God Wants to Move In: A Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

 

“I made your name known to them, and I will make it know, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them”  (Jn 17.21).

 

Last month I came across a commencement speech that was widely quoted in the media; it delivered lastmonth by Jay Powell to graduates of his alma mater, Princeton University.  Jay Powell is the Chair of the US Federal Reserve and may be one of the few adults keeping the US together.   It was a really good speech, and had a lot to say about the importance of personal integrity.  It also included an anecdote that made me think of how we sometimes think of prayer, the subject of my homily today.

Powell told the story of how, when he was a very junior partner at a prestigious law firm, he decided to make an impression on the senior partner, a VIP who had been a US Senator.   As Powell described it, he worked up the nerve to climb the stairs to the corner audience, had a very brief meeting, and left thinking, “well at least I tried”, but he made an impression and that helped his career.

I think many of us find it difficult to pray because we think of God like the senior partner in Powell’s story.    We think that we have to address God like some august personage, “Excuse me sir, sorry to trouble you, but f you don’t mind, could you please help with….”

What if there was another way of thinking about prayer, as something that didn’t look like a formal audience, but rather something that looked  like an intimate conversation with a loved one or dear friend.?  That’s the kind of prayer we hear in today’s gospel, from John 17, when Jesus prays to his father for his friends.

So a little background:  Today’s gospel reading from John 17 takes us back to territory we last visited on Maundy Thursday during Holy Week.   It’s the night of Jesus’ arrest, his last moments with his disciples.

Unlike in the Synoptic Gospels John has no account of the last supper.  Instead, after Jesus washes his friends’ feet, he has a long conversation (Jn 13-17) where he says that he must soon leave them (a dual reference to his death but also to his ascension which the church remembered this last Friday).   He also promises them that he will not leave them alone, which reminds us that next Sunday is Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The remarkable thing about Jn 17 is that by this point Jesus is not talking to the disciples.   He is talking to his Father, and he is praying for the disciples – and for us.  Jesus’ words, “I ask”, are the words of prayer.    So the disciples are actually overhearing Jesus pray for them, which is something we only see in John’s account of Jesus’ arrest. 

When you are going through a difficult time, does it make a difference knowing that others, people of deep faith, are praying for you?   Everyone I’ve put this question to has said absolutely, yet it does.    I wonder what that experience was like for you if the person praying for was with you, sitting with you, so you could hear their words, their tone of voice?   When people have been with me and prayed for me, at first I found it a little awkward, but I quickly came to appreciate how intimate and caring it can be to know that someone values you enough to speak to God on your behalf!

I think the same thing is true of today’s gospel, where the disciples learn that God the Son cares enough about them to speak to God the Father on their behalf.   In the Synoptic Gospels, the night of his arrest, Jesus prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane but we don’t hear his words, except for his prayer that he might be spared the cross unless it was his Father’s will (Mt 26.39).

John however lets us hear everything that Jesus prays, so what does he pray for?   Despite the convoluted language, the prayer is quite simple.  Jesus prays that his friends, including us, know the same love that exists between Jesus and his Father.   He prays that his friends may be drawn together by this love, so close that they become one, as Jesus and the father are one, and that this love might fill the lives and hearts of his friends.   At least, that’s what I make of it (I dreaded translating passages from John in my seminary Greek classes, but here I think I get the gist of it).

It's an astonishing moment when you think about it.  The disciples are overhearing a conversation of the Holy Trinity, Jesus speaking to God the Father on their behalf, asking for their welfare and the welfare of all who believe after them (as I said, us).   As one commentator has noted, it is a  wonder that the Father and the Son spend their time discussing the likes of us and our little community of faith”, but that shows the love and concern that God has for us, that God wants to draw us into the relationship of the Trinity, “so that the love which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17.26).

If you only take away one thing from this homily, may it be this, that God loves you so much that God wants to include you in the love and relationship that exists within the three persons of God the Trinity:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   Last Sunday in her very fine homily, our curate Rev. Amy spoke about how we can know Jesus better if we focus more on him and less on ourselves.  

Amy’s words made me think of decluttering a house, emptying the attic and basement of useless things that just take up space.  If we think of the soul as a house, the clutter we need to remove could be our sense of self-importance, our grievances, our feelings of entitlement – all need to go to make room for God.  And the good news is that God can’t wait to fill up that space, can’t wait to move into your soul, “so that the love which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17.26).

So how do we pray for this occupancy to happen?  How do we pray for God to fill the space, the emptiness, within us?  Or, if you are with someone and you feel moved to pray for them in your presence, how do you pray that you might find words to fill that moment that might initially seem awkward?   If you can’t think of any words, you can’t go wrong with the prayer from our second reading today, the prayer that ends the Book of Revelation, “come Lord Jesus” (Rev 22.20).  Start with that prayer, and the Holy Spirit will fill in the space.

May God give us all the grace and confidence to pray, and the soul friends to pray with us and for us.  

