Sep 15 | Deacon Retreat Week: Preamble

In late August/early September of this year I went on retreat again to Rivendell. It was so nice to be back in my retreat space after a 2014 without any silent retreats taken! This retreat was focused on finally taking the time to meditate on my recent ordination to the transitional diaconate. To help me meditate, I brought the beautiful red stole that my friend the Rev. Christine lent to me.

My days were spent in silence save for a few instances of prayerful singing and recitation. I took a book my mentor the Ven. John Stephens lent to me: Strong, Loving, and Wise: Presiding in Liturgy, by Robert W. Hovda, which I found delightfully acerbic as well as deeply prayerful. Although I hadn’t planned on any particular work of hands, I ended up spending a lot of time drawing. Every night, I wrote a poem inspired by the Gospel reading assigned for Evening Prayer. I also journalled. The following few entries include those poems.

Sep 11 | For World Suicide Prevention Day

Several years ago, I joined the TWLOHA street team and did some of the tasks they assigned. The most powerful one they asked us to do was to write a letter to someone who was contemplating or had contemplated suicide. Here’s what I wrote. ‪#‎worldsuicidepreventionday‬

Hello,

I don’t know who, where, what, or when you are. I don’t really care about any of those things. But I love you.

You are infinitesimally precious. You are incomprehensibly beloved. A spark from the holiness of all things rests in you. No one can replicate the way that holiness shines forth from your eyes.

Your innate nature as beloved does not depend on anything you have done, said, or experienced. It is not something that can be replicated, earned, or stolen. Your innate nature as beloved begins the moment you do.

As someone who loves you, I’ll be honest and say that I proclaim this because I am a Christian. But I tell you this not because I hope you will become a Christian. Your perception of the universe and how it came to be does not concern me. That is your journey, and I cannot presume to tell you the answer to yourself. However, I can impose upon you the great burden of being loved for no reason other than your own perfect particularity.

If you are a person of faith, know truly that holiness loves you and has a place for you.

If you are not, know truly that I love you, and I want you to be filled with light.

If you are a person of faith, know this: You were created by love, for love.

If you are not, know this: You are here by love, for love.

Harbour no fear of your brokenness. The Sufi mystic Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” The wound may be on your skin, or it may be in a place where no-one can see it. The wound does not make you ugly or unlovable. The wound makes you human – and beautiful.

The Light will not force its way into you. You must first open the door and invite it in. Know that when you do that, it will settle in as though it knew you were home all along.

Know this: A voice of awe speaks in you. Perhaps it is the inner Christ. Perhaps it is merely the bits of carbon that once rested inside a star that now rest in you. It says, “Child: be still and know.”

Do this: When you are in that place where you are sure the Light has left you, please read this again.

-Clarity

Sep 06 | “When the World Asks for Crumbs,” (Sermon, September 6th)

 “From there Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, ²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ ²⁸But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ ²⁹Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ ³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ ³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’”

Mark 7:24-37

If you haven’t seen the photograph yet, you will eventually.

The body of a drowned three-year-old Syrian Kurdish boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach. His family, denied refugee status in Canada, received passage on a boat leaving Turkey that capsized on its way to the Greek island of Kos. Alan, his five-year-old brother Ghalib, and their mother Rehanna were all drowned. Abdullah, the father and husband, was the only survivor.

The photo is heartbreaking. The whole situation is unimaginable.

At a time like this, especially during an election campaign, the politicians will react and give their comments. Such comments are drafted with extreme care, so there is sometimes an element of truth to what they say in times like this, even if we don’t agree with all of it. We’re all educated people. We have our own well-reasoned and well-informed political views that we will not explore at this time.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Politics do belong in church. Our business as Christians is God’s work among people, or citizens – which is where we get the word “politics.”

But we Christians live as double citizens – citizens of humankind’s cities and structures, and Kingdom citizens. The Kingdom of God has its own politics – gospel politics. That’s what we’re going to talk about. So in the midst of all of these campaigns, let’s revisit our campaign through our family story, and allow ourselves to be swept up into the sometimes frightening beauty of God’s love and our covenant as baptized ministers of Christ’s Body.

We must because we committed ourselves to be shaped by this story.

We must because today’s story is the perfect story for this topic.

This Syro-Phoenician woman does not exist solely as a literary character. She is as real today as she ever was. And she is reaching out to us, the Body of Christ, and we are weary. We have been healing and feeding and dueling with Pharisees. We often do this work with little help from Caesar. We have, in the wake of many recent scandals and hypocrisies among our supposedly most devout, insisted to a skeptical world that we truly do believe that it is the inner actions of the heart that determine righteousness, and not outer devotions and actions. We are stuffed full of the bread of anxiety, and a media which runs on shock value gleefully crams more in.

And this Syro-Phoenician woman, who is not of our tribe, not of our kin, finds us at our worst.

