Cross-bearing: A Sermon For The Second Sunday of Lent

 

Preached via Zoom for All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto.  Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent (Year B): Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, Psalm 22:23-31, Romans 4:13-25, Mark 8:31-38

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Mk 8: 34)

“Such and such is my cross to bear”.  I’m sure you’ve heard people use this to describe a chronic condition, or a problem child or relative, or a boss from hell. Even in our secular world, the phrase "the cross I have to bear" still carries meaning an involuntary and unwelcome condition of suffering, and I am sure that the expression is rooted in today's gospel reading and its parallel texts in Matthew (16:24) and Luke (9:23).

How many people, yourself included, hear or read those words of Jesus and conclude that Christianity is about suffering? It certainly seems as if this text is the call to a self-inflicted, seriously bad time.   If you’ve driven up Keele Street lately, you will have noticed that our All Saints sign has the upbeat message, “God is nearer than you think”.  I chose that over “Suffering is next to godliness”, because I don’t think an emphasis suffering is the best possible marketing strategy.

Certainly there is a strain within the history of Christianity which seems to see suffering as a path to closeness with God.   One things of stories of medieval saints with their hairshirts and fasts.   A favourite of mine is the Celtic Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, who stood by the cold North Sea to pray, though he may have cheated a bit, as there are legends of God sending otters to keep his feet warm!  We have these stories because Christianity first flourished in a worldview called dualism, which saw the physical realm as being inferior to the spiritual realms, and which thus held that the body needed to be punished or denied for the soul to flourish.   Some austere Christian devotional practices, such fasting and self-imposed abstinences during the season of Lent, are survivals of this idea.

I think we can let go of the idea that good Christians must somehow suffer without ignoring or downplaying Jesus’ words about how his followers must take up a cross.   We don’t want to be like Peter and tell Jesus what he should or shouldn’t say.   We need to listen carefully to Jesus, and to understand this gospel reading, we need to better understand what the cross means.

In Jesus’ day, and in the days when Mark wrote his gospel, the cross was a symbol of suffering inflicted by human power and tyranny.   The Roman Empire and its puppet rulers routinely killed those who opposed them, and displayed their bodies to cow and intimidate conquered populations.  Jesus and his disciples knew this all too well because one of those puppet rulers, King Herod, had recently killed John the Baptist (Mark 6.14-29).   Matthew’s story of another Herod, the one who ordered the firstborn male infants killed because he was afraid of what the Magi told him, also reminds us of how ruthlessly human kings guarded their power.   The deaths of Burmese civilian protestors in the streets of Myanmar this week shows us that human power hasn’t changed significantly.

Peter was rebuked because he wanted a victorious Messiah, but  Jesus never tells his followers to "take up your sword and follow me". That would be a call that people could get behind. It's relatively easy to call people to arms and to battle, especially if they believe that they might win. Following a triumphant king is a feelgood proposition, especially if you will be at the king's right hand when the post-triumph world is being arranged. But a call to take up a cross is different, much more difficult to understand because it seems so unwelcome.

As we saw last Sunday, Peter gets a glimpse of God’s power on the mountain where Jesus is transfigured with the glory of God, but the dazzling whiteness fades, and Jesus leaves that power on the mountain so he can return to be with and serve his friends.  As he journeys to the cross, Jesus shows God’s glory self sacrificing love and forgiveness.   If we don't understand the cross in these terms, then like Peter we miss the picture and just see it as a burden.

By taking up the cross, Jesus shows us his resistance to top-down regimes of human power.  Jesus never for a moment wants to add to anyone’s suffering.  He entire ministry is committed to human flourishing.  As we’ve seen in Mark’s gospel these past few Sundays, Jesus has being going around teaching, healing people, freeing them from demons, and feeding hungry crowds.  There is nothing that says he wants to add to people's burdens or increasing their suffering (an instructive example here is his conversation with the Pharisees in Mark 7 over human and religious laws around ritual handwashing). If anything, Jesus seems firmly opposed to suffering. That's why he's the Messiah, the saviour.  That’s why, by taking up the cross, Jesus turns it into a symbol of resistance.   By embracing the cross, Jesus shows us the depths of the father’s love and commitment to our flourishing.

