Ash Wednesday - Feb 18, 2015 - St. John, Calgary

Joel 2; Psalm 51; 2 Cor 5-6; Matt 6

I commend you for being here this evening. Ash Wednesday is an extraordinarily challenging day for Christians. On Ash Wednesday, we are confronted with the reality of ourselves. We are confronted with our own mortality, with our own death. We come face-to-face with the reality that, without God, we are absolutely nothing. Without God, we are dust. And we are reminded that when we lose sight of that, we lose sight of God.

This is what Ash Wednesday is about. It is an acknowledgement, or a reminder, that we, as God’s people, have lost sight of God. On Ash Wednesday we allow ourselves to feel most fully what we feel a little bit on Sunday, although we allow ourselves to gloss it over pretty quickly–that we are estranged from God. We allow ourselves to feel the great gap that exists between us and God–the doubts, the uncertainties, the question that plagued the prophet Joel– “Where is our God?” We have lost sight of God–we are in need of reconciliation with God, as Paul so rightly points out in our second reading. Today we look at ourselves, and, if we are honest and brave, we allow ourselves to become aware that we, as individuals and as a people together, have strayed from the path of God and now feel distant and disconnected and alone.  

How did this happen? Should we go back to the garden of Eden and blame all of this disconnection on Eve and Adam? Should we excuse our own actions and avoid taking personal responsibility by talking about original sin? No, I think we are beyond that. I think we, as a church, have finally achieved a spiritual maturity where we do not have to blame our disconnected relationship with God on a mythical couple that is meant for child-like intellects.

So what happened then? Why do we still come here on Ash Wednesday? Why do we still reflect on this feeling that we need to be reconciled with God? How did we, as a people in this place on this night, come to lose sight of God? Well, God is where God has always been, but we–we’ve been looking in the wrong places. We are here tonight, having lost sight of God, because we are searching for God not where God is, but where we want God to be. We come to this Ash Wednesday service–we have a need to acknowledge and be reminded that we are nothing without God–we feel disconnected and in need of reconciliation with God because we–we–as God’s very own children, as one of the peoples for whom God created the world–we are selfish and self-involved and obsessed with fulfilling our own wants and needs. We are here because we have lost sight of God, and we have tried to make something of ourselves without God, and because we are searching to find God within ourselves.

I have been struggling for a few weeks about whether and how to say what I am about to say to you. I do not believe that pastors should preach about sins in such a way that the congregation is singled out while the pastor remains aloof and distant from the sin. When I have preached on sin and human failings, it’s always been from the perspective that we are all in this together, because we are not called to judge one another, but to forgive. But there is an uncomfortable truth that needs to spoken–on Ash Wednesday–about this congregation’s having lost sight of God because we search for God where we want God to be, and not where God actually is.

This truth is made visible in one of the questions I asked this congregation during the annual meeting: “given St. John’s limited resources of time and money, should it be spent caring for the members of the congregation or for those in need in the community?” I asked you where we should focus our energy. On St. John or on the wider world? Internally or externally? On ourselves or on others? And the answer was overwhelmingly–80%–that we should spend our energy on St. John, on the members here, on ourselves. The people of this congregation want to find God in ourselves. We want to believe that when we serve ourselves, we are serving God. We know that we’ve lost sight of God, and this people desperately wants to find God again, but what I’m seeing here is that you, like many other well-intentioned Christians, want to find God by looking within these walls, within these relationships, and within this community. But this is not where God tells us to look. (Although if it is any comfort to hear, I’ll tell you that you are not alone in this self-serving belief. The mistaken belief that we will find God when we serve our own community has tempted Christianity since Emperor Constantine. North American Christianity fell whole-heartedly into this belief in the twentieth century–the peak of the “golden age” of church-going was built on this idea. And today, many churches that are struggling continue to believe that they will find God within their church walls, if only they look hard enough.)

But we will not find God here. We will not be reconciled to God in this way. We cannot hope to find God by turning inwards, as Luther says, by curving in on ourselves. We cannot hope to gain new life in Christ or to rise from our own dust by turning to ourselves. When we live to ourselves, we die to Christ.