Like Jesus, we can try and tell her to wait her turn, and not to be so impatient, because the children must be fed first. It is in human nature to care for one’s own family and tribe first. It is something we cannot escape. There is a concept called, weirdly enough, Dunbar’s number, that claims that brain size in primates is related to the size of social groupings, which basically states that the human animal is hard-pressed to care on a deep level about more than around 150 people at a time. This may explain why what we call compassion fatigue occurs, and why there is such widespread apathy about certain issues. If it’s true, I might reflect that it is one of the symptoms of our Fall from Eden. Rather than being one with all things, we were separated and, fearful of the vast world which was no longer known to us, we formed social groupings to survive the fear and loneliness. Eventually any unfamiliar tribe becomes simply a part of that “other” background, along with the rest of the world outside.

The Syro-Phoenician woman shatters that truth. God in Christ found the key to unlock that chain of fear: the human face. Social movements around the world have been galvanized by the human face of suffering. Alan Kurdi’s heartbreaking photo is only one in a long line of photos that have changed the world, and already journalists have been making the connection between it and the infamous photo of a young Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack which had burned off her clothes. She survived, and currently lives in North America, where she spends her time writing on the power of forgiveness.

We cannot afford to hide behind Dunbar’s number, whether we mean to or not. Even Jesus could not hide from the human face of suffering. She sought him out, just as she seeks us out, refusing to be ignored or silenced, no matter how weary we may be.

When she has found us, we face a temptation that Jesus did not face in this story. We may be tempted to find some romantic way to rescue her, to act upon her and become the hero of her story as we see fit. We might try to make her into the deaf man in the story following hers in today’s Gospel – the deaf man who is almost totally a passive object in the story. He is brought to Jesus by friends and receives a strange traditional ceremony of healing. Afterward, he does the one active thing he is permitted in his whole story: he speaks. But we don’t get to hear what he says! His friends are the ones who tell his story to the world. Maybe they were too used to the earlier dynamic of them talking and him being quiet.

This is always a risk when one is a citizen of a privileged group. We are to be friends to the voiceless and proclaim their need to the world, but we should allow those very voiceless to tell their own stories, to let the world see their faces and be moved by the Spirit to act.

The Syro-Phoenician woman didn’t come to Jesus with the help of friends. She came alone. She is never acted upon in the story – she is not even the subject of the healing! She busted down all the doors of propriety. It would have been scandalous for a foreign woman to speak to Jesus, a Jewish man, but none of those things matter when your beloved needs help. She will find us wherever we have been hiding and strike down every platitude – and every insult – with her need.

I need spare change.

I need a home for my children.

I need respect.

I need to be seen.

I need love.

If we’re calm, we might explain that we will help on our own terms. If we’re weary or suspicious, we might say, “Go away!” And if she won’t, we have a name for her – a name that Jesus himself uses – that is not fit to speak in church.

But she responds. The gall.

She says, “You have more than enough, and you’re messy with it. There are crumbs all over the floor. I’m not asking for much. To you, what I’m asking for would look like nothing, because you’re used to always getting the whole loaf. To me, the crumbs are everything.”

Because Jesus is Jesus, he does her one better. He heals her daughter, and then, after he heals the deaf man, he feeds 4,000 Gentiles.

The dogs asked for crumbs…and Jesus invites them to sit at the table.

This is what we are supposed to do. This is what we must do.

The photo of Alan Kurdi showed us the face of suffering. His family became part of our tribe. The world, through the photographer who took that picture, did the inviting. I think that’s why God loves the world.

Jesus does not expect us to do anything he has not already done. The way is open. We just have to walk.

When we leave this place, as your deacon I always commission you to go in peace rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. Today, I commission you anew to rejoice in the power of the Spirit to change the course of history from outside and inside time. This is the great miracle of our faith: that Christ Jesus, the Holy Child of God, came among us to make God’s truth and work manifest in humble flesh – in humus, in soil, in the messy mud of our mortality.

We can no longer afford to be wrapped up in despair over the state of the world. All-consuming weariness which ultimately breeds only further inaction is a tool of Satan. Let’s reject it, and take up the tools of Christ – our voices to bring good news, our hands to feed and heal, and our hearts to liberate and set fire to the cosmos. If you do not know how you personally can do this, ask God to come to you as this woman came to our Lord, and shout that need into your face. We all have our own ministries to the world God loves, and it is up to you to figure out where you are called to do them, with God’s help.

We have so many loaves, and we were only asked for crumbs.

When the world comes asking for crumbs, let’s all do one better.

Let’s do a thousand better.

Aug 05 | “Our Human God” (Sermon, August 5th)

21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. ²²Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ ²³But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ ²⁴He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ ²⁵But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ ²⁶He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ ²⁷She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ ²⁸Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

Matthew 15:21-28

 

This doesn’t start off well, does it? Jesus completely ignores this poor woman who needs help. Then when he does acknowledge her, he calls her a mean name and says, “I’m not for you.”

But she insists. She shames him with her wit, and this somehow demonstrates her faith. We never figure out how. Jesus just says her faith is “great.” She is the only person in this Gospel who earns that title.

But before that, Jesus acts like a jerk.

I said acts. He’s not a jerk. He just acts like one.

Did I just call God’s Son a jerk? The Psalmists believe that God ignores, curses unjustly, and turns away, but this does not stop them from wrestling with God, demanding to be heard.

Like this woman.

There’s so much irony to her story. While the religious authorities Jesus speaks to earlier demand further signs, this woman, having only heard about Jesus, is convinced that he is the Anointed One who heals. Her labelling him “Son of David” is evidence of her conviction.