What Jesus does warn his followers is that the way of the cross can be dangerous.  By the time Mark’s gospel was written around 80 AD, most Christians would have known about the deaths of two of Jesus’ disciples, James and Peter.  According to legend, ten of the twelve disciples died violent deaths.  Countless Christians across the ages have suffered for their faith.  The Kingdom of God is not about suffering, but suffering for the Kingdom of God and the flourishing of others is a definite possibility

As relatively comfortable, safe and prosperous Christians in King Township, we are, thankfully, not called to persecution and suffering.  Taking up our crosses will mean different things to us in our context.  It may well mean asking ourselves how we are aligned.    Do we share the world's priorities about self importance, winners and losers, wealth and power, or do we share the values of the Kingdom of God?   Are we committed just to our own flourishing, or are we committed to the flourishing of all who bear the image of God, and of the creation that God gave to us?   You may not have consciously decided to take up a cross, but you were given one at your baptism, signed on your forehead.  How are you going to take up that cross?

 

Gracious God, give us the courage to understand what your son is calling us to do and be.  Help us see our faith as a vocation to live and grow in.  Give us the conviction to live for your kingdom and not for ourselves, so that the cross we bear will feel like a blessing and not a burden.

 

Forged in the Wilderness: A Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent

Preached Online to All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 21 February, 2021.

Readings for this Sunday: Genesis 9.8-17, Psalm 25.1-9, 1 Peter 3.18-22, Mark 1.9-15

“He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Mark 1.13

This Friday evening, Joy and I were doing one of those pandemic things that many of you will know all too well, the Zoom visit with friends.    Now two of our friends are Catholic, and they were talking about how they were going to observe Lent.   However, another couple in our group are totally uninterested in religion, so they asked “What’s the story with Lent?  Why do you have to give up stuff you like, and why is it forty days?”

One of the occupational hazards of being a priest is that these sorts of questions are always referred to me, and I confess that I was really just looking forward to a chat and a gin and tonic.  Well, I said, forty is one of those significant numbers in scripture, Moses led the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years, the early church saw Jesus as a new Moses who would save God’s people, Jesus was tested for forty days in the wilderness, Lent is forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter and it’s a traditional time to fast like Jesus and think about our faith, our mortality, and our dependence on Jesus.   I confess, I sound more articulate today, typing it out, than I was on Friday.

I think if there was one thing I wish I had explained better, it would be Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and how (or even if) it explains Lent.  I don’t think it has anything much to do with “Jesus suffered for forty days, so we can give up chocolate to honour his sacrifice”, which is how I’ve sometimes heard it explained.   What I want to do today is think about how the  season of Lent helps us understand who Jesus is, what he does, and why we follow him, and I think today’s gospel reading is a good place to dig into that.

Now it may seem as if we’ve been stuck in the opening chapter of Mark for weeks now.  We heard the baptism story a few weeks ago, and you may be wondering why we’re going back to it today.  There are three events in today’s gospel:

1) Jesus is baptized and identified as God’s son

2) Jesus is tempted in the desert

3) Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God

Mark doesn’t tell us why (1) or (2) are necessary.  They just happen.  Mark’s whirlwind storytelling style is to throw events at us and leave us to make sense of them as best as we can, but they all seem connected.

A few weeks ago I spoke about the baptism of Jesus – I talked abut how Jesus shows God still engaged in God’s work of creation – that Jesus’ baptism in the Spirit shows us a new way of being in which we can be God’s children by adoption, to be God’s beloved sons and daughters.   Fair enough, but why is Jesus then immediately sent to the wilderness?  In Mark’s telling, the Spirit “drives” (the Greek word is ekballo, which can mean “to thrust” or “expel”) Jesus into the wilderness – it’s an urgent verb which suggests a crisis or an emergency.