Don't Fear the Man: A Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

Preached at Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, and St Luke's, Creemore, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on May 18, 2025, the Sixth Sunday of Easter.  

Readings for this Sunday (Easter 6C): Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21.1-6; John 13.31-35

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home^[of God is among mortals.  He will dwell^[b] with them; they will be his peoples,  and God himself will be with them and be their God; (Rev 21.3)

Will you listen to the words, long written down?

These words could be used in church before every scripture lesson, but they actually come from a well known song.  Bonus marks if you recognize them?   

If you said they are from Johnny Cash’s song, When the Man Comes Around, then congratulations, you’re a winner, but you still have to listen to the rest of this sermon!

Johnny Cash said that this song took him longer to write than any other of his songs, and thelyrics borrow heavily from the Book of Revelation, the source of today’s second lesson.  And like the Book of Revelation, Cash’s lyrics are ominous, even scary.  There are phrases like “The whirlwind in is in the thron tree” and “Some are born and some are dying”,  and if that’s not spooky enough, the song ends with this words:

"And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale horse
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him"

I would guess that Cash’s lyrics are how many people understand this strange last book of the Bible, as a book of fear and doom, prophecies that trigger our deepest fears and anxieties.   Many of our cultural and movie tropes and images come from Revelation:  the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Armageddon, death as a pale rider.  

I wonder though how many listeners to Cash’s song understand that man in the title who is going to come around is Jesus!   Johnny Cash runs with imagery that Revelation uses to describe Jesus, who will lead the armies of heaven like a conquering king and who will judge all souls at the end of time (Rev 19:11,13-16).   For the first Christians who would have read or heard Revelation at the end of the first century, the scary and doomy parts of the letter would have described their world, where the Roman emperors were beginning to persecute the Christian church and hunt its leaders and members.    These early Christians saw Roman culture as being deeply sinful and corrupt, and so they imagined a day when Jesus would come to rescue them and punish the wicked.  A long sequence in the middle of the book describes Rome as the Whore of Babylon, and imagines its destruction as God finally returns to bring justice and punishment for the wicked.

Whoever wrote Revelation (according to tradition it was a man named John, not the disciple but sometimes called John of Patmos) was drawing on many biblical sources, particularly books of prophecy like the Book of Daniel, which contain strange beasts, coming events, and numbers (such as seven and twelve) that recur frequently in scripture, leading some to want to interpret them as clues and codes.    Many books have been written trying to explain Revelation as a warning about things that will come in the near future, such as Hal Lindsey’s 1970s bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth, or the Left Behind series that started in the 1990s. 

All of these and similar books and films depend on what we might call the “scare factor” of Revelation, but what if I told you that there is nothing to be scared of?  I could summarize it in five words:  “Good guys win.  The end”.   In fact, if you look at today’s second lesson (Rev 21.1-6), the only possibly scary part is that “the sea was no more”, which is disturbing for those who like to go on cruises and eat seafood, but everything else speaks of a world that is renewed, refreshed, and made infinitely better.

Today’s passage begins and ends with things being made new, which is a central idea of our faith, that salvation involves being remade and reborn, as in Paul’s statement in Second Corinthians, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor 5:7).  There is a wedding, which is also an image of something new being created (a family) and we remember that Jesus’ first miracle was at the Wedding in Cana.   Then there is a threefold statement of intimate relationship as God literally comes to be with and stay with us:

“See, the home^[a] of God is among mortals.
He will dwell^[b] with them;
they will be his peoples,^[c]
and God himself will be with them and be their God;^[

Then there is an image of comfort and consolation (tears being wiped away) which makes the scary God that we associate with Revelation suddenly becoming as tender as a mother, and then there is the startling and wonderful news that we won’t have to cry and mourn any more because pain and death have been abolished from this new world that God is creating.   These images of comfort and an end to death and mourning explain why this passage is so often read at funerals.  And this passage is not alone in providing a kinder, gentler Book of Revelation. 

Last Sunday our second reading in church featured a vision of Christians who have been killed for their faith being sheltered by the Lamb, a description of Jesus as a victim and a nurturer as well as a conqueror:  Revelation says that these martyrs will “hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 9.17). 

The image of “springs of water of life” reminds us of how today’s reading ends: “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life” (Rev 21.6) and together these images remind us Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well in John’s gospel and how he promises her water of eternal life.   So once again there is an affirmation of care, rescue, a promise of an end to death and pain and suffering and a promise of eternal life.

So all I’ve done in this short homily today is to try and make a case for why Revelation isn’t a scary book.  Is it mysterious?  Yes, in the sense that a dream can be mysterious, and not every image has a deep meaning.    However, the book as a whole is a celebration of God’s love and commitment to us, despite everything that we fear might keep us from God.  So let me finish with some thoughts about who needs to hear this message.

If you wonder if your church is doing a good job, look at the first chapter of Revelation, which says pretty clearly that a church’s job is always and only to be a witness to Jesus Christ.

