Elders Among Us

As I hurried home from the grocery store in the rainy wet this afternoon, an elderly man crossed the street opposite me, pushing his own wheelchair and stumbling on the frost heaves. I've spent enough time working with the elderly to know that such a man, bent over his own wheelchair as he was, should not be out on his own.

Approaching the man to ask where he was headed, he veered to the right to get away from me. As he did so, he fell into a puddle and could not get up on his own. As I helped him up into his chair, I assured him I was a priest and would help him get home. This seemed to bring him a little comfort, but home was obviously not where he wanted go this rainy afternoon.

Judging from his medical bracelet, I assumed the man was from the nearby hospital. To my surprise,

Singing hymns with my grandfather the week before he died

however, he told me that he lived at the personal care home around the corner. Judging from his apparent confusion and slurred speech, I had assumed he had dementia and was lost. As we walked together through the leaves, I soon realized that he did not have dementia at all, but was simply hoping to buy some shaving cream. His entire family is in England, so there is no one here to walk the two blocks to the grocery store to buy it for him.

It was difficult to make out all my new friend's words, but in those two blocks I learned that he had come over from England in the sixties and studied political science at the University of Minnesota. He went on to teach at St. Paul's College, a place I frequent in my work as chaplain. In the ensuing several minutes, we spoke of international politics, the upcoming mayoral election, and life in England after the war. I felt a little ashamed that I had assumed the man was lost; I was clearly in the presence of a very intelligent man with a fine memory. He spoke of the women in the care home, their average ages, and life at St. Paul's. A former Anglican, he converted to Roman Catholicism because "it was more clearly defined."

The nurse who called me later confirmed my suspicions: the man is an independent academic who almost never receives visitors. His illness has left his body disabled but his mind fully sharp and functioning. He can no longer get out to mass or to university events. He sits alone day after day, hoping he can just make it to the grocery store to buy some shaving cream. In a sense, I dashed that hope for him.

My visit this afternoon highlights something our communities don't often talk about. With all the questions about the future of the Church- debating about euthanasia and same-sex blessings and women in ministry- what is happening to our elders? Is it a symptom of our Church as well as our culture that once a person is no longer physically useful they are cast aside and forgotten, left to die in an institution created for just such people?

To be fair, the Church is often the last to visit forgotten shut-ins. Anglicans and others are particularly good at visiting elderly parishioners and doing monthly services at personal care homes. But it just isn't enough. We must develop a robust theology of aging.

The year before my grandfather died in a personal care home surrounded by friends and family, his dementia had become quite advanced. He looked at my mom when she dropped him off one day and said, "One day they'll put you in a place like this. And I'll be up there laughing (he pointed upward)."

It is true that elder care has come a long way in recent decades. The homes I visited in Colombia were appalling in comparison to our clean and orderly Canadian homes. But still, it is not enough. Prolonged lifespans and new ways of organizing our lives (including childlessness and longer work hours) mean that more and more of our elders are left alone to age and die. This is, without a doubt, a grievance to the Divine who cares for them so deeply. It is a grievance for our culture, which cannot learn from elders shut away in locked facilities and never visited.

Perhaps we send people away, in part at least, because we fear age. We fear the inevitability of growing old and dying. But I would contend that age is as beautiful and vital a part of our life together as youth is. When age is cast aside, our communities become imbalanced, weak. Our indigenous elders teach us that the "winter" season of life is part of the wheel which provides balance in our communities.

If we are to reintegrate the elderly into our communities, two things will be required: that we grapple with our busyness and that we grapple with our own deaths. I can't remember the last time I heard a sermon on either of these. I can't recall when they were last brought up in conversation with a sense of challenge. I've heard it said that we love to be busy to avoid the truth that we are going to die. This is not the freedom we proclaim in Christ. Perhaps it is time to become better acquainted with our own busyness and our own death.

In the meantime- visit an elder :)

Summer Tomatoes

This was not a good summer for tomatoes. I started my seedlings in March, carefully spaced them in cages, and had a friend water them when I was on holiday, but by the end of August I had nothing but soggy soil and green fruit. I wondered what I had done wrong. But when I consulted with fellow would-be tomato farmers, there was unanimous agreement: the tomatoes were a month behind this summer. The cool weather, torrential rains, and early frosts were completely out of our control. Even into October I found myself pining for that summer four years ago when my heirlooms grew huge and early, filling my freezer with a bumper crop.

Our cultivation of the spiritual life can be much the same as my tomato-tending. Sometimes there is a summer- or, more often, a year or two- when the crop is growing a month behind. It’s cold and rainy and we long for the sunnier days when toasted tomato sandwiches were in abundance. The summers of drought in the spiritual life have long been referred to as “wilderness” places in the Christian tradition. And just as even the best tomato farmer has a bad summer sometimes, so the greatest saints have been through times of darkness, doubt, and despair.

Unlike my poor summer crops, however, times of spiritual wilderness can be periods of great learning and growth. It is sometimes said that our greatest spiritual teachers and prophets have actually gone through the deepest wilderness- and it is in those places that they have learned to find God even in drought. When God seems silent and far away, it feels like anything but “new life.” Often, we are tempted to give up all together. But just as I am confident that new tomatoes will come again next year, and some day there will be another bumper crop, so I am sure that blooms will come again to the life of spiritual wilderness.

There are ways, of course, to feed tomatoes during a bad summer. Perhaps the most important thing for nurturing life with God through the wilderness is staying in Christian community. Too often, when we feel far from God, the first thing we do is fall out of touch with community. We cease the routines that once nourished us. But this can be as damaging as if I didn’t water my tomatoes in a drought! When we continue in community together, we are carried by one another’s faith for a time. The importance of community is that others give us prayers when we have none. They give us strength and encouragement to weather the storm. They become, often, the face of Christ for us. They remind us that summer will come again in abundance.