So what is this all about?  If it is a test, why does Jesus have to be tested?  Is God not sure of his ability?   Considering that the voice from heaven has already named Jesus as “my Son, the Beloved” (Mk 1.11), I don’t think Jesus has anything left to prove.   Rather, I think Jesus goes to the wilderness to confront something.   The wilderness as Mark describes it is a place of spiritual extremes – angels are there, but so is Satan , and the beasts are wild, suggesting something that is untamed and even deadly.  Mark suggests that Jesus must go to the wilderness to confront something.

Typically, Mark doesn’t say anything about how that confrontation went.  There is no climactic, Hollywood style battle.   Sometime after these forty days, Jesus replaces John the Baptist, who has been God’s messenger, and announces the coming of the kingdom of God and the need to repent and put trust in the good news.   Next, to show us what  the kingdom of God, we see Jesus curing people and driving out victims (Mk 1.21-34), and the demons screaming with the knowledge that Jesus has come to destroy them (1.24).  The kingdom of God is thus revealed as healing, life, and freedom from the things that oppress the people of God.  Mark does not make the connection explicitly, but it seems that the confrontation between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness prepares Jesus to face sin and death.   If Jesus is tested, then, it’s not see if he is sinful, but more like being tested in the way that a weapon is tested.

And what a curious weapon God forges in the wilderness.  Demons fear him, even his disciples fear him when they see him transfigured, but whole towns bring him their sick.   Jesus’ power will be shown in acts of compassion and healing.   Just as angels served him in the desert, so will serve others.  As Jesus says “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk 10.45).  Here is the lesson of Mark, that Jesus goes into the desert to confront Satan to show God’s love for us.  Jesus demonstrates the Father’s love by rescuing us from sin and death, by taking our place on the cross.  God tried to defeat sin with raw power once, and that didn’t work so well.

Our first lesson reminded us of the Flood story in Genesis, which, whatever you think about it’s historicity, is a story about the problem of evil and how God ultimately chooses to address it.   In promising never to destroy the people God has made, God decides to find some other way to deal the evil things that offend his perfect sense of justice.  God’s decision to save Noah, his family, and their descendants is, if you like, a parable showing that God commits to seeing his great project of creation through to a happy end and a grand conclusion.   God, who has the power to create and destroy the earth, resolves instead to save humanity because the whole story of scripture tells us that God is, first and foremost, love.  Hence my reference last Sunday to CS Lewis’ allegory of Jesus as Aslan the Lion, powerful and dangerous, but loving.  In the Flood, God tried to use power to get rid of sin and evil and it nearly destroyed humanity.  Now, God will use love instead.  That’s why the journey of Lent leads to the cross, because to save us, God must give himself in our place.  That’s how love works.

Lent has traditionally been a somber time in which the faithful are urged to reflect on our sins and to express our penitence in acts of sacrifice and austerity.  I do believe that there are times when penitence is appropriate, especially as we approach Good Friday, but I think that this Lent of 2021 is different.   For a year now we’ve been slogging our way through the pandemic, living with fear and isolation.  Austerity is our daily lot.  Lent has become a way of life.  Maybe this isn’t the year that we think so much on what we give up.

I think instead that this Lent we dedicate ourselves to gratitude.  We can be thankful for the online visits and phone checks that have made us grateful for friends, family, and church.   We can be thankful for the little rituals that give our days and our lives meaning – if you look forward to a morning coffee, a baked treat, an evening drink – why give this up for Lent?  Savour them and be grateful for them! We can be thankful that we are less busy, leaving us with more time for stillness, more time to listen for God’s voice that speaks most clearly in silent moments.   Finally, we can dedicate each day of Lent to gratitude to Jesus, in whom we see the Father’s power and compassion.  Above all, let’s be grateful that we have such a mighty saviour, who goes to the cross because his love for us is the greatest thing in the cosmos.

 

A Meditation for Ash Wednesday by Jan Richardson

Grateful to a parishioner who introduced me to the poetry and art of Jan Richardson.

