Comfort in Our Digital Diaspora

Lutheran Church of our Saviour - Calgary - Hebrews 4:14-5:10

So this reading from the Letter to the Hebrews is a bit odd, isn’t it? It’s not one we really preach on a lot, or even hear read in church very much. It’s hard for us to relate to, I think. This talk of Christ as the high priest, and offering sacrifices - it doesn’t really resonate with our experiences of Jesus or our understandings of Communion, unless our church backgrounds include the Catholic or Anglican churches.

But this letter was written during a time of deep distress and trauma that has something in common with what we’re going through today in the world with COVID. And it offers us some hope, too, so I thought maybe today we could look at it a little more closely and explore the good news and comfort that God has for us today.
So. During the time of Jesus and his disciples––even earlier than that, actually––there was this understanding that the Spirit of God - which in Hebrew is called the Shekinah - dwelled in the Temple in Jerusalem. This is why the Temple was so central to the religious life of Jews during Jesus’ time, and why everyone went there. Maybe you remember the story of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus there as a baby, and then going there when he was 12 and he stayed there and they thought he was lost? And of course we have other stories of Jesus and his disciples going to the Temple, for various religious events. That’s because the Temple was where the Shekinah was, and so that’s where people went to connect with God and with one another as God’s community. Every Jew, including Jesus, felt that as long as the Temple was standing, they were assured of God’s presence amongst the people of Israel, no matter where they were living. (And you might remember the story of Jesus going into the Temple and overturning the money changers’ tables, and that’s because he was upset about how the Temple was being exploited, not upset that it was actually there.)

So, the Temple is central for the religious life of Jews, and then, in 70 CE, about forty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, around the time when the Gospels and the various letters in the New Testament were being written, the Roman legions occupying Jerusalem burnt it to the ground. And by it, I mean the whole city, and the Temple. That’s the reason there’s actually no Temple in Jerusalem anymore. The Romans sacked the city, and the Temple fell. If you can imagine a city on fire, and the streets running with blood, and people screaming and fleeing for the hills, and total chaos––that was Jerusalem.

Obviously this was a huge trauma for the people. Their homes were gone, families were separated and killed, as bad as you can imagine. But even worse, and here’s where maybe we can begin to relate, is that the house of God, the dwelling place of the Spirit of God, was destroyed. Maybe you remember seeing the roof of the Notre Dame on fire, just two years ago? Or maybe you yourself have seen a church burn down? It’s an awful feeling, to see a house of worship burn to the ground. Now imagine that this is the house of worship for an entire people. There is no other. This is it. And now it’s gone. When the Temple was destroyed, it was as if God had left. I mean, where would the Spirit of God dwell if there was no dwelling place? The Jews all of a sudden found themselves spiritually homeless. They couldn’t go to the Temple to worship, they couldn’t go to gather with their families before God, they couldn’t engage in the rituals that helped them feel closer to God. They felt thrown into the wilderness. They were dispersed - the word we use to describe it is diaspora. After the Temple fell, the Jews, including Jesus’ followers, including Paul, were in a diaspora.

We, Christians, have spent the last year and a half in a similar diaspora. Ever since the COVID shutdowns of late March 2020, we have experienced being cut off from our gathering places of worship and dispersed. We have not been able to gather together to worship God like we are used to, to be with our families in sacred spaces. The last two Easters were online, if that, for everyone. There were no physical Easter services. Barely any physical Christmas services. We have been in a COVID diaspora. Spread out across distances, unable to gather. I believe that this will be a time of trauma that will have a lingering impact on Christians for years, similar to the way the destruction of the Temple impacted the Jews and Christian Jews. We have struggled to find new ways to be together, just as Jews struggled in their diaspora. We struggle to figure out what it means to be God’s community when we can’t actually be with one another. We struggle to understand how God can be with us “online” and not in a building. It has been hard. It’s been lonely, and depleting, and exhausting. And particularly challenging because every time we think we finally can get back together again, just like before, there’s another setback. Another wave of cases. A new variant to adjust to. We want to know, when will this end? When can we go back to normal? When can we be together again? Where is God??

