Lent 3B

I was in my car when I first heard about the earthquake last March. And to be honest, the magnitude of the catastrophe didn’t register with me until much later. The CBC reporter simply announced the quake and the resultant tsunami as if he was reporting the hockey scores.

It wasn’t until later that when I arrived home and I turned on the news and saw the pictures. The homes and businesses destroyed and the thousands of lives lost penetrated the noise that is usually the nightly news.

And I had questions. Natural questions for any believer, after seeing or experiencing such devastation. I asked “Where is God in all this? How could God allow this to happen? If God is the creator of heaven and earth, if God put the stars in the sky and the earth on its axis, then why wouldn’t God prevent this from happening?”

Those are important questions. And they have led more people away from faith than any other. And it’s easy to see why. Suffering affects everyone. And when we are on the receiving end of life’s cruelty, we ask where God is, or why God didn’t stop this. Or we ask if God even cares. Or we may ultimately ask, if God is who we say God is, are we lying to ourselves? And those are - good if difficult - questions.

That’s why I have little patience for what some people call “the parking lot God.” I think you know what I’m talking about. This is the God who makes life go so smoothly, the God that limits our inconveniences, the God who will find you a great parking spot close to the shop door the morning of Christmas Eve, so you don’t have to walk an extra 50 metres to get to the store.

Have you ever heard people talk about God like that? As if God is in the business of making the little daily actions of life a little less troublesome?

I have. Far too many times. And of course, the “parking lot God” is a metaphor for the God who makes an easy and already carefree life. I’ve heard people give God credit for them getting all green lights on the way to work. Or for helping them pass an exam they haven’t studied for.

But that always makes me bristle. As one who has been present at the deaths of children, and buried other people who were far too young, and have prayed over the graves of too many with their potential still in them, I get a angry when I hear people talk about the “parking lot God.” I want to ask if God either has a time management problem or a lack of priorities. I know what I would prefer God to be doing.

If I had to make a choice for God, I would rather someone walk an extra couple of steps to go shopping than pray with a family who has lost their son in a car accident. I would rather someone sit at a red light than stand over the grave of a dad lost to cancer. I would rather someone flunk an exam rather than turn on the news and learn that thousands of people were killed in a natural disaster.

But, of course, I don’t have to make that choice. Because that’s not how God works. The Parking Lot God doesn’t exist. The parking lot God isn’t the God of the bible.

But the question remains, if God, does in fact, intervene in our lives and in our world, then how do we reconcile an all powerful God with the suffering of a powerless people? Why doesn’t God stop bad things from happening?

That’s the basic question that everyone asks, isn’t it? I’m guessing that question has crossed your mind if not your lips at one point in your life. It’s the first question people of faith asked. In fact, the Book of Job, which is the book of the bible that struggles with this question is the oldest in scripture. Which tells me that people have been asking this question from the very beginning.

From the beginning, people knew there was a God. And they knew that God was good. People knew that God was loving. But they couldn’t understand why a good and loving God would allow awful things to happen to them and to those whom they loved.

That’s when most people throw up their hands and declare in frustration, “It’s a mystery! We can’t know why these things happen. Only God does!” And to a degree they’re right. We can’t know because we are not God. But the trouble with that is that also let’s us and God off the hook too easily. Especially when people have a primal need to know “why.” And we know that the question of God and suffering isn’t a mere intellectual exercise, but a blood and bones human one.

But the apostle Paul might provide an answer. It’s hidden, but it’s there. It’s there when Paul says he “[proclaims] Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

For Paul, Christ crucified isn’t just for our sins and for our forgiveness. Jesus’ death wasn’t just the penalty for those things we’ve done that have hurt God and each other. In Jesus’ death, God revealed in Christ also knew suffering. The God revealed in Jesus shared our suffering. The God revealed in Jesus knows what it is like to be betrayed, humiliated, and tortured. The God revealed in Jesus knows what it is like to lose a child. The God revealed in Jesus knows what it is like to die.