You will find her very worthwhile Ash Wednesday meditation here.

Also sharing this meditation on Ash Wednesday by two prominent US Episcopal Church here.

Cheers and blessings,

MP+

 

Should We Be Afraid? A Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Preached via Zoom for All Saints King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on Transfiguration Sunday (Last Sunday After the Epiphany), 14 February, 2021

Readings for Today: Psalm 50:1-6, 2 Kings 2.1-12, 2 Corinthians 4.3-6, Mark 9.2-9

The Transfiguration is one of those moments that we refer to in the gospels as a Theophany – God showing God’s self to others.   Before now there are several moments in Mark’s gospel where Jesus reveals something of himself to others – his stilling the storm leaves the disciples “filled with great awe” (Mk 4.40) and his walking on the water leaves them “utterly astounded” (Mk 6.51), but this is something greater.   Seeing Jesus turned blindingly white, and in the presence of Moses and Elijah, leaves the disciples speechless and terrified (Mk 9.6).

One can easily imagine why it would have been a shock.  If you’ve ever been on a long camping or canoe trip with friends, seeing them dirty and tired, cooking and eating together, hearing them snore at night, well it’s the sort of thing that makes or breaks friendships.   I imagine that’s the sort of life the disciples had lived with Jesus since he called them, tramping around Galilee, homeless, never quite knowing where they would end up for the night.  Jesus must have become thoroughly familiar to them, as human as human could be, and that trip up the mountain might have first seemed like a hike with a friend, until their friend was revealed as the Son of God.

What are we supposed to make of the fact that this revelation of Jesus was so terrifying?  As I’ve been pondering this gospel reading, I was thinking of how our parish bible study recently finished the Book of Proverbs, and how we noticed that the theme of Proverbs could be summarized by the phrase, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Pro 1.7).  What does that mean?  What is the place of fear in our faith?   How could we even be fearful of the God of Love?  Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?   And how could we possibly begin to share our faith with others if we said that you have to be afraid of God?

I would start to address these questions by saying that fear has a range of meanings, and in this sense, it has more to do with respect.   When I am installing a new ceiling fan in my house, I should be afraid of electricity.  When I’m approaching a crosswalk, I should be afraid of the power and mass of my car and what it could do to a pedestrian.   If I’m put on trial, I should be afraid of the judge and what she could do to me.    Fear in these cases means a healthy respect of power and authority. It has nothing to do with abject, disabling terror.  Fear in scripture is about the overwhelming otherness of God, what the gospels call the glory of God.  It’s better expressed in words like awe and majesty, an awareness of the power of God, the same feeling we might have standing at the railing at Niagara Falls.

C.S. Lewis captures this idea nicely in his book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in the figure of Aslan, the king of Lions, who clearly represents Christ in Lewis’ allegory.   There’s a famous passage where the child-heroes of the book are being told about Aslan.

“Ooh!” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
“I’m longing to see him,” said Peter, “even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.”

The brilliant thing about our faith is that even though Jesus is revealed in these moments as sharing in the full majesty of God, we still long to see him.   While Jesus is revealed on the mountain as being the apex of the Jewish faith, encompassing both the law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah) as the sole voice we should listen to, Jesus comes down off the mountain to be with us.  It’s often said that the transfigured Christ does not remain up there in his dazzling glory, but comes down to live with, teach, and love his friends.  Jesus trades his blindingly white robes for the traveller’s clothes that are more suitable for the dusty roads of Galilee. 

It’s sometimes said that because the Transfiguration marks the end of Epiphany and the start of Lent, today is the beginning of a journey that takes us from mountain to mountain.   Those dusty roads will take Jesus by stages to Jerusalem and to Golgotha, and to the darkness and death of the cross.   But the road doesn’t end there … it takes a secret path to the garden and Easter Sunday, when Jesus will again be transfigured. Jesus predicted as much to his friends as they came off the mountain, when he “ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead” (Mk 9.9). 

