Holy Communion in Holy Week 2020

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

Holy Week is quickly approaching, especially the services of Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday. On Maundy Thursday, we celebrate Christ’s gift to us of Holy Communion, as seen in the Last Supper. On Easter Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, the firstborn to new life, whose new birth we share through baptism.

In these days in particular, we yearn to be gathered together with Christ. In the church, this has traditionally and historically taken place in Holy Communion. We come together as one body, and receive the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine consecrated by the pastor. We taste the bread, and hear “the body of Christ given for you,” and we taste the wine or juice, and hear “the blood of Christ shed for you.” In this, we receive an affirmation that our sins are forgiven, we experience being united in the body of Christ, and we are comforted for the days ahead.

In normal circumstances, the practice of the Lutheran Church is that we do not commune outside of the church body. Church visitors who bring Communion to shut-ins do so as representatives of the church, bringing the consecrated elements with them. They are acting as extensions of the church, on behalf of the church, for members of the church who cannot be there on Sunday. In normal circumstances, we do not hold Communion at home by ourselves on Sundays when we can’t get to church. Instead, we “fast” from Communion until someone can visit us bringing Communion from the congregation, or we find a way to get to church.

These are not normal circumstances. 

We are experiencing an absence from Communion that may last for months, not simply weeks, and we are experiencing a global trauma that is driving us to desperately seek Christ for strength for the present and the future.

We are also experiencing the workings of the Holy Spirit through the advances of technology. We are gathering in virtual community on Sunday mornings, and Morning and Night Prayer, and worshiping and praying together in very real ways. We are discovering that the Holy Spirit, who “calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth,” (Luther’s Small Catechism, Third Article) is doing this through the Holy Spirit. We are experiencing that God is not restricted by our physical isolation, but is using online tools to meet us where we are. We are learning that “where two or three are gathered,” Christ truly is present, even when the gathering is online.

For all these reasons, I have decided that there is strong theological support for us to celebrate Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday. While it is historically unprecedented, our theology allows us to move forward. We believe that God is with us at all times (especially those who are suffering), we believe that Christ is not held back by any physical distancing (just as he appeared to the disciples behind locked doors after his resurrection), and we believe that the Holy Spirit moves where it wills and gathers the whole church together (through any means available). When we say that we are gathered with “the saints of every time and every place,” we believe that God makes it truly so, and that we are gathered with our ancestors in faith who have died years ago, with our unborn descendants who will one day worship as we do, and with all those now alive, across the globe, who are joined in the spirit, including online.

Therefore, our Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday services will include Holy Communion. I will preside over Communion at church, and each of you are invited to prepare your own table, with bread and wine or juice from your own pantry, at home. For more details, you can watch this video - https://youtu.be/iHdlGELCiKU. Because we will be gathered together in worship by Zoom, we will not be communing alone, but together, as one Body. Apart, but together.

Of course, if you would prefer to wait until we are physically gathered, please know that you are free to do that. For some people, there is no substitute for physical presence, and fasting from Communion for the next while increases their appreciation and gratitude for these gifts from Christ. You may worship with us, and refrain from communion at home, and still hear the words and find strength in them. You are more than blessed if you would prefer this option.

Online Communion is not the regular practice of the church, and will not be the new normal when this time of isolation has passed. We will continue to yearn to be together in the same physical space, and to hear the chorus of voices singing and praying together, to shake one another’s hands in peace, and to come before the rail side-by-side. That time will come, however long it might take, but until then, we trust in God working among us in new ways, and we receive God’s comfort where it is offered.

