Advent 3 09 – Thorburn, NS

slip silently over our

sensibilities.

Ours is not Isaiah’s vigil -

our exile is not so brutal as it once was.

Oh, we are still exiled – bound and fettered -

but ours is self-inflicted.

We keep a willing distance from Divinity,

our choices, poor substitutions.

Yet listen to that advent call!

The promised resolution is revealed

and God waits for our resolve to crumble.

For we have failed in our promises;

we too have turned our backs -

lost sight of glorious grace that meets us still

in Jesus.

Jesus, whose birth sparked

riots of joy

among the down and out crowd.

Jesus, whose birth attendants

stood in steamy stables;

silent supplication.

Jesus answers ancient promises

and stirs our current questions

and today we mark the season (still)

of waiting – our liturgical reminder

that though the waiting is not over,

God is more persistent, by far,

than we.

The story told afresh

will give new hope,

new chances,

new opportunities

to serve and be served

June 20, 2009 – Victoria University – Toronto

two days of sunshine and celebration

midst rain – grey, drizzly dampness

deeply felt.

The citizens, visibly affected,

don plastic coats and rubber boots,

pretending this is just

a dismal spring extended.

This malaise runs deeper

than an atmospheric anomaly.

Our very souls are soggy;

sapped of any spirit

by the effort of existing in the dark.

Perhaps Paul,

writing from an appropriately dry distance,

provides the heat required to dry our dismal days.

“Get along!  Practice perfection!

Live in LOVE for Loves own sake!”

Paul urges his unknown audience

to live in Spirit’s power

in spite of dull and daunting days.

So let’s live, damnit!

Live in love, and let the Spirit

move us in ways that transform and terrify.

Live to serve and honour God,

and never mind your power plays -

endless games of

‘who-did-what-to-whom’.

Worship, work

and wend your way

toward peace in the presence of Peace.

Let Paul rest his pen

and play the pleased patriarch

as slowly we savour the Saviour’s legacy.

June 16, 2011  -  J.R. Lackie

Once upon a time, the prophet says, there was contempt in and for the land and the people of the promise.  In the prophet’s time, darkness prevails – a darkness of the spirit – their hope nearly extinguished.  But the prophet has a good word from God; slowly but surely, light will come.

This word was a ray of hope to God’s people in Isaiah’s time.  The people groaned under heavy burdens – captive, exiled, and seemingly abandoned by God…but here there is hope, says the prophet; a marvellous, glittering light will be revealed in a child.

We may not be sure that Isaiah’s generation received that promised deliverance – there is much speculation either way.  We do know that these words of promise sustained many generations of God’s people.  These words brought much needed hope – each dismal situation was faced with the prayer for the promised child – and so it was that under Roman oppression, people’s thoughts turned yet again to these ancient words.  Thanks to a bedraggled baptizer, the people paused to consider the work of the teacher who followed him, applying the template of prophecy to yet another possibility…

Born into David’s family – in David’s city, so the story went – this fellow seemed to fit the bill.  His authority grew, his influence was unmistakable.  His message brought new light to dark times.

Some 20 centuries later, we have established Jesus as that promised child.  We read Isaiah chapter 9 as though it pointed directly to the one we call Christ – and that is appropriate, because we too are God’s people, desperate for hope, longing for God’s promised light.  We don’t recognize our oppression, as it comes in different forms now – at least in the ‘developed’ world.  Our oppression is Economic, Emotional, and Spiritual in nature.  WE are not beset by marauding armies (in the west, at any rate), rather we are held at bay by enemies of our own design; Corporate bullies, capitalist taskmasters and an ingrained consumer culture control our destiny and destroy our dreams of freedom and equity.  We are slaves to a system that has trained us to expect too much, and prefer style  to substance.  We yearn for relief.  we are desperate for hope, and in faith, we turn to a child of poverty, who would open to us the vast riches of God’s glorious grace.

The message of hope that the gospel records as Jesus earthly legacy is one that has endured, and grown and sustained countless children in many seasons of poverty; through many forms of oppression.  At Christmas especially, the church brings attention to that promised light, and offers light to the world, in story and song – in ritual and rejoicing – as an answer to the darkness that closes down hope and blots out peace.  Christ’s liberating light is our Christmas hope, and the foundation of our faith.

Let us rejoice that this light – found in this child – is ours to share.

Dec 7, 2011

and wondered what God’s promises would bring them.

Their waiting was full of difficulty. Their troubles are well documented –

our Scriptures record the frustration, the fear, and the eager hope of those who waited.

But Scripture also reminds us of something else.

The waiting is not ours alone.

The prophets all eventually recognize that God is waiting too.