That’s why God weeps over suffering. Any suffering.

And that’s also why Jesus rose from the dead. God raised Jesus from the dead, breathing new life into the world, God has put the world on to a course where all people shall rise with him. God has put a New Creation in place, so that - one day - there will be no more weeping, no more suffering, no more pain. Because by dying Jesus has defeated the power of death and he rose again victorious over the powers that take life from us.

And so now, if we want to see what God is up to, look at the face of suffering, look into the eyes of the lonely stranger, the grieving mother, the dying patient.

If you want to know where God is, look at your own battered and bruised heart. Look at your painful past. Look at the moments of pain and desperation.

It is from those moments of suffering and pain, those moments of the cross, that God knows you most deeply. It is in those moments of grief and sorrow that God draws closest to you.

Because it was at that moment when Jesus hung on the cross in Calvary, that God came closest to us, enduring the worst of human experience, receiving the brunt of human sinfulness, and so that God could create something new and beautiful for us. There cannot be a resurrection without a cross. There cannot be new life unless the old life passes away.

That’s why Paul said that God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. That’s why God chose the lowly and despised to overcome the strong.

And if you want to know where God is, look to those who helped clean and re-build after the earthquake and tsunami. Look to those contributed to relief and aid. Look to to those who brought healing and care to the survivors. Look to those who gave of the treasure and their labour that peoples’ lives might be put back together again. That’s also where God is. That is where God is bringing resurrection from the cross.

So where does that leave us today as we remember the victims of last year’s earthquake? I’m not entirely sure. All I do know is that God was deep in their suffering. All I do know is that God wept that day along with the whole world. And all I know is that - one day - when the final resurrection is announced, that the trumpet will sound and the dead will rise, and all creation shall behold the mercy of our God. All creation will breathe new life. All creation will rest in God’s joy.

May this be so among us. Amen.

Epiphany 5B

“…woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel.”

Those words rung in my ears on a viciously hot July night in 1999 at Christ Lutheran Church in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, when this scripture passage was read and preached by my bishop before he invited me to kneel, laid hands on my head, and I received the rite ordination.
It was like I was being joined – stitched – to a long line of preachers who held this message in their hands so reverently that they couldn’t help but share what had been so lovingly entrusted to them.

And while this journey of preaching the gospel has taken me on many adventures – including the one I am on now – I still wonder, in those quieter moments, if I am up the task that is put in front of me. I worry that the words I use and the words you hear are saving words that we call “gospel.”

As many of us know, the word “gospel” means “good news.” And those of us who’ve been around the church for a while might think we know what that word means. But I’m not sure that’s true. Because I find myself asking, “Good news” for what? From what? What is the bad news that is in your life, and then what is the good news that I am called to proclaim as a response to it?
How would you define the word “gospel”? What is “good news”?

For my master’s thesis I had to come up with a definition of the gospel. And because I allowed four years of graduate study in theology to get the better of me I defined the gospel as this: “The gospel is the eschatological fulfillment of Israel’s messianic expectation.”

Doesn’t that just warm the heart?

As I look back I’m embarrassed by how much of a pompous jerk I was. And while that answer might be academically satisfying it is also spiritual barren. Which was why my thesis advisor handed back my paper with the words “Make it simpler!” scribbled in angry red ink.

The exercise isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are as many definitions of “the gospel” as there are Christians. There is no real consensus as to what that word means.

Some may say such a disparity is evidence of Christianity’s lack of intellectual cohesion, or the result of factions fighting one another rather than looking for a common proclamation.
But I see such diversity as the natural result of a faith that is deeply personal. Good news isn’t universal in the sense that it’s the same for everyone. Every person has their own needs, their own challenges, their own struggles, their own bad news to which our God in Jesus brings good news.

The apostle Paul knew this instinctively.

“For though I am free with respect to all,” he writes, “I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

Paul knew that good news could only be heard as a response to bad news. Good news isn’t a once-and-for-all proposition. It’s personal. It’s specific. It zeroes in on peoples` unique challenges and provides a soothing balm.

For us as a church, as we reflect on our future, I think the question, “What is good news for us and for our community?” is an important one to ask.

This past week I met with some other pastors of English-speaking churches, and I gained some useful insight.

Most, if not all English-speaking churches have ministered to ex-pats. And that seems like an obvious outreach. And we, ourselves, have identified ex-pats as the core community for outreach. And historically that has worked.

But things have changed. As we reach out to the foreign community we are still relying on Christianity being the dominant religion in the west. And as Christianity is dying in Europe and North America, the pool of western ex-pats looking for a church grows smaller.

Also, many ex-pats who DO come to Tokyo to live and work, only stay for a year or two. And since they know that their time here is limited they use their weekends and holidays to explore the city, th country, or other parts of Asia. And they don’t want to connect too deeply with any groups because they know they won’t be staying here long enough to make it worth their while.
So where does that leave us?

That’s hard to say. And that’s something that we’re asked to discern together. Just as Paul listened to the voices around him to learn how to make his message heard, we too are called to listen to our surroundings to get a sense of what our mission will be to our community.

And just like Jesus laid hands on people seeking healing, he put his hands on their heads with no other agenda other than to love them. He didn’t tell them what their needs where. He didn’t preach to them. He simply listened. And let them speak. And that’s how he could offer them the good news of their healing, at that moment.

Maybe that’s what we’re asked to do. Maybe our outreach begins, not with our needs and our agenda, but by listening to the voices that surround us, to hear the bad news for which our good news would be welcome.

We know that what worked in the past does not work today. We know that our world is changing. We know that the hurts and needs and sins of today may be different from those of yesterday.

But we know that God still has a future for us. As Isaiah says in today’s first reading,

“The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth….God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Because of what God has done for us, we have strength to move forward, we have wings to fly toward God’s future for us, and we have feet to climb any mountain that’s put in front of us.
So “woe to us if we do not proclaim good news.” God has given us everything we need to be faithful in that proclamation both as a church and in our lives. May we listen to the voices that surround us, and may we act with bold faithfulness.

May this be so among us. Amen.

Christmas Eve

This being my first Christmas in Japan, one of the things I’ve found refreshing is that I don’t have to worry about people whining about the so-called “War on Christmas.”

If you follow the western news you might notice that every December a few commentators, pundits, bloggers, and blowhards decry the fact that some people offer the seasonal greeting by saying “Happy Holidays” instead of the more traditional “Merry Christmas.”

This makes some people’s heads explode. They’re worried that by saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” Christ is being taken out of Christmas, thereby being denied his rightful place in our December celebrations.

But I won’t comment on the fact that Christmas doesn’t start when Costco decides to put up their decorations, or when the radio stations start playing Christmas muzak.

I won’t point out that Christmas actually starts tomorrow, December 25, the day when we actually celebrate Jesus’ birth.
I won’t mention that the song The 12 Days of Christmas alludes to the fact that Christmas runs from December 25 to January 5.

What I WILL say is that demanding that people bow down to the cultic consumer idol that Christmas has become, they are pushing people further away from what gives the Christmas story -the story of Jesus’ birth - it’s power.

They want Jesus at the centre of society. But they forget that Jesus wasn’t given a celebrity birth. Yes there were angels celebrating and singing in the sky. But Jesus was born in a barn far away from home to impoverished parents. He slept in a feeding trough surrounded by smelly animals, while a crowd gathered outside and visitors came and went. I can’t think of a less dignified birth.

So, for me, it’s, again, refreshing to be in a country that doesn’t have the cultural memory of Christmas. Japan is inventing Christmas for itself. And yes, it looks a lot like the Wal*Mart version of Christmas, which has more to do with Santa than Jesus. But Christians know that Christmas is so much more than what Tobu provides.