Story of a Faithful God: Genesis 45

https://soundcloud.com/allison-chubb/story-of-a-faithful-god

The God That Gives a $&#%: sermonic thoughts on Psalm 139

Psalm 139 Sermon

Pursuing our Prophets

When I was in college, I hung around with a Push The Envelope, Seek Justice, Screw The Man kind of crowd. Adults told us that we couldn’t change the world, but we believed differently. We arranged boycotts, “Buy Nothing Day” campaigns, and guerilla gardening. Scores of us taught overseas or worked in orphanages, hung out with the poor on downtown streets, and wrote letters to our MPs. It was not uncommon to wear only used clothing, to live together in large numbers, and to frequent dumpsters for day-old groceries (fondly known as “dumpster diving”). True, we were no draft dodgers, but we considered ourselves pretty radical in our little corner of the Christian College world.

Some would say that at 18 and 21 we were radical for the sake of sheer differentiation, a normal cutting of the purse strings at best. But I still believe that the reason for our social rebellion was a bit simpler than that. The reason for our insistent differentiation could be summed up in just one word: Jesus. We believed that Jesus was a homeless revolutionary, loving his neighbours to the point of death and calling his followers to do the same. If everyone loved the world the way Jesus did, we were convinced, the world would be a different place.

This kind of loving was not just about being kind to individuals, though it was also that. Loving our neighbours as ourselves took on a more corporate feel as we tried to love our neighbours economically and globally. 

How can I love my neighbour by the way I buy groceries? The place I bank? My choices of clothing, transportation, and entertainment? Granted, our response to these questions tended to be unduly simplistic in an increasingly complex global economy. But each one was wrestled with, argued over, and considered of value to how we lived our faith.

Yet as the years after graduation multiplied, increasing numbers my radical Christian friends found that their convictions around loving their neighbours did not line up with the way they’d experienced the Church. The gap between what they understood to be the values of Jesus and the values of the human institution slowly grew, until, eventually, they seemed like two things entirely. With both sadness and understanding, I watched most of these friends leave, first the Church, then the faith, and finally, theism altogether.

Some people assume that my now-atheist friends abandoned their Christian values when they abandoned the Church. But, in most cases, this simply is not true. They left the Church, not because they were leery of commitment or sacrifice, but because that is what they were looking for. Starry-eyed and idealistic, we Christian college students looked to the Church to mentor and grow us into great lovers-of-the-world who would give our very lives to the people Jesus loved. We longed for a faith that transformed economic systems, materialistic values, and individualist careers.

But what these friends of mine found in the Church only mirrored what they despised in the culture. They found there an inward-looking, survival-seeking institution unwilling to take the kind of risks they felt were required to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

Of course, it is a decade later and all of us realize that life is just not that simple. Humans are the same everywhere, at once both saint and sinner, both healed and hurting. Walking in the steps of Jesus looks differently in every context and takes the sweat and tears of a lifetime. It is never as simple as choosing to bank with a credit union.

I have chosen to live from within the institution and my friends have chosen to life from without. Yet I often think of their frustration with the institution I now inhabit and wonder what might have been different. Richard Rohr, Roman Catholic teacher and mystic, warns that the Church has long suffered from “too much priesthood and almost no room for prophets.” The result, he explains, is “a very imbalanced religion.”

As I begin my journey into this very priesthood, I am simultaneously aware of the increasing need for the prophetic among us. Our prophets are those who continually hold up a mirror from within our communities, calling us again and again to our true vocation as children of the Holy One. Israel's prophets were the ones who spoke the word of God to the people; the men and women, lay and ordained, who served as guides through the wilderness.

Let us not forget, of course, that Israel also had a history of casting aside, scorning, and even stoning her prophets. Life on the edges of the Church is not an easy place to spend life. But, increasingly, more and more of God's people are being called to dwell in that space, the spot where the Church's gifts and the world's hunger collide.

As we too enter a time of wilderness in the Church, when our future is unclear and the way forward in an ever-changing cultural context is unsure, it seems that now more than ever we need the voices of our prophets. They are singers, poets, and musicians; artists, support-workers and carpenters. Rarely are they theologians, pastors, or teachers (though of course they sometimes are). Our prophets are the ones quietly whispering along the edges of the Church, calling us home to a new way of living in the world.

Rohr continues: “the church, strange as it seems, has always been a bit uncomfortable with saints and mystics; it is content to just have people 'in the pews'”. My hope is that, as the old way of  being God's children in the world passes away and a new way emerges before us, we will hold onto that discomfort like a good dose of medicine. We will no longer be content to "just have people in the pews" but be more concerned with seeing the kingdom born among us. We need our prophets. It's an exciting time to be Church. 

When Mystery Meets Material: and God showed up today.

So today was the day. Five years after beginning my journey toward the priesthood, 16 years after my first visit to an Anglican Church, I found myself in front of an expectant congregation with bread and wine in my hands. I must have seemed a little hesitant, wondering when someone else would come up and take over, when the real priest would step in and do the real part of the consecration. But no one did.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like, as I have, allow me to give you a little snapshot before it becomes normalized like so many other things which were once new and strange. It seemed to me that the miracle of the thing lay in the normalcy of it all. There, in front of me, sat normal wine and crackers, like those I have handled so many times. Behind the altar stood normal, human, me; no better or magical than any of the people I stood to serve. At the front of the church sat a very normal baby in the arms of his mother, just baptised; wandering to my right was a common one-year-old, oblivious to it all.

The mystery of the thing was that in the midst of all that, God showed up. You won’t find here an explanation of how that happened, because I don’t understand how God works anymore than you do. 

But what I DO know is that God chooses to show up and meet us using the common stuff of life. 

Using the normal lives of you and me. These are the things God has called “good,” and these are the places we find God again and again.