If you feel that God is far away, and doubt that you will ever find God, then remember that Revelation promises that God and heaven will come to us, down from heaven and making God’s home with us, on earth.

If you fear for the earth itself amidst news of climate change, droughts, and natural disasters,  then Revelation promises us that God is deeply committed to the future of the world that God created, and that God will remake and renew all things, including the earth God loves.

If you fear the future and you watch the news anxiously and obsessively, then don’t be afraid.  Revelation promises that there will be a day when wars will cease and justice will come to the warlords and persecutors.   Yes, there may be suffering to come, but God and the good guys win.  The Lamb of God will also be the holy and righteous judge of God.  So maybe switch the news off and spend more time outside!

If you are filled with deep mourning and doubt that you’ll ever feel alive again, hold on to that image of God (or Jesus) gently wiping away your tears and washing your face.

Finally, if you love poetry and language, then Revelation is a book of poetry to enjoy, and not a code to be cracked, so if you haven’t read it already, then now’s a good time to start, and maybe start by listening to Johnny Cash read Revelation (youcan find it on YouTube).

 

 

Sheep And Shepherd Both: A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

 

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

 

Today is called Good Shepherd Sunday in the life of the church.  The readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter traditionally focus on the “good shepherd” sayings of Jesus, which of course come with a side order of Psalm 23 and passages from the New Testament which emphasis Jesus’ role as saviour and protector of the faithful.

It’s a pleasing work of the Spirit (I prefer that phrase to the word coincidence) that this particular Sunday comes just after word that the Roman Catholic Church has selected a new Pope, Leo XIV, and that this event should come less than a week after we heard in church, on the Third Sunday of Easter, Jesus tell Peter three times to feed and look after his sheep.

We are thus reminded that just as God in Christ protects and cares for the faithful, so God’s church is called to protect and care for those who have no one else to speak for them.  Good Shepherd Sunday ties together the sheep and shepherd imagery in scripture to reassure us that God is not detached but is engaged with us, that God is not absent but is present, invested, and attentive, deeply invested in our loves, and that God knows us intimately, understanding our weakness and committed to our welfare.  If you watched the crowds in St Peter’s Square in Rome rejoicing as the new pope was announced and then seen, I think you were seeing that deep human need to be cared for that is at the heart of faith and indeed of our human identity.

All of the ideas that are central to our faith – nourishment, protection, nurturing, companionship and love– are basic human needs, and if you’ve ever studied Mazlow’s theory of the hierarchy of human needs, they are fundamental to our wellbeing.   Just as sheep need a shepherd to lead them to pasture, water, and to protect them from predators, so do humans need food, shelter from the elements, and perhaps even more importantly, others who will help see to our emotional wellbeing and give us purpose.

We want our basic needs looked after, but as humans, if we are fortunate, we can find our greatest satisfaction in caring for others – ailing partners, children and grandchildren, strangers in distress to who we can be good Samaritans, even and (maybe especially!) our pets.   Collingwood, being a wealthy town, has no shortage of pet stores where you can buy all manner of high end things for your pets.  As you know, Joy and I have two little terriers that rule our lives, and we’re fortunate that we can spend an inordinate amount of money on looking after them.   Their current dogfood has the words “Life Protection Formula” in large letters on the bag.   How satisfying for us that we can buy “Life Protection” to our beloved dogs.

Protection from harm is way up there in the hierarchy of human needs.   We want to protect our pets, our families, our pets, and we spend a lot of money in search of protection.  If you’ve driven by All Saints at night, you’ll see the new lighting that we’ve installed to make the church safer, and the new intercom cameras so Nancy can see who wants into the building.   But of course, the word “protection”, so beloved of advertisers, has its limits.    Your insurance policy that should have protected you against disaster has its loopholes.   Your internet antivirus software may protect you from hackers and identity theft, but who really knows?  And your virtuous lifestyle and diet may not protect you against cancer.   Protection is an attractive idea, but we all know that life is inherently risky, and no one gets out of it alive.   The last time I checked, the mortality rate was hovering at 100%. 

So who protects us?  If you’re a sheep, your best source of protection is your shepherd, someone who will provide for those needs we spoke about – pasture, good water – and who will protect you from predators, both two legged and four legged.   If you’re a sheep, a shepherd will also protect you from yourself.   There’s a saying that the difference between sheep and goats is that goats only think about escaping, and sheep only think about ways to put themselves in fatal situations.

Today, on Good Shepherd Sunday, we are reminded that  Jesus can be our our shepherd if we wish to follow him.   We can follow him for many reasons, to meet our many needs:  to be intimately known and loved in an age where so many feel lonely and anonymous, to know what the good life looks like because of his teaching, and ultimately, I think, because Jesus is life.  The ancient church had a phrase it used in worship, “In the midst of death, we are in life”, and I think the idea there is why Good Shepherd Sunday falls during the Easter season, as we try to figure out how the resurrection of Jesus touches our own lives.

