When I was Special

     Most of my life, I've thought of myself as being pretty special. Like many of my peers, I was one of only two children; I took self-esteem lessons in my grade one classroom; I watched TV shows that encouraged me to dream big and was taught by teachers who said I could be anything in the world. In short, I belong to generation Y. We are special.

Yet, in recent days I have become tired of being special because it requires that I be smarter, stronger, and faster than most other people. Since we can’t all be the best, specialness is an attitude which drives us to continual competition and busyness. If we slow down, we might fail. We might not change the world. We might not be “the best we can be.”

My puppy- who has never minded just being normal!

I have often compared my specialness with something else I learned at a young age: God loves each and every one of us. The same. Now this is something I’ve always found hard to believe. If God loves the stranger as much as God loves me, then I am not special. I am just normal. And that has generally been more than my special-gifted-world-changing self could handle. Until now.

Not only am I finally old enough to realize that I’m no more awesome and world-changing than anyone else, but I’ve become tired of always trying to be one step ahead of myself, always trying to prove to a non-existent audience that I’m really making the most of my life and being the best I could possibly be. As it turns out, I would prefer to be normal, to work and play and love as any other person would. Perhaps what is special is simply life itself; not trying harder or doing better, but simply doing life.

And another thing. I’ve noticed that God chooses to use people who are not special at all with remarkable frequency. Was Moses changing the world when God called him from his sheep? Was Jeremiah being the best he could be when God told him to become a great prophet? Was Mother Teresa particularly special when God sent her to Calcutta to care for his children there? No. God does not ask us to be special, or to change the world, or even to be our very best.

Then what does God ask us for? Our faithfulness. It sounds like such a little thing! Yet it is because they were faithful to what God called them to that the people we call heroes did the things they did. In essence, they said “yes” to God, not in grand things but in little things. Saying yes to God- faithfulness- happens every day. It happens at work, on the street, with our families, and (especially for those who are always busy) in rest. Because God asks for our very normal human lives, not our awesomeness :)

Flying in Uniform: God does not forget us

     I’m on a plane, sitting beside a soldier from Portage La Prairie, both of us in uniform. It occurs to me that, while neither of us is “on duty” at the moment, we each wear our uniforms today for similar reasons. He wants to be a visible sign and symbol of the military for the public, a way for them to remember who the military is and what it does. By his very presence he portrays his message: Young men like me still do this. We still think it’s important enough to dedicate our lives to. We’re here to protect you. And while I don’t really enjoy flying in clericals, I wear my collar today for the same reason. Seeing a young priest in the airport forces people to wonder if, perhaps, God is not dead after all.

Throughout the plane, both the soldier and I have our public supporters. Behind him sits a man with a “support our troops” t-shirt. Behind me sits a woman wearing a cross. Yet people do not come up and congratulate me in public the way they do my travelling companion. While they see him as a symbol for all Canadians, I tend to be seen as representing a select few. A fellow passenger might say to me, “Oh, I’m not religious,” but it isn’t often that my neighbour is told, “The military isn’t really my thing.”


Outside a Yorkshire convent at sunset

There was a time, however, when the clergy were also seen as a symbol for all Canadians- both those who identified as “religious” and those who did not. Our ancestors, I think, understood that we are inherently spiritual beings whether we like it or not. No matter how self-made and independent we may become, there will always be a part of us that we cannot take apart and quantify: that which communes with our Creator, the spiritual life.

The public legislation against wearing religious symbols in Quebec is further evidence of our amnesia: to be a spiritual being, it is presumed, is a personal choice that’s best kept private.

As Christians, however, we must disagree. Whether a person shares our faith or not, he or she was made to reflect the Creator. It is not possible to be a human and not be a spiritual creature. When we wear the symbols of our faith, then, we are not projecting our particular religious values onto an unsuspecting public. We are, instead, carrying bits of collective memory which remind us that we rely on one beyond ourselves for our life and daily bread. At the end of the day, we are not self-made and we can never outgrow our DNA as spiritual creatures. In a time when religion lags in Canada, we can be encouraged to remember that even when God’s people forget God, God will never forget God’s people.