As I stretched my hands over the bread and the wine this morning, there was a keen sense of a gathered community there with me, meeting God. I was not alone, and neither was the congregation alone. Together we were meeting God in that place. The rest of the world, all that we were carrying as we came together that morning, seemed to fade away as we came together to encounter the Holy One in those precious moments together.

In my peripheral vision, I could see the faces of all humanity: there were white and black, Asian, Indigenous, old, young, poor, and rich. All these looked forward expectantly as we called upon the Holy One to meet us in that place. To call creation “good” once again as we gathered together in community modeling the communal nature of our Holy Trinity.

The honour in being chosen and allowed to preside at the Eucharist today was the privilege of retelling the story of our people. For many generations, before we could read or write, our story was told and retold by our ancestors. God’s faithfulness was remembered and retold by grandmothers and grandfathers who invited us, not to simply hear the story, but to become actors in its unfolding drama. 

The mystery of the Eucharist is that as we retell the story of old we are swept up into God’s continuing work among us.

And yet, for me the greatest honour was not standing there in front of everyone invoking  our God to join us there. My greatest joy came in the form of a tiny child looking up at me as he awaited a blessing. In the face of this child all the mysteries of our faith come together: God’s taking the form of a little child; Jesus’ pronouncement that the weak are strong and the last are first; the radical welcome of the Church which says all are welcome no matter what they have to offer.

In the eyes of a little child I see the joy and hope proclaimed in the Eucharist. I see there the faith that we so often struggle with as adults. And laying my hand on the little boy’s forehead, I glimpsed what God was talking about when God promised never to leave us. No, I cannot explain to you what happened today; but God met us there.

Celebrating Vocations of Many Kinds

I'm in the middle of ordination season. Four services in six weeks has me thinking a lot about vocation and the places God calls us to as people of faith. Yet I'm ever more aware that not all of my brothers' and sisters' vocations are as celebrated by the Church as mine is, and that makes me sad.

Today I am sitting at a lakeside in Dallas, Texas, watching the animals play along the shore, and I am struck by the unique calling God has given to each one. A bald eagle soars overhead as a young squirrel explores his newfound independence. Two ducks of different breeds wander through shore debris and a a sandpiper tries to distract me from her babies. Each of God's creatures is so good, so perfect at what God has created it to be. The beetle doesn't desire to be a swan, and neither is the mockingbird interested in being a sycamore tree. Each has a unique calling and place in God's Texan creation and it is very good.

 

Humans, I think, are much the same. We have gifts and callings as a species: to care for the rest of creation, to reflect God's image, to love one another and to worship the Holy One. But God has also created us to be remarkably unique, just as each green plant is different from its neighbour. Some plants produce food, some shelter, some beauty; but we need them all, and together they create a magnificent patchwork more beautiful than any quilt.
 
I'm afraid that, as a Church, we haven't been too good at celebrating the diversity of these vocations among us. I am called to be a priest, and that is good; but you may likewise be called to be a biologist or a scholar or a stay-at-home mom and that is also good. It seems to me that some people are called to very specific places in life- such as a juvenile detention centre, say- while others are called to pursue their vocation in the midst of whatever circumstances they find themselves. Perhaps vocation is less about what we do and more about how we do it.

I'm reminded of a family friend who is undoubtedly called by God to his job as a CEO. There was a time when I would have considered such a vocation to be a bit less honourable, a little less Christian, than a career in “ministry.” But I was deeply wrong. As a CEO, a Christian can influence policy and trade practices in a way which honour Christ and his call to love others, to care for the poor, and to tend the earth. A Christian CEO can make money to feed the hungry and to effect positive change throughout the Church and across the globe.

My sister has a vocation to nursing. Nurses are charged with loving and caring for some of God's most precious and vulnerable in a way that not many of us are. Still another kind vocation is experienced by retired people: praying for the Church, visiting the sick, loving and teaching the young, among other things.

Each of our vocations is a deeply valuable part of God's world and deserves to be treated as such. How might we develop a way of discerning and affirming lay vocations as we have done for so long with clerical ones? Perhaps we could begin with celebration. Some of the healthiest and “home”iest communities I've read about or experienced are ones who know how to celebrate. Let's celebrate one another's accomplishments and calls and milestones. Let's learn to encourage one another in the new places God calls us to.

Next, we will need to learn to pray for one another. The discernment of a clerical vocation requires a great deal of prayer and contemplation which should not be restricted to religious professionals! As we learn to invite God into our plans for the future and the unfolding of our careers and ministries, perhaps we will learn to see them more as service we're called to rather than burdens required of us. I would like to learn to see all of life this way: why does God have me in this place at this time? What am I called to here? How can I honour Christ in the midst of this activity?

When I begin to see my life in this way, it helps me think less in terms of the rat race and more in terms of gift. And instead of pursuing wealth, prestige and comfort, I begin to find myself in pursuit of love, of peace, and of holiness. Because just as God has given each small bird and every green plant a purpose and goal for which it is perfectly suited, so too has God called each one of us to a way of life in which we are called to flourish, to bless others, and to bring glory to the Holy One.

The Night Which Changes Everything: Easter Vigil Sermon on Matthew 28:1-10

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Tonight is the night which changes everything.


Shortly before 6am, before the downtown businesses have opened and the night watchmen have finished their shifts, a couple of blue collar women slip out the back door of their rented row house and catch a bus to the cemetery. They each clutch a small package of grocery-store carnations, trying to protect the blooms a little from the cool spring breeze. Blinded by grief, they stare straight ahead as the events of the last few days swirl through their minds. The whole thing feels so surreal.

Jesus had cared for Mary Magdalene and her friend Mary like few people ever had. He didn’t treat them as lesser for being women and uneducated. No, Jesus had believed in those women and in their struggles. He had walked with them through the greatest joys and the greatest sorrows of their lives. Unlike the other religious leaders, he didn’t shy away from suffering. If anything, he embraced it: Jesus had taught them that God could be found in the suffering of men and women just like them.

