You Can’t Go Home Again

 The phrase, you can’t go home again, has been on my mind quite a bit this week.  This phrase, from novelist Thomas Wolfe, generally encapsulates the idea that you may return to the place which was your home but it will not be the same.  Things about it will have changed from what you remember and that’s putting aside the reality that your memories do not reflect how things actually were.

The phrase came to mind when I was thinking about the COVID restrictions, and dangers we have been under for the last two years, are finally lifted.  Things are not going to be like they were even if stores and restaurants and churches open up fully and even if we no longer have to wear the all-pervasive masks.  This idea was crystalized by the Gospel reading which we heard on Sunday.  It was Luke 4: 14-21 in which Jesus, who has begun his public ministry in Galilee, come to his hometown of Nazareth and holds forth in the synagogue reading from Isaiah which declares that the year of the Lord’s favour – prisoners set free, good news to the poor and more - and proclaims the scripture has been fulfilled. 

Things went well for Jesus initially but the crowd turned on him when he declares that there were foreigners more worthy of salvation than then they were.  They responded as you might expect – rather badly - and were going to throw him off a hill but he managed to miraculously avoid the people and puts them in their proper relation with God.  Jesus certainly found that he couldn’t go home again.  I don’t know if he expected a warm welcome and to be embraced by the people as the local boy who has made good.  Probably not, because he quotes the aphorism that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.  Indeed, he wasn’t accepted by them.  Perhaps he would have been smart to quit while he was ahead and the crowd was cheering him?  However, this is not who he was and would not have been true to his ministry.

But turning back to our present situation where COVID sets the all-pervasive parameters of day-to-day life, what can we take from the reality that we can’t, as Thomas Wolfe implies, go back to the way things were?  Are we going to bemoan the fact that COVID or some variant will be endemic and will probably be with us permanently in one form or another? Will we be more mistrustful of our institutions?  Will we be more resentful and punitive to those who question authority or protest against government restrictions in our lives?  There certainly is a possibility of all those things and more coming about. 

Of course, I have no way of knowing – my record of prognostication is mixed to say the least.  However, I do know that our response as Christians should be to follow the commandment to love our neighbours.  If non-Christians don’t want to follow that advice, perhaps following the Golden Rule will work – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – or to put it another way, treat other people the way you want to be treated.  If we do that, we will all find our new home a much better place to inhabit. 

May we all be blessed on that journey to our new home.   

 

Dare To Imagine God’s Dance Part 3

 January 2nd, I was invited to preach at the Nairn Mennonite Church.  The theme I was asked to preach on was the last in a sermon series they were using - Dare to Imagine.  The theme I was given is Dare to Imagine God’s Dance.  The sermons in this church are in the Protestant tradition of being twenty minutes or more in length which is significantly more than the usual Anglican ten minutes I am used to preaching, but I thought it was a great opportunity to explore a theme more extensively than usual so I embraced the opportunity.  I am sharing the sermon in three parts – last week was part two.  Today’s offering is third and final installment of the trilogy – to make it more in line with the usual length of this missive. 

In the story so far, God has danced the world and all that is including God’s greatest creation, into being.  God discovered that although there were many different ways of dancing with God, people needed many different rules in all those varieties of ways of dancing with God.  However, God also discovered that despite all the rules that allowed people to dance more dances with God than all the rest of God’s creation, God realized that something was still missing.  Then God realized, in the way that only God does, that people could not be a full dance partner to God.  God realized that this was so because, even though they were created in God’s image the rules prevented the dance from being all that it could be.

God sat down and pondered – something that God was getting very good at doing.  God pondered what would enable these human being – these sons and daughters created in God’s image - to be able to dance the way God had intended them to do – to dance fully in all the ways that God intended. 

What could God do to enable them to dance to all the vast variations of the music of the spheres that was available to them?

God pondered deeply, more deeply than ever before, and suddenly it came to God.  God would become one of them – one of us.  As proclaimed in the Gospel of John, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.   We would have God as our dance partner who would show us how to dance to all the music of the spheres – to dance as God intends us to dance. 

Now, people have known this before today.  Indeed, there are many people who have known how to dance with God as God intends the whole world and all people to dance with God as our partner.  Actually, people have written songs exactly about this.  We actually sang one a few minutes ago – The Lord of the Dance:

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he

Now it may be hard to believe, but despite all that God has done to invite us to the dance of the spheres, there are still many people who don’t want to join the dance with Jesus as God intends us to dance. 

Sometimes we seem to believe that it is not right or proper that we should dance in all the many ways that God intends us to dance – to dance to all the many different types of dances which will show that we love each other the way Jesus loves us.  We are wonderful at coming up for reasons and excuses why we can’t dance those ways.  This also was expressed in a song. 