It’s especially ironic because Canaanites were ancient enemies of Israel. On divine orders, as the Israelites moved into their promised land, they ritualistically slaughtered all of the Canaanites, and destroyed their possessions, in a sacred act called cherem, as they conquered the land they believed God had gifted to them.

This was a part of the sacred story cycles that nourished Jesus as he grew up, so we can understand where his attitude might have come from, and his behaviour would have been seen as appropriate. But before Jesus meets this woman, he is telling the Pharisees that they are too concerned with purity. “It is not what goes into a person (in that particular case, unwashed hands and impure food) that makes them unclean, but what comes out of the heart,” he tells them.

And the translation we read this morning tries to soften the way Jesus speaks to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food.”

No. Jesus actually says in Greek, “It is not good.”

Our God is an incarnate God. Jesus was born and lived in a backwater. He probably couldn’t read or write. He was raised among his own people, worked an unglamorous manual job, and he didn’t have airplanes or social media to give him a broader view.

He was insular – and somehow became wide-open to others in a way that’s uncommon even for today.

It took me until I was teenager to really notice the subtle differences between cultures. That is part of the privilege a white child inherits growing up in Canada. As I got older I went through the anti-American phase that most of my peers have gone through, and that never ends for some. I think it’s inevitable in a country so flooded with cultural exports from the United States that many Canadians cannot define their culture except as “other” than American.

For example, I believed as a teen that racism was not a part of my country anymore. It was easy for white kids like me to assume that racism was a name for over-the-top ridiculous behaviour that would never be difficult to see or quantify. I believed prejudice was always glaringly obvious and could be dealt with by scorn and well-bred polite contempt.

One day in a high school class, I learned this was not so.

Two girls had decided to do a presentation on racism against First Nations people in Canada. They spoke about the residential schools and the referendum on the Nisga’a Treaty. Their presentation was clear, sober, and well-executed.

My thoughts on the Nisga’a Treaty were, I assumed, typical. I had learned about the residential schools and the legacy of the Anglican Church in church (but never in school). I learned not only about the terrible abuse but the misguidedness of the whole idea in the first place, the deliberate erasure of cultural identity and the years of shame and self-medication that followed.

“We have stolen from these people,” we were told. “We must stand beside them and listen now, and should have from the beginning.”

I discovered that among the other teens in that class, my view was not typical.

I cannot tell you the exact content of the response those two girls received for their project. All I can say for certain is that it was so horrific that I had to leave the room. My belief that Canada was a shining beacon of progressive multiculturalism which treated all citizens equally was shattered.

Since that first discovery I have unfortunately had plenty of chances to reflect on the sin of racism: from the silence of my approved high school curriculum regarding Canada’s history among First Nations people, to the violence visited on Muslim citizens following 9/11, to the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to the constant violence on citizens of colour by police, to the recent targeting for mass murder of citizens of colour in a Charleston church by a young man whom I will not name because I refuse to participate in the terribly weird culture of pseudo-celebrity that always accompanies such tragedy in North America.

That reflection is what is hanging over my head whenever I read this story about Jesus and the foreign woman.

Friends, I’m not trying to demonize my Lord and Saviour, your Lord and Saviour, our Teacher and Friend. This is the whole point: racism and xenophobia are not things perpetrated by inhuman demons. It is a part of being human – not a good part, but a part. We are a tribal animal. Perhaps the true sin of the Fall is the fact that we became afraid of the one we had once loved, which makes it far easier to be afraid of the one we do not know.

We inherit all kinds of things from our families, and while you may be happy to inherit Great-Grandma’s gold wedding ring, there are probably other things in your family that you are happy to consign to the dump, like Great-Grandpa’s newspaper collection, or Aunt Jane’s beliefs about immigrants, or Uncle John’s violent streak.

Jesus understood intellectually that purity does not come from inside – from blood-type or ethnicity – but from outside, from actions and words, and then it is proven to him experientially as well. After he meets this intriguing woman, who refuses to be silenced or ignored, he gets it.

In the previous chapter, Jesus feeds 5,000 people and has 12 baskets left over – a basket for every tribe of Israel. In the next chapter, he will feed 4,000 people and have seven baskets left over – a basket for each of the supposed nations of Gentiles.

This woman, with all the blessed insistence of a mother, teaches him something.

Writer Andrew Prior put it very well indeed, and I’ll paraphrase.

We say that Jesus was sinless, but perhaps this does not mean he never spoke in anger, or lashed out, or reverted to stereotypes. Perhaps what really made him sinless was that “when he sees how he has been fenced in, he does not shore up his defences. He lets the Spirit of God fill him with compassion. Jesus simply repents.”

Prior’s following question is also mine.

Can I do the same?

Can we?

Amen.

Jul 28 | “Reaching for the Light” (Sermon, July 26th)

I’m so glad to be here as your curate, and it’s rather thrillingly appropriate for me to preach on this passage from the Gospel of John, which I feel is so dear to the heart of this parish.

This is the only story which all four of our canonical Gospels share in common. But it means different things to each writer. The Gospel of John’s mission is to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah despite how he was received on earth. John’s lens tells the story of an anti-coronation, the lifting up of a king who was unlike any other king the world had seen before. Nothing in this Gospel is free from the specter of that 20/20 hindsight irony lens.