They’d never heard anyone talk about God like that before. They’d always believed that God was somewhere out there, you know; up with the fancy folks at the church who had education and titles and pretty outfits. If they were really good, God might throw the normal folks a crumb or two, but beyond that God wasn’t much interested in people like them.

But Jesus made them feel like God was right there with them. Like God wanted to be one of them and move in next store.  Jesus had been on his way to making a big difference in the world. He was going to change things. His disciples were helping him build a movement which was going to bring justice to the streets and hold the corrupt politicians and the drug dealers and the slum landlords responsible for the pain caused to their people.

Where were those men, anyway? The women had hardly seen the disciples since they’d all taken off when Jesus was arrested. After all Jesus had gone through with them, they couldn’t even hang around when he was being sentenced to die. They were terrified, obviously, and it was true that they would have been at greater risk than the women were. No one paid any attention to a couple of crying, blue-collar women. They didn’t matter. But they mattered to Jesus.

Mary Magdalene and her friend Mary lived in a world of scarcity, where there was never enough for everyone; where it was every person for him or herself, and where death held power over life. But what they didn’t know on their way to the grave that day was that this was the night which changes everything. This was the death to conquer all death. This is the climax of our story.

Because we too live in a world which claims there is never enough for everyone, where it is every person for him or herself, and where life seems to be at the mercy of death. We spend much of our lives trying to stay just a step or two ahead of illness, of poverty, of loneliness, and ultimately- of death.  But in the last two days, Jesus has descended deep into the heart of death and has bound its power. In rising from the dead, Jesus has declared for all of creation that death no longer has the final say over our lives. In the resurrection of Jesus, we have been given a different story to live by, one which stands in stark contrast to the story of scarcity: it is the story of abundance. “I am the resurrection and the life,” says Jesus, “I am enough.”

To see the difference between the story of scarcity and the story of abundance, we only need to look at our Gospel for today. Here we meet women who are terrified and yet bold enough to stand in the presence of the angel at the tomb, while it is the guards who are so afraid that they become “like dead men.” This is important because in first century Palestine, Jewish women were the very definition of powerlessness. If anyone should be living by the story of scarcity, it is them. These women had very little control over their lives, their finances, their families, or their health. They had every reason to be afraid.

But in first century Palestine, the Roman soldiers were the definition of power. What their position represented was life and health and abundance, because the emperor had made himself lord over all of this. The emperor controlled who lived- and who died. So it’s strange that we find the gate-keepers of life and death paralyzed with fear in the face of the resurrection.

This is our first hint that something has changed. In defeating the power of death, Jesus has exposed the story of scarcity for what it really is: a lie. The resurrection of Jesus has shown that the power of the emperor is really no power at all, and not something to be feared. Jesus makes it possible for the women to live unafraid. He enables them to see that life is the victor- not death- and he invites them to come and join him in the story of abundance.

It is true that the women leave the angel in fear, but this is a different kind of fear than the soldiers had. It is the sort of fear, mixed with overwhelming joy, which comes from realizing that this is the night which changes everything. This is the climax of their story.

But their story does not begin at the resurrection. New Testament scholar Stanley Hauerwas explains that the women are only enabled to see the resurrection because they have walked with Jesus through the crucifixion. That is why the women are the first to see the resurrected Jesus- they were the ones who walked the whole way with him through his suffering, the ones who wiped his face as he struggled toward Golgotha, the ones who stayed by his side as he died.

In my chaplaincy class at the Vic a few years ago, we were told to take this kind of approach with people who are suffering. My teacher explained that most people’s first reaction, when dealing with a person who suffers, is to try and make it better. We want that person to experience the joy of resurrection right away, without having to descend first into the pain of the crucifixion with them. But as anyone who has suffered knows, this just isn’t possible. When someone treats our pain like a thing to be fixed or avoided, they only make the pain deeper.

The job of a chaplain, my teacher explained, is to descend with the hurting one all the way down, being present with them to the very bottom of their pain just as the women were present with Jesus during those long and dark hours of Thursday and Friday. Then, and only then, once they’ve experienced the crucifixion with him, are they enabled to come up out of that darkness to join him in the joy of the resurrection.

The resurrection isn’t good news because it denies our suffering. That would be as much of a lie as the story of scarcity. Until God’s kingdom comes in all its fullness, pain and suffering continue to break in on our lives even though they have lost their final power. The resurrection is good news because it means we have a God who goes deep, down into our suffering and dwells there with us- but that God does not allow our pain and brokenness to have the final say.

Jesus enables us, as he enabled Mary Magdalene, to live unafraid. In a world where suffering appears to be the only truth, we are given new eyes to see life bursting forth everywhere. In a world where there never seems to be enough for everyone, we are given hope that in Christ there is enough. In a world where death appears to have the final say, we are given a narrative which declares that life wins in the end, despite all evidence to the contrary.

In a few minutes, we will be invited to renew again the promises of our baptism, declaring our intention to live by the story of abundance and not by the story of scarcity. Declaring that we too wish to die with Jesus because we know that in his death, death itself has lost its power. Declaring that we too wish to be resurrected with Jesus because we know that in his resurrection, we are given real life.

Living as a people of abundance will make no sense to the world around us, just as it made no sense to the Roman soldiers. As a resurrection people, we are called to live as if the death and destruction and darkness in our world hold no power. Because on this side of the kingdom we continue to be wounded and to die, but that is not the end of the story for us.

Jesus’ resurrection was not the resuscitation of his corpse, like coming back from a coma. No, Jesus’ resurrection was the victory of life over death. Jesus’ resurrection means that he will never die again and in him we can become people of resurrection both in life and in death. When we die with Jesus, the narrative of death no longer reigns over our lives.

