Lent Madness: Monica vs Joanna the Myrrhbearer

In a narrower margin of victory than I expected, Richard Hooker defeated Scholastica, whose name sounds like she should be the patron saint of elementary school book clubs.  Richard goes on to represent Anglicanism in the battle of the Saintly Sixteen.    I’m still working on a motto for him - “HOOKER’S A LOOKER” , maybe?   Let me know if you’ve got anything better.

 

Monica should be, as I said earlier, the patron saint of mothers worried about the souls of their adult children.   Augustine, as we know, wandered wide and far from the path of faith as a young man before he heard the call.   The story he tells in Confessions of his “conversion” has echoes of the story of Saul becoming Paul in the Book of Acts. As Augustine wrote of Jesus, “Too late I came to love thee”.   Surely, Monica’s prayers for her wayward son must have been at work somewhere.  

 

John Nava, Study for Saint Monica, oil on canvas, 2003.

 

Later in life, Augustine regretted the pain he had caused his pious mother:  “I cannot sufficiently express the love she had for me, nor how she travailed for me in the spirit with a far keener anguish can when she bore me in the flesh.  

 

Augustine had one child, an illegitimate boy named Adeodatus (“Given by God”), who died shortly after his baptism.   Monica had dearly wanted to adopt him and raise him as her grandson, and herself died at fifty-nine.

 

In a lovely essay in Plough Quarterly, Susannah Black Roberts calls Monica “our spiritual grandmother”.  While was only briefly and tragically a grandmother, Black writes that “all those who have converted after reading the Confessions, and all those whose hearts found rest in the doctrines of God’s grace which he articulated, and all those who have found their household in the church which her son did so much to build: these too are her grandchildren” (https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/relationships/monica-of-thagaste)

 

Joanna the Myrrhbearer may have a stronger claim for fame because whereas Monica’s son worshipped Jesus, Joanna knew Jesus and paid his bills.   In that respect, she may deserve to be the patron saint of church treasurers.  

 

She is mentioned twice mentioned in the book of Luke, once as part of the administrators of the disciples (8:3) and  more famously as one of the women who go to the tomb to anoint (myrrh was a burial spice) Jesus’ body (24:10), only to find the tomb empty.  Thus, Joanna is honoured as one of the first to bear the Christian message, “He is risen!”.   Speaking of tending the dead, Joanna is also honoured by tradition in the Orthodox church for recovering (and presumably burying) the head of poor John the Baptist after his execution. 

 

Saint Joanna recovering the head of Saint John the Baptist

 

One wonders, given that the Baptist and Jesus were both popular preachers, and given that her husband worked for Herod's killer, if Joanna paid a price for her faith. Joanna deserves the memory and honour of the church today as a person who had all the advantages of class and power,  but who dedicated her life to following Jesus. 

 

The connection of myrrh with the Nativity story also links Joanna with the Magi as those who honoured Jesus.   I discovered a wonderful website dedicated to Joanna which calls on us to be “modern myrrh bearers”:

“We can identify the modern equivalent of myrrh in our lives, some intrinsically valuable way of living - controlling our actions and speech - that like myrrh will fight corruption in its modern, cultural sense.  And we can make that thing of value, that myrrh, our gift to Him.  The White Angel will beckon to us, and wait patiently to give us the Good News”.  (https://modernmyrrhbearers.com/what-is-a-modern-myrrhbearer/)

 

Blessed be their memories.

 

I am currently three for four in my predictions thus far.  I’ve picked Joanna to go up against Augustine, which would be a blessing to Monica, if you think about it, as that would just be awkward.

 

You can vote here - you’ll see the buttons when you scroll to the bottom:

https://www.lentmadness.org/2023/02/monica-v-joanna/

 

Blessings to you this day,

 

Michael

 

Lent Madness 2023: Hooker vs Scholastica

Good day Saint Supporters!

