The Memorial of Peace

Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, Remembrance Sunday (November 8, 2009).

Readings:  Wisdom of Solomon 3: 1-9; Psalm 116: 1-8; 1 Peter 1: 3-9; John 6: 37-40.

A common ritual for me growing up in Victoria was to accompany my father downtown for the Remembrance Day service at the cenotaph.  I should say that it was common once I was old enough to be on my own, since dad would leave me to join the other veterans and march behind the active service personnel to the memorial on the corner of the grounds of the Parliament Buildings.

I was always inordinately proud of my dad on these occasions, dressed in his crisp Legion uniform, his medals newly polished, and – more often than not – white-gloved and carrying one of the flags in the colour party.  In those days, the contingent included veterans from the First World War as well.  I think everyone’s hearts swelled with pride and gratitude as we saw these men and women marching ranked behind one another – those of my father’s generation followed by those of my grandfather’s generation.  And I sometimes realized, that, had they lived, indeed my grandfathers, great-uncles, and my uncle would have been there, too.

Of course, people choose to go to war – or submit to be sent to war – for a number of complicated and conflicting reasons.  Let’s not forget that these are almost entirely young people, many barely out of high school.  For sure, some are called by a profound sense of idealism to defend deeply held principles.  For others, war is an adventure – a chance to perhaps escape a humdrum life in a small town.  And still for others, signing up is simply what one is expected to do by the often unconscious forces of societal and peer pressure.  When I was 18, about the same age as my dad when he signed up for the Air Force, I vividly recall asking him why he went to war.  He looked a little surprised by the question, and replied simply, “Because there was a war.”

Around my apartment are scattered, sepia-tinged photographs of men in uniform of three generations on both sides of my family – dating back to a great uncle who went with a Scottish regiment to fight an imperial war in South Africa at the turn of the last century.  Given that legacy, I suppose I’m not the only one of my generation who felt that I dodged a proverbial and perhaps literal bullet having not been called into battle myself.  The threat of a Third World War was somewhat distant by the 1980s, when I was of that age, and, in any event, my friends and I thought that if it ever came, we’d all be fried in a nuclear holocaust before we’d get anywhere near a recruiting office.

After the massacre of the Second World War, it was evident to many people that another global conflict could risk a catastrophic collapse of civilization, in light of this new and horrifying spectre of nuclear annihilation.  After sixty-five years, the deaths of  up to 200,000 people by the detonation of just two bombs over Japan retains a fresh power to appal – and it is all too easy to survey the photographs and films taken of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the explosions and imagine Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal.  But, despite the ghastly number of fatalities inflicted by these two nuclear weapons, it is important to recall that over seventy million people died in the Second World War, almost four times as many as in the war to end all wars, just a scant generation earlier.

As we all know, warfare – what von Clausewitz euphemistically defined as “the continuation of political discourse, carried on with other means –  has not ended.  Indeed, it’s often all too easy to forget that we are at war right now, 132 Canadians having died in Afghanistan over the last eight years.  According to the United Nations, there are six active wars and as many as seventeen smaller conflicts currently underway, which have so far consumed as many as one million lives.  When we turn our attention to our own small country, 115,000 or so have perished in warfare since Confederation.

In services of remembrance at churches, it is not uncommon to focus on peace; and, indeed, we incorporate a peace theme here at St. Hilda’s today, as well.  But we need first to take note of the dead, for peace is really their memorial – and it is still uncompleted.  It is significant, as it is poignant, that the readings appointed for Remembrance Sunday are for the commemoration of the dead.  The readings speak to them, and they speak to us about them, those who “run like sparks in the stubble,” as the Book of Wisdom says, those who have received “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,” according to the First Epistle of Peter.  And from the lips of Jesus, the promise to these faithful dead that they will “have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”

Christians have reflected on the justness of war since Augustine first explicitly addressed the subject in the fourth century.  Christianity’s past complicity with secular powers, and perpetration of violence in conquests, crusades, and that oxymoronic condition known as “religious warfare,” has often made a mockery of Jesus’ promise that “in me, you may have peace,” and “peace, I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”  Given this, we ask, is pacifism the answer?  War is a manifestation of evil, of sin – in other words, of the darker recesses of human nature, a nature is not always pacific.  War exists.  It happens.  And we have to respond to it – sometimes theologically, and sometimes actively.

When we consider the dead, some of whom may have been our loved ones, it is sobering to reflect that one of the most important lessons of war is the one so frequently the first to be forgotten.  That lesson is the imperative of peace.  Peace is essential to progress, it is essential to survival, it is the necessary precondition to the fulfilment of human potential and spiritual sustenance.  Peace is a product of righteousness just as surely as war is the product of sin.  To ask whether Christians should be pacifist sidesteps the real issue.  Afflicted with illness, quiescence is nothing less than submission to its power.  The medicine to cure war is peace; and pacifism is the state of a collective, peaceful consciousness.

St. Paul teaches that one of the primary attributes of a Christian is to be a minister of reconciliation.  By professing this, he acknowledges that there exists a rupture to be reconciled.  Forces are always at work to create oppression, to plant division, and so to reap inequality, injustice, and conflict.  It is our Christian calling, and our Christian duty, to water the tree of life through completing that memorial of peace whose foundation is those countless graves.  Educating the young leads to their participation in society; participation leads to action; action leads to justice; and justice leads to peace.  These are the means to combat war, and defeat sin, which is really the most significant conflict people of faith can wage.  The only casualty of such a conflict is the darkness of evil that permeates human history, obscuring the light of God’s kingdom which we alone have the power to shine.  Let us leave here today committed to shine that light, and build the memorial worthy of our fallen:  the memorial of peace.  Amen.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009

 

Continuity, Connectedness, Veneration

Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, Feast of All Saints (Nov.1, 2009).

Readings:  Isaiah 25: 6-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21: 1-6a; John 11: 32-44.

I was not charmed by my work during the spring and summer of 1993.  I had a number of difficult cases I was dealing with as a social worker with the Ministry of Family and Child Services, as it is now euphemistically known.  My personal life wasn’t going so well either.  I was bored and lonely in my little cedar shake cabin, located on three acres of broom and bramble north of Sooke on Vancouver Island.  Most of my friends had long since left the Greater Victoria area for other pastures, and my job was a daily drain on my energy and contentment.  My only real pleasures were my garden – a plantation for the deer, as I ruefully considered it – and hiking in the hills, often with the Book of Common Prayer tucked into my back pocket.

One of the few cozy, comfortable nooks of my life during those months was – and it’s a good thing you’re all sitting down for this – Saint Augustine (commemorated August 28^th).  I’d get home from work, crack a beer (in those days, I brewed my own beer, and consuming it was a constant chore), and curl up in a hammock strung between two pine trees to read his memoirs.  They are called – appropriately enough – Confessions.  For all that people in the church today deride Augustinian theology – even if they haven’t read any of it – there is little doubt that the scholar reluctantly made Bishop of Hippo was a deeply spiritual man.  He had undergone a very profound journey from Gnosticism to Christianity, guided by his mentor, St. Ambrose (commemorated December 7^th), and he detailed that evolution in his autobiography.

My encounter with Augustine changed my life.  I may not have made my own journey to ordained ministry had I not come across this book, along with John Dominic Crossan’s The Historical Jesus.  I mention this because it provides an example of how the saints – those people honoured and revered for their exceptional holiness – can work miracles in our lives.  And by saints, I don’t just mean the 157 individuals named in our yearly calendar, including our own Hilda of Whitby (commemorated November 18^th), I mean also your saints, and mine.  Beloved parents, brothers and sisters, children, husband or wife, friends, colleagues, and comrades, teachers, pastors, and mentors – we all build shrines in our hearts to the holy people who have changed, and continue to change, our lives.

So given this, why have we chosen today – the Feast Day of All Saints – to incorporate stewardship of creation into our worship?  If we consider the principles that animate our communion with the saints, it is, I hope, clear.  For those principles – continuity, connectedness, and veneration – are the same ones that animate our communion with creation.  Our hands reach back in time to clasp other hands, which in turn reach back until they touch those twelve pairs of hands – those of the first disciples – who touch the hands imprinted with nails.  This lineage – this web – is the superstructure of the saints which binds us together as a people called “Christian.”  Continuity, connectedness, veneration.

