophets who proclaim “peace when there is no peace”, but I don't think any of us would see our faith as an easy answer like that. Rather we might see the ways in which people around us are genuinely troubled by the direction of their lives and their society. We might see how people are suffering the effects of a world that has forgotten God – both those who are on the receiving end of oppression, catastrophe, wars, economic disruption and everything else that is going on – but also those who have the power to do something about it and just don't know how, people who are being turned spiritually inside out by their inability to find a way forward. People, in other words, a lot like us. If that's the world we see, then perhaps the message God wants us to spread is the one that Isaiah first spoke and that Jesus took as the charter for his own ministry – the good news that God is rebuilding us, bringing us back together again, setting us free, welcoming us home. Of course for us, spreading that message won't be as simple as Isaiah going to where his people gather, or Jesus speaking up in his hometown synagogue. They were speaking to God's people, a ready made audience – and even then it didn't always go well! We ARE God's people in this place and time, but for us to give voice to God's word we first have to find our audience. I think that always sounds more difficult than it is. We imagine that God is asking us to do something artificial or strained: to stand up on a stage and act, to declaim a message in words that someone else has written for us. That's not it at all. The truth is that each of us already has our audience, and it is the most natural thing in the world. We live our lives, we are part of families and friendships, we work and play in a community, we put our talents to work in many ways. All those things connect us with other people, and not just superficially – we genuinely want to let them into our lives, to let what matters to them matter to us. Those are the people I mean when I talk about our audience. They need to hear something from God, just as much as we do, if not more. And we are what they are hearing. We are God's message to them. That's not difficult, it's as easy as breathing - but it can be a scary thought! It certainly reinforces our need to align our own personal stories with the story God is telling – so that the message others hear is not ours, but God's message coming through us. But if we have any doubt that we are capable of doing that, we just need to listen to God's response to Jeremiah in the first reading: God knew us before we were born, and God chooses us to tell his story. Every baptism reminds us that God makes that same commitment to each one of us, and to all of us together as we live out God's good news. Let's be clear about this. The good news God is calling you to share is not likely to be a verse of scripture. Again, we have to keep in mind who our audience is: these days, they are not likely even to know where a Bible verse comes from, let alone what it means. But it is the good news that Jesus proclaimed: liberty to those who are held captive by any force greater than themselves; sight to those who are blind to the possibilities; the freedom created by God's decision to interrupt the order of things as human beings have so badly determined it. Each of us has experienced that good news in our own way, and that is likely to be your best indicator as to how to pass it on to someone else. What did you need to hear from God? What set you free, what let you see, what opened a new door in your life? That's probably going to help you in your mission to bring the same good news to your neighbour. You won't always get the red carpet treatment. Jesus didn't, either. Sometimes, as in all those old jokes, we end up having to say “I've got some bad news, and some good news... first the bad news.” People need to hear and see very clearly what is wrong in their lives before they really look for a change; and people will go to great lengths NOT to do that, including shooting the messenger. But once again, we only need to turn to our own experiences to see how that works. I bet you have had days when you've resisted seeing the truth about yourself: I know I have. The only way through that kind of resistance is the certainty that the person telling you the truth actually loves you. That what matters to you, matters to them. That they are in with you for the long haul; that, in the long run, you actually don't want to shoot them! That's what St Paul tells us about love in his great hymn from I Corinthians 13: it's there before prophecy, it will be there afterward, and you can't tell God's truth without it. It's how God got through to us, and is still getting through – and it's the only way we will ever be able to get through with God's message to anyone else. And if you really get what St Paul is saying, you'll see that he's not talking about what we often mean by love, a vaguely euphoric feeling for another person easily confused with indigestion! That kind of love comes and goes, just like every other feeling or aspiration we can generate within ourselves. But this kind of love isn't something that starts with us. It began with God, you might say it began on the day of creation, or you might say it began when Jesus died on the cross. But for you and me, it began when we really saw how much God loved us, when we took on the truth that God was telling us for good and ill, and made it our own. The good news IS God's love, and God's love is God's own presence through the Holy Spirit. That's who is with us, that's what drives us to share the good news that has happened to us with others, and that's what makes it possible for us to do just that. * |
|