Over the coming year we will explore with Mary Magdalene and with the early Church what it actually looks like to die and be raised with Jesus. We will wrestle with the implications of living as a people of abundance in the midst of a culture of scarcity. But for now, only one thing matters: He is Risen!

The women have just met with Jesus in the back alley behind the cemetery and they hurry to catch a bus home to tell his disciples. The sun has risen now, but they aren’t worried about who will see them anymore. Just as they were overwhelmed by grief only an hour or two ago, so now they are so overcome with excitement they can hardly contain themselves. They have a growing sense that nothing is going to be the same after this. Christ is risen. Life has won. Alleluia.

The Ancient Things We Do: Confession

I was a little shocked when one Sunday during Lent my priest stood up and announced that the clergy would be hearing confessions throughout the Lenten season. But my shock gave way to intrigue as the idea rolled around in my mind over the coming weeks. Imagine saying all those things you've being carrying around for years to one other human being, and then being absolved and set free. At the very least, it was worth trying as an ethnographic experiment.

Eight years later, I find myself kneeling before my confessor in a hospital chapel for what has become my bi-annual practice. It occurs to me that I have less time to collect sin between Advent and Lent (three months) than between Lent and Advent (nine months!), so this shouldn’t take very long. I reach into my coat pocket and draw out a crinkled piece of paper with my list.

As I trudged through a snowy field on my way to the chapel this afternoon, I wondered why I keep coming to the confessional long after the intrigue of the thing has faded. Not a common Anglican practice, even my confessor seems to find my diligence a little odd. My mind skips back to another confession not long ago. It had been a long and difficult year, and by the time I arrived at Lent’s doorstep I was holding more than I could carry. My confessor at that time, Andrew, had recently preached about clay. He spoke of our difficulty in allowing ourselves and others to be clay. We try to pretend we’re made of tougher stuff and we expect others to do the same, but God created us to be clay and called it good. Clay, Andrew told the crowd at our early morning worship service, is mouldable. With warm and gentle hands, it can by softened and sculpted and changed. Clay is what we are called to be.

I went to Andrew for confession later that Lent to lay down all those things I was carrying which prevented me from being soft, mouldable clay. Anything causing- or being caused by- guilt, fear, anxiety or shame, I brought and named before Andrew and God that day. I named things I had done, but should not have; and things I had not done, but should have. I brought him my “sins,” those one-time events I was individually responsible for, and my “Sin,” that greater societal brokenness of which I am apart. And when I finished naming those things out loud, Andrew asked if I also forgave those who had hurt me. And then he told me that through Jesus I was absolved of all sins and all Sin and was restored to wholeness.

When those words have been said over me, I can no longer carry those things around with me anymore- like an old backpack slowly collecting stuff as it becomes heavier and heavier- because all that was preventing me from becoming soft clay has been given away. I am not free to take any of it back. One time, the priest took my list and set it on fire, preventing me from even looking at it again. Sometimes, as I walk away, I am tempted to revisit the things I’ve left behind. To turn them over in my hands just one more time, making sure I haven’t missed anything. But I can’t. They are gone.

I’ve often heard Protestants say that confession can be made to God, and that’s enough. But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes there’s something about bringing those hard parts of our clay-selves and naming them before another one made from clay. Naming all of our fear and brokenness and sin out loud tends to release the power those things hold over us. Accountability has been a Christian discipline for centuries, and this is one way of doing that in a safe and structured environment.

And I do love structure. But the formal practice of confession isn’t for everyone. I know one priest that makes a point of having lay people as confessors, thereby stating his conviction that all baptised people are called to the ministry of reconciliation. Still other people are able to name things before God, in the silence of their hearts, and then walk away.

The word “repentance” means turns turning around and walking in the other direction. The liturgy of reconciliation enables me to focus more on the turning around part than the dropping-off-the-heavy-backpack part. I informed Andrew one time, “But it seems too easy!” and he just smiled and responded gently, “It was never meant to be hard.”

But sometimes it is hard. I have met people in the winter years of their lives who’ve carried around deep secrets for decades, wrought with shame and unable to forgive themselves. Jesus reminds us, “Come to me! All you who are weary and burdened- and I will give you rest.” Jesus takes all of that heaviness with him to the cross tonight and tomorrow so that we need not carry it into our own winter years. Jesus takes those things into the battle with death so that life can reign in our lives. Death and sin and brokenness no longer have the final say.

Being Transformed: New DNA (Romans 12)

Some thoughts on Romans 12 and living into our new identity in Christ, from the April 6th Evensong with All the King's Men at St. John's College: Being Transformed

The Ancient Things we Do: Mothering Sunday

In churchland we maintain some remarkably odd practices. Take Mothering Sunday, for instance. An odd name for Mother’s Day, I presumed? Nope. Last week my priest buddy, less green and more intense than myself, sent me a text announcing that I needed to find the small bottles of oil in the college chapel used for anointing the sick, the dying, and the newly baptized, and bring them to the cathedral to be refilled.

No problem, I thought to myself. Just grab those bottles and take them to the church. Wrong.

It turns out that Mothering Sunday is one of those ancient practices we continue to observe which look like it’s been pulled from historical fiction. As I followed my friend’s instructions, down to the finest detail, I felt like I was LARPing rather than doing my job. The process was fascinating.

The oils left from several years ago had gone completely rancid, sticking to the bottom of the bottle like old honey. Nothing new could be added until the old had been removed. I called my mentor. “You’re sure I can’t just pour this down the sink?” I asked, a little whiny. Nope. The oil had to be burned.

How does one burn rancid oil out of the bottom of a tiny glass jar, you’re wondering to yourself?? After several failed ideas and consultations, I came up with a solid plan. Squatting in front of my fire place, I carefully wiped out each jar with a rag and lit the rags on fire, consuming all the oil. As I watched the flame soar up from the earth, I felt like I was sitting on holy ground. Here was sacred oil, sent out into the world to be a blessing to the vulnerable, being returned to God in fire and ashes.