Today’s story has been portrayed as a sweet pastoral scene, where people sit together in harmony with Jesus at the head of the table, probably surrounded by sheep and sunshine, and demurely nibbling their bread. It’s been the kind of thing someone might have put on the cover of a children’s Bible with pastels. This doesn’t give us a fair picture, though. There’s nothing neutral about this story in the Gospel of John. After all, this section of the Gospel, Chapters 2 through 12, is called the Book of Signs. This is a sign, and a sign always points to something outside of itself. It’s not good enough to just say that this story is about sharing. Despite the fact that we don’t always follow the rule, pretty much everyone learns about sharing by the time they’re three years old, and they don’t have to go to church to do it. John’s Jesus always tells us to go deeper. Let’s go deeper.

First: Today, the city of Tiberias is a holy city for our Jewish brothers and sisters, but this was not always the case. Tiberias was named after the Roman Emperor by Herod Antipas, who we heard about a few weeks ago in the story about John the Baptist’s death. It had also been built over top of a necropolis, or a city of the dead. This location, plus the name it shared with the hateful Emperor, made it an unclean city for many Jewish people. If Jerusalem was at the top of the ladder to heaven, Tiberias was probably a couple of inches beneath the soil.

Unclean location.

Second: “The Passover is near.” Here comes a huge crowd of people – conspicuously not in Jerusalem, where the great Passover feasts are to be held. They were probably too poor to make the journey. These are people from the Galilee, and about 90% of that population was desperately poor. Our beloved friend Philip (tested by Jesus the way Israel is tested in the wilderness) finds a boy, who has two little fish – which he may have caught himself – and barley loaves. Barley was a poor people’s food, usually fed to animals. Rich folks would have had the more expensive wheat bread. The inability of these people to engage in the prescribed rituals would have made them an object of pity to the religious leaders, and scorn to the upper classes.

Unclean people.

This is the raw material for the sign that is about to occur. A Eucharistic anti-banquet, hosted by Jesus, the anti-monarch, in an anti-palace. Our king refuses the world’s trappings of wealth and makes his royal court among beggars, lepers, and thieves. As Jerusalem prepares to feast sumptuously, the Messiah transforms ghetto, gangster, and gruel into gold.

And there’s not only enough – there’s an abundance. There are twelve baskets left over. We the informed readers of John remember that there are other disciples who are to come afterward, who have not seen but will come to believe. Perhaps the baskets of fragments are kept in honour of those unknown, anticipating their hunger for the bread that will last.

Another person’s hunger can sometimes be something that we can’t see with our eyes. It’s not always physically apparent – but the feeling, the empty maw, remains, for the physically and the spiritually hungry. It’s an all-consuming feeling of waiting – the body or the soul whispering, “When?”

This is what reminds us that we cannot simply remain on the warm grass of this field, enjoying and sharing our bread. This beautiful meal is more about who God is than who we are. It is a sign pointing to the light shining in the darkness, a sign we are called to embody, right here and right now.

We are the raw material for a sign which is about to occur, a sign pointing to who God is. We are disciples looking among the unassuming pebbles of God’s precious earth for crumbs of bread to feed a multitude we could never have imagined would come this far, after all they’ve been through – after all we’ve been through. We are disciples gathering up the leftover fragments of this great gift, holding onto it for those who will come after us, who have not seen and yet will come to believe.

The hungry of our world, the hungry of this parish, are waiting for signs, and reaching out for bread.

Well, we have bread! But that’s the easy part. One of those two hungers is much easier to fix than the other, isn’t it? There is little honour or sense in caring for a soul and not the precious body which clothes it.

But all the same, when the bellies are full, Jesus still has work to do. We don’t live by bread alone.

When the people have eaten their fill, they are desperate to make Jesus their king. They still don’t understand. John always insists that Jesus’ kingship is about being lifted up not on shoulders but on a cross, and that hour has not yet come. The community of love will not be ready until that hour has come. It is not only the crowd which needs to see and believe. We disciples also need to see and believe.

Jesus withdraws to the mountain, and the dark comes. A fierce wind begins to blow. And finally they see Jesus, walking through the dark and the storm toward the boat. The light is shining in the darkness, and although the darkness overcomes the disciples it does not overcome the light of the world, the one who says to his terrified friends, in our problematic English translation, “It is I;” and in Greek, “I AM.”

The hunger of the belly has little comfort to offer in the face of the storm. Storms are where the heart begins to hunger.

And while some of us may be lucky enough to never feel the hunger of the belly, none of us pass from this life without knowing the hunger of the heart – the all-consuming feeling of waiting, but not for physical things; for things which cannot be grasped by the darkness. Things like the light.

So we’ve brought our baskets of fragments, and we’re in the boat now with them. The storm could be a lot of things. Remember, the wind is pneuma, in Greek – the same word for spirit. That wind that we hear right now is the Spirit, singing as loud as she can.

It’s scary how loud she sings, and it’s scary that she’s not particularly organized or logical about where she does it. Fear and disorientation is, again, understandable, but we’re allowed to leave it behind. The Beloved walks on top of the chaos. His voice cuts through it: “Take heart. I AM.”