May the peace that passes all understanding be with you all,

Pastor Kayko

~~~~~~~~

The Rev Kayko Driedger Hesslein, PhD

Advent Lutheran Church, Calgary AB

Fifth Week of Lent, 2020

Lent 4 - Light in our Darkest Valley

Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

Darkness and light, blindness and sight. It seems like we are a bit more in the time of Advent than Lent, watching the world get darker around us, needing the light to shine in the darkness. Our psalm for today says, though I walk through the darkest valley, and we are just at the beginning of that walk. In all likelihood, we will be walking through this valley for the better part of a year, if not longer, and it will get darker before we are through.

But we are not the first to live in times like these. There have been others before us who have also faced a darkening world. Some of us have family members who lived through the end of World War II, who have shared stories of struggle and survival in unimaginable circumstances. We read the words from five hundred years ago of those who endured the bubonic plague, including Martin Luther whose faith was honed in the loss of his baby girl. Even our Scripture readings for today were written by people whose lives were as threatened as ours. The letter to the Ephesians was written during the time of Emperor Nero, who persecuted Christians, including the apostle Paul. They, too, lived under a kind of quarantine, never daring to leave their houses as Christians, lest they be arrested and fed to the lions. And the Gospel of John was written a bit later, by a group of Christians who were rejected by their Jewish communities, who themselves had just experienced the destruction of the Temple and the complete burning down of the city of Jerusalem by Rome. We are not the first of God’s children to stand at the entrance to the darkest valley and to know that the only way through is just that, through.

I share the background of our Scripture readings because sometimes we forget that the people who wrote them were living in times of great crisis. The writings are so full of hope, that it seems like they must have been written during good times, when everything was bright and sunny. It can be tempting to dismiss them as not applying to our modern world, and our current situation, whatever that might be. One of the things that happens in times of crises is that we get overly-focused, we get sucked into the emergency at hand, and we lose the larger perspective. This is a normal reaction, of course, we do need to assess our own situations. But we can’t get stuck in them. Eventually, we have to look beyond ourselves to others. And when we do, we realize that people throughout history have experienced what we are experiencing, and that they have words of light, and words of wisdom to share with us.

This morning, that wisdom comes to us from the letter to the Ephesians. In a moment of great crisis, when Nero was jailing and killing people like the apostle Paul, and all the early Christians, we have these verses, “for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light––for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. ... Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness.”

So what does that mean, to live as children of light and not take part in the works of darkness? Well, the works of darkness right now are pretty clear - profiteering, hoarding, taking way more than we can use at the moment in case we might need it later. Taking advantage of people’s need for something to sell it to them at outrageous prices. We’ve seen stories in the news of people doing this, buying up and then selling toilet paper, N95 masks, other protective gear. These are works of darkness.

The works of darkness also include ignoring the restrictions that the government has put in place to keep our neighbours healthy. It includes going out to the store, even though you’ve been told to stay home. It includes lying about your health to get into the hospital to visit a loved one. And believe me, I know the temptation of that one. It includes playing down the seriousness of this situation, something we see happening in other countries around the world.

These things are what we, as Christians, do not take part in. Because, as Ephesians reminds us, we are no longer living in darkness, now we are in the Lord, and so we are in the light. And so we live as children of light. Which means we live knowing that yes, we might die––we all will, eventually––but that before that happens, we are called to bring Christ’s light and love to the world. We stay home in order to protect the most vulnerable in our midst. We rearrange our entire lives so that, as a country, we might all get through this. We live with generosity of spirit, with openness of heart, towards those around us. We extend compassion to those who are short-tempered, who are struggling, who are still stuck in darkness. We extend compassion to ourselves when we are feeling those things. We open our eyes, we see the needs of those around us, and help in any way we can, especially in taking time to pray. Prayer costs us nothing but time, something we are beginning to have more of than we wanted. In these ways, even though the valley ahead is dark, we shine Christ’s light for others.

First, though, as children of the light, we take the time to remember that we ourselves have received light. You see, what the letter to the Ephesians asks us to do, what Christ calls us to do, to turn away from darkness and to walk as children of light, is impossible if we are not ourselves filled with Christ’s light. Please know that what we are called to do is not meant to overwhelm us. Living as a child of the light is not meant to drive us further into darkness. It is not meant to be a burden. Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “my yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:30)