At the cathedral service, the new oil was blessed, that it would be comfort and hope to those to be anointed, spread out across our diocese in all the diversity of their homes and lives. I thought of how elemental it is to take something as common as oil and make it into something sacred which nourishes community and draws us into the life of the Holy One. And just as oil brings flavour to food and fills our bodily cravings, so now this oil is sent out to flavour our life in spirit.

This Christian tradition of ours, with its ancient rituals and mysterious rites, has an intriguing way of mixing the sacred with the profane, using the stuff of normal days to usher us into relationship with the Divine. Quite unlike the powerful top-down institution it has often become, the call of Christianity has always been to affirm the goodness of everyday life and to find God in all the small and normal places. There’s a reason our God took on humanity and pitched his tent among us.

In a culture where everything is disposable and even our most valuable possessions are made to break (as I write on a cracked computer screen!) there’s something life-giving about investing sacred qualities in physical things. Sure, I could have just dumped out my oil and no one would have known or cared. I could simply anoint a dying woman with oil from my kitchen. But when I am careful to return to the earth by fire that which has been consecrated for holy use, I am declaring my belief that God inhabits our time and space. God comes and dwells among us and uses the stuff of our lives to create life and mystery and hope.

In a world where even human beings are treated like commodities, the blessing of oil says that the simplest things are chosen and used by God. The oil is a tangible reminder that we are never alone in our journey or sickness or even in death- that the Holy One comes and dwells with us just as Jesus walked among us on this same dusty earth.

I’m struck by how the burning of the old and the blessing of the new mirrors my own messy life. That old oil can stick to me like crystalized honey sometimes, but it has to be burned away before it can be filled with bright new oil. The old might not be bad exactly, but it is not the best. It has grown stagnant and it is difficult to bless others with that old oil. But just as the Holy Spirit dwells with the sacred oil, so the Holy Spirit dwells with me, filling me up to be a gift which overflows Christ onto the world. It is not, of course, the oil that is sacred. The oil comes from Superstore! But it’s what God chooses to do with that oil that marks the story of our faith. And it's an ancient story.

Abraham, You, and the Pilgrimage of Faith

https://soundcloud.com/allison-chubb/pilgrimage-of-faith

dust. noun. the stuff of life.

I know there are lots of things I’m good at. But being mortal isn’t one of them. I like to think that I can do everything and please everyone, not taking rest and not making mistakes. I get frustrated when I’m tired or sick or in pain. I wonder why I only accomplished seven out of the 17 things on my to-do list.

And this, my friends, is why I have ashes smeared across my face this afternoon. Ash Wednesday is one of the few chances we’re given in our culture to stop and acknowledge our own mortality. I like to call it, dustiness. Yeah, I’m dusty. And that’s okay. You are too. Being mortal means being fallible and sinful and making mistakes. It means being tired and grumpy and needing to rest. It also means I will die.

Think about it: we spend most of our lives pretending we aren’t going to die. When a conversation around death arises, people tend to speak in hushed tones or discretely excuse themselves. Many families don’t even have funerals anymore, so averse are we to thinking and talking about death. The problem is, people still die and I am still mortal. Avoiding our own mortality leaves a hole of fear in our lives that we rush to fill with other things.

Today, however, I sit quietly and take it all in. My mortality, in fact, is a beautiful gift. We are like the lilies of the field, here today and gone tomorrow. And yet, not one bit of life is the same as another. There is something beautiful and whole and good in every bit of life we encounter. It is a fragile thing, like a cherry blossom or a newborn bird. It does no good to treat it like it will not be easily broken.

This is also why, historically at least, we fast today. It reminds us of all the things we rely on other than God. There's nothing like hunger to help us let go of the mirage of immortality. At the same time, by fasting we declare that we take our life from something more than animal-like needs. As humans, we are mortal like the animals but called to something more as bearers of the Divine Image.

Yet it is a mistake to make Ash Wednesday- and the ensuing season of Lent- into something about ourselves. Today we are called to repent of all the ways we mess up by turning again to God. But mostly are called to simply acknowledge who we really are and who God really is. It’s tempting to make Lent more about our own repentance, about a call to pull ourselves together and be better people. But with the ashes we are acknowledging that we cannot, in fact, be better people. We will always be mortal and we will always be sinful. So we come to the ashes again and again, proclaiming that it is only God who is the Creator, the Healer, and the Redeemer. All that is asked of us today is to tell the truth about ourselves and to allow God to enfold us once again in his loving care.

Don’t misunderstand me. Of course repentance means turning away from darkness and toward light. But even then, it is God who enables us, even as we remain very dusty people. We pray the ancient Psalm together:

 

For behold, you look for truth deep within me,

      and will make me understand wisdom secretly.

Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure;

      wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

      and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence

      and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

As I sat in a midday service today, I was reminded of the prophet Ezekiel, taken in a vision to a valley of dry bones. His guide says to him, “O son of man, can these dry bones live?” And a baffled Ezekiel responds, “You know.” God promises to bring life to our dustiness, to make the dryness of death flourish with the greed of life. This is the mystery of our faith- and indeed, of life itself. All we must do now is declare ourselves dust.

Moving into Lent: Economics of Power

https://soundcloud.com/allison-chubb/economics-of-power-and

Living Between Times: Sermon on Malachi 3:1-5

I stumbled along the path in front of me as the night closed in on both sides. I can’t remember a night before or since being so black: holding out my hand in front of me, it disappeared into the darkness. I wondered where all the stars had gone. It occurred to me that if I stepped off the path now, I might disappear into the Canadian shied forever. I was at a chaplaincy retreat in a rural retreat centre and my cabin was unusually far from the main camp. I stopped, alone on the path, wondering what to do next. I couldn’t keep going this way, unable to see a thing in front of me. Salvation came in the form of my cellphone. The light was tiny and dim, but it was just enough to get me safely back to the cabin. In the morning, as the sun shone on the path as I walked back to camp, I had to laugh at myself for being so worried the night before. The path was so obvious in the sunlight!