We will not find God by looking inwards because God is out there. God is present with those who are suffering, God is with those who are in need, God is out there, in the world, beyond church walls, amongst those whom we think are farthest from Christ. We catch sight of God in the hungry and the thirsty, when we feed them and give them something to drink. We catch sight of God in the stranger and the naked and the prisoner, when we welcome them and clothe them and visit them. As Jesus says, “truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:34-40) It is when you look outside of this place that you find God. It is when you serve others that you see God. It is, actually, when you pour out yourselves as alms for the suffering of others that you find God. When you pray for others, you find God. When you fast–for others–you find God.

And in these acts, God raises you from the dust. In these acts of pouring out yourselves for those who are suffering, in meeting the needs of others with a broken and contrite heart, in dying so that others may live, in becoming poor so that others may be rich, in taking nothing so that others may have everything–in these acts God seeks you out and finds you, and brings you through the dust of Ash Wednesday and into new life in Christ.

So how can we bear this knowledge for the next fifty days of Lent? How can we carry the condemnation of Ash Wednesday through until Easter? Well, what I never struggle to say, and what we must cling to in order to make it through our own sin, is that while we may have turned away from God in seeking to serve ourselves, God has not turned away from us. While we may be looking for God in the wrong places, God is not hiding from us. Because of Easter, because of Christ, we know that God is reconciling us to God’s self. You see, there is a cross of water, given to you in baptism, underneath the cross of ashes you are about to receive, that is God’s promise that God is creating in you a clean heart, and a right spirit. Our own Lutheran martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reminded us that “baptism in the name of Jesus Christ means both death and life.” “Now is the day” that God is restoring to you the joy of your salvation. And God is sustaining in you a willing spirit so that you will, like Christ, take this path of the next fifty days until Easter, in service to those most in need, fasting to bring God’s new life to their dust and their ashes, and seeking and being found by God by dying to yourselves and being brought to new life in Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Epiphany 5, 2015

[adapted from 2006]

“That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door.” 

It really sounds as if the writer of Mark is saying here that a whole city of sick people were brought to be healed by Jesus? On the one hand, it’s a bit ludicrous that there are that many people - probably an exaggeration meant to give emphasis to the story. But on the other hand, it is quite believable. If we stop and think about it, I would guess that each of you sitting here has at least one person in your life who isn't well - a friend or a family member, or even you yourself -  someone who is physically ill, or mentally, or emotionally, or even spiritually ill. I don't even have to guess to know that every one of us here has, at some point in our lives, been sick - whether from something mild like a cold or the flu, or from something serious like cancer or a heart condition.

But what it would take for disease and illness to be completely eradicated from our world? Of course, we could talk about cures and medical advances, but really, what would have to change for sickness to become a thing of the past is that we’d have to address the root causes of illness. We’d have to get rid of all the things that make people unwell in the first place. To start, we'd have to get rid of malnutrition - a major cause of all kinds of disease. We'd have to do away with poverty and homelessness, two more major factors that contribute to people getting and staying sick. We'd obviously have to take environmental factors into consideration - polluted air and water and food cause all kinds of diseases. Naturally we'd have to end wars and all kinds of abuse - things that can lead to mental and emotional diseases, not to mention the physical consequences of violent conflict. In short, for people to be well and whole for their entire lives, the world would have to become a place where everybody was cared for, fed, protected, and at peace. The world would have to become, well, heaven. Or, as our Gospel writer would say, the world would have to become the kingdom of God.

Is it a leap for me to say that getting rid of sickness - healing the world - is connected to the kingdom of God? Well, in our Gospel stories for the past two weeks, taken from the Gospel of Mark, we see that those two things - healing and God's kingdom - are intimately connected. In Mark, Jesus arrives on the scene in Galilee with the proclamation, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near." And then, immediately after that, after calling some disciples, Jesus begins to demonstrate just how near the kingdom has come by healing people. First he casts out the demon of a man with an unclean spirit, and then, as we heard today, he heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law of a fever, and then that same evening he cures "many who were sick with various diseases." And the next morning, Jesus and his disciples go off to neighbouring towns "proclaiming the message... and casting out demons." In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' proclamation that the kingdom of God has come near is always closely followed by his healing one person or another. Throughout his ministry, Jesus is healing sick women, casting out demons, and eliminating sickness as often as he can, bringing God's kingdom to as many people as he can.