So let’s receive the light out of the storm, out of the dark, and into the boat – this meticulously maintained but slightly creaky boat lovingly made by human hands, this boat which holds his precious flesh every time we gather.

He’s here, but, like the Kingdom he calls us to build, he’s also not here.

He’s here, and he’s out in the storm, and we all have work to do.

For ninety years we’ve been feeding hungry bellies and hungry hearts. We’ve reached out through the storm toward the light and received our beloved into our boat.

This time, though, let’s also take a page from Matthew’s Gospel, and step onto the water ourselves.

Take heart.

He is.

We are.

Jul 22 | “I have seen the Lord!” (Sermon, July 22nd – Mary Magdalene)

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb.

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ ¹⁶Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

John 20:1-3, 11-18

We’re in what the Godly Play curriculum refers to as “the green and growing time” of the church year, and yet we have this little slice of Easter peeking through at us, because today we celebrate Mary Magdalene, who some have called the Apostle to the Apostles. The name “Magdala” may refer to her place of birth, or it may refer to something more: in Aramaic Magdala meant “tower” or “elevated, great, magnificent.”

I feel a special connection with her for a number of reasons. I consider her the patron saint of my marriage, and a close friend also refers to me as “his Mary Magdalene.” I haven’t yet asked him what it means. I’m a little worried about what the answer might be!

After all, you might be familiar with her complicated history. She plays a role in all four Gospels and is one of the first people to see the resurrected Jesus. She also looms large in several of the documents discovered at the Nag Hammadi library, particularly the Gospels of Thomas and Philip, and in fact, among those documents is a Gospel that bears her name. The Nag Hammadi documents tend to have one thing in common: they tell of difficulties between Mary and the other disciples, particularly between her and Peter. We don’t know precisely what this means, but it seems to foreshadow the controversies that have followed Mary since the beginning.

It took several generations before Mary was merged with other characters in the Gospel stories, like the adulterous woman saved from stoning by Jesus; or Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus; or the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus’ feet. She went from being a disciple of Jesus who had received an exorcism of seven demons, to a penitent sinner, to a prostitute or woman of ill repute. Paintings of the era show a woman with fiery hair loose around bare shoulders, eyes rhapsodically cast upward toward heaven, made new in the light of Christ. I actually rather enjoy some of these pictures, which show her remaining wild, as she was imagined to be before following Jesus, and not hidden under miles of modest veils as a response to her salvation. However, it was never appropriate to conflate her with these other women. So at first it may have appeared to be a welcome correction to read The Da Vinci Code when it came out and slapped down the idea that Mary was a prostitute (even though it was rather presumptuous to assume that no-one had figured this out). However, in the book there was a similarly problematic assumption, which was that Mary Magdalene must have been married to or romantically involved with Jesus. We will never know that for sure. And again, it’s not as if this was a new hypothesis: the Cathars, a medieval sect, believed the same thing and suffered greatly under the rule of Pope Innocent III, who slaughtered many of them on the Magdalene’s feast day for slandering her.

I find that the problem of these visions of Mary Magdalene is that they render her eternally passive, very much like another famous Mary. The earlier movement of the church framed her story as one of a “defiled” woman who was made a new creation in Christ through being cleansed of her former liaisons with other men. The movement of society after The Da Vinci Code framed her story as the beloved wife of Christ, who bore him children and established a line of holy descendants. My question is, “Why are we so tempted to make Mary into an object who is acted upon, rather than ever letting her have a chance to be one who acts?”

After all, the Gospel today shows her quite active. She comes to the tomb. She sees the stone. She runs to the others and speaks to them. She weeps. She demands information of the stranger she sees standing there. And finally, she sees Jesus, and he calls her by name, because the Good Shepherd knows each of his sheep by name. He calls and the floodlights come on for her. And then, most intriguingly, she can’t hold onto him. He doesn’t let her.

She has to take charge now. She is told to go and tell the others, and she does.

Although other Gospels and traditions include stories about what Mary did after she talked to the disciples, we don’t see her again in this Gospel. Maybe that could remind us of the Samaritan woman in Chapter 4, who runs into the town to tell them about the mysterious stranger who met her at the well at noon, the way Isaac met Rebecca, and Jacob met Rachel. We never find out what happens to her afterward either.

For me the true beauty of the Magdalene is in her commission and her faith. You can see it in the gratitude she had for Jesus granting her freedom from those seven demons, her ability to stand beside him in the darkness and to welcome him in the morning (even if she didn’t know it at first) and her strength in going to the others and doing what she had been commissioned to do, even if, as some of the other Gospels suggest, none of them believed her at first.

My prayer for myself and all of us is that we follow her example – that we allow ourselves to be healed of the things that hold us back from discipleship and respond with joy and service; that we go to the dark places – the tombs – of our world and perform the rituals of care required by the forgotten and destitute (even if they eventually turn out to be unnecessary, as in Jesus’ case!), and that we have no hesitation in speaking out the truth:

We have seen the Lord.

Jun 16 | The Inner Mark

So I am horrendous at updates that are not sermon-related. But there is big news: I am to be ordained to the transitional diaconate on June 28th.