This morning the Israelites find themselves stumbling through a similar darkness, wondering where God has gotten off to and how they can possibly reach their destination without his light guiding them. They have made the journey through the wilderness from exile in Babylon back to Israel, and after years of hard work, they have finished rebuilding their temple. But they remain under the control of the Persians, a fierce nation that was strong enough even to overthrow Babylon.

The Persians encouraged the returning Israelites to rebuild their temple, but it seemed to always be on Persian terms. The Israelites could have a sanctuary, but not a watchtower; an overseer but not a full order of priests. For decades the Israelites had been dreaming of the day they would return to their homeland, when their independence would be restored and God would be their king. They dreamed of the days of Jubilee, when the poor would be treated fairly and they could earn a living wage without having to give half of it back to the Persians in taxes.

But that day didn’t seem to be coming. It seemed to be a lost dream, because even though they’d finally returned to their hometown, things weren’t much better than they’d been in Babylon. There were still orphans living in the streets, single moms forced to work as prostitutes, warlords keeping an eye on everyone and taking the best of everything. “Where on earth is God??” They wondered. “Has he abandoned us here? Whatever happened to the “God of justice” who’s supposed to be always with us?” They seemed to be living in-between-times: between the glory days when the temple was full of laughing children and groups of young men studying Torah; and the promised future, when God’s messenger would come to restore his people and his temple.

When they were honest, though, the Israelites had to admit that they contributed to the problem about as much as the Persians did. They got tired of waiting for God to deal with the Persians, so they developed a few of their own strategies: just a little dishonest deal here, skipping the temple tithe there; cutting corners on the way of life God required of them just to get ahead a little. Living in between the glory of the temple’s past and the glory of its future seemed like wandering in the darkness, hoping for a little light to lead the way.

2400 years later, we once again find ourselves wandering between times. The Church in Canada, once filled with laughing children and curious youth, is closing more doors every week. We find ourselves longing for the days when our buildings were the hub of the community, brimming with activity seven days a week. A couple weeks ago I went on a tour of a church just up the street and heard stories about the 20’s and 30’s when there were 1500 people on the parish list and 200 teachers in the Sunday school. The parishioners filled the neighbourhood, and the needs of the community were the needs of the parish.

Yet by 1940, war brought exile to the community and just as the Israelites were sent off to Babylon, the young men of the parish were sent across the ocean to fight in Europe. When the war was finally over, the parishioners began moving to the suburbs and leaving the old church behind. The parish entered a long, dark, in-between time, when they longed for the days of the past and wondered what the days of the future would bring. As the neighbourhood became filled with poverty and violence, some people even ventured to ask the question others were thinking, the same one asked by the Israelites: “Where is the God of justice we keep hearing about?”

“But look!” Malachi says to the Israelites, “God has not forgotten you! During these times of darkness and uncertainty God strengthens you and leads you by a small but strong light- his promise to be faithful."

Malachi goes on to remind the Israelites of what God’s faithfulness looks like- God will send his messenger; the purity of temple worship will be restored; justice will reign (though it will not be easy, especially for the oppressors). But a prophet’s primary concern is never what is going to happen in the future. Malachi’s main point is to show his people that God’s promise to be faithful is light enough to guide them today, through the darkest valley and the most uncertain times.

Since the beginning, Israel’s relationship with God has been based upon God’s promise of faithfulness. He makes promises to care for them, to go ahead of them, to provide for them- all that is asked of Israel in return is that she remain faithful, trusting that God’s promises will carry her through.

In the book of Malachi we have reached the end of the Old Testament, and God’s promises of faithfulness will have to be enough to carry the people through for four hundred years, until Jesus is presented in the temple as the light of the world they’ve been waiting for. In the promise of the coming messiah, God takes hold of his people and does not let them go. For four hundred years they will be without another prophet, struggling to defend their temple, living in oppression under one foreign power after another. But they cling to God’s promise to restore Israel, knowing that it is enough. And even when they forget, complaining against God and taking matters into their own hands, God carries them through by those same promises as they move toward the coming messiah.

Today we celebrate the dedication of the baby Jesus in the temple, the light of the world long awaited by the people of Israel. But now we also find ourselves in a strange in-between time, wondering when Christ will return in glory to establish the kingdom of justice and mercy long ago promised to us. Sometimes we even dare to ask one another, “Where is the God of justice?”

The good news is that today the prophet Malachi comes to us to proclaim the same hope as he brought to the Israelites long ago. We have often heard that God is a God of covenant, which means that God communicates and sustains his people through his promises. The ancient feast of lights or candlemas, which we celebrate today with the presentation of Christ in the temple, is really a celebration of God’s faithfulness- his promise-keeping.

God does not leave us alone in the uncertainty of the future, but promises to carry us safely into the future just as he brought Israel through her uncertainty. “I will never leave you and I will never forsake you” he tells us in Joshua, “and I have plans to give you hope and a future” he promises to Jeremiah. Malachi reminds us that while the journey into the future we hope for is not an easy one, God’s justice will purify and refine us into the community we’ve been called to be.

So now that God has made the promise to bring us into the future and to care for us along the way, we are given the same choice as the Israelites. We can take hold of God’s promises and engage them, or we can sit back and wait for them to happen. As we wait for the promised messenger to arrive so that justice can be established, we learn that God’s promises are messengers for the in-between times. One way that we take hold of God’s promise to be faithful is by stepping out into an uncertain future by trusting in the God who promises to go there with us. The light of God’s faithfulness doesn’t promise to show us the entire path back to the camp; but it is enough to keep us going, trusting in the one who calls us to new adventures during these in-between times. And just as Israel grew and changed, learning more about herself and about God in the journey between Malachi and Jesus, may we also grow and be changed into God’s likeness.