But it's not just in the Gospels that we see that God's presence among us results in healing. In a general, cosmic sense, God has been healing the world from the beginning, bringing God's creative and life-giving Spirit wherever there is sickness and illness. In our reading from Isaiah, we hear about how great and cosmic God is, having spread the stars throughout the sky, encompassing the whole world in a glance, being "great in strength and mighty in power," while at the same time we hear that God is concerned with the weak and "gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless." We have so many psalms that speak of God's healing of the world and of individuals, and today, we read [past tense] Psalm 147, where we proclaimed that God "heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds" and that "the Lord lifts up the downtrodden." From the beginning of creation, through the prophets, into the time of Jesus and even beyond into the Acts of the Apostles, we see that God brings healing to the world, and in doing so, brings God's kingdom ever closer to the world.

But I’m guessing that when it comes to sickness and healing, most of you aren't all that concerned with the general, cosmic overview of God's healing. My guess is that when it comes to sickness and healing, you want to talk in specifics - about specific people and about specific illnesses. In fact, my guess is that the question you're asking - because it's something I have asked, too - is what about God's healing in my particular situation? Whether that situation concerns an illness that we're going through ourselves, or whether we're thinking about someone else that we care about very much who is sick, we want to know - what is God going to do in this case? Simon Peter saw Jesus heal the man in the synagogue and no doubt thought immediately of his own particular situation - of his sick mother-in-law. The people of Capernaum heard about the man in the synagogue and thought not of how the world was changing for the better with this one healing, but of how Jesus could heal their family members and neighbours. They wanted specifics, not generalities. When we think of sickness and healing and God's presence in the midst of that, we want to know when will God heal, how will God heal, and sometimes even, why hasn't God healed yet? We read books on how prayer can heal and watch healing ministry shows on television hoping for some clue that will tell us when God is going to address our own problem. We wouldn't usually put it this way, but we want to know: when is the kingdom of God going to come to me, personally?

Well, having struggled with these questions quite intensely at certain points in my life, I still don’t know the answer. Because the truth is that we have no way of knowing when or why God moves from generalities to specifics. We don't know why Jesus chose to heal the man in the synagogue, or Simon Peter's mother-in-law, or why he then left the people of that town to move on to the next. We don't know why he didn't go around healing every single sick person in Israel. We don't know why some people who pray for healing get better, while others do not. We don't know why it seems like the kingdom of God seems to come sooner for some, but not for others. And the tough pill to swallow is that when it comes to these questions, we will never know.

It is hard to bear, this not-knowing. Things are bad enough when we or someone we love is sick - not only is the pain tough to deal with, but so is the uncertainty over the future - when recovery will happen, if it's even possible, what will happen if it's not. But then to hear on top of that that even God's involvement in the healing process is uncertain - well, that can seem like too much.

But there is a difference between being uncertain and falling into despair - being without any hope whatsoever. Because although we may be uncertain when it comes to the specifics of God's actions, we are not without hope. We may not know how or when God is going to act, and we may wonder when the specific moment that the kingdom of God is going to come to us will happen, but that doesn't mean that it's not coming at all. That doesn't mean that healing is an impossibility, it doesn't mean that continued sickness is the fate of the world. In fact, what we do know, and what we base our hope on, is that, as Isaiah says, the Lord, the everlasting God, "does not faint or grow weary" in the task of healing either the world or individuals. From the beginning of creation - and that's a long time ago no matter how you figure it - God has been healing on both a macro- and a micro- scale - counting the stars in the heavens and feeding the small birds in the skies.

We also know that when it comes to bringing about that world where sickness doesn't exist - when it comes to bringing to fulfilment the kingdom of God - that although we are far from certain about when that might happen, we are given every reason to hope, by Jesus Christ himself, that it will happen, and is happening even as we speak. "The kingdom of God has come near," Jesus said often and in various ways, and demonstrated it over and over again in healings and feedings of thousands and indeed, proving it definitively when he was raised from the dead. And indeed, those rare moments of healing that we do experience, those brief instances when pain is eased and wholeness is present, when heaven touches earth, those moments, though sometimes fleeting, are given to encourage us to keep up our hope, as signs that the kingdom of God has come and is coming near.

I cannot say when God will bring healing and the kingdom of God to your particular situation. But I can say, without hesitation, that you and all those who need healing are a vital part of the vast cosmos that God is committed to healing. To paraphrase Isaiah, do not say that your way is hidden from the Lord, and your right is disregarded by your God. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless ...  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." The kingdom of God has come near to the world. When it will be fully here, we do not know, but it continues to come and you are a part of that and all will experience the healing of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.