May 17, 2012

Dear friends in Christ,

Long ago, or at least it seems that way, Fr Kell Morton (then of Antigo and Tomahawk) told me a story. It was shortly after Ascension (which we celebrate this week), and Jesus was spending time with the angels after his life upon earth. Together they looked upon the world Jesus had just left, as Jesus was telling the angels of all that had happened in those thirty or so years. Then he came to the part that made the angels sit up. “I have left my mission to the disciples and followers,” was all he said. The angels looked at Jesus, and then looked at each other. Finally, one spoke up and asked, “What’s your Plan B?”

The point of the story is there is no plan B. Jesus left the work of restoring all of creation to God and each other to us. We are not alone, for he does send us the Spirit. But we must choose to accept this mission and accept the Spirit in our lives. And why would we take on such a responsibility? Because for the children of God, wanting to restore relationships, searching for harmony in life, longing for wholeness, is simply a part of who we are. It comes naturally as we grow in our relationship with God.

There is no Plan B, but in the words of the angels to Mary, Joseph and others, do not be afraid. “God with us” through the body of blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, through the Word proclaimed in scripture, through the presence of the Spirit working within and through us. We are not only the means to God fulfilling his dream, we are also the fulfillment of the dream as we become one with God, each other, creation, through Christ.

Fr David

May 8, 2012

The gates of heaven were open, and there were people recently arrived from their life in this world. They were a diverse lot. God met them at the gate, wishing to greet each one individually. God looked over the group and invited one to step forward.

“Welcome!”

The person stammered a thank you, and said, “I’m not sure I really belong here.”

“What would make you say that?”

“Well, I think I could have done much better than I did. I messed up a lot.”

“You don’t say. Well, if you like, you can stay here for a while and think and watch the others who have arrived with you.”

“Thank you”, and the person stepped aside, grateful to still be at the gates, and not going somewhere else.

The next person stepped forward, holding all sorts of papers and books.

“Welcome! What do you have there?” asked God.

“These are just records of what I have done and haven’t done while on earth. I hope they demonstrate I have a place with you in eternal life.”

“These papers can prove that you say?”

“Well, yes, I think so. I have tried to live according to the laws you have given us.”

“Looks like a lot of reading.”

“I had a long life, and I did a lot of things.”

“You hang on to those for a bit, and let me welcome some others.”

The person stepped aside, somewhat disappointed, but still hopeful, holding onto the papers tightly.

A third person approached. Once again, God welcomed the person.

“Welcome!”

“Thank you! I have so looked forward to this moment!”

“I know you have, and now please enter into life with me.”

The person beamed and walked through the gates. The first two people looked incredulous, and together stepped forward to question God about the person.

“That person who just went in…”

“Yes, pretty excited about it all, huh?”

“Well, yes, but all you did was welcome and invite the person to go in.”

“Yes, what did you expect?”

“I have my papers, and this person has doubts, and we were asked to step aside…”

“And watch.”

“Yes, watch. And you saw a person who had chosen to look forward to this day, chosen to be with me in my kingdom.”

“Well yes, but how do you know the person belongs?”

“Belongs? Because they chose to be here. They wanted to be with me.”

We don’t know what happened next to the first two people. The story just ends there. It is a good place to end. It leaves us wondering. Did they leave their doubts and their proofs behind and ask to be with God and in his kingdom? Or did they decide that without some better “controls” just anyone could enter the kingdom and chose to go elsewhere?

Fr David

May 1, 2012

Well, this is born out of IRS audit yesterday, and you can take that for what it is worth in terms of the reflection below. Hope you enjoy it.

The earth had not yet been formed. There was darkness. There was God, and his adversary, the devil. The two had been discussing plans for a creation out of the darkness, and the devil simply could not understand God’s plans.

“So, it is your idea to create a world with creatures that will be able to choose whether to obey you or not?”

“Oh, it is much more than obedience I long for.”

“Well, if I were you, and I still don’t understand why I am not, and I were thinking about creating a new world, I would want to create something that would obey me. But then again, I am not even sure I would create anything that could choose. Seems to me you only open yourself up to a whole bunch of things that would give you nothing but trouble, thinking and choosing for themselves.”

“What about love?”

“What about it?”

“Well, if a creature can’t choose anything, they couldn’t choose to love.”

“And that is important…why?”

“Well, my friend, the reason I would create in the first place is because I have all these thoughts and ideas within me that need expression. But who do I share them with, and who can appreciate them as I would appreciate them?”

“There is always me.”

“Ah, but you have already said that you have a very different idea of the proposed creation than I. I fear you could not appreciate with me, share in my joy at creation. No, I fear that you would always be trying to take from me what I have created, and remove the joy I could share with creation. And what is more, I fear that in taking my creation from me, you would attempt to become god to my creation.”

“You do not trust me.”