To understand what I mean in saying that we follow Jesus because he is life, let’s conclude these reflections with a brief look at today’s first reading, from Acts.   The apostle Peter has been summoned to a town where one of the leading lights of the local church has passed away.  Tabitha, or Dorcas to use her Greek name (both names mean Gazelle) is the sort of faithful woman that any church would love to have,  someone “devoted to good works and acts of charity”.   But she has died, leaving a huge hole and much grief in the community; the description of widows holding the cloths that Tabitha made for them is a very real detail that tugs at our hearts. 

I don’t think there’s a pastor alive who wouldn’t love to be able to do what Peter does, to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life.    We would certainly be asked to do more hospital visits if that were the case.   But I think we need to resist the temptation to think of this as a fantastic story.   The Book of Acts has its place in scripture because it describes the impact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the way that a seismograph captures aftershocks following an earthquake, or in the way that our eye registers the ripples moving out from a stone thrown into a pond.

Peter was in that room with the disciples when the risen Christ appeared to them and breathed on them, giving them the Holy Spirit.   Acts makes it plain that Peter is drawing on this power, because he puts the widows out of the room and prays before he brings Tabitha back from the dead.    Likewise, in an episode just before this one, he tells a sick man to be healed “in the name of Jesus Christ”.   Acts thus describes a vital power that flows out of Jesus in the immediate aftermath of the resurrection that empowers the apostles and brings enough people to faith to create the church.   Indeed, one could fairly say that the biggest miracle that Acts describes is not healings or resurrections, but the creation of a church that has survived for all these centuries.

Even in the first generations of the church, it became evident that believers would die, either from sickness and age or from persecution.  Our second reading from Revelation describes martyrs. those who “have come out of the great ordeal”, who are now sheltered under the throne of the Lamb who has himself been slaughtered, so that Jesus, himself crucified, becomes the most powerful force in the universe, a force of life and love who is both sacrificed sheep and protecting shepherd.     The message of Revelation is that whatever our fate, our faithful shepherd will never let go of us, never let us be snatched away, either in this life or the next.

When a church is real, and not just a social club or a cultural experience, the living Christ is at the centre of its life.   That living Christ, the voice of Jesus speaking to us in our scriptures and in our hearts, calls us into an eternal life that begins now.  I think Jesus’ promise of “eternal life so that we may never perish” is not just the afterlife, but is also experienced in the present.   We find eternal life in the knowledge that Jesus knows us completely and loves us, but that Jesus also calls us to see others as he sees us, as individuals worthy of respect and dignity.  Jesus calls us to a life of service, in which we realize our satisfaction from recognizing that the needs of others are as great as our own, that we too can be shepherds to those around us.

I started this homily with a mention of the new pontiff, Pope Leo, and I’ll finish with another reference to him.  I read yesterday that the reason Cardinal Prevost chose the name of Leo was in honour of Leo XIII, who was alive when the industrial revolution of 1800s was impacting the lives of millions.   As the new pope said on May 10, the church’s social teaching, which comes from the gospel of Jesus, speaks to “another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour”.    That word “defence” is important because it speaks to the role of the shepherd as a protector, and reminds us that the church’s role is to speak for and protect those who have no voice.

Good Shepherd Sunday reminds us that we, as followers of Jesus, can be sheep when we need to be, but can also be shepherds when we are called to be.

 

Follow Christ and Die?: A Homily for the Third Sunday After Easter

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 4 May, 2025, the Third Sunday of Easter.  Texts for Easter 3C, Acts 9:1-6 (7-20); Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

9 Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest ² and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem

Before Paul, there was Saul.  Before the proclaimer, there was the persecutor – a man convinced of his own righteousness,  an enforcer willing to use his power cruelly and violently  against those he deemed subversives and criminals.    If Saul existed today, I suspect he’d wear a ski mask, heavy boots, and military style uniform, armed and empowered to kick down doors and make arrests and haul people away in shackles to grim prisons from which they might never return.

We’ve seen people like Saul on the news, he might be the immigration enforcement agent in the US or the riot police in countries like Russia or Georgia, wading into protesters with baton swinging and throwing them into vans.   He’s the kind of thug whose bosses are self-satisfied, smug men and women in high office who boast and smirk at news conferences and say that the undesirables are finally getting what they deserve.

So while there are aspects of this first lesson from Acts that we can relate to, let’s first put it into context text. The Book of Acts moves us forward a decade or so beyond the events of the Jesus’ death and resurrection.    The message of the gospels has spread out of Jerusalem to neighbouring regions, where some Jews in places like Damascus are coming to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.  In Acts, such people are not called Christians (that word hasn’t yet taken shape) but they are called followers of The Way.   

The Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem are worried that things are spinning out of control.   They begin to arrest and imprison the apostles (Acts 5), and one, Stephen, is executed, which is the first time that we meet Saul (Acts 7.58).  Stephen’s death doesn’t slow down the spread of the gospel, and soon Saul is fully employed as a religious policeman “ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison” (Acts 7.8).  At the beginning of our first lesson today, Saul has been sent to Damascus wit orders to inspect the Jewish population there and round up any Jews who are now Jesus followers.

The story of how Saul becomes Paul is one of the most well known stories in the New Testament, so that when someone makes a lifechanging decision, we still sometimes call it a Damascus Moment.  In the church we refer to it as the Conversion of St Paul, an event which is commemorated on 25 January, and while it’s a very important and dramatic story, it’s strange that we only hear it in church as part of our Sunday lectionary cycle once every three years.

When Jesus speaks in this story, he asks a question:  “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9.4).  The pronoun “me” speaks volumes.  The “me” is Jesus identifying with the persecuted church, with the men and women that Saul wanted to arrest and bind and haul away.    Jesus may speak here as a disembodied voice, but he is very much embodied and enfleshed in those powerless ones who suffer because of people like Saul and the authoritarian systems that he works for.    The “me” of Jesus represents God’s compassion for and solidarity with those who have no voice of their own to speak for them. 

Jesus can speak with and for the persecuted and the hunted because he became one with them on the cross.   Since Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem not as a conqueror but on a donkey, we’ve seen this strange and consistent way of how God in Christ turns worldly power on its head and invests ultimate meaning and ultimate hope in an innocent man condemned to death after a show trial.    This same man, exhibited, broken  and shamed on a Roman cross, comes out of the tomb to show that human power is empty and that the imperial apparatus of death is a hollow sham.

Saul’s encounter with Christ takes two forms, the first with the disembodied voice on the Damascus road, and the second with the very real and very embodied Annanias, the first person he sees when he regains his sight.   I say Annanias is Christ because is the “me” that Saul is persecuting, he is a member of the persecuted church that is the body of Christ.    Saul, who would have hauled this man off to prison, is now tended by him, is called “brother” by him, and I think this is the moment when Saul becomes Paul, when he finds his earthly power broken by the love of Christ which has claimed him and remade him.

There are two ways that this story is helpful to us, I think, one being political and one being personal.  Let’s take the political first.

The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that “When Christ calls a person, he bids that person come and die”.    This statement sounds like terrible advertising for the church, but it’s actually good news.  When Jesus calls Paul, Saul has to die.     Whereas Saul would have despised and cruelly treated Annaias,  Paul sees him as a brother and an equal, as a vehicle of Christ’s love, and Paul will spend the rest of his life working out how those who follow Christ are one body and one family.  And likewise, something of Ananias had to die.    When Jesus called him to go to Paul and tend him, Ananias didn’t want to go, he was afraid of the man Paul was and probably even hated him, in the way that we fear and hate mortal enemies.   But Jesus wouldn’t let him off the hook, Ananias had to go and minister to this man, and in the process he too had to change, even let his old self die so he could truly become Christ’s disciple.

I think this story from Acts is incredibly relevant at this dark and fearful time that we find ourselves in.   Authoritarian regimes seem to be on the march in many cases.   There’s a famous line from George Orwell’s 1984, where the chief of the secret police says “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever”.   Our Christian faith tells us that this is a lie.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ shows that the power of despots is hollow and fleeting.   The secret police and soldiers who oppressed Poland before the fall of communism couldn’t defeat a man called Karol Wojtyla, who we knew as Pope John Paul II.   Dictatorships inevitably collapse because they can't control the place where God lives, the human heart and the human soul.

Dictatorships do end, but often they end in violence and revenge that create new cycles of violence and fear.  Last night I heard a rousing chorus from Les Miz, the one that goes "do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men", but the problem with all revolutions is how do you stop people from being angry?   Reconciliation seems like the only way, as we've seen in Northern Ireland and South Africa, but it's a slow process.   Our best hopes for reconciliation, I think, is to let God into our hearts, so that old selves can die and new selves can be born.  I started this homily by imagining Saul as some kind of secret policemen in fatigues and boots.   What if we ended by imaging his fatigues and boots and truncheon abandoned in a trash can, and Paul and Ananias together walking into a new future?

Finally, let’s look at the personal.  You may have had a conversion experience in your life. It might have been a religious transformation or maybe something less spiritual but important, like from smoker to non smoker.  

When we think of conversions I think we tend to think of them as conscious decisions, though in our lesson today  Saul doesn’t really get to make any decisions.   Instead, he is directly affected by the intervention of Jesus, who, despite seeming to be only a disembodied voice and a blinding light, can still change a life, and even change world history.  Not all Christians have a dramatic story to tell like Paul’s, but I’ve known many whose life’s direction changed significantly because they had an experience of Jesus that was very real to them.   

On Friday night we witnessed an ordination service, which can be an extravagant display of conversion, but not everyone needs to become a minister to follow Jesus.  Sometimes Jesus just forces us to recognize we have to see, stand with, and even love those we didn’t previously recognize as people.  If you’ve come to one of our Friendship Dinners, and served and sat with people whom our affluent Collingwood community generally ignores, then you’ve had your eyes opened by Jesus.