Christmas is about God inserting God’s self into history by being born as a first century, Mediterranean, Jewish peasant.

Christmas is about God making the whole world sacred by sharing the best and the worst of humanity.

Christmas is about God’s ongoing commitment to life by being born to a world obsessed with death.

Christmas is about God reaching out and gathering the whole world to God.

If this story is new to you, don’t worry. It’s new to many people. And it was new to most of those who gathered at the stable after the angel announced Jesus’ birth.

Most of those who were summoned to the manger were those who had been shut out of the halls of economic, religious, and political power. They were the 99%. They muddled through their days hoping that their lives would get better, even though they didn’t expect that they would.

They heard over and over and over again that they were insignificant little nothings, whose existence would never be remembered, much less celebrated. They were told that they had no direct access to God.

So, they had to pay the priests with money they didn’t have to gain forgiveness from a God they barely knew.

The system was broken. The deck was stacked against them. They had hope, but little expectation that anything would ever change.

I wonder if we see the same thing today.

People muddle through their lives directionless, devoid of purpose other than paying the bills and crashing in front of the TV. Work can be a meaningless slog up a slippery hill. Relationships break. Families fall apart.

And when people seek after God they often find even more troubles and burdens from those who claim to speak for God.

There’s so much religion out there whose chief aim is to make you feel badly about yourself. There’s so much religion out there who makes money off of YOUR guilt.

There’s so much religion out there that demands perfect moral behaviour from you, that trades on your shame, that requires that you hide those parts of your life that need healing but that others would judge you on.

There’s so much religion out there that tries to strip you of your humanity, denying your failures, your grief, your regrets, proclaiming a false victory in your life. There’s so much religion out there that asks you to ignore your pain in order to fit their tiny view of God.

But the Christmas story tells us something very different. The Christmas story tells us that God dropped Jesus down right in the middle of the world’s pain. God dropped Jesus down in the middle of YOUR pain. YOUR shame. YOUR sin. YOUR Death. By dropping Jesus right down in the middle of your aching failures God is saying to YOU:

‘You don’t have to hide anything from from me because I know everything about you. You don’t have to hide your shame. Your grief. Your loneliness. Your addictions.

‘You don’t have to hide your resentments and discouragement. You don’t have to hide your fear, your lack of faith, or doubts.

‘You don’t have to hide those moments when you wonder if life is worth living at all. In fact I will share them with you. I will take those burdens from you.

“Others may reject you. But I embrace you.
Others may point out your faults. But I celebrate your gifts.
Others may hold a grudge. But I forgive you for everything wrong you’ve done.
Others may demand that you stay locked in place, weighed down by social expectations. But I will give you wings so you can fly.

“I will wipe your tears. I will heal your pain. I will die your death so that you can rise to new and everlasting life as the beloved child of God that I made you to be.”

Today Jesus is saying from the manger,

“If you want to know who God is, just look at me, hear my words and feel my embrace.

‘When you’re longing to see a better tomorrow keep your eyes wide open because the future is as bright as a resurrection morning.

‘If you want to know eternal life, trust that I know what to do with you after you’ve closed your eyes.”

Jesus came so that YOU may have abundant life.
Jesus came so that YOU can live in the freedom and joy of being God’s child.
Jesus came so that YOU can be forgiven and set on a new path.
Jesus came so that your past will NOT dictate the future that God has for you.

Because of Jesus you have a new chance at life.
Because of Jesus you can know that your tomorrow will be better than today.
Because of Jesus you can know that the God who created the universe holds you in the palm of his hand.

So now you can go back out into the world carrying Jesus with you, giving birth to life and hope wherever you go.

You can go out into the world spreading peace and joy to you meet.

You can go out into the world shining God’s light in life’s dark corner’s.

You can go back out into the world singing the song of the angels, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace and goodwill to all the world!”

That’s Christmas. That’s why we celebrate.

May this be so among us. Amen.