 

So Bertha of Kent sent Olga of Kiev packing in our last matchup, which is probably fortuitous, as "VOTE KENT THS LENT!" is a great slogan, and honestly, I don't know what I would have done with Olga.  So on to today's matchup, by way of an esoteric anecdote.

 

I studied theology at Wycliffe College, a famously low-church seminary.  One day in chapel during Lent, our principal, George Sumner, was preparing to celebrate.   Our sacristan (the luckless student in charge of worship) noticed that he was wearing a faded blue stole (blue being the colour for Advent) that looked like a rat had been chewing on it.  The poor sacristan knew that purple is the liturgical colour for Lent, and did her best to enforce the rule.”

 

“Principal Sumner!”, she said, in a horrified whisper, “Your stole isn’t purple!”

 

“Really?”, he said in his Boston accent, pretending to examine the stole.  “Well, it’s purple enough” and off he went into chapel.

 

While he didn’t say so, Principal Sumner was invoking the thought of Richard Hooker, one of our saints in the ring today.    Hooker, an Anglican priest and theologian, lived in a time of intense conflict in the Church of England.   Reformed clergy, influenced by the most extreme trends of protestantism as advocated by the likes of Calvin and Knox, were deeply hostile to priestly vestments and any other kind of worship that seemed Catholic.    Conservative clergy looked to the past and wanted to continue some Catholic traditions carried over into the Tudor church.

 

Hooker was one of those peaceful fence-sitting moderates who seem so rare today.  His response to these church debates was to invoke a Latin term, adiaphora, which means “things indifferent”.  Essentially, Hooker said that whereas Jesus said we must do some things, like remember him during Communion, Jesus didn’t say anything about other things, like customs in worship, so do them if you like or don’t do them, whatever makes you happy.   So Hooker wouldn’t have been greatly offended by a purple stole worn during Advent.  Could any debates over worship in your home parish be settled by someone saying “Adiaphora!” in a loud voice? 

 

Today we remember Hooker for a huge body of work, including guides on how to read and interpret scripture that we still follow today.   I would say his main contribution was to chart the “media via”, the centre way in Anglicanism that keeps us united despite the differences in style and customs between our congregation

 

Whereas Hooker definitely lived and wrote (a lot!), Scholastica, on the other hand, is a rather shadowy figure who may or may not have existed.   She was widely known and admired in the early medieval church, and several Anglo-Saxon writers told stories about her, including the charming one about how she prayed to God to send the rainstorm to keep her brother St. Benedict and his companions for a long chat and a (chaste) sleepover.

 

It was not long after St. Benedict’s pioneer rule for male monastic communities that the first communities for women began to appear in Europe.   Given the celebration of virginity and chastity among women that stemmed from the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it’s not surprising that the first convents had strict rules about sexual morality and chastity.  Scholastica seems to have been most well known to the early church as an example of chastity.  Stories about her were written and used as tributes to real-life, noble born English women, like Hild, the 6th century Benedictine Abbess of Whitby, who played important roles in the growth of the church in England (see https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/whatley-saints-lives-in-middle-english-collections-life-of-st-scholastica-introduction).

 

I suspect today that Hooker will win the day over Scholastica because he’s a famous Anglican, and Lent Madness is, after all, an Anglican geek fest.   However, spare a thought for the wise and pious Scholastica, who reminds us that the saints don’t have to be real to inspire us.

 

Here's the link for voting:  https://www.lentmadness.org/2023/02/scholastica-v-richard-hooker/

 

 

Blessings this day,

 

Michael

Lent Madness 2023: Olga vs Bertha

Good morning and welcome to this one and only Saturday Lent Madness email from Fr. Michael.   It’s been lovely to hear from some former parishioners and to add some new friends to this list.    It’s a fun project for me to send out these commentaries and I hope you’re all enjoying this Lenten learning opportunity.

 

Isn’t it interesting that Olga of Kiev comes up for voting around the one year anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine War.  Knowing something of the minds of Scott and Tim, the clerical chiefs behind this project, I’m pretty sure that’s not an accident.

 

The hair-raising story of Olga and her revenge on the killers of her husband might shock us, though to be fair, Olga has her equally dangerous sisters in Jael and Judith from the Hebrew scriptures and apocrypha  (Judges 5:24-26; Judith 13), perhaps proving what Kipling once said about the female of the species being more deadly than the male.   We might however put Olga in context by remembering that the Dark Ages got their name for a reason.   The world of Bertha of Kent, one of feuding petty kings, was equally dangerous, though Bertha herself seems to a non-bloodthirsty sort of saint.

 

Olga on the other hand is one of those nationalistic saints of European Christianity whose memory is resurrected in times of crisis and war.    For Ukrainians today, she is one of the symbols of national resistance, and her icon has been morphed into Saint Javelin, an image of the fierce saint in Ukrainian uniform, wielding an anti-tank missile called a Javelin - see https://www.saintjavelin.com/collections/saint-olha

Whether this adoption of St. Olga is blasphemous or an appropriate tribute is a matter of opinion (I’ve heard both).

 

 

There's some more discussion on Olga and the Ukraine war here:

https://theconversation.com/saint-olga-of-kyiv-is-ukraines-patron-saint-of-both-defiance-and-vengeance-178019

 

Bertha of Kent, on the other hand, appears to have been a pious and righteous woman all her life, as opposed to Olga, who converted later in life.  If you were confused by the bio of her on the Lent Madness website, the Augustine she welcomed to Kent was not Augustine of Hippo, who had been dead for some centuries, but another Augustine, St. Augustine of Canterbury.   Augustine was apparently a popular name back then.

 

The chapel that King Ethelbert gave to his saintly wife still functions today, as part of a two-point parish of the Church of England known as St. Martin and St. Paul (https://www.martinpaul.org/contactus.htm).   Parishioners of All Saints Collingwood or other historic churches can imagine the work of the building committee in maintaining a church that is 1400 years old!   Bertha and her chapel also remind us of something that Bishop Stephen Neill once said about Anglicanism, that those of us who go to the ancient churches of Britain feel a deep sense of kinship with the pre-Reformation past, and sense that this has always been our church.  

 

I noticed today when I voted on the Lent Madness site that the percentages and totals of votes cast were already displayed before I voted.   I’m hopeful that this is a glitch, as it’s better I think to vote with one’s heart and not with the majority.   That being said, I had thought Olga would do well, given widespread sympathy for the Ukraine, but it appears I was wrong to pick her going forward.   I was right about Florence and Augustine, so I guess I’m two for three so far.  How about you?

 

Blessings this day.

 

Michael+

Lent Madness 2023: Florence vs The Count

Walk down the long hallway between the nave and the hall at All Saints, Collingwood, or go to any other church where photos of past clergy are displayed, and starting in the 1970s and 1980s you will see the faces of women deacons and priests.  Indeed, walk into any parish in our Diocese, and chances are good the celebrant and/or preacher will be a woman.   It seems normal to us now, but it was made possible in part because of the life and witness of Florence Li Tim-Oi.

 

 

Florence’s call to Christ was made possible by the work of missionaries who took the gospel to Asia in the 1700 and 1800s.   History as we now understand it tries to acknowledge the greed, racism, and violence of imperialism, but as Christians we believe that God works in human history, and the growth of the church in China and Japan is part of God’s work.  Taking the name Florence from her hero, Florence Nightingale, Tim-Oi began her ministry amidst another terrible phase of history, the wars between China and imperial Japan.

