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. 

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.

When We're Faced with Suicide

World Suicide Prevention Day

Tomorrow is World Suicide Prevention Day and I find myself thinking of all the theological misconceptions around suicide. The questions people have when a loved one takes his or her own life are particularly difficult, in part because suicide is such a bizarre event that it makes us question much of what we thought to be true. I say it’s bizarre because creation is made to live and to desire life; the very fact that a person no longer desires what he or she has been created for is an unusual twist in the created order.

Nonetheless, I think it’s fair to say that virtually all of us has been affected by suicide in some way; I can’t even count the number of people I know of who have suicided, known either to me or to people I love. I use the verb “suicided” rather than “committed suicide” because it’s time we stopped putting suicide in the same category as a crime (such as, “he committed a felony”). Usually when someone “commits” something it is utterly shameful, a taboo subject in the community.

In years past, the Church has made the grave mistake of treating suicide as one such taboo subject. These deaths were explained away and condemned, the families of the deceased shamed and outcast. A person who died this was buried outside the churchyard as a symbol that he or she would not rise with the Christians on the day of resurrection and would be condemned to eternal punishment.

Fortunately, the Church now has the opportunity to acknowledge our error and take an active role in suicide prevention and care, as we have with other ancestral baggage. A suicidal person is in utterly unbearable pain, such as most of us could never imagine. Jesus calls such hurting people, saying “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:18). As the Creator-God, it is always God’s desire that God’s children choose life, promising to carry us through the darkest and most painful moments of our lives. Yet when a child dies, God is also there to catch him, to gather him into God’s arms and keep him safe there forever.

As those who are left behind to wonder and to grieve, I believe the most important thing we can do is to talk openly about suicide, as scary and painful as it can be. When a friend or family member is struggling, don’t be afraid to ask about it. Encourage her to seek help in whatever way you can, reminding her that she will come out the other side of the darkness she’s experiencing. Tell her she never needs to walk alone- and then tell her again.

Tomorrow I will wear a yellow ribbon to honour the too-short lives of those I have known and those I have not. But I also wear the ribbon as a symbol of light in dark places, a reminder that it’s ok to talk about suicide and to ask for help. Finally, I wear the ribbon as a reminder to myself that sometimes the people around me are walking in dark and lonely places. Perhaps if we can walk together, the road will be a little smoother and the burden a little lighter. Perhaps together we can come out the other side of that darkness.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, click here to contact the Manitoba Suicide Hotline