The heritage that has been entrusted to us is not an institution nor a set of dogmas.  It’s more organic than that.  It’s a movement – a movement for hope, for peace, for joy, for life.  A movement, in other words, of the Spirit.  And as a movement with those characteristics and this heritage of antiquity, we should be acutely concerned about its place in the fabric and fibre of the planet.  The message of Jesus is not words, it is action, beginning with a strong defence of the creation which makes life possible.  The first act of God was to bring being into being – the stage where the divine drama could eternally unfold and eternally enfold its creatures.  And whether it was St. Jerome (September 30^th) fervently translating scripture into the Latin vernacular, called the Vulgate, so that it could be read and understood; or whether it was William Wilberforce (July 29^th) exerting every ounce of his energy to ensure that human would no longer enslave human; or whether it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (August 14^th) strangled with piano wire because of his opposition to Hitler’s fascist tyranny and race hatred; Christians have recognised that without creation, salvation and sanctification are meaningless concepts.

Our hands reach back in time in another sense as well – they grasp roots, paws, stones, talons, fins, soil, water; forming another sort of lineage, another sort of web, reaching back to our creaturely origins.  But this lineage and this web embeds us in the fabric and fibre of the planet as thoroughly as does the lineage of our human ancestors in the spirit; the saints.  In fact, and I hope this is not too heterodox a claim, the cloud of witnesses with whom we are surrounded include those rocks, earth, birds and beasts, water, trees and plants that truly make up this holy stage called creation.  This creation, sanctified by God’s original blessing of the Book of Genesis – “God saw it, and indeed it was very good” – abides indeed in the company of the saints.

Sanctification reminds us of the permanence of God’s original blessing in our lives, which seem so fleeting at times.  We are truly here in an instant and gone again, like a water drop vaporised in a hot frying pan.  But like the steam that thus rises, we don’t actually disappear, but are joined to that cloud of witnesses, to Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, Hilda, and all those ones known to us alone, to smile benignly on the stage of nature where the divine show continues to play into the wee hours of eternity.

I invite you to step outside today prepared to breathe in the good air, to feel – perhaps – the rain and cold slap against your skin.  See the trees, these beautiful trees, rise up around us, and poking through them beyond, the vast, continuous ocean, to where it meets the vaster, limitless sky.  Breathe in and out and feel your heart beat and your blood pulse.  Experience the continuity, the connectedness, and the veneration.  And then think of those saints, those holy men, women, and children, who are bringing you to a state of greater spiritual maturity…and intimacy.  Recall their wisdom, and whet your appetite for further knowledge…and deeper love.  And again, experience the continuity, the connectedness, and the veneration.  So begin your week, and so begin your ongoing journey home to the saints above, even as you now abide with the saints below.  Amen.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.

 

Blindness

Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, 21st Sunday After Pentecost (October 25, 2009).

Readings:  Job 42: 1-6; Psalm 34: 1-8; Hebrews 7: 23-28; Mark 10: 46-52.

Have you ever cured a person of blindness?  Well, it’s a great feeling, I can assure you!  Of course, a lot depends on what is meant by blindness.  While I can’t remove cataracts, I do preach, teach, and write in an effort to help others see.  Well, and to help myself see, as well, if I’m being honest.  Whether it is a case of the blind leading the blind I cannot say for sure, at least until I meet God face-to-face and get a status report.  But I try…and any frustration is more than compensated by the feeling a physician must get when she removes the bandages from a patient’s eyes, and previously unknown colours, shapes, and perspectives come into view.

Now, I know that the theme of spiritual blindness is a somewhat tired trope that preachers regularly trot out, but it is absolutely necessary to do so if we’re to rightly understand the message of the gospel.  Miracles abound in the stories of Jesus, and they’re so familiar we often can’t be bothered to take the time to ask why.  What do they mean?

In many cases, miracles represent a straightforward suspension of natural law in order to make a point about Jesus’ legitimacy as an emissary of God.  Think, for example, of him stilling the stormy Sea of Galilee, or raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead.  Those miracles simply scream what was heard on the mountaintop at the Transfiguration:  “This is my son, the beloved, listen to him!”  But, in this instance, the message is more oblique.  It is about society, and about our response to Jesus.  Now sure, to a certain extent, it is – like the other miracles I mentioned – a legitimacy thing.  Note that the blind man uses a very specific title to refer to Jesus:  “Son of David.”  In one sense, this foreshadows the immanency of Advent, in which the identity of Jesus as the consummation of the kingly lineage of David and Solomon is fulfilled.  But in another sense, the story is about us, and about the kind of world we need to be living in.

It’s hard to make the leap from hearing this as a story about an encounter between a suppliant and the messiah.  But it helps if we realise that the individualism of these narratives function as illustrations of a larger societal message.  This is a standard rhetorical device, easily observed when, for instance, a politician attempts to explain revenue policy by telling an anecdote about someone deducting taxes from his income.  Here, a metaphorically blind man wants to see the messiah, and his faith heals him.  The message that is being illustrated is summed up by a pithy saying of Jesus elsewhere in the gospels that “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

What don’t we see?  What are we wilfully blind to in our society?  Who will remove the film covering our eyes and show us the messiah?  What keeps us from perceiving God’s world in our world?  Well, I want us to consider just one source of blindness – one I alluded to in my sermon last week when I contrasted consumption with commitment.  This is a theme I hope to develop next week when our worship takes on an environmental focus in the context of honouring All Saints, as part of our “Communities Caring for Communities” stewardship campaign.

What does it mean to live as a spiritual person in a consumer society?  First of all, it means having to respond to a culture that is profoundly alienated from spiritual values.  When church folk like us talk about reasons why people are alienated from religion, they usually cite issues around doctrine, about whether we’re too liberal or too conservative, or whether insights from science have undermined the credibility of an Author of Creation.  But I think the real elephant in the room is that people already are worshipping a God – the God of consumption.  When you do that, you don’t have any room to experience the real God.  And you can’t believe what you don’t experience.

By and large in our society, material hunger is substituted for spiritual hunger, and yet the appetite is never satisfied.  We see it all around us.  Take, for instance, the news media.  What is news?  Well, if you were to drop down here from another planet, you might think that the main issues confronting human beings were such things as climate change, overpopulation, and radical inequalities between rich and poor.  So, you might rightly expect to see those as the top stories on the news, and top priorities for the governments of the world.  And do you?  The US government very quickly gave away a trillion dollars over the past twelve months, but it wasn’t to solve these crises.  It was to subsidise industry during a financial crisis.  How can we ever believe a western government again when they say that they don’t have enough money to bring clean water to dying Africans, or HIV medicine to sick people in southeast Asia?

Truly, there are none as blind as those who will not see.  And so, journalists ask hard questions about whether a family in Colorado perpetrated a publicity stunt; but when they even bother to ask public officials about environmental destruction, they accept insipid platitudes in return.  Why?  I remember as a child that advertisements were all about luxury – from the silky smooth taste of the lowliest addictive substance right up to the football-field of metal called the family car.  Now, it’s all about convenience, economy, and what we might be able to get away with environmentally.  How long until the ads will be for products that will help you survive in a ravaged world?  And will we still refrain from asking questions of our god Consumption?

Jesus is all about good news, and so I foreswear sermons that paint a dark future, or that take a cynical stance with regard to human beings.  But we need to have a clear vision about the future, and be clear-eyed about human nature…lest we become so blind that we cannot see.  Building the kingdom of God doesn’t begin anywhere but here.  And it doesn’t begin any time but now.  Jesus didn’t promise the blind man that he’d strike a panel to discuss his blindness, and, when he got the results at unspecified time, would develop a ten-year plan with an ophthalmologist to give him his sight.  Jesus healed him there and then.  As the living body of Christ, we owe our community nothing less.