The whole thing has been a bit frantic and last-minute for a number of reasons, so everyone’s a little on edge about it…and I have not at ALL fully processed this momentous news. I may not believe in full ontological change at ordination (I like the way my friend Fr. Michael put it: “An inner marking on the heart”) but it’s probably going to feel like it anyway.

I think the most appropriate way to share such news is to share the following post from Facebook. Enjoy (I did):

I have a very dear clergy friend who has been a great support to me on my journey, and who LOVES to yank my chain. Like my husband he helps me not to take myself too seriously.
Today I received the following email from him. My reply is below it.

Dear Clarity Harp,

Jun 01 | “Join the Dance” (Sermon, May 31st, 2015 – Trinity Sunday)

I used both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament readings in this sermon, which can be found here and here.

Today, the Anglican Church of Canada will hold events across the country to mark the closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work over the last several years. The theme: “This ending is only the beginning.” For the twenty-two days leading up to our annual National Aboriginal Day of Prayer, the Anglican Church of Canada is encouraging Anglicans to mark the time in some special way. All of it is being promoted and advertised on the website www.22days.ca, with suggestions like learning to say “Thank you” in an indigenous language, adding indigenous leaders to the prayers of the people, visiting the site of a residential school, and various other awareness and justice initiatives.

As I considered how I might mark this time in my own way, I remembered a very powerful experience I had in December of 2013. There was a gathering being held at Georgia and Granville Street for the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The road had been blocked off for a group of First Nations demonstrators calling for a public investigation into the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women. For a while I simply stood and listened as stories were told and tears were shed. Then the drums began.

Have you ever been in a round dance? It’s a most amazing thing. There’s something about it that’s appallingly inclusive. You don’t have to be good at dancing. You’re just standing there minding your own business and all of a sudden the people around you become an entirely new thing – like watching a tree grow ring by ring, or ripples moving outward from an inner point of movement. And before you know it, you’re a part of it. Someone has taken your hand and you are moving with them, and then you take someone’s hand, and you’re growing out and out, spiralling around, letting the drum push and pull your feet to the side – clockwise, usually.

It’s amazing enough as it is…but try doing it in the middle of Georgia Street. People stopped to watch as this amazing new beast pulsed and scuttled, all of us amazed that so many disparate shards could be brought into this one unbelievable new symbol of wholeness that had no business existing in such a fragmented world.

Of course, it is prophetic. The round dance speaks truth in a world of lies by yearning toward something different. It’s a sign for the world of a cosmic biblical law – the movement from separation to union and the cycling back, forever and ever amen.

The most beautiful thing about our God is that this truth – the yearning turning wheel of desire and fulfillment, the tidal pull of giving and receiving – is written right into the ground of Being itself. That is what we proclaim when we proclaim the Trinity. The Greeks called it perichoresis – the dance of the three, spinning around in a circle forever with hands entwined.

Perhaps at the end of our lives we emerge newly born into the center of the circle, adding our voices to the millions who reside there – our brothers and sisters all singing together.

There’s a trick to the round dance, though. Eventually, someone’s going to stick out their hand. You’ve got to figure out if you’re going to take it.

Isaiah, rendered wide-eyed by burning seraphim and the hugeness of his own fragility, voices his brokenness and is answered. He receives scorched lips fit to proclaim the truth. And even after being made fit to proclaim, he’s still given the chance to accept or deny the mission. I love in this passage how God asks – as though there’s someone else hanging around waiting for a chance – “Whom shall I send?” And Isaiah replies, “Here am I! Send me!”

He takes the offered hand.

Nicodemus comes to see Jesus at night. Remember, for the writer of John that means Nicodemus comes in ignorance, moving toward the light shining in the darkness. Why does he come? It doesn’t say. We know he doesn’t understand who Jesus truly is, because he mentions Jesus’s signs. In the Gospel of John we’re not supposed to come to Jesus because of the signs. We’re supposed to be like the Samaritan woman in the next chapter, knowing Jesus immediately by his presence and his words. It’s not certain if Nicodemus ever figures it out completely. We don’t hear from him again after he says, “How can these things be? I don’t know this song, I can’t dance to it! I’m lost!” And the next (and last) time we see him, the poor guy is bringing a hundred pounds of burial herbs to the new tomb. There’s a lot of talk about the love and care he was showing, but we’re supposed to laugh. He still doesn’t get it! Jesus is coming back from the dead – and here’s Nicodemus not just with a packet of herbs but enough for a king’s burial! Huh – ironic. The king is dead, long live the king.

So maybe Nicodemus never joins in the dance – at least, within the boundaries of the Gospel. But because he comes in the night, I’ve got to believe that he was at least watching. Maybe he felt a little self-conscious. That’s okay. “Mere” witnessing was not scorned at the TRC.

So how will you take the hand?

We’re Anglicans, so we have a couple of advantages. We’re highly Trinitarian, so we are inclined toward the dance. And we are sacramental. The offered hand is present in every sacrament, calling us out of disharmony into harmony. For example, in baptism one reaches out – whether they know it or not – and is welcomed not only into the Body of Christ, the holy flesh, but into the family of the Church, the thousands who came before and the thousands who will come after. In the Eucharist the people reach out to the crucified beloved, and are united not only to him but to each other and, again, the yesterday-today-tomorrow family of the Church. Finally, we are incarnational: we believe that the divine, separated from us in the Fall, was united to us again in the Son of Mary – and this means that we are living in a God-haunted world, carrying the gift of the Holy Spirit. To live in a God-haunted world is to see the Beloved’s face in the faces of all others, and to be drawn into service as a testament to that reality.

