Geste of the Great King

Blessings in Our Lord Jesus Christ, As our year begins, I want to reflect on what it means to be a disciple in a missional church.   Disciple means to be a student. Not a student who simply gathers biblical facts and moralizes about them. Rather a student, much like the disciples, who are invited by Jesus to enter into ministry and learn from those experiences, to pray for the people we encounter, and to invite them to discover God in our church family. To be missional, means that we all have a vital role to play in the growing of Christ's church through engaged discipleship. We are called to share the good news with our unique gifts and skills. We must not hide these talents.  Jesus also demands of us to invite strangers into our church (Luke 15:2).  Of course, this involves a great risk of being open to questions of why we believe in God and why do we go to church. But as we have heard this Sunday, we only can rejoice as a church if each of us leaves the ni...

Friends, unlike what we heard in the prophet Hosea’s prophesy last week—that harsh indictment, judgement and swift execution against the Israelites—we get a totally different portrait of YHWH.   We hear about how God loves us like an infant, holding us cheek to cheek, teaching us to walk, nurturing us with food, healing us when we don’t know it, wrapping us up in kindness and with bands of love.    Yet, the human tendency, failure, and sin in our relationship with God is to not recognize the persistent love of YWHW and honour that.   Remember this nation was stubbornly set on trying to use a currency of sacrifices to persuade the Gods of Baal to ensure prosperity, power and primacy.   Yet, God, in this parent/child simile, continues to nurture and sustain their existence beyond all rational thinking—YHWH will not give up. That is why the child parent analogy is a beautiful image. In a certain sense, we as parents will do whatever necessary f...

Out of the many things that had happened at the General Synod in Vancouver, one of the most meaningful for me was when our Primate Fred Hiltz offered an apology for the spiritual harm caused to the indigenous peoples of Canada.  It was historical and it is only the beginning for the much needed reconciliation to occur. If there is one thing I tend to keep close to my chest is that I am Metis.  I do so for many reasons.  It took me decades to gather enough information for my genealogy and to properly apply for my Metis citizenship.  Beyond the practical frustrations of having to "prove" I am Metis in a colonial way (your documents get submitted to the government to ensure that your not claiming Indian status as well as citizenship), I grew up with the mystery of knowing that I was a "half breed" or "half Indian" but was strongly encouraged by my mother to suppress this knowledge for fear for me (she was unsure if we were Metis or Cree).  There are some ...

Fear and honour, praise and bless, give thanks and adore the Lord God Almighty in Trinity and in Unity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Creator of all. (From the Rnb XXI, 2) St. Francis of Assisi Our Church’s patron, St. Augustine, once said: “Hope has two beautiful daughters.   Their names are Anger and Courage.” Truly it seems like an odd thing to say about the Christian concept of hope.   Odd that that anger can be an important element of faith.   The reason why I mention this quote is you may have noticed that St. Paul begins his letter by affirming anger and I quote: “ Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger …” Paul allows for anger within the community with the condition to lay it to rest before you sleep.   However, later in his letter he states: “ Put away from you… anger …” in order to allow for the way of forgiveness, and God’s love.   You might have noticed that S. Paul seems to be talking about two diff...

Led Zeppelins track called "Dazed and Confused" is the perfect title to describe the mentality of the disciples who were struggling to make sense of the resurrection of Jesus. Today we hear about how John highlights the early struggles of the disciples of Jesus.   We hear that they are full of doubt.   For John, the theme of doubt is closely related to maturing in faith—they are, in fact, interrelated and necessary as we discover in the next act. So before we get to doubting Thomas, let us get to the unnamed disciples who locked themselves in an upper room out fear.   These disciples were naturally seized with fear because they were fugitives of faith from the Jewish authorities.    Despite, Mary’s proclamation about experiencing the risen Christ, these disciples kept themselves hidden as they knew shame, insult and even death were knocking at their door.   These disciples were full of confusion and, yes, serious doubt about the stories bei...