No, living as a child of the light is what we do after we ourselves have been filled with Christ’s light, and it is our psalm that fills us with words of light this morning, as it reminds us that even though we walk through the darkest valley, our great shepherd, Jesus Christ, walks with us and takes care of us. Jesus, who himself walked through that valley all the way to the cross, who was rejected and isolated from his his friends and family, who was alone when he died, he is the one who walks with you now, and with your loved ones who are in isolation. Jesus, the good shepherd, will never leave a single one of his sheep, he will never leave your side, he will not lose any one of those whom God has entrusted to him. Not you, not your family, not your loved ones, whether they are here or far away.

And our psalm reminds us that in the midst of our enemies––viruses, isolation, financial loss––the goodness and mercy of God are following us, pursuing us the Hebrew says, chasing us down until they overcome us. God’s blessings are being prepared to fill us with overflowing, as we see already in the dedication of medical professionals, in the thoughtfulness and consideration of government leaders, in the support of our province’s teachers for our students, in the work of grocery store clerks, and delivery drivers. These people and many others are beacons of God’s light for us, as Ephesians says, “the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” God’s goodness is with us through these people and through others.

In this time to come, as we walk through this valley together, as it gets darker, know that when you reach out your hand in blindness, Jesus will grasp it and hold you firm. He will bring peace to your heart, and he will comfort you. He will send beacons of light to you when you least expect it, and you, in turn, will be a beacon of his light for others. By the grace of God, in the light of Christ, we will walk this valley together. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Lent 3 - Thinking Again in Our Anxiety

Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11

This morning, I want to look at our reading from Exodus. It’s a strange little story, partly written to explain why some springs in the eastern part of Israel are named Meribah, which means Quarrel, and partly written to shed light on the wilderness experience of the Israelites after they were rescued from slavery in Egypt. But it also has something to say to us about who we turn to when we’re feeling desperate, so it seems like the right text for today.

So, the people of Israel are moving slowly from crossing out of Egypt across the Sinai peninsula, which is desert and mountains (not what we’d call mountains, but enough to make walking more like a scramble), and then north up to Canaan. It is not easy going. They’ve already run out of food, and God has already provided them with quails and manna to eat every day, but there is no fresh water available, and it is not a place where there is a lot of rain. And so the people complain.

Now there are a lot of interpretations of this text that say the Israelites were ungrateful, and they shouldn’t complain so much, and even Moses himself seems to get annoyed with them. But remember, they were a large group of people, with vulnerable seniors and children in their midst. They were not going to survive very long without fresh water, and they would not want to watch their children die before their eyes. It’s true that they might have gone a bit overboard in saying, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” But we all say things in the midst of our stress, and it doesn’t mean we actually believe them or wish they were true. It’s easy to let our emotions get the best of us when things are looking dire. Some interpreters have said that the people of Israel sinned for doubting God, and even Moses seems to be implying that, but that’s a bit harsh. Doubt and fear are not sins, they are normal reactions. I don’t think the message of this story is that we shouldn’t complain.

No, what’s interesting to me in this text, where I think our message for today lies, is where it says that the people turned to Moses to solve their problem. The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink,” and clearly they issued some kind of threat, since Moses complains to God that he thinks the people are about to stone him. Now to me, that’s weird. Why would the people would demand that Moses give them water. What on earth do they think Moses could have done about it?

I mean, I know that Moses led them out of Egypt, and that when Moses struck the Red Sea, the waters parted, but that wasn’t Moses actually making that happen. That was God. God was the one who brought the plagues that caused the Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, God was the one who split the sea so that the Israelites could walk through on dry land. God was the one who provided them with quail and manna in the desert. Yes, God used Moses to do many of these things, but God was the one who actually did it. And yet the people complained to Moses.

And he accepts it, and then he complains to God. Now, it’s not weird that he complains to God - that’s what he should be doing. It’s weird that he accepts their complaints. You see, what he should have said to them was, “Hey, I’m not the one in charge here. Remember that God was the one who brought us out of Egypt? Talk to God. Complain to God. Turn to God.” That is, after all, the responsibility of religious leaders––to point people towards God, to redirect people from turning to the leaders in their anxiety to turning towards God.