“No, I do not. And if you did indeed manage to steal my creation, you would remove their ability to choose, and demand obedience to you and only you.”

“While I cannot agree or disagree with you on any future plans for this creation you plan, I am still bothered by the need to give your creation choice. Why is that so important to you?”

“I don’t know if you can understand, but I will attempt to explain it once more. By giving creation choice, I am inviting those who have the choice to decide in their own minds what is important or not. I am inviting them to choose whether to appreciate it or not. I am inviting them to choose to appreciate the one who created these things they appreciate. Finally, I am inviting them to seek the one who creates everything, and enter into a relationship with me.”

“You mean like the relationship between a king and the servants?”

“No, a relationship that recognizes one as creator and the other as created, and yet still provides an equality of sorts, based upon both parties being able to choose to name, to appreciate, and to respond.”

“This relationship you seek with creatures…the ability to choose, to name, to appreciate, to respond…is that what you call love?”

“Love includes those things. I wish to be in relationship in which the other chooses to want to be with me, not for personal advantage, but simply because there is a knowledge born by looking, choosing, appreciating, that in being with me there is a sense of completion that cannot otherwise be found.”

“I don’t know. Seems to me potentially very messy and dangerous. You might never be appreciated, and that relationship might never be chosen.”

“Possibly.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because of the joy shared when the relationship and love are chosen.”

The devil simply shook his head, considered the plan a failure even before launch, and went on his way.

God would proceed, and out of the darkness, came light, and from the light came creation, and from creation came human beings, born with a freedom to choose. It was not long before the devil came and did all that God had predicted he would do, making it necessary for God to help human beings learn how to recover the choices they had seemingly lost. Yet even now, human beings find themselves living in a world with different paths, different choices to make. One leads into relationship, the other into obedience and loss of freedom. God would, it seems, have it no other way.

Fr David

April 25, 2012

Dear friends in Christ,

Easter is the proclamation that Christ is risen. But last week’s gospel challenged us to decide if it is a “full” resurrection of all that God has created, both material and spiritual. While the easy approach may be to declare that resurrection frees a person from the corporal body, and the spirit can now take its place with God, the gospels call us to something more. Jesus stands in the midst of the disciples, not as a ghost, but as a body, hungry to eat, still carrying the wounds of crucifixion.

God created everything, including the physical world. We proclaim that everything, including the physical, is good. And we believe that God’s will is to restore all things to unity with Him and us through Christ, again not just the spiritual, but all things. Thus, though we cannot understand or explain it, Easter is the proclamation that all creation is subject to the resurrection, including body and soul.

Why do we find it so difficult to accept resurrection of both soul and body, focusing primarily on the soul? Maybe it goes back to the gospel account. Jesus stood among the disciples but the disciples could not believe what they saw. God is ever working in the world, ever active in our lives. We may even “see” the signs of God working among us. But our minds do not appreciate what we are seeing, and we fail to name what we see as signs of resurrection.

Let this Easter season be a time for us to train our minds to appreciate what our eyes are seeing all around us, and even within us. As part of that appreciation may we name what we see as God raising the dead to life, breathing new life into what was dying, restoring us to unity with Him and each other through Christ. Try doing that for 50 days, and you may not be able to stop saying “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

Fr David

April 19, 2012

Dear friends in Christ,

Time and time again you will hear me say two things.  We are called to live in relationship, and to a lesser degree, we are a people of the Story.  “The Story” is the story of God’s relationship with creation, including you and me, a relationship that we born out of love, and finds restoration in that same love.  As the people of God, we are shaped by this Story.  We are shaped by the experience of Jesus identifying with us, dying for us, and then rising from death.  We are shaped by that story because we are invited to become part of the story.  We are invited to join Jesus in a life freed from death, sin and darkness.  We are invited to see the power of God working in life, in us, every day, and making all things new again.

As a congregation, we are presently asking ourselves how the story of God’s love for us will shape us in the present and future.  What story will we be telling in years to come of how God has acted in and through this parish family?  And you are invited to do the same.  Hear the story, engage with the story, and ask yourself, how will I identify with the Story in my life?  What will I choose to do so God may tell His story of love and forgiveness through me?

We don’t just become the people of God – we choose to be the people of God!  In choosing to be the people of God, we choose to become the living Story of God’s love, allowing it to shape us and our relationships.

Fr David

April 10, 2012

Dear friends in Christ,

I can relax a little this week after Easter.  It was a wonderful, meaningful Holy Week and Easter for me, and I believe, many.  One thing I take from Sunday morning I share with you.  During the sermon I spoke of “resurrection moments” – the moments each day when we see life, or sense hope, being born anew or presented before our very eyes.  I was reminded of that during communion.  As I approached people with the bread, I was thinking of how resurrection has touched, or could touch you.  I remembered stories, recalled situations you are presently in, and celebrated your openness to God working in your lives, and the love of God so freely given.  It was a powerful time for me, and made me appreciate how fortunate I am to be your priest, to be trusted in your resurrection moments, and the opportunity you have always given me to share mine with you. 