 

Because of the war, the Anglican Bishop of Hong Kong decided to ordain her to do the work of a priest where the male clergy had been killed or rounded up.  Florence carried out her incredibly demanding ministry amidst hunger, fear, and the brutal Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the surrounding regions.    Often she had to journey in disguise as an old woman to go unnoticed by Japanese soldiers.   There is an inspiring account of her wartime ministry, in her own words, here:  https://montrealdio.ca/li-tim-oi/

 

I’m not sure what was worse, the attempts of the Chinese Communists after the war to deny her vocation (she was made to cut up her vestments) or the efforts of the Anglican church to deny her ordination to the priesthood.  Florence endured both with patience and humility, and was duly honoured by the church in later life.    Canada was honoured that she chose to end her days in our country and in our church.

 

Compared to this humble and heroic life, I feel a bit sorry for the odds against poor Nicholaus von Zinzendorf.  As a Count and a German nobleman, he could have had a pretty comfortable life, dressing well, hunting, dancing, consuming copious amounts of schnapps and snuff and whatever else German aristocrats did in those days.

 

Instead, Nicholas fell in love with Jesus, and devoted his life to living in community with German settlers in North America.    His heart went out to slaves and indigenous peoples, and he lived out his belief, as he said in a sermon, that “There can be no Christianity without community”.   

 

Nicholaus thus reached beyond the Lutheran church of his ordination to serve the German protestant churches in North America  known as Moravians.    The Moravian Church is one of the oldest protestant churches, committed to the common good, suspicious of wealth and capitalism, and deeply intentional about a common discipleship regardless of race, and it survives here, especially in western Canada.  There is a wonderful statement about Moravian beliefs here:   https://www.rioterracechurch.org/who-are-moravians-

 

I doubt that Nicholaus will go on to the Saintly Sixteen, especially with Canadian Anglicans whose hearts and votes will likely go to Florence.  But, you know what?  Nicolaus would be ok with that.  As he said in one of his sermons, "Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. ” 

 

Blessed be their memories.

 

You can vote here: https://www.lentmadness.org/2023/02/florence-v-nicolaus/

Scroll down to see the voting buttons.

 

Lent Madness: Holy Holy Hippos

Our first matchup of Lent Madness has a little bit of sophomoric humour in that both battling saints have “Hippo” in their name, hence my even more sophomoric Subject Heading for this email.

In fact, neither saint had anything to do with hippopotamuses (hippopotami?).

I like to think of Augustine of Hippo as the patron saint of middle aged churchgoing parents who despair of their young adult children ever coming to the faith.  Augustine perplexed and perturbed his mother Monica, a woman of great faith (she also features in Lent Madness).  Essentially the young Augustine was the typical, cynical, bohemian undergraduate who has read a bunch of books and thinks he knows everything - an uncomfortable self portrait of myself in my 20s!

Augustine did come to faith, and wrote a ton of learned theological books on subjects like the Trinity and good and evil.  He’s most well known for his book Confessions, which many people are disappointed to find is not terribly racy.  In fact, the Confessions is, as has been noted, Augustine talking to God, and we are simply listening in.     In one famous and lovely passage, he praises God for finally breaking into his arrogance and making God’s self lovingly and inescapably real to him:

“You called, you cried out, and you broke through my deafness; you flashed, you gleamed, and you banished my blindness; you wafted your fragrance, and I drew a breath, and I pant for you; I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.”  (Confessions).

Hippolytus of Rome is a much less well-known figure, in that little of his life is known for sure and there are several legends around his death and martyrdom.   He was steeped in classical knowledge and learning, and used his quill to fight in the many theological wars of the second-century church.   These lengthy battles seem arcane to us today, but remember that Hippolytus and his like, by their many arguments and disputes, eventually allowed the councils of the church to agree on the creeds we say today.

One work attributed to Hipploytus was called The Apostolic Tradition, which laid out various rules for liturgy, church membership, and governance.    One of the rules laid out in this book is that soldiers and gladiators could not be members of a church!   We can imagine how, amidst the casual violence and brutality of the Roman world, how the early Christians struggled to establish a way of life that was different, one dedicated to Christ the Prince of Peace.

Which of these Holy, Holy Hippos will win today?  My money is on the better known Augustine, but he gets a bad rap in some circles for “inventing” the doctrine of original sin, so Hippolytus might win as the underdog.   

Cheers and blessings this day,

Michael+

Ash Wednesday Thoughts On The Communion of the Saints

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been thinking about saints lately, there was  moment during our Ash Wednesday worship this morning when I noticed something in the liturgy that I had never thought about before:

 

Most holy and merciful Father,

we confess to you, to one another,

and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth,

that we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed;

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

 

Confessing our sins and offences to God, I readily understand, as we do that as Anglicans whenever we worship.

 

Confessing our sins and offences to one another, I can understand, as part of being part of the community of the church is a willingness to seek forgiveness and to forgive for the inevitable offences that arise when we live together.

 

Confessing our sins and offences to the “saints in heaven” however is something that I had never much thought about.    Why would the saints need our confession?   Why would they need to forgive us?

 

In Revelation, St. John describes seeing “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”, worshipping Jesus, who has ‘guide[d] them to springs to the water and life” and ‘wipe[d] away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7.9-17).

 

This passage reminds us that we as the church temporal live our allotted time on earth in the fellowship, or communion, of the saints who have gone before us and who are know blessed to be in the company of God.  This fellowship includes all those whose names and acts are known to us (even via Lent Madness!) and those humble saints whose names are remembered only by God, but who are just as loved by God.  

At our bible study today, someone asked if we could disappoint the saints in heaven or “let down the team” if we fall short in our earthly Christian lives, as we inevitably will, being human.    I think it's more helpful to be reminded of the passage in Hebrews, that we are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” who cheer us on and encourage us as we run our own spiritual races.  

 

Another way to think of the communion of saints is provided in a lovely recent essay by Peter Mommsen (https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/culture-of-life/yearning-for-roots) .  Writing on our fascination with genealogies and ancestry, Mommsen notes even those of us with family trees to research find that within a few generations, our ancestors are merely strangers, whose genetics blur into the vast pool of human DNA.

 

In contrast, the Bible’s insistence on genealogies, all those “begats”, including the Davidic bloodline of which Jesus’ adoptive father Joseph is part, reminds us that while biological kinship is important to God, far more important than the “transmission of genes” is the “grand intergenerational story into which Jesus was born, the story of God’s covenant with Israel, of sin and exile, and of the promise of redemption”.  In this family, anyone who seeks to do the will of Jesus is our kin.

 

As Mommsen concludes, “In Christian teaching, this redefined family is known by another name: the communio sanctorum, the fellowship of saints.   In this great intergenerational family, we are linked by a bond of brotherhood and sisterhood to believers from every era of the human story, past, present, and yet to be born”.

 

Thus, the stories that we read about as we play Lent Madness are really our family stories, stories of our ancestors,  But, unlike a human genealogy such as we might get from ancestry.com, these ancestors exist in the eternal present of God, they see us, and they cheer us on to our own finish lines, when we shall join their blessed company.

 

What a lovely way to think about Lent Madness!

 

Blessings this day,  Michael

Lent Madness 2023 Begins Soon

I sent this out to interested parishioners past and present who are interested in the Lent Madness project from Forward Movement.   I’m going to be sending something like this out every day during Lent, and will post them to this blog as well for anyone out there who finds them interesting, and if you are in that camp, by all means go to Lent Madness  and play along.

Blessings,  MP+

Hello and welcome to Michael’s commentary for Lent Madness 2023.   Some of you are receiving this because you signed up last year and seemed to enjoy it (looking at you, friends from Trinity Church, Barrie!).  Some of you are friends I've made at other churches,    If you would rather not receive emails this year, then please let me know and I’ll tearfully remove you from the list.  At any rate, I hope that you enjoyed some pancakes today and are ready for whatever Lenten discipline you've felt called to accept.

First, some brief housekeeping.   The emails you receive from me are simply my own thoughts, hapless prognostications, comments and lame jokes.   If you want to receive the official emails from the folks at Lent Madness, and you really should, then go to www.lentmadness.org and sign up – their daily emails are handy reminders for the matchups of the day and reminders to vote.

Here’s a quick summary of how it works.  There are thirty-two saints in the running, and each day during Lent except on Sundays, there is a matchup between an ever decreasing field until the final two candidates go head to head for the Golden Halo.   Each matchup is determined by people like you, Anglicans from across the North American church.  It’s all good fun, but also an excellent way to learn about some inspiring figures of the faith.

I looked ahead and made some foolhardy predictions. It was a daunting task – how to say that John Donne’s poetry is more deserving than JS Bach’s music, or that the faith of ancient martyrs like Blandina was any less heroic than that of martyrs of our own era such as Rutilo Grande or Jonathan Daniels?  At the end of the day, all of these figures are inspirational and show the Holy Spirit working across the centuries.  But, it’s a game, and someone’s gotta win, so if you want to see my picks, they’re here:  Lent Madness - Percentage Bracket (commoninja.com) But don’t just take my word for it – who do you like?  

Make your own choices, scored on percentages of wins or on points.

https://www.lentmadness.org/brackets/percentage-bracket/

https://www.lentmadness.org/brackets/points-bracket/

But hurry - the first round of voting begins on Thursday, Feb 23, in the “Ancient and Apostolic” category as Augustine of Hippo goes up against Hippolytus in the Battle of the Megaherbivore Theologians!  More thoughts on these two venerable thinkers coming soon.   

Cheers and blessings,

Michael+

 

Hello and welcome to Michael’s commentary for Lent Madness 2023.   Some of you are receiving this because you signed up last year and seemed to enjoy it (looking at you, friends from Trinity Church, Barrie!).  Some of you are friends I've made at other churches,    If you would rather not receive emails this year, then please let me know and I’ll tearfully remove you from the list.  At any rate, I hope that you enjoyed some pancakes today and are ready for whatever Lenten discipline you've felt called to accept.

First, some brief housekeeping.   The emails you receive from me are simply my own thoughts, hapless prognostications, comments and lame jokes.   If you want to receive the official emails from the folks at Lent Madness, and you really should, then go to www.lentmadness.org and sign up – their daily emails are handy reminders for the matchups of the day and reminders to vote.

Here’s a quick summary of how it works.  There are thirty-two saints in the running, and each day during Lent except on Sundays, there is a matchup between an ever decreasing field until the final two candidates go head to head for the Golden Halo.   Each matchup is determined by people like you, Anglicans from across the North American church.  It’s all good fun, but also an excellent way to learn about some inspiring figures of the faith.

I looked ahead and made some foolhardy predictions. It was a daunting task – how to say that John Donne’s poetry is more deserving than JS Bach’s music, or that the faith of ancient martyrs like Blandina was any less heroic than that of martyrs of our own era such as Rutilo Grande or Jonathan Daniels?  At the end of the day, all of these figures are inspirational and show the Holy Spirit working across the centuries.  But, it’s a game, and someone’s gotta win, so if you want to see my picks, they’re here:  Lent Madness - Percentage Bracket (commoninja.com) But don’t just take my word for it – who do you like?  

Make your own choices, scored on percentages of wins or on points.

https://www.lentmadness.org/brackets/percentage-bracket/

https://www.lentmadness.org/brackets/points-bracket/

But hurry - the first round of voting begins on Thursday, Feb 23, in the “Ancient and Apostolic” category as Augustine of Hippo goes up against Hippolytus in the Battle of the Megaherbivore Theologians!  More thoughts on these two venerable thinkers coming soon.   

Cheers and blessings,

Michael+

Choosing Life Over Despair: A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday After Epiphany

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 12 February, 2023.

Readings for the Sixth Sunday After Epiphany (A): Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37 

 

 

“Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving he Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him” (Deut 30:19)

 

 

Some of you may remember the scene in the film Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, where the hero, Indy, a globe-trotting archaeologist of the 1930s, finds the cave where the Holy Grail has been guarded by a faithful knight for seven hundred years.   Of course, there is also Nazi, who wants the Grail and its reward of eternal life, for himself.   There is one problem.  The true grail is amiss a collection of glittering chalices, and so, being a Nazi, he takes the most glittering chalice and, naturally, dies a horrible death.  “He chose … poorly” says the ancient knight.   

 

 

Indy of course chooses the humblest wooden cup because, as he says, “That’s the cup of a carpenter”, and uses it to save the life of his father.

 

“You chose … wisely” says the knight.

 

While it’s just an action movie, The Last Crusade is drawing on a long biblical tradition of making good versus bad choices.    Hebrew wisdom literature, like the Book of Proverbs, urges us to fear the Lord and be wise, and not be foolish.    Paul speaks today of choosing the “spiritual” way of life rather than the way of “the flesh”.  

 

Jesus in Matthew’s gospel frequently speaks of a choice of life that has profound consequences:  ’Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. ¹⁴For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt 7.13).   Likewise in his last public sermon before his arrest, Jesus says that he will return to divide the sheep, those who have served the poor, from the goats, who have served themselves (Mt 25: 31-45).

 

In these passages from Matthew’s gospel, and particularly in today’s reading, Jesus is saying that our choices have consequences, and today I want to think about those consequences in terms of the kind of life that Jesus invites us to.

 

First, I need to clear the air and try to dispel a certain Christian framing of what sort of choice God lays in front of us.      There is a certain way of preventing Christianity that lays out a stark choice.   One can either accept Jesus as one’s personal saviour, give one’s life to him, and go to heaven, OR, reject God’s love, reject Jesus, and go to hell.     This view of Christianity is so wrong in so many ways.    First, it sees God’s invitation as coercive and manipulative:  either love me, or I will punish you.    As Stanley Hauerwas has spent his career saying, the crucifixion is proof that God refuses to redeem coercively” because, in the cross, Jesus chooses self-giving love for us and refuses power over us (Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir page?, ).

 

Secondly, a coercive view of the gospel is just a terrible form of evangelism.    There are many reasons why people in our part of the world are abandoning Christianity in droves, but one of them is surely because they see “fire and brimstone” as being morally and spiritually bankrupt.  We won’t fill the pews by holding a metaphysical gun to peoples’ heads and saying “turn or burn”.    That approach might work for a handful of churches catering to a self-satisfied elect, but it’s not the Anglican way.

 

What is the Anglican way?  The Anglican way is to see Jesus as the redeemer who saves us from ourselves and the bad choices that we are likely to make.   Note that this is not the way of a coercive, manipulative parent who threatens us if we don’t love them.  Rather, it’s the way of the Father in the parable of the prodigal son, who leaves his child free to make choices, and who welcomes them home when they realize that they’ve made a terrible mistake.    

 

“Choose life so that you and your descendants may live”.   We need saving from ourselves because so many today make bad choices that lead to death.     In 2019, Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times about a culture of despair, a term that points to a rising number of deaths in North America whose root cause seems to be a general lack of hope.   Specifically he was talking about rising death rates through drug and opiod use, through suicide and alcoholism particularly among middle aged working class males, and likewise rising death rates among young people due to suicide and depression.

 

To this list we could add the isolation of Covid in the last few years, the rise of online conspiracy theories, the collapse of trust in institutions, identity politics that pit groups against one another,  a growing chasm between the wealthy and the poor, gun violence, fear of the stranger, fear of environmental collapse, and pervasive loneliness.    Just to underline this last category, I read this morning that almost 30% of Canadians live alone.

 

If you had to sum up the crisis of despair that we find ourselves in, I agree with those who are that we have forgotten how to choose the good.   We’re told that the only real thing is the self, the only moral compass is whatever we personally believe, and that the only good things worth seeking are physical things and personal pleasures.  As a result, says Tim Shriver, the long time chair of the Special Olympics, “we’re dying of loneliness and fear and anxiety and it’s the outcomes of those things which are self-harm and hostility and anger towards others”.

 

“Choose life so that you and your descendants may live”.  In our bible study last Wednesday, we debated whether Jesus’ words in today’s gospel were angry finger pointing, or whether they offered a way to choose life.  I would say the latter, but I would admit that Jesus is angry at practices that demean and exploit others.

 

In Judaica, Jesus’ culture, the law was life, and all morality of Jesus’ teaching comes from Torah.  All of his teachings today are elaborations of the commandments that God gives to Moses as described in Deuteronomy: don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t swear false witness.  However, Jesus goes beyond the minimum requirements of the law and challenges his followers to put the law into their hearts and actions.   If you don’t want to kill, then don’t harbour and enjoy angry thoughts towards your neighbours.   If you don’t want to commit adultery, then stop seeing women simply as sexual objects.  If you don’t want to bear false witness, then don’t make elaborate oaths that you can’t keep, and just be sincere.

 

It’s helpful to think that Jesus is defining the ways in which a community would live if that community wanted to show something of the kingdom of heaven to the world.  In such a community, there would be no hateful thoughts, and angry grudges would not be harboured.  In such a community, men would treat women wth respect, and wouldn’t cast them off when a marriage ceased to be rewarding.    In such a community, people would be honest and sincere with one another.  In such a church, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, we would never talk about a fellow churchgoer in their absence , so that we don’t risk descending into gossip and mockery.

 

Now imagine a world where Jesus’ teachings go unheeded.  Imagine a world of sexual violence, where many men are warped by pervasive sexism and pornography, where sex is seen as power and dominance, where women’s shelters have long waiting lists.   Imagine a world of anger, where politics are based on grudges and grievances and scores to be settled, where demagogues stoke fear and hatred to keep us at one another’s throats.  Imagine a world of lies and insincerity, where no one can be trusted.   Well, my friends, you don’t have to work hard at imagining that world  because that world is already here.

 

“Choose life so that you and your descendants may live”. I said earlier that the gospel is never coercive and that God never threatens us if we don’t obey.  I think that statement is just as true of out gospel reading.  The hellfire that Jesus speaks of is I think a hell of our own making.   It’s the culture of despair that more and more people are choosing because they’ve abandoned any idea that God has a good life to offer.

 

Where is the good news in all of this for the church?  The good news is that a meaningless world of moral relativism and individualism, people are starving for the good and they are starving for community.   I mentioned Tim Shriver earlier.  He said recently that the Special Olympics movement works because “millions and millions of people come out to help people with Down syndrome run a 100-meter race. They’re not doing that because they’re going to get paid for it. … They’re doing it because they’re starving for experiences in which the walls break down, where they feel free to be themselves, their best selves.”

 

On Wednesday night at our Community Dinner I met new volunteers who had come to help us because they wanted to give back.   I think they felt that same desire that Tim Shriver talks about.   They wanted to be their best selves, they wanted to be part of a community, they wanted something more than a purely individual and selfish view of the world.   Personally I find this enormously helpful because it tells me the gospel is true.   It tells me that Jesus’ vision of a self whose wellbeing is bound up in the wellbeing of others is better than any other identity that the world can offer us.

 

I think that so many around us are like Indiana Jones in that cave, looking a variety of glittering, enticing choices that seem to offer life and meaning, but which in fact offer death.   We know differently.  We know that we’re not perfect, God knows we’re not perfect, but at our best, we’ve chosen God’s way of life in which our wellbeing is bound up in the wellbeing of others.  That choice gives us life, hope, and meaning.   Our mission as church is to offer that choice to others.    May God give us grace to help others choose wisely, and choose life.