This, I think, is the central message of this text for us this morning. We, too, are in a place where, as a community, as a city, as a country, we are deeply concerned about the vulnerable among us. And of course we turn to our leaders to help us and tell us what to do. Which, for certain things, we should. We turn to our medical leaders to tell us what health precautions we should be taking, and it might interest you to know that the Chief Medical Officer of Alberta, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, is a life-long Lutheran. She is one of “us,” which for some reason makes me feel better.

But who do we turn to in our anxiety and fear? Who or what do we turn to for that “peace that passes all understanding?” Right now, lots of people are turning to the grocery store to feel peaceful. What I mean is, people are stockpiling things like toilet paper, and canned goods, and hand sanitizer as a way to feel more peaceful about what is happening. In addition to this creating more problems for the community around us rather than less, in the long run this isn’t going to help us in our anxiousness. We might walk away from the grocery store feeling better, but as soon as we hear the latest update from AHS, the anxiety comes back.

We might turn to strict cleaning and hygiene protocols to help us feel better. These are good things to do - we want to cover our face when we cough or sneeze, we want to stay home if we’re sick with anything, we want to wash our hands with soap and water for 20-30 seconds. Incidentally, reciting the Lord’s Prayer takes about that amount of time, so you might think about doing that when you’re washing your hands, instead of singing Happy Birthday, or the ABCs, or any of the other suggestions. But again, these things, while helping with germs, don’t help in the long term with our anxiety.

What helps with our fear is turning to God. God is the one who helps us when our spirits are anxious. Those other things––recommendations from doctors, staying home if we’re sick, clean hands, they all help with our bodies, but it is God who helps our spirits. In our Exodus story, yes, Moses failed to be a good leader when he accepted the complaints of the people and didn’t tell them to turn to God, but he did do a good job in himself turning to God. I suppose that’s why I am reassured by our Chief Medical Officer being Lutheran, because I know that she is also turning to God for peace––for a clear head and an open heart.

We turn to God because God has shown over and over and over again that God is there for us. God did give water to the Israelites in their need, and didn’t mock them for their anxiety. God has been the source of spiritual strength for Christians for 2,000 years, and for Jews for thousands more. God was there for Jesus––more than there: God’s Spirit filled Jesus when Jesus faced death. God was there for the apostle Paul, imprisoned and beaten, which is why Paul was able to say that “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” 

We have been talking about Lent as a time to “think again” about God’s relationship with us. As this coming week unfolds, when you feel your anxiety rising, I encourage you to think again. Think of God. Turn to God, and remember that God has already turned to you. In times of anxiety, from the bubonic plague of Luther’s time, to the Spanish flu that some still remember, to today, God has always and will always be with us.

Now, it’s one thing for me to say that, and it’s another for us to put that into practice. So, today, and as long as we need, we are going to take more time in the service during our prayers of intercession. Since sharing the peace is taking less time, and since we’re not passing the offering plate, we have some extra time in our service, and so we’re going to use it to pray. When it comes times for people to offer their own individual prayers, we’ll take the time to do that. Whether you pray out loud, or just in your hearts and there’s only silence, we will turn to God together. And God, who has already turned to us, will grant us peace in our hearts, today and in the days to come. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Lent 1 - Thinking Again about our Connection to the World

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11

Exactly two years ago this Sunday, I was in Tanzania. And I was having a conversation with a young man from there, who asked me, “Why do you work?” Now, I knew that the question had to do with why did I, the mother of two children, with a spouse who worked, have a job outside the home. And I knew that I could answer that it was because I enjoyed it, because it gave meaning to my life, because I was helping people. But what I said was, “Because we need the money.” Which of course sounds ridiculous to someone working at a tourist lodge. In what way could a tourist need money?

Naturally, I didn’t get into the whole thing of my dad paying for the whole trip so we could create memories as a family rather than just leaving us money after he died. But we did get into a conversation comparing costs-of-living, and what percentages of our income went towards housing and food. In Tanzania, if you want to own a house, first you buy some land, which is about one year’s worth of one person’s income. Anybody know of any land around here for $50,000? And then, in Tanzania, you build a very small house - just with one or two rooms, which costs about six months’ worth of income, which you expand as you have need and money. When I explained to him that to live in our city, the only land for sale comes with a house already built on it, and that my house and land was almost ten years’ worth of my income... Well, first he actually gasped and then he said, “Now, I know why you and your husband both work.”

But that’s just housing; then we got to talking about food. And I asked him, “Where do you get your food when you’re not working here?” Because, as an employee of the lodge, he was provided with his meals from the kitchen when he was there. And he explained that some of his neighbours had goats, and if he was really hungry, he could just walk past one of the fruit trees growing along the road and help himself. And I said, “See, we can’t do that in Canada. In the cities, we have to buy all our food. Everything, we pay for. We pay for our water, we pay for our fruit, for our rice, for our chicken, for our greens.” And again, he gasped. And then he shook his head, and he said, “It’s better here.”

Now, of course, there are many ways in which it’s better in Canada. High-quality education for our children is free and easily accessible. Life-saving surgery is likewise. We don’t have malaria. Our children are well-nourished, and vaccinated against childhood diseases. Our infant mortality rates are way lower, and the life-span of women, especially mothers, is way longer. This isn’t true for everyone in Canada, to be sure. It’s not-true for Canada’s indigenous people, who in some ways are worse off than people in Tanzania. But looking at our quality of life as a whole, by most metrics, Canadians are doing much better than Tanzanians.

But at the same time, I wonder. You see, I was really struck by what this man said about food. In Tanzania, people are connected with their food. They live with it as part of their community––the local trees have “public” fruit, the neighbours have chickens or goats, the local Maasai have endless supplies of milk and beef. In Canada, we live very separately from our food. For more than 80% of Canadians, those us who live in cities, our food is not growing along the street, or in our neighbours yard. It’s in the grocery store. We can only access it if we have money. In Canada, if you’re hungry and you don’t have money, you have to beg for your food. You have to go through the humiliation of going to a food bank and being told, I’m sorry, you’ve already been here the maximum amount of times you can be this month, you can’t have any more. You are isolated, separated, from one of the necessities of life.

Now, we’re so used to this way of living that we accept it as the way the world is supposed to be. But it’s not. More importantly, it’s not the way God created the world to be. The first few chapters of Genesis remind us that God created us so that the entire world––people and animals, plants and oceans, the sun, the sky––would all be one living community, brought into being and given life as a whole by God. Our Scriptures give us the beautiful story of creation in one week, which is meant to convey the completeness of what God has done, and tell us that God has meant for the earth and us to nurture each other, to be a community together. Science tells us that we are all part of a finely-balanced ecosystem that depends on not just the things we can see but on the networks of microbes and rhizomes and bacteria and fungi that knit all living things together. Scripture and science together remind us that we, humans, cannot survive if we are separated from the world around us. God designed us to flourish together.

But, as Scripture also tells us, we are constantly tempted to think otherwise. This morning’s Gospel reading is particularly making that point. In our story, Jesus is tempted by the devil three times to reject the belief that God provides. First, the devil tempts Jesus to provide food for himself. Second, the devil tempts Jesus to protect his own life. And finally, the devil tempts Jesus to take control over the entire world. 

Naturally, Jesus resists. Which is part of the point of the story. But the other, just as important part, is that Jesus resists by reminding the devil that God has already created the world with everything in it that a person needs. First, God gives us our daily bread and God’s own word––God is the source of both our physical and spiritual nourishment. Second, God is the source of life and protects that life. And finally, God is the one who has ultimate power and control over the entire world, not the devil or anyone else. Jesus knows that the devil’s temptations are built on a lie. It is a lie that our needs can be fulfilled apart from the essentials God has already provided. Jesus is able to resist the temptations that the devil offers by proclaiming that our provider is not we ourselves, but God, who is gracious and generous to all.

In Canada, we are tempted in many ways to believe that our needs are fulfilled by someone or something other than God. Our food production and distribution systems, that separate us from the land and from the people who grow what we eat, are one of those ways. Our manufacturing systems, that separate us from how our clothes and our homes and our goods are made, are another. When I have the power to buy something with the tap of a card or the click of a button, the relationship between me and the people who are producing what I’m buying, the connection between me and the resources and methods used to provide the materials, the community that God has created for our mutual well-being becomes invisible.

And this is dangerous. Because when we are separated from the world, from the raw materials that are used to make what we need, from the people who create these things for us, from the plants and animals that feed our bodies, then we forget where these things came from. We forget that we are in community together, and we forget that the source of all these things––materials, food, people, life itself––is God. And we begin to think that we––through our money, or our jobs, or the economy––provide the essentials of what we need to live. And we are tempted, as Jesus was, to turn away God.

In Lent, we are called to turn, or rather to re-turn, to God. We are called to follow Jesus in resisting mindless and self-centred consumption, and to stop disconnecting from the world around us. Instead, we are called to think about how God has created us to be in community with one another and with the entire world. We are called to think about how God is the true source of our essentials, and how God gives abundantly to all. To think it through, and to live it out, and to say, Thanks be to God. Amen.