I would encourage you to look on the website, where there are now a couple of pictorial/musical accounts that record Palm Sunday and Easter at St John’s.  If you were there, it will be a wonderful way to remember.  If you missed one or both, you will be amazed at the sights and sounds of celebration.

Finally, thanks to everyone who helped make this Holy Week and Easter so special.  Resurrection is not just “given”; it must be received as well, and that means preparing to receive it.  I consider all the work done with decorations, music, bulletins, liturgy, coffee hours and dinners, and much more to be part of that preparation.  We could experience resurrection as a community and as members of a community because together we prepared to receive the gift.  Now, may we live in resurrection, live in expectation of living new lives with one another and in the world today and always.

Yours in Christ,
Fr David

Holy Week & Easter 2012

“Do this in memory of me.”

The words are etched in many of our minds and hearts. On Maundy Thursday, we hear those words spoken by Jesus against the backdrop of a last meal he will share with his friends before his arrest and death. Over the years, those words have become part of our spiritual practice, and many of us can’t remember a Sunday when the service didn’t include those words, and the communion that accompanies them.

It wasn’t that long ago however, that our spiritual practice at St John’s and other churches did not include Holy Communion on a weekly basis. The norm for many generations was Morning Prayer and not the Eucharist. And the change from Morning Prayer to Eucharist was not an easy one, for it represented a change in “practice”.

Why is all this important? Because the invitation to receive Communion is an invitation to enter into life – the life of Christ, and the life of a community. As the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, those who partake of them become new as well. Even as the bread and wine still appear to be the bread and wine, and yet are more than that, we still appear to
be the persons we were prior to receiving, and yet we become something more.

Each time we respond to the invitation to come to the Banquet, we invite Christ to transform us, transform our lives, transform our community, by His presence. As we imitate that first meal, and continue to practice what Jesus left us, we are shaped. Maybe not all at once, but slowly. We are shaped by Christ, by his love, into children of God, and a family of God.

This is why we “practice” Communion each week and even more often, and doing this in memory of Him. Each time is an opportunity to be shaped, transformed, into his likeness by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. In each Communion, we are becoming who we were created to be.

This Holy Week and Easter, may it be our intention and choice to do those things which imitate Jesus, and thus invite His love to shape us into His likeness. You might have already guessed, this means more than attending, it will require your full participation!

A blessed Holy Week and Easter to one and all!

Fr David

(3/28/12)

I don’t often do movie “stuff”, but I went to Hunger Games this weekend. My daughter had gotten me to listen to the books, and I was excited to see the movie when it came out. I must admit I was not prepared for the tremendous response to the movie. It is a movie, and book, that is filled with a certain darkness, and I kept asking what excited so many people to come out for the premier?

The movie presents a tension between society and its members. Society presses upon its members to conform, in order for things to be in good order. But what happens if that order ends up destroying the freedom to choose, to love, in the individual? This tension is heightened by a “game”, produced by the state and presented as reality television to the whole nation. The goal is simple: Be the last one standing, the last one alive. To achieve the end, however, contestants will have to change, setting aside their own natures, and becoming creatures of society.

I could not help notice the parallels between the story and our story of Holy Week. Jesus enters into Jerusalem and is identified as a messiah to deliver the people from Roman rule. But he is not. He is seen as a madman overturning the tables and claiming he can rebuild the temple in three days.  But he is not. Pilate begs him to acquiesce so he might be released, but he will not. Jesus resists all temptations to become what people want him to be, and relies instead on a a relationship with the Father. It is that relationship that shapes his decisions and allows him to accept his death.

The movie, and the week to come, prompt me to wonder what pressures are upon me to conform, and how strong is my relationship to God that I might continue to be his child, and exercise my freedom to choose and to love, even in the face of pressures?

Fr David

For many of us, the recent “snow day” provided a break from the normal schedule.  School children, teachers and some others found themselves with unscheduled time.  What to do, given the weather and road conditions?  In some ways, a snow day is an unscheduled holiday.  It removes us from the “norm” and places us in the position of spending time in a different way.  Of course, the difference is that for most holidays, we begin scheduling ourselves long before the day, and end up as busy as we are normally, just doing other things!  But a snow day is different, and thus we get a chance to choose what we will do.

I probably have more opportunity than most to choose how to fill a day, so a snow day may not be as much of a stretch as it would be for someone else.  That being said, how did you choose to use the time, if indeed you found yourself removed from the normal schedule?  If you didn’t, how would you use the time if given the chance, if on any given day you were suddenly released from the normal schedule of the day?  What would you learn about yourself from those choices?

All that being said, I don’t need any more snow days for a while!

Yours,

Fr David

(2/23/12)   From Fr. David: