Here is a link to my review of the subject book, which appeared on The Strategy Bridge (TSB) this week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, TSB is an excellent online journal for anyone interested in military history, contemporary military issues from doctrine to ethics, and foreign policy.
https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/5/28/reviewing-the-invisible-injured
Disclaimer: while I am an associate editor for TSB, I had nothing to do with the selection of this piece.
MP
Late putting this up, but I preached this just after the funeral of a beloved and longtime servant leader of the parish, and was reflecting on how Pentecost gives us resources for spiritual resilience as Christians and as church. MP+
Preached at St. Margaret of Scotland Anglican Church, Barrie, Diocese of Toronto, Pentecost Sunday, 20 May, 2018
Lections: Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:24-34,35b; Romans 8:22-27, John 15:26-27, 16:4b-25
"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. John 15:26-27
In John Donne’s famous poem, “No Man Is An Island”, he writes that “any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” Funerals can make us feel this way. St. Margaret’s will feel like a diminished place for a while. As Father Simon said on Friday at Ron Steffler’s funeral, there are many many ways in which we will miss Ron’s love, Ron’s service, and Ron’s gifts. He won’t be sitting back there at Mission Control as he did on many Sundays, running the audio-visual display. We’ll miss his care for the building, his attention to the website, and all of the many acts of help and assistance that Ron gave to so many of us - and so many of us can talk about something that Ron did for us. The place will seem poorer without him. As someone said on Friday, we’ve had enough funerals a St. Margaret’s for a while. We’ve said goodbye to Ron, and Kay, and Randy, and others in the last six months. Enough grief. Enough sad memories. Fortunately for us, it’s Pentecost.
Our gospel reading today speaks to those of us with sorrow in our hearts. It reaches out to us who may still be struggling with the grief and the memories that a funeral can trigger. Jesus in John’s gospel is bidding farewell to his disciples, who will be left behind, but he promises them that he will not leave them. He will send another, who he calls “the Holy Spirit, the Advocate”. The Spirit will be God’s ongoing presence with his people. The Spirit will be be a comforter, but it will be more than that. The Spirit will enable God’s people to be a community with a very specific character and purpose. Pentecost is about how God creates a community that has the faith, strength, and hope, to rise above adversity and to go on, even after the funeral of a beloved member.
So this Sunday, Pentecost, is about how we are here because God is all about community. The story of the appearance of the Holy Spirit is a story of God creating a community with a certain shape and character - let’s call it a Pentecost community. What are the hallmarks of a Pentecost community?
First, it’s a diverse community. It’s gathered up out of all sorts of people, different languages and backgrounds, different walks of life. The Pentecost community is not Wonder bread. It has the same diversity that we see at St. Margaret’s, very different people indeed, who are all here because God wants us to be here.
Second, the Pentecost community is a called community. It began in a core group of disciples, who were all called by Christ, but different people are constantly being added to the story, like the crowds attracted to the disciples in Acts. Think of how the community of St. Margaret’s and St. Giles is constantly growing and changing. Some of you remember the heroic days in the storefront and portable, but to many of us, who came later, those are inspiring stories. Whatever stage in the story we arrived at, we were called to be here.
Third, the Pentecost community is a gifted community. The Spirit was incredibly generous to the disciples, equipping them with gifts of languages so they could be heard by people from all over the known world. We too have gifts and talents, and we know something about God’s abundance. As we prepared for Ron’s funeral, I heard people talk about how they never saw food run out at a church function. That doesn’t surprise me, since our Saviour knew how to make a little bread and fish go a long way. But think how people of this parish also turned out to help feed and welcome the people who came to see the Deanery Play Saturday a week ago. Think too of all the gifts that came together in that play, and of how much money it raised for the Busby Centre, $6 thousand dollars. The same day Sarah Ash ran a golf tournament for her late father, Randy Packham, and raised over $7 thousand dollars for cancer research. The Spirit’s abundance works with our gifts in so many ways in our community, if we care to look for it.
Fourth, the Pentecost community is a community with a story to tell about God. In Acts the people in the crowd say that “we hear [the disciples] speaking about God's deeds of power”. This gift of tongues and gift of communication is in keeping with what Jesus ways of the Spirit in John: “he will testify on my behalf. 27 You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning” (Jn 15:26-27). A Pentecost community tells people about God and about our hope in God. I think of Ron’ Steffler’s work maintaining the parish website and fixing the church and helping with the audiovisual so that people could come and hear God’s word spoken and preached, and I think he got this. His ministry had a lot to do telling God’s story.
Finally, the Pentecost community is a hopeful community. Peter says to the crowds in Jerusalem that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”. We are hear because our Saviour rose from the dead. The resurrection tells us that death will not have the last word. We may be well schooled in death looks like. We may be uncomfortably aware of what cancer can do to the human body. We may see some among us seen to diminish and become frail, but we are undaunted. We are a resurrection people. We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God. We believe that God is not finished with us, that his work of creating the world is not yet done.
What that new world will look like, we are not sure, but we know that it will be a world without sin and death or cancer or any of the other things that we struggle with. We know this because the resurrection of Christ is a sign of God’s determination to rid us of these things. We may not know clearly how this will happen, but Paul says in Romans 8, in one of the most wonderful passages in scripture, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:22-23).