I think about Job, who was clear-eyed enough to realise that his punishment was unjust, but still needed to polish his spectacles to see the awesome grandeur of God in creation and salvation…and, just as significantly, the ultimate proprietary right of the Creator over that creation.  As stewards of God’s creation, we are uniquely called to bring sight to the blind, to bind up the broken-hearted, to let the oppressed go free.  It is a calling that is as breathtaking in its simplicity as it is in its audacity.  Let’s have the audacity to be simple, to get on with living this amazing gospel of miracles, and to touch the blind and make them see that faith will make them well.  Amen.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009

 

Creating a Religious Culture

Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist (October 18, 2009).

Readings:  Sirach 38: 1-14; Psalm 147; 2 Timothy 4: 5-13; Luke 4: 14-21

The Gospel of Luke, and its companion piece, the Acts of the Apostles, are accounts of a revolutionary spiritual movement in action.  Consider the gospel we heard today – “The spirit of the Lord,” says Jesus, “has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…release to the captives…to let the oppressed go free.”  He is quoting from the Prophet Isaiah, and his audience merely nod their heads in agreement, and commend him on his delivery.  In this sense, they are akin to so many congregations deafened by familiarity with an oft-repeated holy text.  It is only when Jesus sits down, pauses dramatically, and declares, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” that all hell breaks loose.

Many of us familiar with this account know how it ends.  Jesus informs the hometown crowd that God was perfectly capable of showing mercy to the faithful of the foreign nations, while scorning faithless Israelites – reconfiguring for them who exactly is the wheat in God’s eyes, and who is the chaff, and why.  His former neighbours in Galilee respond to the perceived affront by attempting to hurl this upstart young rabbi off a cliff.

This is the tenor of Luke’s version of the good news from Mary’s famous proclamation of social reversal in the Magnificat – in which the lowly are raised and the hungry fed, while the powerful are toppled and the rich are sent away empty – to Paul’s proclamation before a crowd of hostile Jews that God’s love embraces the Gentiles, as well.  Yet, like the dulled attention of his Galilean audience, the church today has grown so accustomed to the radical nature of this message, that we often treat it as hollow rhetoric, despite our best intentions.  Sure, they are very noble sentiments, but what of it?

I don’t blame Christians for lethargy in this regard.  In draining the Lukan message of any hint that overturning the social order might actually be a spiritual imperative, we are merely imitating a culture in which consumption is valued over commitment.  This sense of a society untethered from commitment, a society of dilettantes in which self-obsession is a noble pursuit, was a recurring theme at the symposium I attended yesterday, and helped organize.  The symposium, called Spiritual But Not Religious: Challenges for the Church in a Post-Religious Culture, critically examined the place of faith in our region in the 21^st Century.  What I took from that day-long event was that we don’t live in a post-religious culture, so much as we live in a pre-religious one.  Allow me to explain.

Luke is a message of hope to us, living as we do in a part of the world where religion has never fully taken root, as it has elsewhere in North America.  Ours is a culture of individualism, where autonomy is frequently valued over community, and the principles of self-preservation and self-fulfillment are considered important values – even if they are rarely stated in such ethical terms.  One of our presenters yesterday, Dr. Patricia O’Connell Killen, recounted a comment made by the recently appointed pastor of the largest African American congregation in Seattle, who had moved to this region from Baltimore.  Concerning the attitudes she found here, she declared that, in Seattle, “most folks care more about their dogs then they do about their neighbours.”

Is she right?  I don’t know enough to comment about Seattle, but I think she’s right about this part of British Columbia.  We live in a society that, if you judge by actions rather than words, unquestionably values consumption and personal fulfillment over commitment and care for others.  This is, unfortunately, not only reflected in the spiritually narcissistic smorgasbord enjoyed by many outside of the church, but also by the complacency of so many inside it.  You cannot, along with the Galileans, admire the “gracious words” of Jesus’ paraphrase of Isaiah, if you are not prepared to respond to the sting of its application – good news for the poor, release for the captives, freedom for the oppressed.  At a time in our own parish when there has been much discussion of what we euphemistically call “outreach,” but is really just our commission as the baptised, we need to ask ourselves not if we are doing too much, but if we are doing enough.  We cannot confuse church with a sort of Medieval chantry chapel in which masses are perpetually said for the dead – in this case, for dead understandings, traditions, and practices of a culturally mandatory Christianity that has long since ceased to exist.

Another participant in yesterday’s symposium was Sharon Betcher, a Lutheran pastor and Associate Professor of Theology at the Vancouver School of Theology.  She said that one of the most profound messages of Jesus was that “giving yourself, even giving your life for others is a safe thing to do.”  It is a deafening counterblast to a prevailing cultural ethos which is all about minimizing personal loss, maximizing pleasure, and denying the sometimes difficult realities of life.  As a community of action in the Lukan mould, we must always be considering ways in which we can help our society move beyond this spiritually immature state:  to move from being a pre-religious culture to being a religious one.

We live in a part of the world that is much like the world Paul confronted at Athens, which Luke describes in the Acts of the Apostles.  We live, in other words, in a culture that builds statues to an unknown God.  But, like Athens, we also live in a culture that is a crossroads of many faith traditions.  In acts of social and environmental justice – whether it is helping to ensure food security for the hungry, or build houses for the homeless – there is room for us to live faithfully, to witness to others, and to discover room to think about how our wisdom tradition intersects with other wisdom traditions around us.  In this way, we can truly think outwardly rather than inwardly.

Our one nonreligious participant yesterday, Kolin Lymworth, is the founder and co-owner of Banyen Books, a clearinghouse of spiritual literature.  He suggested that one reason why people resist religion is the perception that it requires buying into dogmas and doctrines at the expense of acting with justice, kindness, and intentionality.  Our bishop, Michael Ingham, responded that attention to doctrine is the first step in scrutinizing it.  Without a set of shared beliefs, he claims, there is no impetus to self-examination as a community, so that the beliefs can be constantly judged, refined, and reinterpreted.  In this sense, doctrine doesn’t become the defining characteristic of a religion, rather, community does.

On a day in which we raise up the teaching of St. Luke, let us remember his message of commitment over consumption.  Consumptions assumes the character of individualism, but commitment proclaims community.  The commitment we are proclaiming during this season of stewardship is, simply, communities caring for communities – in pastoral care, in outreach, in evangelism, education, and worship.  In all these ministries, may we never lose sight of the one prevailing endeavour.  That is to live out the commitment of Jesus that “today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Amen.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.

 

Preach It, Brother!

I’ve been both delighted and humbled by the positive feedback I have so often received for my preaching. On the one hand, I take such praise with a few grains of salt – offering it to the preacher waiting at the door to shake your hand is sometimes a matter of graciousness more than veracity. On the other hand, I am myself conscious of a gradual improvement in my sermons; and the fact that a few students and colleagues have asked me to share my ideas on developing and delivering them seems to support this self-assessment.

I have always felt that, like any craft, homiletics is both an art and a science. A lot of people can be taught to sculpt, or even cook – but to do these things well requires what, for lack of a more precise word, we call “talent.” I don’t think talent is some sort of innate magic that you either have or you don’t. Rather, one’s fascination with a process or activity fuels a desire to learn to do it as well as possible. This requires focussed attention on the production of the craft by others, as well as on one’s own process. Hence, just as an artist may view the world in terms of colouration, aesthetics, and composition – so a homilist often views the world semantically, allegorically, analogically, or morally; in other words, rhetorically – for rhetoric is the nature of homiletic discourse.

I was an indifferent student of homiletics at seminary.  For me, preaching was a matter of “common sense.” As a naïf in the wilderness of pastoral theology, I was much like the novice actor who thinks that if she simply gets an agent, then her natural charisma and talent will win over the producers at her first audition. There is little to compare with the crestfallen indignation and wounded pride of someone who thinks they’re “all that,” only to be informed by a teacher that, sadly, they’re not. I had to learn that. But one thing I already knew going into my first homiletics class was that I didn’t need to be remade into the mould of my instructor who – decent enough preacher that he was – had a style that would have been artificial had I adopted it. Nothing stirs up the cauldron of disgust in the thoughtful listener quite so much as the spectacle of a self-consciously synthetic orator.

In my opinion, there are three essential elements of any sermon: interpretation, rhetoric, and literary character. I’d like to discuss each of these elements at some length.

Interpretation
Regardless of Christian denomination, a sermon almost invariably follows the reading of scripture as an exposition or explanation of what the audience has just heard. Hence, if the notion of a “literal interpretation” made any sense, a sermon would be unnecessary. Even limiting the role of a homily to that of pursuing the application of a scriptural passage to the lives of the listeners requires the interpretation of the passage’s original meaning, and then translating that into the meaning of contemporary events.

“Literal interpretation” is little better than an oxymoron, since it rests on the untenable proposition that words are objects-in-themselves, rather than symbols pointing to ideas, archetypes, or simple grammatical functions. String words together in sentences, paragraphs, and books, and the level of interpretative complexity becomes densely multivariate. Scripture is freighted with additional complexity, of course, relating to the lengthy history and diverse sources of its authorship and development (through editing), the difficulty associated in identifying authorial intent and the way in which original audiences would have received the material, the relationship of disparate books to one another – not to mention the relationship of a Hebrew canon (the Old Testament) to a Christian canon (the New), the deformation of meaning inherent in translation from one language into another, and the history of interpretation and doctrinal development, beginning with the choices made in the third and fourth centuries determining the texts that would be included in the Bible.

Of course, this is all Bible 101 stuff, but it is surprising just how quickly preachers seem to forget the importance of these basic parameters when they launch into a sermon. Thus, to take a familiar example, a Christmas homily will frame the dubious birth narratives as historical fact – which I guess is what passes for a “literal interpretation” – without so much as a passing reference to the theological claims associated with the incarnation which these highly suspect narratives serve to illustrate. I would counsel any preacher to forego preparing their sermon on Luke 2:1-20 without first undertaking a close reading of John 1:1-14. There’s a reason why the latter was prescribed as the primary reading in the Book of Common Prayer, and the former was supplementary – our forebears were more self-consciously theological than we are comfortable being today.

I am not arguing in favour of a sort of dry, pedagogical lecture in place of a sermon. What I am arguing is that the preacher owes his congregation the benefit of his learning – that’s one of the reasons why they pay you the big bucks. We must resist discarding as superfluous the exegetical, hermeneutical, and linguistic tools we learned as seminarians. Scripture is not rightly expounded when fables are confused with fact, false connections are made (e.g., between the prophecies of Isaiah and the coming of Christ), or translational difficulties are elided (a virgin will conceive? Is that what Isaiah says?). One does not need to belabour exegetical points, but the most basic form of interpretation is the interpretation of the meaning of a scriptural passage as a piece of writing. You can’t talk about understanding a passage, much less applying it, unless you first deal with its actual content.

This reminds us that there are strata of interpretation, and that a fault-line in the foundation has the potential to undermine the entire structure of the argument a preacher wishes to advance. In other words, if the presuppositions are wrong or suspect, then the entire thread is tainted and compromised. What can the enlightened listener expect to believe if the preacher can’t even grasp basic literary criticism?

Understanding the text rightly, through critical methodology, permits the preacher to begin exploring the murky waters of what we usually call “sermon ideas.” Sermon ideas are, essentially, the message we want to convey. What do we want listeners to take away from what they have heard? By this, I don’t mean answering questions, so much as ideas that will raise questions. As a pedagogical matter, preachers need to be acutely interested in how people learn. And as much as we may be inclined to forget it, the rhetorical arrows in our quiver are only fired as far as the bow of our content will allow.

In practical terms, this means searching for the hidden nugget – the surprising or provocative element of a familiar story, often developed through reference to a personal analogy or topical situation. Interpretation begins with being perplexed by something. Ideally, a congregation should be provoked into perplexity, recognizing that “provoke” and “provocative” have the same Latin root: pro vocare, to “call out,” or to “call forth.” In this sense, what is being called forth is consideration of the questions being raised, and potential answers. Or, in some cases, not even potential answers, but a way of thinking about the questions in such a way that answers are even considered possible. The best of all possible sermons, from a purely pedagogical point of view, are those in which the listener is aware of questions she didn’t even know existed.

Awareness is the necessary condition for enlightenment in any realm of human understanding. Without the cultivation of awareness as the underlying strategy of a sermon, any rhetorical or literary device the homilist wishes to deploy may be rich in form, but vacant of content.

Rhetoric
When I began preparing sermons, I had already spent nine of my fifteen years out of high school in a classroom, and my delivery showed it. Sermons, I felt, were meant to be educational – hence, their primary function involved the transmission of information. In my rather simplistic way of constructing a sermon, I would typically begin with a very barebones anecdote, and then speedily go into an exegesis of the passage meant to support a certain conclusion – the “takeaway.”

To show how my approach has evolved, it might help to compare the introductions to two Christmas sermons – one which I gave shortly after being ordained a priest in 2000, and a second given last Christmas. First from 2000:

Growing up in a more or less secular household, festivals like Easter and Christmas were, for the most part, my only taste of the Christian world. What was Christmas to me? It was the family getting together, presents under the tree, the Christmas specials on television. And what was the message of Christmas? Well, I guess it could be summed up in the quotation from Luke, which has become a trite Christmas card slogan: “peace on earth, goodwill to all people.” For many folks, this is the beginning and the end of the meaning of Christmas. It has little to do with an invitation to emulate the life of the humble child whose birth was announced to poor shepherds. And it has little to do with the end of oppression, bondage, and war of which the prophet Isaiah spoke.

Now from 2008:

Walking around the village about a month ago, I noticed that stores were putting up Christmas displays and decorations. So when I returned home, I cheekily changed the status on my Facebook page to read “It’s beginning to look a lot like Consumer-mas!” Within an hour, I received a comment from someone who took me to task for trying to spoil her Christmas fun with my “Scrooge-like cynicism”! Ouch! Of course, the suggestion that there are two Christmases – a secular one and a religious one – has become so trite, it’s scarcely remarkable. For some people the two intersect, and for some they don’t. Some go for the nativity scenes, church, and carols; others go for snowmen, Santa, and pop music. And some go for both.Contrary to what my innocent note on Facebook might have signified, I’m actually pretty broadminded when it comes to Christmas. I certainly hold my nose over the season’s role as an engine of the retail economy, and all that this says about the substitution of spirituality for consumption. But, what the heck. I buy presents and listen to Frosty the Snowman, as well. In fact, I see the truth about Christmas lying somewhere in an intersection between Jesus and Santa.

I think it is fair to say that the theology underlying both introductions is fundamentally identical: Christmas has secular and spiritual components; the former only skims the surface of the true meaning of the holiday; and the true meaning lies in the liberating theology represented by the incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth. A standard Christmas trope, in other words – one which preachers generally feel obliged to adopt (as annoying as that sometimes is) on account of the large number of unchurched or minimally churched people in the pews on Christmas Eve.

Yet, the form has demonstrably changed. The anecdote is more detailed and extended, allowing people to visualize the events. It provides insight into the ambivalent feelings they probably share, and then I engage the provocative, unexpected part of which I spoke in the last section – in this case, asserting that the truth of Christmas can emerge out of this ambivalence.

The form has changed in subtle ways, as well. The tone is more colloquial, more intimate and direct, more engaged with the audience – in short, more conversational. Theological points can be made without an appeal to abstraction, as Jesus ably demonstrated. Language which obscures comes trippingly to the tongues of those who have spent vast swaths of their adult lives in university (I ended up spending fifteen years in post-secondary education). An important lesson for me was that I could speak in an educated idiom without resorting to dense, archaic, or technical prose. This came home for me most tellingly after preaching a sermon at my first placement upon returning to the Lower Mainland from pursuing doctoral studies in Berkeley. I had just preached a Pentecost sermon, in which I spoke about how we are all “vivified by the Holy Spirit,” when a parishioner approached me to congratulate me on it. “Except one part confused me,” he said, “when you said we were ‘vilified by the Holy Spirit.’” “Ah,” I responded, “you must have heard incorrectly. I said ‘vivified.’” He looked at me blankly. He didn’t know what “vivified” meant.
When I want to be stubborn about something, I can be a glacially slow learner. I chalked this incident up to one individual’s particular ignorance. It wasn’t until a few more similar episodes had transpired, and a few people politely told me that my language went over their heads, that I realised this was MY problem. Sermons are a rhetorical exercise – that is, they are discourses meant to persuade. But you cannot persuade people if they can’t understand you. By the same token, the King James Version has been largely abandoned in churches not because it is a poor translation (it is, in fact, a fairly literal one), or because the language is ugly (it is actually quite sublime), but because it is written in seventeenth century prose. By the time people have invested the mental energy in deciphering what is being said, they have none left over to absorb its meaning.

On the flip side, congregations are ill-served by language which is banal and anodyne. The most charming and amusing story in the world could be told, one which will be remembered for weeks – maybe even years – afterward. But if the theological point is nonexistent, you might as well be reading a short story by P.G. Wodehouse. Insipid or trivial sermons about how Jesus just wants us to love everybody are scarily easy to produce. But like a constant diet of fast food, it may make us feel good and fill us up for an hour or two; but in the long run, it’ll (spiritually) kill us. Homiletic rhetoric succeeds when a congregation is engaged and challenged. The challenge is primarily in the content, but the sermon also needs to be sufficiently intellectual to invite people to think and reflect. In this sense, the language should be comprehensible without being bland. Engagement is content driven, but the form is vital.

For the most part, my sermons begin with an anecdote (either personal, cultural, or historical), which serves as an illustration. Sometimes it begins with or contains a playful, colloquial retelling of a passage of scripture – in case people didn’t “hear” it the first time. Then I start exploring themes, putting them in dialogue with the passage(s) under consideration. There is no one way of doing this. Sometimes, I might spend half my sermon unpacking a theme, before I suddenly make the connection with a scriptural passage – “the long lure,” I call it. I once spent seven minutes talking about the dynamics of inferiority, personal and cultural, before I brought in the gospel passage – “the first shall be last, and the last first” – and how it related to such instances. Conversely, on another occasion, I spent an entire sermon retelling the story of Jonah. I related the amusing and brilliant ways that the author plays with the Hebrew language, how he takes direct aim at popular xenophobia, and then concluded with the very pointed, poignant, and timeless theological message of its conclusion.

The theme is important, of course. It needn’t always be about “right living.” It could be about the sacraments, biblical interpretation itself, or even – God forbid! – ecclesiology. Surprising connections are helpful, too. I recently preached a sermon on regret for a blessing of the animals service on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. The underlying question of the sermon was whether Francis had anything to regret having thrown away a materially bright future in order to become a friar. Why didn’t I preach on animals? Because love of animals wasn’t Francis’ primary mission or contribution to the church; and because their presence at the service already provided a living (though mute) homily on the importance of animals in our lives. The feast day is about Francis, not about pets. In this way, I was able to introduce two levels of surprises – the sermon wasn’t about pets, and its discussion of Francis used an unexpected theme (one with which the listener could relate) as a touchstone. I received an extraordinary amount of positive feedback.

Obviously, each preacher needs to find his or her style – hopefully one that is authentic and free of gimmicks. Modulation of tone, the use of silence, and some animation in delivery are all important. Above all, even if one has the text before oneself, deliver the sermon, don’t read it! If you stray, omit, add, and edit along the way, go with it. As one practices, the text will become more a framework and an aide de mémoire rather than a script. Having said that, I wouldn’t dispose of it entirely, for reasons I’ll outline below.

Delivery should not be the primary conveyor of emotional content. A good sermon works on the emotional level as well as the intellectual, ideally producing a spiritual response. But the feelings generated come in the content, primarily by successfully inviting the listener to personally identify with the message. This is often accomplished most convincingly in the conclusion. Again, allow me to compare my 2000 and 2008 Christmas sermons. This is how the first ended:

As we heard this evening, “the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all.” Thus the message of Isaiah, manifested in the coming of God in Christ Jesus, is as much for the child who thinks that Christmas is all about Santa as it is for the most zealous follower of our Lord. Now that is a reason to celebrate and be joyful! We are called to remove the burdens, bondage, and oppression – those placed on others, and those placed on ourselves. My prayer for us all tonight is that every day we be renewed in the desire to build God’s kingdom of righteousness, justice, and peace – in our hearts, and in the world. Amen.

Yawn. Christmas is for everyone, and it means liberation, and I hope we all feel liberated enough to do good things. Compare with the following:

Because the divine God came to us in the human Jesus, Christians are called to see Jesus in all whom we encounter – those whom we love, and those whom we despise; those who make us comfortable, and those who make us uneasy; those who uplift, and those who annoy. In so doing, we begin the work of helping to reconcile individuals with themselves, with one another, and with God. It is the toughest of callings. And yet, it is so immensely rewarding. We are drawn into the story, with the shepherds and the angels and the magi – and we are brought to the foot of a cradle where we see that most vulnerable of creatures – a human infant. And likewise where we see that most powerful of figures, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Both in this one, tiny being.
This Christmas I invite you to into that story – into the love poem that is Jesus Christ. Sing out that poem loudly as you journey through the coming year, sing it out as you see the face of God in all those with whom you will come into contact. Make the poem your own, being as Christ to others. For when you do that, you incarnate the truth that is Christmas, the truth that is love. The truth that we are not alone. Amen.

It says exactly the same thing. Only better.

Literary Character
My graduate thesis compared the rhetoric of wealth in the Epistle of James with that found in the discourses of the Greek philosophers Plutarch, Epictetus, and Dio Chrysostom. We sometimes forget that the prose works of the ancient Near East were meant to be read aloud. The aesthetic quality of oratory contributes to its rhetorical force, and that can only be preserved when it is prepared as a literary work.

Writing a sermon allows one to be careful with language, to make good use of the literary devices at hand (whether it be something as simple as alliteration or as complicated as allegory), to be subtle and precise, to be evocative. It also allows one to more easily develop the thread of a narrative in a focussed, complex way, for example by weaving in references and quotes, or revisiting key words or concepts.

From a purely practical standpoint, writing a sermon also keeps the preacher on track. The temptation to ramble, to lose the thread, to repeat oneself, or to digress is gone. There’s a lot to be said for telling stories around the campfire – but the best told stories are the ones told many times before, practiced and honed within an inch of their lives. Absent that, writing it out is the next best option.

Finally, writing a sermon commits it to posterity. By that, I don’t mean you can recycle it for later use. Unless one is in a terrible pinch, recycling a sermon does a disservice to yourself and the congregation: to yourself, because you are not doing the necessary work to develop your theology and your skill; and to the congregation, because you are giving them your theology, interpretation, and style reheated from circa [fill in the date]. What I do mean, is that you provide yourself and your congregation with a record of your exposition of passages of scripture to which you and they can refer. To that end, I recommend making sermons available to the congregation, either on a blog or in hard copy. It reinforces the message your sermon was meant to convey.

In a certain sense, preachers prepare the sermons they want to hear. It is often said that a hundred people will hear a hundred different sermons, but this is a misapprehension. If a sermon is rich in content and meaning, it will invite a variety of responses – but those responses usually flow from the message the preacher intends to convey. When this fails to occur, it is usually due to a lack of clarity in the message, and this usually results from a failure of literary soundness. A preacher shouldn’t be above saying, “This is what I’d like you to take away from my sermon,” when necessary.

Having said that, it is simply not possible to preach the sermon everybody wants to hear. Unlike the fond hope of St. Paul, one cannot be “all things to all people.” To get a sense of the culture and concerns of the community is important, of course, but so is getting a measure of the human condition and the vagaries of human nature. At its core, religion is about making sense of the world and one’s place in it. As such, sermons address basic existential questions – the nature and purpose of being; the roles that fear and love play in defining our thoughts and actions; understanding pain, loss, and the spectre of death; the fundamental human relationships with God, with one another, and with oneself; and, ultimately, how one might best live one’s life in the context of these questions. The rest is commentary.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.

 

Regret

Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (observed October 4, 2009).

Readings:  Galatians 6: 14-18; Psalm 148: 7-14; Matthew 11: 25-30

Someone recently asked me if there was anything in my life which I regretted.  What I think the questioner was really asking wasn’t so much whether there was anything I regretted as what it was I regretted, since regret is simply part of the human condition.  I suppose there are some folks who don’t have the capacity for it, or are somehow able to turn it off, but I don’t think that’s always a good impulse.  Regret over wilfully choosing to do the wrong thing, for whatever stupid, selfish reason we’ve chosen to do it, is the first step toward repentance.  But having done what we could to achieve reconciliation, we are supposed to put the regret away.

But what about that other sort of regret that says, “If I’d known then what I know now, I would have done x, and my life would be so different”?  I think, for example, of all the years I spent in school – seven years mucking about trying to decide on an undergraduate major (so much time, in fact, that I was inadvertently able to minor in philosophy); three years getting a Master of Divinity degree, my academic qualification to be a priest, and then another five years getting a second graduate degree and beginning a doctoral program, which I never finished.  So much time and money, and what to show for it?  I was forty when I finally gave up on the academic enterprise – folks I’d been in high school with had long since consolidated their positions in the world, establishing good careers, buying homes, travelling, raising a family.  I graduated from sleeping on a futon to sleeping in a bed just three years ago – I couldn’t afford one before that.

I thought about all this when I was asked about regret, but it was all too complicated to go into, so I deflected the question.  Still, I brooded, as I sometimes do, and wondered if I had to do it all over again, mightn’t I have been – I don’t know – a little more focussed?  And it nagged at me for a few days…that is, until I began preparing for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

Of course, like most people, I knew a little about St. Francis.  I knew he was the son of a wealthy Italian merchant, who famously gave away the clothes on his back to a poor beggar before running away from home to found a new ascetic community of beggars, pledged to live lives of service and poverty.  I knew that he was famous for his love of animals and of nature, and that he preached to the birds.  And I believed I saw reflected in the Anglican and Roman Catholic orders that bear his name those same virtues of simplicity, humility, voluntary poverty, and service to others.

What I didn’t fully realize about Francis of Assisi was just how totally and breathtakingly he reformed the Church without even intending to.  Yet so effective was his community’s ministry, so complete their evident devotion to God, so charismatic the person of Francis, that within a few years, he was able to make a personal appeal to the Pope himself – the most powerful figure in Europe – to permit him to establish an order of friars.  Within a few years, the Order of Friars Minor was spreading out of Umbria, through the Italian Peninsula, and beyond into the rest of Europe.  Within a generation, it would be second only to the Benedictines as the dominant religious order in Europe.

What did Francis have to regret?  By the standards of the world’s customary values, plenty.  He had voluntarily estranged himself from his family, surrendering any hope of a career in their profitable textile trade.  He eschewed ownership of any property, opting instead to survive by begging.  He made it his life’s work to pray and practice acts of piety, scarcely a lucrative enterprise.  And he rejected the option of marriage and children, choosing instead to associate himself with a community of like-minded misfits.  Then he died at the relatively young age of 44, without the conventional comforts of family, income, or a home to call his own – those things we call “security.”  If you didn’t know it was Francis of Assisi I was talking about, you may be inclined to read these facts of his life as something pitiful, or at least hopelessly eccentric.

Of course it is Francis I’m talking about, and in the eyes of history, he had little to regret.  He travelled far more broadly than just about anyone of his generation – to Spain, to Egypt, to Asia Minor, he even attempted a trip to Morocco.  He conversed with popes and kings.  He attended great councils of the church.  And he founded what became one of the most influential religious orders in Christianity.  His example shamed a religious hierarchy which had grown indolent and corrupt, and served as a model of piety in action to the faithful sorely in need of exemplars of righteousness. Given all this, to say “Ah, but he might have been comfortable, wealthy, and surrounded by family,” misses the mark.

Had I an ounce of Francis’ humility, piety, and faithful devotion, I would indeed possess a pearl of great price, to quote the parable.  What I do possess results from choices I have made.  Some of them, while not as dramatic or influential as Francis’, were likewise gestures of the foolishness of faith, including most of my education.  But whenever I am asked a question, or my advice is sought, or I sit down to write a sermon or article, or prepare an educational program, or even when I am confronted by challenges in my own life, I am reminded that I did not waste fifteen years, and heaven knows how many tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and lost wages.

Instead, I think about how much my education has formed me as a priest and as a child of God.  It  taught me to think and reflect deeply on the world.  I couldn’t know what it was I wanted to do with my life – and more importantly, what God wanted me to do with my life – otherwise.  What I, at times, thought was a huge mistake has proven to be one of my greatest strengths, helping to afford me the capacity to see the world and the issues it faces with interest and concern.

Of course, as Francis’ own life demonstrated, you don’t need to have much education at all to foster these sorts of qualities.  One arrives at insight via different routes.  One thing you do need, however, is experience.  There are no shortcuts to wisdom – whether it be acquired in the classroom of a university, the classroom of nature, or the classroom of human nature.  I don’t believe Francis’ initial impulse to be the proverbial rich young man giving away all his possessions came out of nowhere.  At 21, he had already experienced warfare and captivity.  His brief life was full of amazing experiences which shaped and refined his relationship with others, with God, and with his own self-understanding.  He inadvertently transformed the church and the world.

On a day we honour our own relationship with the creatures of God who help make us more human and more humane, let us recall that assuming this and other responsibilities are a movement of God in our lives to greater wisdom – wisdom that does not exist in a vacuum, but draws us closer to wisdom’s source.  There are no acts which create regret that cannot be turned toward this goal.  Let us put aside regret through reconciliation, and act with the knowledge we have sometimes painfully acquired to prevent any temptation to regret in the future.  We may not change the world, but we may suddenly discover that we are living – as Francis lived – in the will of God.  Amen.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.

 

Communities Caring for Communities

Our 2009 Campaign

Pastoral care may not be what you think it is. When we imagine it, we are apt to think of visiting a fellow parishioner in the hospital, or writing a card to a friend who is shut-in or convalescing. And while this constitutes the core, “acute” form of pastoral care, a broader vision sees it as supporting all those who are in need – stranger as well as friend, across the ocean as well as down the street. Even animals, plants, and the planet itself can be seen as potential recipients of our loving, healing concern.

Starting today and running through Reign of Christ Sunday (Nov. 22), St. Hilda’s will be undertaking its annual fall stewardship campaign. The theme this year is communities caring for communities. This reflects a new ethos of pastoral care. It is one summed up by one of the activists interviewed in Velcrow Ripper’s compelling documentary, Fierce Light: Where Action Meets Spirit:  “A spiritual warrior is only as strong as his [or her] tribe.”

If we can envision the communities we dwell in – family and town, Christianity and all people of faith, the globe and all creation – as interlocking circles of mutual support, we can see that the healing of the world is already in our hands. The ministry of reconciliation, which is our baptismal commission, is realized through our gifts of time, skill, and material resources. And this, in turn, is the very definition of stewardship.

Each Sunday we will explore a different aspect of care through our worship, as well as through a bulletin insert or a presentation by someone involved in caring for others.  On Nov. 8 (Remembrance Sunday), pledge cards will be distributed. We will collect them on the last Sunday before Advent – a celebration of the Reign of Christ, and a celebration of what we can do to further it as a community caring for communities.

Return of the UN Millennium Development Goals

Today we welcome Mr. Terry Umbach, representing the Sechelt Rotary Club. Terry is here to talk about us partnering with Rotary to help the people of Ndandini, a small village in eastern Kenya, obtain a permanent, sustainable, clean source of water. But more than this, our parish has an opportunity to continue helping this village achieve other UN Millennium Development Goals – such as access to education and basic health care.