Genuinely wanting to know Jesus can be risky.  Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves, he understands what holds us back from being our best selves, the people God always wanted us to be.   He may ask us searching questions, like he asks Peter in the Gospel today, but those questions come from a deep love and can lead us forward.   But be warned that Jesus does want to transform you.  You may be on that road already.  But if you want to be on that road then I encourage you to consider our course starting this spring, which we call a confirmation course but is actually a course about following Jesus so that we can truly live.

A Homily and Backgrounder for the All Saints Special Vestry Meeting

Preached at All Saints Church, Collingwood,  Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on the Second Sunday of Easter, 27 December, 2025.

Readings:  Acts 5:27-32; Psalm  150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” Acts 5.32

A witness is someone who can speak to what they know to be true.

Since 1855, in one form or another, All Saints has been a witness to the community of Collingwod.

We’ve been a witness through our physical presence, through our worship, and through our service to the community.

It hasn’t always been easy, especially as the world became more secular starting in the mid 20th century, but like the disciples who say to the sceptical Thomas that “We have seen the Lord”, so our job has always been to say that we are witness to the Lord Jesus whom we believe to be true because of the love, forgiveness, and community that we’ve found.

Part of Christian witness has been the churchyard or cemetery, a place where the dead are remembered by us as they are remembered by God.  The Christian cemetery is also a place where our witness to the resurrection is displayed.  As we heard this morning in Revelation, Jesus is the “firstborn of the dead”, meaning that those who follow him and believe in him will also be awakened to new life.

All Saints was blessed to receive a lot of land for its cemetery from the Crown, back in the days of Queen Victoria.  Given current rates of usage, our Cemetery Board believes that the current space actually in use as a cemetery will be sufficient for 160 years to come.   The remaining thirteen acres of scrub forest is surplus to requirements and could be sold.

All Saints has imagined selling this surplus land for years, and while various ideas were proposed to the Diocese and rejected, finally we have full Diocesan approval to proceed.   The only requirement placed on us by the Diocese was that we consider how some of our share of the proceeds from this sale would go to ministry.  Putting all of our share of the proceeds into our Foundation and living off the interest is not an option.

If you look at the motion that will be voted on today, you will see that there are some ideas given as to what our ministry or witness might look like.  These ideas include a shared ministry position between All Saints and Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, enhancement of programs in our Regional Ministry (children’s ministry, food ministry, etc), as well as much needed work on our historic building and rectory.  After all, buildings are witness in themselves if they are well used and busy, they say “God’s Kingdom is lived out here, come and see!”  All these ideas will be carefully considered by our parish leadership in the years to come.

Here is the text of the motion below.  You will notice that the proceedings of the sale will be divided 50/50% between All Saints and the Diocese.  We had asked for a 60/40 split but Synod Council was within its rights to make this decision as per Diocesan policy.  Assuming that the property sells for what we believe it is worth, a 50/50% still gives us somewhere north of two million dollars, which is a very nice position for any parish to be in.

Resolution of the Vestry of All Saints Collingwood Regarding the Disposition/Sale of Property

Whereas the Corporation of All Saints Collingwood has proposed the Severance and Sale of thirteen acres of surplus cemetery property as legally described below;

Whereas, during the Vestry meeting held on Sunday, April 27, 2025, the proposal was duly presented, reviewed, and discussed.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Vestry of All Saints, Collingwood, authorizes the Corporation to:

1. Seek all necessary diocesan approvals in accordance with Canon 6, with respect to the sale of property; and further,
2. Retain the services of a licensed realtor to list, market, and sell the property, legally described as PT W1/2 LT 41 CON 7 NOTTAWASAGA AS IN CG3285 & CG10012 EXCEPT PT 1 PL 51R19115 & PT 1 PL 51R32520; COLLINGWOOD, PIN 582990068, located on the northeast portion of the existing cemetery property along Ron Emo Road at a sale price not less than five million dollars; and further,
3. Request that, in consideration of the diocesan Capital Re-Deployment Policy, the Incorporated Synod of the Diocese of Toronto grant permission for the parish to retain 50% of the sale proceeds; and further,
4. Allocate the parish's portion of the sale proceeds as follows:

1. A.Repayment of money leant by the parish to the cemetery board for construction of the new columbarium, purchase of software for cemetery management, and other improvements to the cemetery as agreed on in advance by both the Cemetery Board and the All Saints Corporation;
2. B.Regional Ministry priorities including a shared clergy position between All Saints Collingwood and Prince of Peace Wasaga Beach, as well as improvement of services and programs at our regional churches, as discussed by the Regional Advisory Group and approved in advance by the All Saints Corporation;
3. C.Repairs to the physical plant of All Saints Collingwood including replacement of antiquated heating plant and radiators, parking lot repairs, accessibility improvements, and renovations to the historic rectory including window frames and casings, as required and over a time frame to be determined in advance by the All Saints Corporation; and
4. D.Investment of remaining proceeds in the All Saints Foundation to provide for the long term sustainability of All Saints and of the Regional Ministry of South Georgian Bay.