This is only one reason why I would commend to you a practice of marking our 22 days. The other reason is that I believe the dancing Trinity is reaching out to us right now, through the work that we are doing with our First Nations brothers and sisters. And that’s only the place where I see the hand reaching out. There are millions more.

On this Trinity Sunday, I commend you to the dance.

You don’t have to be self-conscious. You don’t have to be worried. Once you’re in, it feels like you’ve been there forever.

So don’t hesitate.

Just watch for the hand.

May 20 | “Sanctified with the Truth” (Sermon, May 20th)

Many of you have heard me say before that the Gospel of John is written in code, and one of the best ways to absorb that message is to do “ear-training”: ring a bell each time you hear a code word. The passage we read today is snipped from a larger section towards the end of the Gospel which scholars call “The Book of Glory,” which begins in Chapter 13 and ends around Chapter 20. If you’re using that bell while you read, this is where you start to really give it a workout. Chapters 14 to 17 are when you start to develop a headache…and in Chapter 17 that headache becomes a real rager. “In the world – not of the world.” “I am coming.” “Fulfilled,” “word,” “sent,” “truth.”

Chapter 17 is called “The High Priestly Prayer,” because Jesus is praying for the disciples – all of them, those present and those yet to be born. Beautiful. The High Priestly Prayer is also where you really start to see the lines of code in the speech.

Following the code words will likely get us lost and dizzy, but John really was crafted by a masterful storyteller, and we can see it here. This chapter, in effect, is yet another perfectly distilled essence of the entire story.

I’d like to share several truths in the code words I found within the jewel of this text.

The first is “given.” For the writer of John all that has happened to Jesus also happens to his followers – and will happen to us. Remember the story of Thomas – we are the blessed who believe even though we have not seen. In John’s story, Jesus was sent into the world from outside –outside time and matter, the pre-existent Word, beloved of God. Now we are created beings, of course – but Jesus thanks God for us! We were given to him by the Father, and then Jesus gives us back. We are gifts of God to God’s self: not pre-existent but still composed of carbon atoms and the remains of a great light, a great becoming: star stuff.

Second: Jesus finds himself “in the world…but not of the world”: created/uncreated; Prince of Peace/bringer of a sword; Son of Mary/Son of the Father. We, through virtue of our baptism, or through witnessing the great truth of Easter, are the same: beings living within a created order, experiencing in heart and flesh the death and resurrection of the Beloved. We experience the truth in our very own bodies: our blood and skin cells tell the story of death and regeneration – rebirth – from the moment we have life.

We are always dying, and we are always rising – in the world (forever locked in the process of change) and not of the world (subverting change with the stability of our faith shared across generations and therefore constant, even if day to day our personal faith may not be).

Third: Jesus is sanctified – “sanctified in the truth.” What could this mean? Pilate asks this question only a couple of chapters later: “What is truth?” For the Evangelist, I believe, truth is this: Glory is kenosis. Kenosis is a Greek word meaning “to pour out.” For John, the glorification of Jesus occurs on the cross. It is where he is enthroned – a ridiculous and rather frightening truth. Several scholars actually argue that the seventh sign in this Gospel is the crucifixion itself – the ultimate and consummating sign of Jesus’ kingship. It makes sense in context. The light shines in the darkness.

We are sanctified with the truth. Dying and rising simply as a matter of renewed cells and our day-to-day lives is not enough. We must not only accept this but embrace it.

Now of course this is a rather dark proposition. And yet, I’m sure each of us knows deep down that this is true. You don’t need to tangle with an Empire to know that sometimes you have to stand up for what’s right, even if you risk everything to do so. You don’t need to be crucified to know that sometimes despite your best efforts to tell the truth, others will turn on you and make you their scapegoat. You don’t need a spear in the side to know that giving of yourself in some way so that others may live is part of what makes the world holy.

Glory is kenosis. It is the truth, and we are sanctified with it, in baptism, at Easter, and at Pentecost.

Jesus prays that we will become like he is: a gift, in the world but not of the world, and sanctified with the truth.

Even now, I know that in the world, and among you, God will give him whatever he asks.

Apr 12 | “A Kenosis Poverty” (Sermon, April 12th)

Acts 4:32-35

^32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ^33 With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. ^34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. ^35 They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Just by way of introduction, this is the third time and the third church I’ve preached in on the second Sunday of Easter. Three years ago I preached on Thomas at St. Paul’s in the West End, and two years ago I preached at my home parish, Christ Church Cathedral, on Revelation.

This time, I am here, having survived the madness of Holy Week and Easter with my St. Philip’s family. We made it! It has been such a joy for me to walk the pilgrim path of Lent and Holy Week with you, and to sing my Alleluias in this grand choir of saints.

And today I’m preaching on Acts.