When we discussed the MDGs last fall and winter, we visualized focusing on one or two discrete projects associated with specific goals. But after hearing Terry’s proposal, and how much work he has done in eliciting the support of other Rotary Clubs and agencies, the MDG team (Ben Eaton, Jill Halliwell, Dave and Stephanie Moul, and myself) couldn’t help but be enthusiastic about the possibility of transforming our overseas outreach opportunity into a long-term, holistic partnership with a community in need. We are confident that, after hearing Terry’s story, you will agree.

Outreach was identified as an important unfulfilled goal in St. Hilda’s vision questionnaire. Nurturing a parish culture in which support for overseas development becomes part of our identity will help meet that goal. At its last meeting, our church committee decided to support this project, and a “flow-through” fund for designated giving by parishioners to support it has been created. The MDG team will discuss with Terry the allocation and disbursement of donations in order to meet our obligations as a registered charity. Rotary International has a 100 year history of credible humanitarian work, and it is clear from what Terry has shared with us about the project in Ndandini that the legwork has been well and thoroughly done, in full consultation with the people of the village and with the Kenyan government.

During the next two months, there will be plenty of information available about the village, what has been done, what needs to be done, and what their hopes are for the future. Any questions can be directed to the MDG team members. And anyone is welcome to join our team! Our next meeting is in mid-October (to be announced).

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009

 

About St. Michael and All Angels

St. Michael and all the angels are commemorated on September 29 – a feast which is often called Michaelmas. According to an old legend, blackberries should not be picked after this date. This is because, so folklore goes, Satan was banished from heaven on this day, fell into a blackberry bush, and cursed the brambles as he fell into them

In Hebrew, the primary term for “angel” is malakh (מַלְאָךְ), meaning “to send.”  Other words referring to angels include כרוב (keruv), from which the English word “cherub” is derived and Gil-gulim, meaning “revolving,” since angels are sometimes depicted as wheels with wings. Derived from this is the Hebrew term galgal, “the rotation of fortune, change.”  The word “archangel” derives from the Greek αρχάγγελος (archangelos) = αρχ- arch- (“first, primary, chief or highest”) and άγγελος – angelos (“messenger”).  Catholic Christians, including Anglicans, recognise three archangels – Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel.

In Christianity, Judaism and Islam, angels often act as messengers from God, or as active agents in pursuing God’s will, often as a warrior or guard.  From this is derived the concept of a guardian angel in modern Western culture.  The Book of Daniel is the first biblical text to refer to individual angels by name.

Michael

Michael is one of the principal archangelic warriors, seen as a protector against the dark of night, and the administrator of cosmic intelligence.  We hear of him first when the prophet Daniel experiences a vision after having undergone a period of fasting.  In the vision, an angel identifies Michael as the protector of Israel (Dan 10:13, 21). Later in the vision (12:1), Daniel is informed that Michael will stand for Israel during the tribulation to come.

In the Psuedephigrapha (Jewish religious works written c 200 BC to 200 AD), Michael is designated as “the prince of Israel.”  He is the angel of forbearance and mercy (Enoch, xl:3) who teaches the mysteries of clemency and justice (lxxi:2). In Jubilees (i:27 and ii:1), Michael is identified as the angel who is said to have instructed Moses on Mount Sinai and to have delivered to him the tables of the Law.

It may have been natural that Michael, the champion of the Jewish people, came to be depicted as the champion also of Christians, giving victory in war to his clients.  In the Epistle of Jude, Michael fights Satan over the body of Moses. In Revelation (12:7-8), Michael leads a heavenly army against Satan (in the form of a dragon) and his army. Satan is thrown out of heaven, recalling the “abomination that causes desolation” described in the Book of Daniel (Dan 9:27).

Raphael and Gabriel

The name of the archangel Raphael appears in the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, disguised in human form as the travelling companion of the younger Tobias.  Later, he miraculously heals Tobit using a fish’s gallbladder.  Because of the healing role assigned to Raphael, this particular angel is generally associated with the archangel.

The name Gabriel first appears in the Book of Daniel. The Jewish leader Daniel ponders the meanings of several visions he has experienced in exile, when Gabriel appears to him with a message about the “end of days” (Dan 8:15).  In the Gospel of Luke, Gabriel reveals to Zechariah that John the Baptist will be born to his wife Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-20), and visits Elizabeth’s cousin Mary to reveal that she will give birth to Jesus. Gabriel’s visit to Mary is often called the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), an event that is celebrated on March 25.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.

 

Symbol and Reality

Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, Holy Cross Day (as observed on September 13, 2009).

Readings:  Numbers 21: 4b-9; Psalm 98: 1-6; 1 Corinthians 1: 18-24;  John 3: 13-17

A colleague of mine tells the story of shopping for a small gold cross on a chain to give to her godchild as a Confirmation present.  Walking up to the jewellery counter at a major department store, she asked to see what was available.  The clerk replied, “Would you like to see the crosses with the little man on them, or without?”  Depending on how you’re feeling, this comment can seem comical, annoying, or even pathetic.  Symbols are only significant if they are recognised as such.  If they aren’t, they become meaningless curiosities, which is clearly what the cross was in the mind of the salesperson.

A symbol is an object or a word meant to represent the idea of something.  On the simplest level, the word “chair” is not a chair, but represents the idea of a chair.  This is why we often get into trouble when we talk about reading the Bible literally, as though words had anything other than a symbolic reality which has to be interpreted.  Even common household objects have symbolic power.  For instance, a martini glass may symbolise for us a parent’s battle with alcoholism, or the carefree days of our youth.  We bring any number of associations to objects which may have little or no bearing on their actual intended use.

Some symbols are deeply personal.  We understand that it has to be explained why that rather cheap and undistinguished vase on the mantel means so much to us.  But things become more complex when the symbol reflects our identity, more specifically, an aspect of our identity that we share with others.  Bearing the symbol carries with it certain unspoken expectations; and certain, perhaps unanticipated risks.  We can understand that wearing a Canadian flag on our backpack in Afghanistan will be seen by some as an intolerable provocation by a citizen of an occupying power.  Yet, we can be righteously indignant when wearing the same flag elicits bored incomprehension by someone in the United States, or even derision for a place that person may consider a backwater, quasi-socialist joke of a country.

When we say we want our symbols to be rightly understood; what we mean, I think, is that we want them to be rightly understood by those whom we think should (a) understand them, and (b) understand them the way we think they should be understood.  In other words, we want our identity affirmed by those whose affirmation is important to us, or rather, important to our own self-understanding.

The cross is a potent symbol.  Purely as an object, it is an ancient and obsolete device designed to slowly and torturously execute people.  For Christians, like the clerk in the department store of whom I spoke, the device itself would be an antique curiosity if it were not for the fact that it was used on Jesus of Nazareth.  And in that function, it becomes invested with all kinds of symbolism.  It is a sign of human evil in putting anyone to death in such a cruel manner, much less the Messiah of God.  It is a sign of the suffering of God, in the face of such sinfulness, in order to free humanity from its grip.  And, finally, it is a sign of the victory of Christ over the power of sin and death – Christ broken free of the cross.  Hence, the distinction between the cross with the little man on it – the suffering Christ; and the cross without – the triumphant Christ.

Were it to end at that as the common understanding of the cross, things would be fine.  But we all know that the cross is freighted with other symbolic meanings as well.  For some, it represents missionary colonialism, when Christianity was used as a handmaiden of European culture to wrestle other tribes away from their own identity and customs.  For others, it represents reactionary, narrow-minded intolerance and ignorance.  And still for others, it represents a pious, unworldly naïveté in response to a world of complex moral relativism.  Finally, there are those – like our salesclerk – whose response to the cross is one of bored, uncomprehending apathy.

In the face of such a smorgasbord of not particularly appetizing perceptions of this important symbol of our shared identity, our response may be similar to the various responses in my flag example – a sad understanding of the context, indignation over a simplistic and jaundiced attitude to an important religious icon, or frustration over an individual’s lack of interest or education in the importance of Christianity, as a cultural and historical phenomenon, if nothing else.