So it is that we follow Jesus because we see in him both the power of God and the love of God.  We follow him because we need both so badly.  Ash Wednesday, that most honest day of the church year, will remind us of our full dependence on Jesus to save us from sin and death.  We will follow Jesus through Lent to Good Friday, when we will see that love in full view, in Jesus giving himself to the cross and death.  On Easter Sunday we will see that power in full view in the resurrected Jesus.   

So it is that we follow Jesus, knowing that in his transfiguration we see a glimpse of our own potential, for we know that God wishes to transfigure us as well.  St. Paul says that our transfiguration begins in discipleship, when we put on Christ like a garment, and it is complete when we join those who have gone before us, so that, in the words of the hymn, we who will be “bright shining as the sun”, will have “no less days, to sing his praise, then when we’ve first begun”.

Let’s pray.  

Gracious God, we thank you that your son shows us your glory in such a way that we can bear to look at it, so that in Jesus we see all your love and power. We thank you that in Jesus you set aside that glory so that he may walk with us, teach us, and die for us.   May this vision of the transfigured Christ remind us of the glory of the resurrectrion and the restoration of all things through your Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

Twenty four hours in Capernaum: A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday After Epiphany

 

Preached online for All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 7 February, 2021, the Fifth Sunday After Epiphany.

Readings for this Sunday: Isaiah 40.21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9.16-23; Mark 1.29-39

“Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mk 1.38).  

Today I want to talk about how Jesus’ message is simple:  God seeks to heal us, and in healing we find our restoration to community, which is community with God and with one another.

Humans measure time by rituals attached to special days, and perhaps the strangest of those last week was the world waiting breathlessly for a large rodent to tell us how long winter will remain with us.  For some of us, one of the rituals of February 2^nd is watching the 1993 film Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, about a vain and unpleasant TV personality who is trapped in a time loop where only he realizes that the day repeats endlessly, resetting itself each morning at 6 AM.   This year a number of commentators have cited the film as catching the spirit of the pandemic, where we seem to be trapped in a stasis where nothing really seems to change.

However, the film’s message is that people can change.   Over the course of countless repeating days, Bill Murray’s character learns evolves from a conceited, celebrity-seeking jerk to a man who learns to love and serve the people around him.    Like Dickens’ Christmas Carol, the message is that living death is isolation from our fellow human beings, while healing and redemption come from being in community with others.   While the film is totally secular, its director, Harold Ramis, said that he was inspired by the Buddhist idea of the slow perfection of the human soul over time.  It’s an interesting example of how a commercially successful film can be a vehicle for profound truths about the purpose of life.

There’s another connection with February 2^nd – in the life of the church it is known as the Feast of the Presentation, commemorating the day when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple in keeping with Jewish law and custom for the firstborn, as told in Luke’s gospel.  Luke tells us how the infant Jesus is recognized as the Messiah by the aged prophets Simeon and Anna as the Messiah. 

Simeon thanks God  that

^…-- “…my eyes have seen your salvation,
³¹   which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
³² a light for revelation to the Gentiles
   and for glory to your people Israel.’ (Luke 2.30-32).

Simeon’s words have come to be known in our liturgy as the Nunc Dimitis, the prayer of the faithful at the end of the day before we take our rest.  Perhaps because Simeon recognizes Jesus as the light of the world, this day also became known as Candlemas, because of the custom of blessing the candles to be used in the church that year.   The faithful would also be given blessed candles to remind them of the light of Christ in the depth of winter.  Thus Groundhog Day brings us to Candlemas brings us to Jesus, the light of the world that shines in the dark, which lightens the winter of our souls and brings us to the light and life of God.