So here we are – ears still ringing from all those bells, lily dust hopelessly smeared on our best white blouse or jacket, hair mussed from the old Easter bonnet, but all worth it. We walked prayerfully through Lent, and came through the dramatic highs and lows of Holy Week. We earned our bells and lilies and the crumpled bits of coloured foil scattered all over the house. After forty days of careful preparation, we’re ready for fifty days of celebrating!

And we come to this passage.

At first glance, it’s inspiring but innocuous. It’s familiar, even if the main player is missing and his back-up crew is filling in. In Chapter 3 just before this passage, Peter heals a crippled beggar and everyone makes a big scene about it, and Peter dishes out the snark: “Why are you all so surprised? We told you that Jesus was the real deal and you didn’t believe, and now we’re healing in his name!” and the Apostles are thrown in jail. Yet they still manage to flummox their detractors, as Jesus did. They are stirring up trouble just the way they were taught, and they’re so good at it that they are released. The truth of Easter breaks open every cell door.

Now it starts to get really good: they pray for boldness and the place they were in “was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.”

Yeah! Message received! Peter’s got a holy bug and it’s catching! Everybody’s being slain in the spirit! Easter season is really getting ramped up! What could possibly be next?

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”

Oh.

Man, this was going so well! Maybe just this once we can…you know, skip ahead? I do it all the time, don’t worry! Let’s go to verse 33 – “With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”

Aw yeah, Mama Church, that’s it. But…“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”

Aw, fricassee, as an old friend used to say.

It sounds so reckless to give everything. It’s all well and good to be an idealist up until a certain age, but most of us learn quickly that things aren’t so simple as all that. A generation living off of pensions and savings while making plans to not bankrupt those they will one day leave behind knows that. A generation planning for retirement while holding investments above the water of worldwide financial collapse knows that. A generation raising families as the gaps between the super-rich and the not super-rich grow wider knows that. My generation, shackled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for an education that has managed to become a requirement for every job from doctor to barista knows that.

No sensitive person makes light of the responsibilities we have to ourselves, our families and loved ones, and the system. No sensitive person berates the faithful for not being faithful enough when the faithful are still here every Sunday despite all things.

Comparing what we have with the less and the more fortunate is a game we’re usually going to lose. It makes us defensive and separates us from each other’s hearts and true needs. We may be called to outdo each other in generosity, but aren’t we also called by the Gospel to recognize that if the wisdom of our world is a vicious form of physical, mental, and spiritual competition, with winners venerated as gods and losers cast out on the dung pile, then the wisdom of the church might be to put an end to that kind of thinking among the faithful, because wasn’t Jesus himself one of the ones tossed out onto the dung pile specifically because he called that thinking into question?

This is not to set such sharing and generosity aside as something foolish that should never be considered. We should be thinking about the things we have that stand between us and God, because those things do exist. We should be laying our treasures and self-imposed burdens at the foot of the cross. We should consider what in our lives is worth living and dying for, and it’s probably not the latest iPhone.

But we’re not idiots. We know that. Despite all the panicked and technophobic newscasts and the “Kids these days” doom prophecies and the best attempts of wild-eyed advertisers, I actually do believe that most people know that.

So for now, let’s try looking at this differently. Instead of using a political lens to examine a spiritual truth, why don’t we use a spiritual lens to examine a cosmic truth – which, if we do it right, does indeed have political implications?

Imagine, if you will, a kind of poverty, stripped of all political implications, positive or negative; a poverty neither idealistically pursued nor fearfully avoided; an all-encompassing poverty not imposed by another but willingly embraced, not to make a point but to make room; a mystical inner poverty that is material, psychic, and spiritual, embraced gladly after receiving, growing, and giving birth to a great revelation.

A kenosis poverty.

The kind of poverty that comes back from the dead still bearing the scars of one sacred, dreadful, exquisite encounter with human brokenness and longing.

The kind of poverty that falls to his knees, having let go of every doubt and fear and assumption about the laws of the universe he ever had, crying, “My Lord and my God!”

Now imagine breathing in that poverty, offered by a crucified one who returns, physically scorched from the fire of love for us.

Imagine breathing in the sweet flames of that love, shouldering the joyful, joyful weight of that love – paradoxically the easiest yoke and the heaviest burden.

Imagine the sting of that poverty, because if we, gathered here, are the Body of Christ, then the wounds belong to us – if we’re doing it right.

Remember that both Luke and John go out of their way in their Gospels not to make a lick of sense to anyone who sees life as a simple and predictable series of events. They’re kind of obnoxious that way. But they’re giving us a very powerful teaching.

Christianity is about paradox. Our greatest wealth is our poverty. Our greatest strength is our vulnerability. Our greatest armour is the wound in our side.

Christianity is about going all-in, whatever that looks like. You’re the only expert on your own life. You know already what going all-in looks like for you. If it scares you and you don’t really want to do it, think seriously about why.

Lent gives us time to contemplate the cost of what we are about to do – and the cost of not doing it.

Easter is about recklessness. It’s about going all in, because the alternative is to say that nothing has really changed.

So be warned: If you pray for boldness, you will have it – and we will all be of one heart and soul, and will give testimony with great power.

If you pray to walk in the light and to be filled with the Holy Spirit this Easter, God help you.

You will be.