In the earliest days of our faith movement, there was a great deal of interest in the objective symbolism of the cross.  In the fourth century, St. Helena – the mother of the Emperor Constantine, who instituted Christianity as the imperial religion – reputedly obtained a portion of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on the site, and this object was placed inside it.  Holy Cross Day commemorates the dedication of that church, an occasion on which clergy from all over the Byzantine Empire came to venerate the object Helena had discovered.  In the centuries that followed, churches all over Europe, Asia, and North Africa obtained portions of the cross – so many that the joke was that Christ would have had to be more than divine to carry an object of that immensity.

But of greater weight was the symbolism.  In the Middle Ages, pilgrims crisscrossed the continents to venerate icons of spiritual significance – the bones and blood of martyrs, the pens and books of church scholars, the regalia of holy kings, and – of course – the wood from the cross of Christ.  The reaction of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century was a collective swinging of the pendulum.  The smashing of statues and stained glass; and the destruction of shrines and relics represented a visceral rejection of the impulse to invest faith in visible objects rather than the invisible God.  For Protestants, such veneration itself was a symbol – a symbol of the discredited notion that there should be any intermediary at all between us and God.

For us today, I hope we can assume a more mature understanding of the complexity of the symbols of our faith, including the cross.  We should proclaim our identity, proudly, so that all can see that the light we shine has its source in the love of God.  The cross is, for us, a symbol of liberation fulfilled through a path of suffering.  We should resist any effort to be labelled by others, to be put in boxes of narrow understanding.  Such boxes are constructed out of ignorance – and this ignorance will flourish as long as we are willing to hide our identity.

I am not asking you to immediately run out and buy crosses to wear around your neck, with or without a little man.  But what I am asking is that you own your identity, and define it according to your own relationship with God, through the community of faith that is the church.  The cross is the symbol that defines all other symbols in our life – it conditions every aspect of our identity.  May we wear it proudly, not so much on our chests, as in them.  Amen.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009

 

The Economy of God

Sermon preached by The Rev’d Neil Fernyhough, 14th Sunday After Pentecost (September 6, 2009).

Readings:  Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2: 1-17; Mark 7: 24-37

My neighbour across the hall in residence at seminary was a guy by the name of Eric.  Eric was a few years older than me, a gruff, plain-spoken guy from the prairies who had worked at a tire plant before coming to study in Vancouver.  In his younger days, Eric had been – I don’t think he’d mind me saying – a hard-living guy.  He spent years bumming around the States, playing guitar, drinking, getting into fights, involved in petty crime.  Had his life taken a different course, he could have ended up a doctor like his brother, since he’s one of the smartest – not to mention funniest – guys I know.  He was also one of the warmest, most compassionate people that I came to know during my seminary years.

Eric knew what street life was all about, because he’d seen it first hand, and lived it from time to time.  When I was around him, I sometimes had this feeling of, well, inadequacy, I guess.  He made me aware of how sheltered my life had been, despite my time as a child protection worker.  I loved my books, and going to the woods to hike or hunt or fish.  My tastes were moderate.  I’d never travelled far from the confines of the place where I was born, never mixed too much with people who didn’t look like me or have the same sort of background as me.  Eric, on the other hand, had journeyed far from safety and security, had danced with the demons of self-destruction, and yet had turned from that completely.  He was able to drink of the living water of Jesus Christ and transform his life to such an extent that here he was, in Vancouver, learning to be a pastor, while supporting himself, his wife, and his children. I had, and have, nothing but awe and admiration for Eric – who became my best friend at seminary.

I remember once seeing him downtown.  He was talking to one of the homeless people sitting on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of Nova Scotia on Pender Street.  I went up to say hello, just in time to see Eric fish around in his pocket and hand the guy a loonie.  “So what are you up to?” I asked him.  “Oh, just walking around and talking to people,” Eric said.  “I come down every so often just to hang out with the guys on the street and see how they’re doing.”  “Do you give all of them money?” I asked, half jokingly.  “Oh yeah,” he said, and he pulled out from his pocket a roll of loonies, half empty – “That’s why I bring one of these.”  That was generous, I thought, and I told him so.  In his usual earnest way, he exclaimed, “Oh, I don’t hand out all of them!  I don’t have time!  What I’m really down here to do is listen.  These guys are ignored constantly.  I’d be down here all day and all night if I was going to hand out an entire roll and listen to their stories.  Listening is a much bigger deal than the loonie.”  Then he said something that has stuck with me ever since.  Eric said, “The dollar is just money, but what I want to give them are ‘kingdom bucks’.”  He paused to let me think about that, and then quipped, “It’s sort of like Canadian Tire money, only redeemable in heaven.  They get some, and I get some, too!”

I miss Eric.  Nowadays, he’s a Presbyterian minister in Regina, and while we talk on the phone sometimes, we’ve only seen each other once since we graduated ten years ago.  One thing I can say about him, though, is that he definitely understands the healing power of faith.  Indeed, I’ve found it is usually those who have experienced poverty and marginalisation who understand that power better than anyone.  As the story from today’s gospel reveals, sometimes they have even needed to remind Jesus of the broad embrace of his compassion.  Here, when Jesus balks at casting out a demon from a Gentile woman’s daughter, she tells him, “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Christ, rebuked, of all things – and by a poor, marginalised, and outcast untouchable – is taught a lesson.  He is compelled to agree that it is faith, not lineage, that restores people to God.  As if to drive home the lesson, we are told that immediately afterward, Jesus goes to Tyre in Lebanon, the home of more Gentiles, and cures a deaf mute.  Clearly, something is going on here.

What is going on is that Jesus is freely passing out kingdom bucks – currency that had hitherto been circulated only among the chosen people.  If any of the pious scribes and Pharisees had reason to doubt Jesus’ messiahship before, their doubts were now confirmed.  The Son of David, the Messiah of Most High, including Gentiles in his plan of salvation?  Unthinkable!  Gentiles are outside the law, and even to touch them would bring impurity, much less to touch a woman or place fingers on the tongue and in the ears of a deaf mute.  But that’s how God’s economy works.  Freely passing out kingdom bucks keeps it in operation.  It pays for the construction of the kingdom of God – a massive public works project on which we are all employed.

Should it surprise us, then, that James, the brother of Jesus, understands this message fully?  “Do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” he asks his listeners with incredulity.  Some of you may recall that last week, in response to Martin Luther’s claim that James is an “epistle of straw,” I referred to it, on the contrary, as the fifth gospel.  It is the gospel in action, as James launches into his audience with an indictment of hypocrisy, accusing them of treating wealthy visitors with distinction, and treating the poor, as – well – as dogs to eat up the crumbs.  “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom?” he asks them.  What James is really asking, at its heart, is “do you love your neighbour as yourself – and, if so, what are you doing about it?”  How are you walking the talk?  And so, he concludes, “mercy triumphs over judgement,” and “faith, without works, is dead.”  If it were otherwise, there would be no hope of building up the kingdom of God, no hope of restoration to health and wholeness for a suffering humanity and a creation that, as the apostle Paul elsewhere tells us, “groans for liberation.”

When we realise that it is our faith which heals us, just as it healed the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter and the deaf-mute, the only possible response is gratitude and humility.  This is why we say grace before meals.  This is why we pray for the sick and the suffering.  This is why we welcome all into our community of faith.  This is why we seek Christ in others, striving to serve him there.  The Love which makes life itself possible is a gift we cannot treat indifferently if we are to honour God.

The love of God makes life possible.  But it is just as true that the life we have makes the love of God possible.  We don’t all need to take a roll of loonies and head onto the streets to talk to the poor, though that’d be nice.  But we do need to do something – something to demonstrate that the love of God dwells in us – something we can share with others around us, especially those who have been marginalised.  We don’t need to think about it.  We just need to do it.  Those kingdom bucks just keeping adding up.  Invest them now, and watch the economy of God grow until all the poor are fed, and all the outsiders are made welcome.  Amen.

© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.