This was the struggle of the Jews in the diaspora, of Paul and the first disciples, of the early church community (because remember, they were Jews who followed Christ). And what we see in the letter to the Hebrews, and in this passage about Jesus as the great high priest, and Jesus as the one who sympathizes with our weakness, and gives us mercy and grace, and deals gently with us, is the beginning of an answer to the struggle of how to be together while in a diaspora.

For those early Christian Jews, wondering where the Spirit of God was when the Temple had been destroyed, they began to realize that the Spirit of God had come to rest in Jesus. That Jesus was the dwelling place of God. And, because Jesus had ascended into heaven, that Jesus had extended himself as the dwelling place of God to the whole Christian family. That is why the church is called the body of Christ––this body, this body of Christians, is now the dwelling place of the Spirit of God. Wherever Christians went, God’s Spirit was with them, because Christ was with them. If you remember Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians (6:19-20) that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, this is what he’s getting at. The Temple in Jerusalem was gone––the Jews had given up hope that it would be rebuilt––but Paul, a Christian Jew, came to understand that God’s Spirit was not gone. It had found a new home in the bodies of the body of Christ. For these Christian Jews, in their Temple diaspora, that was an immense comfort. God was not gone! They were not cut off from one another!

This is our comfort, too. Even though we are not all worshipping together in the same space, some people are here, but many more are attending from their own homes, we are not cut off from one another, because Christ is with us. Christ is with each of you, in your home, in your pew, with every single one of you. And because Christ is in you, and you in Christ, as the Bible says, you are not truly separated from one another or from God. Although we are not physically together as we worship, we are together in Christ. We are actually together not just with those who are attending this service today, but with all those across the world who call themselves Christian who are gathered to worship. Across space, and even across the generations. Christ gathers Christians from all around the world, from all across time, and makes us one in him. We are dispersed, but we are not cut off. We are individual, but we are not alone. God––Father, Son, and Spirit––is with all of us.

Of course, it’s hard to really feel this, especially if we’re worshipping at home and we are the only one in front of the screen. I know that feeling. But God has given us a gift for this time, just as God gave to those first Christians in diaspora, and that is the gift of Holy Communion, the body and blood of Christ. This is why Holy Communion is so important at this time, especially online. The physical bread and the wine here, and the physical bread and wine you have at home, in whatever form that comes in, are all part of the one bread and the one wine that is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. When you hold that piece of bread or cracker in your hand, and when you sip that wine or juice, you are holding the same body that every single other person is holding in Communion, and taking into yourself the very same Christ as everyone else. You are engaged in communion with God, and through the Holy Spirit, with one another, whether you are here in this building or sitting at home. Holy Communion makes us one. Despite the COVID diaspora, God graces us with the Holy Spirit so that we are still one church, one congregation, one body of Christ. So, whether you are at home or here, as we continue through this time of disruption and dispersion, as we seek strength to get through this difficult time, know that through God, in Christ, by the power of the Spirit, we are still together. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Creator's Good Road - Sermon for Hope Lutheran Church

Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

So, I’ve never been divorced so I’m not sure I’m really the best one to talk about what Moses’ command means for divorce. On the other hand, Jesus was never married, so I’m not sure he was the best one to talk about it either…

Fortunately, it turns out that this passage isn’t actually about marriage, as far as I can tell. This passage is about receiving the kingdom of heaven, or “walking the good road,” as some indigenous Christian theologians call it.* This passage is about living as God’s children, and accepting the goodness that God has laid out for all of Creation, and not going off on roads of our own making, where we trip and fall and bring others down with us. This passage is about trusting that God is good and that God has made a good road for us to walk.

But to really get that, we need to back up a bit because there’s some stuff to unpack here.

To start, we need to understand that, during Jesus’ time,  one of the big religious questions going on in Israel was whether or not God is in charge of our lives. It’s a question of fate: has God planned out our lives in advance and we just follow along, or is the journey of our life up to us? It’s a question we still ask today, especially when confronted with mass suffering and an unknown future. And as you can imagine, some people believe it’s the first thing––God has a plan for our lives and makes that plan happen, regardless of the choices we make. And some people believe it’s the second––God gives us responsibility and free will in our lives and therefore we determine how our life unfolds.