So assuming that we approve this motion today, we will have accomplished everything that needs to be done on the church side.  It will also allow us to unlock a $75,000 line of credit from the Diocese which will allow us to do the things we need to do on the Town side.  All of the items below that do not yet have a checkmark need to be achieved before we can put up a FOR SALE sign, and each of these items costs money.  We are grateful to Mr John Kirby for all the work he has done to date in getting us to this point.

Our hope is that we can complete all the steps required of us by the Town of Collingwood and list the property for sale by this summer or early fall.

Thank you for reading and hopefully for supporting today’s vestry motion.  We shall keep the parish well advised as we move forward in this process, and may the result allow us to continue our witness here for many decades to come.

From the Land of the Dead to the Land of the Living: A Homily for Easter Sunday

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 20 April, 2025

Readings for Easter Sunday:  Acts 10:34-43 OR Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 OR Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18 OR Luke 24:1-12

”Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen”

We don’t know what it was like, those first steps out of the tomb. Perhaps the garden outside the tomb was just being painted with the first dawn light and just starting to come alive with birdsong.  To get out of the tomb, though, those first steps had to be taken on mangled, wounded feet mangled by the cruel iron of Roman nails.   Even so, he took those steps, and it was an easier journey than the one he had already made that night, travelling from the land of the dead, to the land of the living.

It’s been a hard journey to be sure.   I suppose it began, really, up there on the mountain after the Transfiguration, when Jesus had to drag his starry eyed friends back down and into the midst of human need.  And eventually that road took him to Jerusalem, and it looked for sure like it was leading only to the domain of death.  The journey took him to anguished prayers in the dark, to torches and swords, to thorns beatings and meetings with despots, and finally to agony and humiliation on the cross and the quiet tomb.  The journey seemed to end there, in the land of the dead.

If it seemed that the journey entered there, then perhaps we should have remembered the words of the psalmist, that we heard back near the start of Lent: “What if I had not believed that I should see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” (Ps 27.13).  The psalmist speaks to us, for Jesus was never traveling this hard road by himself.   No, he was always bringing us along, as many of us as wanted to journey with him, the guide who brings us to the land of the living.

If we’ve been traveling with Jesus through Lent, we have heard stories from the gospels of other travellers who went ahead of us.  You may recall the story of the prodigal son that we heard later on in Lent, how he came to his senses when he realized that he had squandered his gifts and was literally dying.  His steps out of the land of the dead must have been hobbled by hunger and shame, until he saw his father at the gate, faithfully keeping vigil so he could welcome his lost son to the land of the living.

You may also remember, on the last Sunday of Lent this year, hearing the story of how Jesus stopped at his friends’ house in Bethany.  They were having a party, remembering how Jesus had stood at a tomb and cried in a loud voice, “Lazarus come out!”   And now they are feasting, Lazarus very much alive, and the house is filling with fragrance as Mary washes her teacher’s feet in costly perfume.   That sweet small banished any memories of the stench of death that had lingered in the minds.  That fragrance was a promise that Jesus will bring his friends to the land of the living.

Easter is always an invitation to accompany Jesus on this road from darkness to life.  Perhaps your life has been one of disappointment, and the things you thought you wanted didn’t bring you joy.  Maybe you’ve been struggling with some addiction or burden.    If so, then you’ve probably been looking for the living among the dead.  Follow Jesus, and he’ll help you find better things in the land of the living.

Perhaps you’re convinced that there’s a better worldview than the one they’ve tried to sell you on:  shallow consumerism, the idle vanity of influencer culture, and the harshness of political extremism.   Maybe you’re standing on the edge of faith, wanting something ancient and permanent and trustworthy.  Last night our friend Josh was baptized because he chose faith so he could become a citizen of the land of the living. 

It may be that you’re life is full of grief, that a loved one’s absence is a hole at the centre of things.   Or you’re sick or old and weary, yet perhaps fearful of what lies beyond.    You’re on the border of the land of the living, and there’s a guide waiting to bring you across to the reunions that await.

You see, Jesus isn’t content to make the journey by himself.  If there’s one more of us that needs to come with him, Jesus will find them.   Sometimes we come willingly, sometime we have to be nudged a bit, and sometimes we have to be dragged out of death into life.   There’s an old tradition in medieval art called The Harrowing of Hell.  Many scenes show angels holding devils at bay, while Jesus reaches out his hand to pull the dead out of their graves.  No one is beyond his reach.

This Easter, Jesus’ hand is extended to you.   The hand is pierced and wounded, but its still strong.  Grasp it, and let Jesus pull you over the threshold, out of the grave, and into the land of the living.

Given For All: A Sermon For Maundy Thursday

Preached Thursday, April 17, 2025, at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Barrie, Ontario

Lections:  Exodus 12:1-14, Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 17:1-17, 31b-35

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Tonight we do something so unusual, so profound, so clear in its meaning, that I think the act of washing one another’s feet speaks clearly to our souls.   To kneel before someone, to touch and wash their feet, to accept the other’s offer of vulnerability and grace, and to hold that offer, like their feet, in the greatest trust and humility – these things speak clearly and eloquently to our Lord’s call to love one another that I think they scarce need a sermon to illuminate their meaning.  

Besides this service where we do this one extraordinary thing once a year, we also do the perfectly ordinary thing of coming forward to take the bread and wine.   Well, sort of.   The bread is really a weightless, tasteless disc that might be distantly related to wheat, and a tiny sip of wine for those who dare to drink from the chalice.  Nevertheless we recognize that this symbols stand for something greater, and see them as a glimpse of the love and forgiveness of the heavenly banquet.  So we do this every Sunday, and as we receive the bread and wine we hear the same words each Sunday, the same words that we just heard in our second lesson, “this is my body”, “this is my blood”, “do this in remembrance of me”.   

The familiarity of the eucharist that we are all used to is juxtaposed with the strangeness of something that we just do on this particular night.  Some of us are brave and allow ourselves to feel the shock of water and strange hands on our gnarled and unlovely feet, others awkwardly watch and all grateful that they don’t have to go forward.  This is all as it should be, for the Anglican saying certainly applies tonight, “All many, some should, none must”.    But I wonder tonight, as we transition from the foot washing to more familiar ground, what if we could  somehow also find communion weird, as that last supper must have seemed to Jesus’ friends as they heard him say “This is my body”, “This is my blood?”

This meal, what we call eucharist or communion, certainly was strange to the first Christians.   It was absolutely foreign to their thinking.  When Paul wrote his first letter to Corinth, he was writing to new believers who had started a church, but had almost no clue what they were doing or why.   They knew about communion or the Lord’s supper, but they observed it as if it was just a normal meal, conducted according to the usual social rules of the ancient world.   The haves ate with the haves and had quite a nice time.   The have nots stood at the fringes and watched.  

So Paul wrote angrily to them:

²⁰When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. ²¹For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.  ²²What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! (1 Cor 11: 20-22)

 Paul made it clear to the Corinthians that this was an event for all of them.   No one should be left out.  It was a meal for all, to be started only when the community had come together, so that all believers would be fed, regardless of their wealth and status (1 Cor 11:33).   These instructions on how to conduct this meal were not up for debate.   As Paul told this struggling church, “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” (1 Cor 11:23).  These instructions came from Jesus himself, and when he said “do this in memory of me”, he was speaking to all his followers.

 Paul understood that a community that waited until all were at the table was a community that cared for one another.   It was also a community that wanted its witness about Christ to have integrity and credibility.   No one was left out of this meal, slave, rich or poor, man and woman, observant Jew and gentile believers in Christ, all were welcome.  That was a huge message in the ancient world. 

 It’s a huge message in our world of inequality and injustice, where a handful of mega wealthy oligarchs control vast amounts of wealth and billions have inadequate access to shelter, food and water.   When we come forward to receive the bread and wine, rubbing shoulders with people from all walks of life and from different races and places, we come forward and are welcomed by our God who wants all to be fed.   I think we make a mistake to think that the bread and wine are just spiritual food, that communion is simply about the feeding of our souls.   Food is food.  In taking the bread and wine, we remember a savior whose place was with the poor in body and spirit, who called us to care for the least among us.

 “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you”.   Tonight, our act of communion may not be as dramatic as the ritual of footwashing but they point to the same thing.   Both actions remind us that just as God came to serve us, so are we expected to serve.  The life of this parish, particularly what we do around food, should be in the spirit of the eucharist.  If one of us brings some folded twenties to slip into the free will offering, and someone else brings an appetite sharpened by want and hunger, both should be welcome.  No one should be resented for being a free rider, because we are all free riders at the communion table.   Our social events, our programming, our mission and outreach, need to point the God who wants to feed us all out of his love and abundance.

I started by saying that the eucharist seems symbolic compared to the physical reality of footwashing.   I suppose we could do something to make communion more concrete.  We could tear off chunks of bread for one another, leaving the floor covered in crumbs, and drink the wine in big gulps so that it dribbles down our chins.    That would be fun, though it would be messy!   But better still, I think, to make our communion truly real and truly urgent by remembering the amazingly generous spirit of the words that we hear each time we take the bread and wine.    

This is the bread.  This is the wine.  This is the love.  This is the abundance.  Given for us.   Given for all of us.   Paul  wrote, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.”  May we, who have received so much grace and abundance from the Lord, hand them on to others.  May we wo do these things in remembrance of him, remember also those who are physically and spiritually hungry.   Amen.