So we are a Pentecost people. Our community is the church, which has carried on across the centuries, forming and reforming, speaking to us in our time. Our funeral liturgy speaks of how we go the grave singing our Alleluias, because we know that death does not write our ending, but is only the beginning. We baptize the newborn in the promise that they will have their gifts, their part to play in God’s life of abundance. And what abundance it is. This weekend I met Miriam, who was then celebrating her second day on earth. She really has no business being her. Her mother had a partial hysterectomy several years ago and was told she would never have children. And here Miriam is, a sign of God’s abundance and of the Spirit’s work in the redemption of our bodies. And so we say, as a Pentecost community, as we do each Sunday, Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the church and in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Preached At St. Margaret of Scotland Anglican Church, Diocese of Toronto, Barrie, ON, on Sunday, 22 April, 2018, the Fourth Sunday of Easter
Lections: Acts 4: 5-12; Psalm 23, 1 John 3: 16-24; John 10: 11-18
Much of this sermon relies on insights from Joel LeMon’s commentary found on here on the Working Preacher website. MP+
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.
(Psalm 23)
Psalm 23 is like comfort food for the anxious soul. Each of its lines exudes peacefulness and reassurance. It’s certainly the one psalm that most of us could recite by heart, and get mostly right. I’ve been in hospital rooms at the end of life, and I’ve heard family members join in as I read this Psalm, as if they were clinging to the promise of its words. Friends of mine who have served as chaplains in Afghanistan have told me about reading this psalm to troops before they went out on patrol. No doubt, Psalm 23 is one of the pieces of scripture that we turn to in our most anxious moments when we find ourselves in that “darkest valley”.
The images of the first few lines set a tone of peace and tranquility. The words “makes me lie down” and “still waters” suggest a kind of spiritual oasis, the rest we long for when we are spiritually exhausted and bone-tired. Small wonder then that we turn to this Psalm at our darkest moments, when we are confronted with our mortality. Like Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross beside him, “In my father’s house are many rooms, I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).
It is lovely and reassuring to think of Psalm 23 as an image of the afterlife, as an assurance that we and are loved ones are safe in God’s keeping after death. But what does this beloved Psalm say to us in the here and now? Today I want to reflect on what how it can speak to us and support us as we live out our lives?
This week I came across a really helpful insight by a biblical scholar who pointed out that Psalm 23 is actually about a journey. Joel LeMon notes that “This psalmist is on the go, walking beside the water, along paths, and through valleys (vv. 2-4)”. It’s true that the Psalm begins with an image of rest by “still waters”, but that moment is like a short rest on a long hike. It’s as if God says, “Get up, we’ve got a long ways to go” and then we’re off again.
It’s quite a hike. We go past “still waters”, and the phrase “right paths” suggests trustworthy routes through a difficult landscape. The use of the word “leads” suggests a knowledgeable guide to keep us safe. I think of my own experience with a crusty old army Major who took a small group of us to the Rockies to climb three mountains in three days. “It won’t be a walk in the park, Padre”, he warned me when I asked to join. But he was an expert in mountain warfare, and for three days we followed in his footsteps, always trusting that he would get us up and down in one piece. I think of the guide in this Psalm as someone like that, skilled and trustworthy.
We need such a guide desperately, because the road we will take is a dangerous one. The verse “Even though I walk through the darkest valley” doesn’t necessarily suggest death, but it does suggest a bleak place, some moment of despair or depression where we feel might be tempted to feel that we are lost or abandoned. The Psalm promises us that however dark our road, however difficult, we are not abandoned. God will be with us.
God will be with us, or, if we go astray, God will seek us out. One of the things I learned about Psalm 23 this week is that the verb “follow” in the verse “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” is actually a translation of a Hebrew verb that can also mean “pursue”. Elsewhere in the Psalms, this verb is used to describe pursuit by enemies. Also, the word “surely” is a translation of a Hebrew word that can also mean “only”. Again, to quote Joel LeMon, another way to translate this verse would be “only goodness and mercy will be chasing me down.”
Sometimes we use language of pursuit or chase to describe moments of adversity. For example, we can speak of being hounded by creditors, or of having our steps dogged by misfortune, or of having enemies at our heels. Psalm 23 invites us into a life where the only thing that is pursuing is is the immense and inexhaustible love of God. Psalm 23 invites us into a life where nothing has the power to catch us or ensnare us, because of God’s fierce determination to protect us and accompany us through our darkest moments.
Psalm 23 reminds us that there is no way we could mess up, and nowhere we could stray to, where God’s grace would not seek us out and try to bring us home. It is the same vision of God’s love that we see in today’s Gospel reading, of the passionate and resolute shepherd who will seek all the sheep, even the lost ones, and who will die for them all. It is a vision of a broad, inclusive, and persistent love that will risk all and do all for us at each and every stage of our lives.
I say every stage of our lives because there is one more point I would like to make about the language of the Psalm. Our bible translation says “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long” which has a sense of permanence, perhaps suggesting the vision of heaven or the afterlife that comforts us at moments of crisis or imminent death. Again, Joel LeMon points out that the Hebrew word for “dwell”, shuv, can mean “to turn” or “return.” He notes that another translation of this line might be “I will continually return to Yahweh’s presence, my whole life long.”
In other words, our lives are only a long journey in which God is seeking, even being chased by God’s love, but in which we are also checking in with God, staying in God’s presence, long enough to be refreshed and recharged, before going back onto the road. Think of it as the sheep coming into the sheepfold for the night, or think of it as us, gathering in this church, pilgrims and sojourners stopping for rest and refreshment, before we continue on our way.
MP+