Waiting for us – for all God’s people – to admit our need – to turn from our selfishness and return to our God.

“Consider, we are all your people” Isaiah says, but does God really need to be reminded?

No, I think this is a reminder for us.

Our habits throughout history

have been to turn our mistakes into God’s anger;

our impatience into God’s absence;

our failure to find grace, into God’s failure to offer grace;

and these habits go against everything we say we believe

about the power, presence and persistence of God.

The stories that we will share in this advent season

will remind us of how God really is.

Always reaching out – always offering hope – always loving,

and always waiting for God’s people to take God’s invitation seriously.

You see, every time God makes a promise (in Scripture),

it is an invitation to accept that God has the power to keep a promise;

a promise to guide a people home;

a promise to hold back God’s destructive wrath;

a promise to unite God’s people under God’s chosen king.

Scripture records, in various ways, that God has been faithful even when we have not,

and still we play the part of those who wait for redemption –

we act as people waiting for God’s great breakthrough,

Mark’s gospel is sometimes heard

as a call to wait on some future bit of fantastic activity from God;

the “second coming” long awaited – Christ on the clouds, come to rescue us from ourselves.

But given God’s record of faithfulness (in all things),

and our record of forgetfulness where the things of God are concerned,

I wonder if this call to wakefulness -

this reminder of the suddenness of God’s activity -

might be an invitation to open our eyes

to really see what is already there, waiting for us;

the grace of God –

Forgiveness and mercy,

peace, hope, love and life,

at our very fingertips.

Every Advent we mark a period of waiting.

We delay our Christmas celebrations with these reminders of God’s certain presence,

and the consequences of our ignorance of that presence,

and we vow to look differently at the world to which Christ came – the world for which Christ was raised.

This year, let us recognize who waits for us.

God in Christ – grace made flesh -

the kingdom of glory waits for us.

God help us to open our tired eyes as see, with real joy,

that those long awaited promises have always been there, within out reach.

I lead worship.  I am a minister of the Christian Gospel.  I offer sacramental and pastoral support to the gathered people of God in my communities, and I am weary (and wary) of the temptation to use entertainment to attract people to our endeavours.

Entertainment is something you choose because it lifts your spirits, and helps you forget your troubles, unless you are a fan of horror movies, which do all of that with a tinge of terror – making your personal problems seem small by comparison.   Worship is an encounter with the divine, and an invitation to accept the divine presence in our less than perfect reality.  Worship invites compromise, asks difficult questions, asks us to think for ourselves about the stunning claim God makes on our lives through Jesus Christ, and that is not often very entertaining – it is life changing… and therin lies the problem.

We have convinced ourselves that life is fine (and getting finer).  We have everything we need (in the North American/Northern European world, at least).  We are occupied with entertainment and nothing else matters.  The Christian Church (when it is genuinely the Church) professes otherwise, therefore the church is irrelevant.  So says the large majority of my friends and neighbours.  Not out loud, of course.  They would never outwardly mock my career choice (not if they would be my friends..) – no, they speak by not speaking – by staying away – by declaring with their time, and talents what they think is important.  That’s fine.

The church has her strengths, in addition to her many weaknesses – the gospel has its advocates and more than sufficient detractors – and still the call of God does not go unheard, or unheeded.

God’s call has convinced me that we don’t always know what is good for us.  The gospel assures me that even when I get it wrong, and confuse my will with divine justice, or when we go down a path that makes worship into nothing more than a pleasant way to pass the time on a Sunday morning, there is still something grander going on than we imagine.  We have been invited to life – encouraged to love – and not a life and love of our own limited invention or imagining, no, through Christ we are welcomed into the life and love of The Divine One.

Entertaining?  Not at all!  Interesting?  Every moment.

Worth giving up an hour on a Sunday?  Why don’t you come and see?

Aug 30, 2011

billowing; blinding

blocking the senses –

harbingers of Halifax, where land meets sea

and all weather goes to make it’s tentative

tour of the North Atlantic

A trip through

Maritime airspace

would be incomplete

without the buoyant bump and grind

of system meeting system.

Weather,

whether of not

you care one way or another

is our welcome home

ambassador

Nov 2010 – over Nova Scotia

with clouds above us

a roller coaster ride as

air unsettled

seeks to find its way

Through gaps and gusts

we wander ever eastward

under no illusion

of our place in

the vast complexities of

time and space

The blanket opens,

here and there

suggesting the

unsettled nature

of the systems holding us

accountable (aeronautically…)

this calm belies reality -

yet here, a road – a farm

a field -

then gone again

a victim of

capricious clouds and vagrant wind

Nov 2010 – Ottawa to Halifax