However, in the pre-dawn darkness of a deserted place outside Capernaum, that light that Simeon hailed is not easily found, as the disciples frantically seek Jesus.   It’s the morning after a busy day in Capernaum, a day whose beginning we heard about in last Sunday’s gospel.   Unlike the film Groundhog Day, where twenty-four hours endlessly repeats, Jesus has no intention of being trapped.   Time passes quickly and relentlessly in Mark’s trademark style of piling one event on the next:  “As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew” (Mk 1.29).   Jesus has done a lot here in just a day, healing Simon’s mother-in-law and many others, but now he tells the disciples, “Let’s go, I’ve got to bring my message to the next towns, that’s my job” (Mk 1.38).  In just thirty-eight verses, Mark has thrown us into a whirlwind of action as we try to keep up with Jesus, and here we might ask, what exactly is Jesus’ message?  Has Mark actually explain it?  Am I sure that I understand it?

During those 24 hours in Capernaum, Jesus’ message is seen almost entirely in action.   Mark tells us that he began the day teaching in the synagogue (1.21), but his driving the unclean spirit out of the man is what eyewitnesses seem to recognize as “A new teaching – with authority!” (1.27).  Right after this, Jesus cures Simon’s mother-in-law of her fever, and then at the end of the Sabbath day there’s a crowd outside his door and he “cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons” (1.33).   Finally, all that Mark says about his tour through Galilee is that Jesus went “proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons” (1.39).   Whatever  the words are in this preaching, they don’t seem nearly as important to Mark as Jesus’ actions, and all of these actions have to do with healing and restoring people. 

Just after his baptism, Jesus summarized his message very simply:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news” (1.15).  Or, as a contemporary translation puts it, “Time’s up!  God’s kingdom us here.  Change your life and believe in the Message”.  The good news, the message, seems tied to the nearness or even the presence of the kingdom of God, and the kingdom is seen, not just in the healing and curing of the people, but in restoring them to community with God and with one another.   Freed of the unclean spirit, the man in last Sunday’s gospel can properly enter the synagogue to be in community with God’s people and give thanks for his healing.  Healed of her fever, Simon’s mother in law can return to her vocation of hospitality to her guests. 

We might think it sexist of Mark to give her a name, and to think that her only role is to make sandwiches, but in Mark the word “serve” is vitally important.   The Greek word, diakaneo, is the origin of word “deacon”, one of the three holy orders with a specific focus on ministry to others.   Jesus himself uses the word diakeno to describe his mission: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk 10.45).   In our culture, the words “serve” and “service” can often have a menial connotation – think of how little prestige we attach to jobs in the “service industry” – but for Jesus, the kingdom of God is about service as a vocation, about a purpose in life.   Healed, Simon’s mother can resume her proper vocation which includes offering hospitality to her guests.   Hospitality and service are what makes community and communion with others possible.   The people from All Saints rightly see preparing meals for the CrossLinks residents as part of their vocation.

Finally, Jesus’ focus on service to others explains why he is so shy of publicity, the so-called “Markan Secret”.  He could have stayed in Capernaum and basked in the gratitude and adulation of the people he cured.  Instead he hides in a place so deserted that the disciples have to hunt for him, and when they do find him, he says it’s time to move on.   Jesus has an aversion to fame and celebrity that seems totally remarkable in our society today where people are famous for being famous, and yet how many celebrities can we think of that have been chewed up and spit out by the fame factory?  Whereas Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day has to learn to let go of his desire for celebrity and attention, Jesus from the very beginning knows that the one who truly knows and understands him is God the Father, which is why the disciples find him in prayer.  Jesus’ identity is firmly rooted in his relationship to God and in his ministry to others.  He needs nothing else.

Jesus in Mark is thus revealed as someone who wields so much power that demons fear him, and yet he used that power to heal and restore.   Jesus’ message is that we see the kingdom of God most fully when we are in community and communion, with God and with one another.   In this communion that we find our healing, and our saved from the forces that would refocus us selfishly on our needs and our desires, a kind of possession that can only lead us to the despair of our inadequacies.    At the end of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character, now totally changed, exclaims that he wants to stay in the small down that he despised at the start of the film.   True communities, whether Capernaum or Punxsawtaney, is where we find our true identities in love and service to God and to one another.