Jesus Meets the Stranger- a sermon on Luke 16 for All Saints Church

   Imagine yourself sitting in church on a Sunday evening at 5:00. Beside you sits an aging drag queen; on the other side is a woman who appears to be a prostitute. You discreetly cover your nose a little to block the smell of the man sitting in the pew in front of you, a man who appears to be homeless and not taken a bath in years. You’re visiting the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, a quirky Lutheran church plant that’s only five years old. You look up and notice that the pastor is a tough looking woman covered in tattoos. Her language is remarkably crude and a little blunt for a pastor and you remember hearing that she’s a woman with a past: a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. To the side are several small children playing by themselves and making rather a lot of noise; their parents are nowhere in sight. You shift a little in your seat, trying not to appear too uncomfortable.
     You stand to chant a cappella with the rest of the congregation and then sit down as pastor Nadia moves to the front to preach. She turns to Luke 16 and tells you a parable about a manager who’s accused of wasting his master’s resources. You’re pretty sure you’ve heard this one before; the parable is about a wicked and dishonest manager who is fired for being irresponsible or stealing, you’re not sure which. Oh, but hold on a second: Nadia’s telling the story a bit differently. The manager, she tells the congregation, is getting himself in trouble because he’s being too kind and generous with the debtors. He doesn’t really care how much they owe the master because he knows they can never repay it.
     The master in the story ends up firing the manager because rumours are going around that the manager isn’t very reliable. The manager loses everything. But on his way out the door, he ends up reconciling the master and the debtors by reducing the debts. The manager knew that the debtors could never pay all that they owed on their own; they needed him to reduce it even though it ended up getting him fired. Perhaps the manager was just dishonest enough, just enough like the common people who owed his master money, that he could actually understand them.
     As you sit listening to the story, it occurs to you that the manager she’s describing is an awful lot like Nadia herself. People say she’s too much like the people she serves; too many tattoos, too much compromise, too much time spent singing with her parishioners in the local bar. They say that Nadia condones sin by welcoming people like addicts, con artists, and transgender people into her worship service. The manager suffered for being unjust, and Nadia has also suffered from people in the church that think she should clean up her act a bit and run a cleaner, purer kind of church.
     And then it occurs to you: this is exactly what Jesus was like. Jesus hung around with homeless deserve to be welcomed at all. He drove the religious leaders were going crazy because he hung out in bars and was a bit too vulgar and got tattoos. Well, ok, he didn’t have tattoos. But he hung around with people on the edges of society and he did break a lot of rules. Without sinning, of course, he became like the people he wanted to welcome, making a lot of sacrifices in the process. I imagine that some days it was a lot of fun; but other days it was downright exhausting. Sometimes he probably just wanted to go hang out in the temple with the other rabbis and talk theology. But that’s not what he came for. He came to welcome those who the rest of the church didn’t have time or space for: the foster kids, the transgender teenagers, and the refugees. He wasn’t fired for it, the way the shrewd manager was, though; he was killed instead. It was a pretty hefty price he paid to reconcile the debtors with the master.
guys and prostitutes and drag queens. He welcomed people that didn’t
     Nadia looks out at the congregation and for a second she catches your eye. The parable of the shrewd manager, she tells you, is ultimately one of radical, undeserved grace. It is about learning to speak the people’s language so that you can make space for them. After the parable finishes in Luke 16, Jesus points out that “the children of this age are more wise in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” If we want to welcome the stranger into this place, she tells the congregation, we need to learn to speak their language. Sure, they might not be clean, respectable people deserving of this time and space; but then again, neither are we!
     I’ve been reading the story of House for All Sinners and Saints this week in Pastrix, Nadia’s new book. And as I read the parable of the shrewd manager at the same time, I thought about the ways in which we, here on the corner of Osborne and Broadway, have learned to speak the language of the people Christ welcomes: inviting a Sudanese congregation and mission church to share this space; opening our doors to Agape Table, hosting events that bring together people of different backgrounds to share their gifts and learn from one another, like the Feel the Heat concert coming up next month. And then I also wondered how we might find new ways to speak their language of our neighbours. How can we make space for them? Who are the poor debtors in our neighbourhood who don’t deserve to be welcomed by Jesus but who are welcomed anyway, just for being God’s precious creation?
     And I realized that you’ve already begun exploring that question by beginning conversations about reaching out to new Canadians, to youth, and to children in West Broadway. Dietrich is excited to talk about starting a children’s music camp. Yanna is interested in how we can develop a children’s liturgy. Cynthia is committed to caring for students. Edmund is talking about having dialogues with other faith groups in the neighbourhood. What I’ve been doing over the last few weeks is getting to know this neighbourhood as well as I can in order to discern what God is calling us to in this time and place. What’s already here? What’s missing? What would a Saturday children’s church look like for the people of West Broadway?
     In two weeks, I’m planning to give you a report about what I’ve been discovering and I’ll invite you into a conversation about how God might be calling us to speak the language of our neighbourhood and offer welcome to whoever the “debtors” might be that God brings to our doorstep. How can we facilitate hospitality and reconciliation to them as Jesus does?
     In our reading from Timothy today we were reminded that no matter what our particular gifts and callings might be, we are all called to the ministry of prayer. So I invite you to join me in prayer over the next couple weeks as we discern how God is calling us to create new space for people in our neighbourhood. It might be a difficult journey and it will always involve sacrifice, but Jesus welcomes everyone to come in, cancel their debts, and join him at his table. It’s a pretty preposterous idea that makes a lot of people unhappy, but it’s also the most beautiful, the joyful, and the most life-giving thing in the world.