Lent Madness 2025: Emily Cooper vs Bishop Dunstan

 In our first match of this year's Lent Madness, the stubborn and faithful theologian Athanasius defeated the 19th century English Anglican priest, Father Benson.   While the defeat may sting, Fr. Benson's achievement in founding the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, an order of Anglican brothers, remains.  If you ever get a chance to visit the SSJE house in Boston for a retreat, it is well worth your effort.

Today's matchup takes us to early medieval England to meet Dunstan, a reluctant monk who went on to be the wise counsellor of kings and who once, it is said, pulled the devil by the nose (served him right!).

Dunstan has a formidable opponent, Emily Cooper, a widow who at forty dedicated her remaining years to saving and raising poor children and orphans in her native Kentucky.   Mother Emily evidently took our Lord's words seriously, "let the little children come to me".

Vote here.

Lent Madness 2025: Athanasius vs Benson

 First matchup of Lent Madness 2025:  Athanasius the Fearless Theologian vs Father Benson the Modern Monastic.  Vote here.

Fix Our Hearts: A Homily for Ash Wednesday

 Preached on Ash Wednesday at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 5 March, 2025.

Readings:  Joel 2:1-2, 12-17, Psalm 103:8-18; 2 Corinthians 5:20B-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

“Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near - a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!” (Jl 2:1-2).

Several weeks ago, one of Elon Musk’s Space X rockets exploded during a test flight over the Caribbean.   However, Musk’s company did not call it an explosion, or a failure, but rather, it was a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.  Or, as WB Yeats would have put it more poetically, “things come apart, the centre cannot hold”.  Things coming apart seems an apt description of the strange time that we are currently living through, in a way that makes our readings today especially pointed and relevant.

Ash Wednesday is about things going apart in catastrophic ways that only God can fix them.  The prophet Joel warns of a coming disaster that threatens the very nation.  Jesus warns us that our wealth and security can disappear.  And the ashes, a sign of mortality as well as repentance, warn us that our health and our very bodies will one day fail us.   Things come apart.

There are times when Ash Wednesday can seem like a quaint ritual, the flip side of Pancake Tuesday.  When things are going swimmingly, the familiar scripture readings don’t really touch us.  We laugh at one another’s smudged foreheads, we might even leave the church hoping that someone will see our ashes and ask us about them.   At other times, though, when things don’t look so rosy, Ash Wednesday seems to strike a nerve.   Today Ash Wednesday feels very real.

I don’t need to spend much time detailing the crazy times we live in.   Certainties are being swept away daily.   Dictators are now friends.    Friends are now dictators.   Neighbours and allies are scorned and threatened.   Cruelty and corruption, ignorance and racism now seem to be the official values of the most powerful country in the world.  Recently, Elon Musk said that “empathy was the fundamental weakness of western civilization”.

In these times when we feel vulnerable, threatened, and just dazed, we need to remind ourselves that we stand on solid ground, and that saints and angels stand with us.   Empathy is at the centre of all that we believe as Christians and is at the centre of what we inherited fro Judaism.   Earlier we heard the prophet Joel saying “rend your hearts and not your clothing”, meaning that true repentance is not ritual but a change of life.  Or, as the late film director David Lynch once said, “Fix your hearts or die”.

The Old Testament readings chosen for Ash Wednesday, Joel or an alternate selection from Isaiah, call on cruel and corrupt societies to find their way back to God by embracing justice, kindness, and equity.   Likewise for St Paul in our second lesson, the path to God is “patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech”.  And in our gospel reading, Jesus reminds us that when we give alms and do acts of kindness, we are giving from the true wealth of the human heart.

Today the ashes on our heads can be seen as a as something more than a sign of our mortality.  They can also be seen as a sign of our commitment to God’s kingdom of justice and empathy.   Amid the darkness and gloom, we can wear the ashes as an act of lamentation and sorrow for what we see going on around us.  Like the people in Joel, we can wear the ashes as a call for God to reappear, to come and be the God of justice and peace that we long for, to forgive our many collective sins and to drive away the darkness and gloom.  

Today, on Ash Wednesday, we call on God to fix our hearts.

Background On This Year’s Vestry Social Justice Motion and Supervised Consumption of Drugs in Ontario

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, for the parish vestry meeting, The Last Sunday of Epiphany, 2 March, 2025.

Every year, as part of the vestry meeting process, our Diocesan Social Justice Committee asks parishes to vote on a motion concerning some social cause or issue that is in the news.  Each year the Social Justice Committee gives these motions careful thought and research.   

The 2025 Social Justice Motion gives all churches in our Diocese the chance to call on our provincial government to reverse its opposition to and closer of Supervised Consumption Sites across the province.    When our vestry meets tomorrow, on March 2nd, the motion we will consider reads as follows:

We, the parish of All Saints, Collingwood, in the Diocese of Toronto, urge the Province of Ontario to reverse the planned closure of safe consumption sites in Ontario, and to lift the ban on the creation of new sites, in order to expand life-saving harm reduction services to Ontarians.

A fact sheet on the motion, and a video explaining it,  can be found here.

Before I talk about the motion, let me offer a short explanation of what I think we as church mean when we talk about Social Justice.  Social Justice should not be confused with supporting any one political party.   Social justice is about how we live the values of the Kingdom of God in our daily lives.  It’s about how our social values uphold the value of each life made in the image of God and loved by Jesus.

Our province does not value lives as it should.  Between November 2024 and January 2025, an average of seven people a day died in Ontario from drug overdoses.  Each of those people mattered: they were someone’s child, brother, sister, partner, parent.  So for me, the basic question boils down to this:  we as Christians and as Ontarians are not okay with people dying if their deaths are preventable.  If we don’t want them dying of hunger and exposure on the street or in homeless encampments, then we don’t want them dying of overdoses. 

The premise of the Supervised Consumption Site program has always been to offer spaces that provide a wide spectrum of health and medical attention.  For some users, they function as community clinics, offering a path away from addiction and back to wellness.  They bring drug users and care professionals together and offer hope for healing, and they make neighbourhoods safer.  

Here are some comments that the Social Justice Committee has gathered:

Rebecca is another parent whose child attends school near a supervised consumption site, the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site. She says, “As a parent, I value safe consumption sites.  Amidst the opioid crisis that has claimed thousands of lives in Ontario, safe consumption sites are saving lives, and making our communities safer. I am sympathetic to people who are concerned for their safety; however, as research points out, overdose prevention centres do not increase local crime, but instead help reduce drug use in public spaces and reduce the disposal of syringes in public spaces, such as parks and school yards.” 

Zach, who lives in a homeless encampment in Toronto, goes to a nearby SCS for harm reduction supplies. He says, “I don’t use these as much myself, but other people come here [to my tent] and get this stuff. I often go three times a day to refresh the supplies.” He adds that people who are

addicted “gotta do it somewhere. It’s better people know what you’re doing and how you are doing it, so you don’t do it in the bathroom. That’s how people die.”

We might decide that Safe Consumption Sites are a Toronto problem, but we’d be wrong.  Health advocates in Barrie and Orillia have been trying in vain to establish sites in their communities, and we know that drug use happens in small communities, where there are even fewer places to turn for help.   I hope that you will look at the materials that our Diocese has made available on this subject and that you will decide to support this year’s motion.

The clergy team hopes that when all four parishes in our region have voted to support the motion, we can write a joint letter to Brian Saunderson, our newly re-elected MLA for Grey Simcoe, calling on him to consider the concerns that we have raised as Christians and as citizens.  Better yet if we could present the letter in person and have a discussion.  Please support the motion so we can do that.

Blessings,

Fr. Michael

https://odprn.ca/occ-opioid-and-suspect-drug-related-death-data/