The Darkness and The Light: Mental Illness and the Coming of Spring

I get excited this time of year when I realize that the days have started getting longer. Especially in Manitoba. There’s nothing like the feeling of getting up in the dark and going home in the dark and feeling like it’s never going to end as we drag by December 21^st, the longest day of the year. I make crafts.  I watch TV. I wait.
But today is January 22^nd and it’s still light out as I hurry for the bus after work. Even though many weeks of cold still lie ahead, I know the end is coming. The dark winter will be over, I will wear less than 6 layers in the morning, and I will wake with the feeling that it isn’t still night. Yes, summer is on the way.

Yet, thinking of the hope that comes with the longer days- even 5 and 10 minutes longer- reminds me of my friends, family, colleagues, and students whose days are not becoming any brighter just yet. The ones over whom mental illness has settled like December 21^st itself, that long and dark day which seems to never end. Apparently, we’re in sight of “mental health awareness week,” and I keep hearing a cheerful voice on the radio from Bell Network saying, “Fortunately, you can make a difference! Just text this number…” Every time I hear the voice, I find myself yelling back at it, “No! You can’t make a difference!”, annoyed by the simplicity of the idea that sending a text could somehow put an end to the darkness faced by so many dear ones.

The truth is, mental illness is on the rise at an alarming rate in this country- particularly among our students. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, suicide… sometimes I feel like a walking DSM5 just because of the people I interact with and love on a daily basis. There seems to be an epidemic of hopelessness which refuses to be quarantined. Just as I cannot make spring come any faster, so do we seem utterly helpless in the face of the darkness of mental illness. Perhaps it is all the more confusing, since we Canadians have become accustomed to having a degree of relative autonomy and control, that something so debilitating can escape us. You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it too.

It is often at these darkest times that people find themselves stumbling into the strange world of faith, with its metaphors of dark and light, valley and mountaintop, wilderness and homecoming. Because mental illness is something quite outside our ability to categorize and understand, it is frequently with metaphors and bodily memory that people are able to trudge their way through it. Ideally, the world of faith forces people outside of themselves, so that they can see themselves as part of a bigger story in which light and darkness come and go and in which the light of resurrection always has the final say.

When we are overcome by our own darkness, Christ promises to be light for us. When we wander through the wilderness, lost and alone, Christ will be our homecoming. And when it seems like the darkness itself is caving in on us, God has promised to fight on our behalf.

It is a miracle of life that those who find themselves weakened by mental illness are often the ones who do community better than those of us who are self-sufficient enough to forge ahead on our own. They are often the ones with hearts big enough to love the stranger and forgive the unlovable. Because wisdom and endurance are developed in the wilderness. Sometimes, during cold Manitoba winters, we talk about how hearty and strong our ancestors must have been and I can see some of that hearty endurance in the courage of those who suffer the dark days of mental illness.
But while I’d like to say there’s some great purpose to the darkness, some greater good which will be worth it all in the end, that would be naïve. Sometimes, there is no endurance developed in the wilderness, but only chronic pain. It shouldn’t be. And when God’s kingdom comes in its fullness, such suffering will be no more. But until then, the Holy One really will be spring for us. And spring won’t be long now.

Epiphany Feast: Being World-Changers

I used to think that God was looking for people who could change the world. (Okay- most of the time I still do). We’ve all been inspired by the likes of Mother Teresa and Mahatma Ghandi, but my youth has been jammed full of these kinds of figures. When I was five it was my grandmother’s stories of heroic missionaries who cured the sick, wrote down languages for the first time, championed education, and connected the story of Jesus with the spiritual teachings of far-flung tribes in unheard of places.

When I was 12, it was Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, the prophet Micah calling his people to care for the poor, and St. Paul heroically braving prisons and beatings and shipwrecks. At 18, I began looking to Paulo Freire, transforming an entire continent through the power of education; Heather Mercer, imprisoned in Afganistan; and my own uncle, born in Uganda to a family of 18, who now develops innovative ways for the poorest countries to grow more and better food.

When I went to Colombia to change
the world, I discovered new heroes.

God, it was clear to me, is looking for these kinds of people: giants who can really make a differencein the world, pulling it toward the place it was made to be, the world I’ve come to call “the kingdom of God.” But here’s the problem: when you or I stand beside such people we are lost in their shadows. When we set out to be Ghandi  or Freire, we are not becoming the people God is looking for. No, God is not looking for people capable of changing the world: God is looking for people who know they can’t change the world.

I know, it sounds ridiculous. God NEEDS us. We are God’s hands and feet. But two things have convinced me that these are the sorts that God is looking for: the realization that we are created for community, and the truth that God is the one who changes things, not me. Each of the people I’ve mentioned above as heroes were members of movements; large, extended communities that changed the world together. Not one of them acted on their own, and (to my knowledge), not one of them tried.

Why? Because these people knew that God is the one who changes the world; God is the one who builds the kingdom, the one who calls us to be part of what God is already up to. When I try to be the person who changes the world (whatever that looks like), I end up pulling myself away from community and from the movements God is already creating.

Tomorrow, we will celebrate the Feast of Epiphany, a season which reminds us that God shows up in unexpected places among unexpected people. In Epiphany, God is revealed to the world as a “light to lighten the Gentiles.” The significance of this can be hard for us to understand today, but the fact that it was Gentile wise men who brought gifts to the toddler Jesus is very important. The seers were not the types that might have been expected to be world-changers that day and neither was that their intention. Instead, they were merely doing their job, following their God, and working together. God asks no more- and no less- from you and me.