In Jesus’ time, there were also two opinions. The Pharisees, whom we hear posing this question to Jesus, held the second opinion––that God gives God’s people the freedom to make decisions about our daily lives. That’s why they allowed divorce––we make choices in marriage and sometimes those turn out to be bad choices, and so divorce is a way to correct those mistakes. The Essenes, another sect in Judaism who don’t show up in this passage, held the first opinion––that our lives are preordained and that our daily choices are irrelevant, and God sets our path the way it is meant to be, and that we should not even attempt to change the situation we find ourselves in.

Jesus, in his response here, is sounding a lot like an Essene. (And I say here because there are other times when he sounds a lot like a Pharisee, actually.) When asked about divorce, Jesus refers to the Creation story, and goes back to God establishing certain relationships, and says, “what God has joined together, let no one separate.” In other words, what God has established for someone’s life, do not undo. If God has ordained that two people should be married, that should not be undone.

But again, the point that Jesus is trying to make is not about marriage. Marriage and divorce are brought up here as an example of what he’s trying to say, not the point. You see, just a few verses earlier, Jesus tells the disciples that “the Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” (Mark 9:30-31) He is speaking again about fate––about God’s plan and path for his life, and that he is not going to undo that plan or stray from that path.

And then, in the passage from last week, Jesus tells the disciples not to put stumbling blocks in front of others, not to interfere with the paths they are walking on, because God has set them on those paths. Jesus tells the disciples to remove the obstacles that are getting in the way of the path God has set them on. And then, after telling his listeners that if God has put them in marriage they should stay in it, he says, “receive the kingdom of God as a little child.” In other words, just as little children automatically open their hands if their caretakers hand them something good, we, too, are to receive what God has given us, and to walk where God is guiding us. Jesus believes that God has made for us a road we are meant to walk and that it is not our job to decide to leave that path.

I don’t know about you, but wow do I have trouble with this. Maybe it’s because I’m an oldest child, maybe it’s because I’ve grown up in a democracy, maybe it’s because I’m still in what I hope is the first half of my life, but wow do I not want to just accept that my life is the way it is and there’s nothing I can or should do about it. I want to be able to make choices about my life, to feel that I have an ability to shape my future, and the future of my children, and the future of those in my community. I want to decide which road I will walk on. I want to believe that I am an adult, not a child. I want to believe that there is a point to me voting in the upcoming election.

And yet, if I am honest, I also believe that even as an adult, I make the wrong choices. I believe that sometimes I choose to leave the good road God would have me walk, and that sometimes I choose to walk the rocky road. Sometimes I have encouraged others to walk that road with me; I have made decisions that have led to a lot of stumbling. And I think we all do that. As much as we want to walk God’s good road, as much as we want to follow Jesus, the reality is that we don’t always do that. We decide to make our own roads. We go our own way. Sometimes because we don’t know any better, and sometimes because we think we do.

So how do we know whose road we are walking? Especially when we come to a fork in the road and must choose one direction over another. When we are faced with a decision that has implications not just for us but for others, how do we know which direction is going our own way and which is following the road Jesus has walked ahead of us? Right now we are all experiencing what happens when those who make decisions lead us down the wrong road––we are dodging stumbling blocks left and right and the vulnerable are getting crushed as they get dragged along. I believe that deep in our hearts, we want to walk the good road, we want to open our arms and receive the blessings of the kingdom of heaven, but it’s not always clear which road that is.

You know, the Pharisees and the Essenes, or in our text today the Pharisees and Jesus, did have something in common. They both believed that God is good, and that God intends goodness for our lives. Jesus mentions the Creation story, and one of the things we know from that story is that when God had finished creating, God called everything “very good.” We know that God created a second person so that the first person wouldn’t be alone, because being alone was “not good.” We know, as our second reading tells us, that God “spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways” and in “these last days” speaks to us by a Son, who sustains all things. Jesus, the Pharisees, us––we all believe and proclaim that God is good and God wants good things for creation.

And so perhaps that is where we start when we decide which road to walk. We remember that God is good, that God’s road is good, and that this goodness is meant for all of creation, not just for a select few. And so we look for the road that is good for children to walk, and the elderly, and the sick. We look for the road that keeps us all together, that is wide enough for us to walk side-by-side, rather than sending us each on our own paths. We make decisions based on what is good for all, not just ourselves.

Of course, sometimes it turns out that we are on the wrong road––that we took the wrong fork. That we chose a road that looked exciting and interesting for our own personal benefit, without considering what it would mean for others. Then we have to engage in the very hard work of making our way over to that other road, over to the road that is good for everyone. If you’ve ever gotten lost while hiking because you tried to take a short cut and then realized you had to make it back to the actual trail, you will know how hard this work is. But here is the good news in that case: Jesus is standing on that good road, shouting out to us and encouraging us and reassuring us that we are now heading in the right direction, and the Holy Spirit is with us, supporting us and giving us strength to make our way back. To push the analogy maybe a little too far, the Holy Spirit is our GPS and our water bottle and our snack and our flashlight, ensuring that we have the energy to get back to the road the Creator has made.

I started by saying that our Gospel passage isn’t about marriage, and it’s not really. It’s about choosing the good road God has laid out for us. And those choices can include the choice to get married, or the choice to get divorced, or the choice to stay single. Sometimes people choose to get married without regard for God's plan––for what turn out to be the wrong reasons, and returning to the good road means getting divorced. Sometimes people choose to get divorced for what turn out to be the wrong reasons, and returning to the good road means choosing to stay married. For some people, walking the good road means never getting married at all. Again, marriage is an example, it’s not the point.

There are other examples, other forks, and these days they are coming fast and hard. The upcoming election and the votes you cast––that’s a fork. To vaccinate or not––that’s a fork. To stay home or go out––that’s a fork. Sometimes God’s good road is clear and easy to choose, other times it’s more difficult to discern, but one thing is for sure, there will always be tempting side roads and decisions to be made.
And in all of these decisions, we remember that God has made a good road for us all to walk on, God has made a kingdom for us all to dwell in, to use the biblical imagery. And we can recognize it because God’s road is the one that is wide enough to accommodate everyone and smooth enough for the vulnerable to travel. It is a road that keeps children and the elderly and the sick safe. It is a road that is good for everyone, not just a few. 

Most importantly, this road is one we can return to again and again. When we find ourselves off the road, either because we have chosen to leave it or accidentally left it or been led off it, the Spirit will lead us back, where we will find Jesus––welcoming us with open arms, healing us where we got hurt on those other roads, and giving us food and drink for the rest of the journey on the Creator’s good road. Thanks be to God. Amen.

*The phrase "Creator's good road" can be found in First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament (IVP, 2021), based of the work of Osage and Lutheran theologian, George E. Tinker (p. 478).

Letter to Alberta Premier, Minister of Health, and my MLA

 Dear Premier Kenney, Health Minister Shandro, and MLA Issik,

I am writing to you after having read the AHS triage protocols that will be implemented when the currently expanded ICU capacity reaches 90%, which is currently sitting at 80%. These protocols determine that my mother, due to her age, and the dozens of seniors that I know through my work, will not be accepted into acute or critical care should they have some kind of medical emergency requiring it, despite having been fully vaccinated against covid since the spring of this year. 

I have been following the news that Alberta will need to airlift ICU patients to Ontario and Quebec, which I note is a four hour plane flight. I have been watching the Protect Our Province Alberta updates which present the latest actual statistics (and not model projections) of COVID cases alongside the most recent evidence and scientific research of what is known about the delta strain. (Presentations which should have been presented by the CMOH this whole time.)

These statistics and evidence point to two inescapable realities. The first is that the delta strain of COVID is airborne, highly transmissible, and transmitted by children. The second is that our current measures and restrictions are resulting in needless deaths, with more to come. Alberta needs stronger measures, including a complete shut-down of everything, including schools, a return to contact tracing, and a return to isolating close contacts of positive cases, including those who are asymptomatic. This will not prevent the deaths about to occur, but will prevent this horrific level of death from lasting longer than it should have.

I do not say this lightly. My father was admitted to the hospital in March 2020 for scheduled surgery and during recovery the country went into a complete shutdown. I and my mother were not able to visit him in the hospital at that time, which absolutely slowed his recovery. His condition deteriorated and he died in hospice in late May 2020. We were fortunately able to see him during his two weeks in hospice, but from late March until late April his one designated visitor was myself. My sisters were unable to visit him, his wife was not able to visit, his siblings were not able to visit. During that time, my jr high child and my elementary child attended “online school,” which demanded an incredible amount of parental support, which my husband and I struggled to provide while we worked from home. (Noting that I am a pastor, and working from home meant moving church online, where we continue to worship today). It was an extraordinarily stressful time for everyone.

WE WOULD DO IT AGAIN in order to prevent the hundreds of deaths that are about to happen.

Your roles in leadership mean that you are responsible for the well-being of the entire province, not just select groups. I continue to be frustrated and now furious that you continue to offer weak restrictions in order to placate those who argue that any kind of shutdown would be too difficult. You appeal to the economic burden of a shutdown. But a province is more than an economy. A province is the people who live in it, and your actions (or lack thereof) demonstrate that you do not count the vulnerable among those whose well-being you are concerned with. You have shown what is either an appalling dereliction of duty or a staggering level of incompetence in handling COVID this year.

Premier Kenney, I know that you are a Christian, and I will remind you of Jesus’ words in Matthew 26 to take care of the sick and that “just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” You are not taking care of the least among us.

The next provincial election is in 2023. I will be taking every opportunity between now and then to remind people that the responsibility of leaders is the well-being of the entire group with priority given to the weakest among us, alongside the words of Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Sincerely,

The Rev. Dr. Kayko Driedger Hesslein, M.Div., Ph.D.

PS. I have posted this letter to my blog to facilitate easy access and sharing for you.

http://kayko.blogspot.ca

Cc: Leader of the Opposition Notley

MLUC Chapel - Lent 3 - Our Non-human Neighbours

 MLUC Chapel - Lent 3/UN Wildlife Day - Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-22

“Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” Ah… Jesus and the Temple.. One of the very few stories shared between the Gospel of John and in the Synoptic Gospels, it clearly left as much of an impression on the first generations of Christians as it does on us. Then and now, we bristle when holy spaces are contaminated by the marketplace, by commodification. 

Back then, in Jesus’ time, people understood the Temple in Jerusalem to be the holiest of spaces — the dwelling place of the Shekinah––the dwelling place of God’s Spirit among God’s people. Of course it was important not to turn it into a marketplace, not to commodify it. Access to the presence of God’s Spirit was never something to be marketed, to be made transactional. Jesus was not the first, and certainly not the last, to resist the place of God’s dwelling being reduced to a transactional space. The Temple was the place where God dwelled in the midst of the people for the well-being and holiness of the people. It was a place of shelter - a house where people could find comfort in God’s presence. Marketplaces - places of transaction, where the have-nots had to bargain with the haves - they might have had their role to play, but not within the walls of this holy house, not where God’s Shekinah dwelled, not within the Temple.

Of course, what happened through the course of history was that the Temple was actually destroyed. And Jews, and then Christians, struggled to understand what that meant for the Spirit of God dwelling among us. Jews came to understand that the Spirit of God did not leave, but came to be with them in the study of Torah and in the continuation of the people of Israel, while Gentile Christians came to understand that the Spirit came to dwell amongst the Christian family as we gather in the name of the resurrected Christ. Both Christians and Jews came to understand that God’s Spirit moved from the Temple to dwell amongst the people, to dwell in the world.

Today, which is UN Wildlife Day, I want to invite us to understand God’s Spirit dwelling among us in an even deeper way, which is to see God’s Spirit dwelling amongst all of creation, not just among humans. This way of seeing is not new, of course. Christian mystics and theologians have understood the world, and even the cosmos, to be the dwelling place of God’s Spirit for centuries, from Francis of Assisi to Teilhard de Chardin to Sallie McFague. 

My own sense of beginning to see the entire world and its web of plants, animals, trees, rocks, bacteria, even viruses, comes from indigenous people introducing me to the indigenous perspective of greeting these things as our “non-human relations.” And so today I invite you to envision God’s Spirit dwelling in the Temple of nature, to find God’s Shekinah dwelling amongst our non-human relations.

So what might we notice if we take on this understanding?

Well, we might again return to Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” Because we are noticing that more and more, our world is being commodified. Land, of course, was the first to be sold and bought, without regard for who else might need it, including especially our non-human relations. The deep parts of our earth have suffered from unrestricted mining, impacting not just the earth but also the waterways vital for fish and animals. Trees are commodified, the waters of the Great Lakes are bought and sold, entire industries are built on animals and even plants. You cannot step outside your door without being impacted by the way our entire relationship with the earth has been made transactional. Everywhere you step, you are on somebody’s land now. There is, at least in Canada, no such thing as unowned land. There is nowhere that God’s Spirit might dwell that is entirely transaction free.

But we know this. And I know that we lament this. Even in the midst of all else that we lament––COVID consequences, personal loss, even just this period of Lent––I know that we also lament that we have allowed this planetary non-human Temple, our Creator’s Dwelling Place, to be made into a marketplace and I know that we yearn to do better. We yearn to find a way to decenter ourselves from this web of God’s Creation, to turn away from anthropocentrism–– our species-wide version of curvatus in se.

It is yet one more sign of God’s graciousness in giving and nurturing us in life that God has given us the framework for doing this. This time, I invite you to take our new perspective of our non-human relations as we look at our reading from Exodus––the Ten Commandments.

We have, after all, been entirely anthropocentric in understanding these commandments, particularly the ones concerning our relationships with other humans. Honour your mother and father, do not kill, do not steal, do not covet––I, at least, have only ever considered these commandments in my relationships with other humans. I have tried to honour my human parents, I have never killed another human, I have never consciously stolen something that belongs to another human. I’m continually working on the coveting part.

But as I’ve worked on adhering to Luther’s “but instead” of the Commandments, I confess that I have also been anthropocentric in that. Do not kill, which Luther expands to say, “neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbours, but instead help and support them in all of life’s needs,” has been something that I have worked on. For my human neighbours. Do not steal, which becomes “neither take our neighbours property nor acquire it by crooked deals, but instead help them to improve and protect their property,” is another thing I have worked on. For my human neighbours. Do not covet, “so that we do not try to trick our neighbours out of their inheritance or property or try to get it for ourselves by claiming to have a legal right to it and the lie, but instead be of help and service to them in keeping what is theirs.” Again, working on that, for my human neighbours.

But might we not consider these commandments as also applying to nurturing our relationships with our non-human neighbours? Might we not consider these commandments as ways in which we can resist and overturn the commodification of God’s Temple, that we might stop making our Creator’s house a marketplace? Perhaps we might find ways to help and support our non-human neighbours in all of their life’s needs, to help our non-human neighbours to improve and protect their “property,” as it were, to help and be of service to our non-human neighbours in keeping, or at least living on and accessing, what is theirs. 

Perhaps we might be as zealous in protecting natural habitats and watersheds as we are in defending property lines. Perhaps we might invest as much in our park rangers as we do in our police forces. Perhaps we might advocate that our governments enact legislation that establishes the rights of wildlife as equal to the rights of humans. We would not be the first to think and act on behalf of our non-human neighbours - I thank Tim Hegedus for directing me to an article that described how indigenous peoples around the world have been fighting to establish legal personhood status for various bodies of water, and you may perhaps remember the news from several years ago of a group of 21 children suing the United States government on behalf of the climate. Perhaps it is time for us Christians to see this work as part of the work of following the Ten Commandments.

For as we consider that these commandments apply to our relationships with our non-human neighbours, might we not also understand the blessings to apply as well? Because we know how these Ten Commandments are positioned––with curses to the third and fourth generations who break these commandments, yes, but also with blessings to the thousandth generation of those who live by them, because it is the living by them that is the blessing. Honouring the earth which supports us and the waters which nourish us and the air which sustains us, protecting the spaces and places of our non-human neighbours from commodification, protecting the lives of our non-human neighbours not just so that they might survive but so they might thrive, this blesses them and us and all of this earthly Creation for generations to come.

Through honouring these Commandments, we are ushered into the presence of the Spirit of God, the Shekinah who dwells in this planetary Temple, so that we all, humans and non-humans alike, might experience the blessing of life that God has intended since Creation. We pray that God might empower our efforts, and we so say, thanks be to God, Amen.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02/24/news/quebecs-magpie-river-first-in-canada-granted-legal-personhood

LTS/STU Chapel - Love Builds Up

Deut 18:15-20; 1 Cor 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority.”

I think I speak for all of the faculty members at the STU when I say that I hope that as our Winter term begins next week that we all teach with authority, and that all our students are astounded! Although I also hope that there are no hostile spirits in our online classrooms heckling us….

It is a challenge, though, isn’t it––to know who is speaking with authority, to know which of the people claiming to speak the word of God are actually doing so. There are so many people in the world right now claiming to be prophets, claiming to speak on behalf of God, asserting quite strongly that God wants this, or that, or the other––many of them very earnest in their beliefs, convinced that they have a teaching from God that will change the world.

As people who earnestly desire to take in the word of the Lord and to follow Christ, we get confused and anxious when we hear so many different, and especially opposing, teachings. We don’t want to follow the wrong teacher, we don’t want to end up on the wrong side, we don’t want to be like the “weak” ones in the community of Corinth who end up compromising their own consciences by following false teachings. We yearn for one single “right” voice, one prophet, one teacher who can assure us that our interpretations, our hermeneutics, our proclamations of the Gospel, our social justice actions, our political affiliations are the ones to which God calls us. Instead, we find ourselves challenged, and sometimes exhausted, because there are too many voices, too many bloggers, too many op-ed writers, too many biblical scholars, I might even say too many theologians for us to easily discern who is speaking with God’s authority, to clearly discern whose teachings we should take as our own and, as present and future leaders in the church, pass on to others. How are we to know?

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” 

There it is, Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians, our hermeneutical key, our benchmark, our principle for discernment, as it were: love builds up. This is the essence of Paul’s message here: we can identify those who offer true words from God when the knowledge they impart directs us to love for the sake of building up the community. Love for the building up of the community. This is what the voice of the Lord our God is teaching us over and over and over again: to love, not to tear others down, not to build us up individually, but to build up the community as a whole. Teachings that seem brilliant but pit us against one another, that belittle or disparage others, that encourage contempt––these teachings are not from God. Teachings that seem crude but encourage us to walk with one another, to lift one another up, to open our hearts to others––these teachings build up the community in love. These teachings come from God.

Prophets from God, teachers from God, they give us words that heal, that give new life. We encounter this most clearly in our Gospel reading for today, in Jesus’ visit to the synagogue in Capernaum. The heart of the action, the literal centre of the pericope, is Jesus casting out the disruptive spirit. The seven verses are presented as a chiasm, to throw a little biblical studies in there. And in the very centre is Jesus and his words that bring new life. When violence threatens, Jesus silences the spirit of hatred, and calls it out––literally out, thereby healing the man, and by extension the community. The people identify him as teaching with authority not only because he rebuked an unclean spirit, but because his rebuke resulted in healing and new life for the one possessed. Jesus’ authority came from his words and actions of love, building up the community.

“All of us possess knowledge,” as Paul writes rather sarcastically. And all of us will possess even more knowledge by the time this semester is over. But the life of a Christian-in-community is not about knowledge, thank goodness, no matter what we professors say about grades and rubrics. In the end, it is about love. It is about the love we share with the world that God shares with us through Christ. It is about the love that builds us all up together, so that we all might be healed.

As we begin our winter semester together next week, as you embark once again on the important and necessary work of Biblical analysis, of critical engagement with theology, of learning the ins and outs of preaching and liturgy and pastoral care, as you open your minds to the bottomless pits of knowledge before you, take comfort in the reminder that the teachings that come from God are the ones that assure you that you are loved, that in Christ you are given new life, and that encourage you to share that same teaching with others, for the building up of the entire community. God has not actually left us to muddle through it on our own, but has sent us a true Word, one of love and life for all. Thanks be to God, Amen.