With apologies to the Medical Mission Sisters:

I cannot dance, I cannot dance at the banquet,
don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot dance.

So, I invite you to try a new dance – to listen for the music of the spheres that you haven’t heard before and to join in the dance with our perfect partner- Jesus Christ, and show the love of Jesus to the world.  I invite you to dance as if no one is watching.  You don’t have to know the steps or be afraid that you might get them wrong.  Jesus does not expect you to know the steps – and doesn’t expect you to be perfect.  What he does expect is for you to accept his invitation to dance at the banquet we all have been invited to.

So, to riff of another old Christmas hymn, rather than tomorrow being my dancing day, we are called to God’s dance today:

Today shall be my dancing day;
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance;

chorus
Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

Jesus is our true love inviting us to the dance – so let us all dance the dance of love in all its variety. Amen

Dare To Imagine God’s Dance Part 2

January 2nd, I was invited to preach at the Nairn Mennonite Church.  The theme I was asked to preach on was the last in a sermon series they were using - Dare to Imagine.  The theme I was given is Dare to Imagine God’s Dance.  The sermons in this church are in the Protestant tradition of being twenty minutes or more in length which is significantly more than the usual Anglican ten minutes I am used to preaching, but I thought it was a great opportunity to explore a theme more extensively than usual so I embraced the opportunity.  I am sharing the sermon in three parts – last week was part one.  Today’s offering is part two and next week will complete the trilogy – to make it more in line with the usual length of this missive.  Here is the second installment.

The story so far – God has decided to do something new – something God had never done before – to dance.  After some thought, God decided that to dance you had to have music so God called on the music of the spheres.  …

Now you might ask if there was nothing but God, where did the spheres come from.  Well, I don’t actually know – it’s a mystery - but the music of the spheres began and God began to dance.  God, being God, knew just what the dance should be to that music.  God danced – perhaps a bit hesitantly at first because God had never danced before -- but God soon got the hang of it and just danced away until it was time (because now there was time) to stop dancing.  Now, I can’t tell you what the dance was, but I can tell you that when God stopped, he saw something new.  God saw that the dancing had created light and not only that, the light separated and there was light and there was non-light or darkness.  And God declared that his dancing was good and that what the dancing had brought forth was good.

Well, perhaps you can guess what happened after that.  The next day – because of this creation of the light where there was no light before – as I noted, God had also created time.  The next day, God danced a new dance to the new music of the spheres and God found that the dancing had produced a dome in the midst of the water which separated the water from the water.  There was water under the dome and water above.  Again, God decided that this was a good thing and declared it to be good.  After that, each day God danced a new dance to new music and something new was created. 

On the third day, God’s dancing created vegetation.  On the fourth day, God danced and brought forth the sun and the moon.  The fifth day God danced and brought forth the living creatures in the air and in the waters and wild animals of every kind that filled the earth.  And each day, God declared that what God had done was good.  God was pleased and yet God knew, in God’s omnipotence, that something was missing. 

God realized that all these things were good but they were limited in the dance.  Each of these creations could dance in a particular way but only one way.  God decided that there needed to be something else.  God then realized that God needed a creature that could be God’s full partner in the dance.  On the sixth day God ordered the spheres to bring forth the best music ever.  God danced the dance that was perfect for the music and when God danced, what had been brought forth was someone who would be a perfect dance partner - one that was created in God’s image.  And God was pleased with God’s-self and declared that this was good – it was very good indeed.

Now after all this creating, God rested because God had worked very hard and danced so many different dances.  After this, God danced with his greatest creation for a long, long time.  God discovered that although there were many different ways of dancing with God, people needed many different rules in all those variety of ways of dancing with God.  However, God also discovered that despite all the rules that allowed people to dance more dances with God than all the rest of God’s creation, God realized that something was still missing.  Then God realized, in the way that only God does, that people could not be a full dance partner to God.  God realized that this was so because, even though they were created in God’s image the rules prevented the dance from being all that it could be.

That’s all for today.  Tune in next week for the rest of the story and don’t forget to listen to the music of the spheres and try a few dance steps to that music. 

Blessings on your journey.  

Dare To Imagine God’s Dance Part 1

Sunday, I was invited to preach at the Nairn Mennonite Church.  The theme I was asked to preach on was the last in a sermon series they were using - Dare to Imagine.  The theme I was given is Dare to Imagine God’s Dance.  The sermons in this church are in the Protestant tradition of being twenty minutes or more in length which is significantly more than, the usual Anglican ten minutes I am used to preaching, but I thought it was a great opportunity to explore a theme more extensively than usual so I embraced the opportunity.  I am sharing the sermon in three parts – this week and next two – to make it more in line with the usual length of this missive.  Here is the first installment.

The theme of God’s Dance is a wonderful one and I want to thank Jay for the invitation and opportunity to share in the exploration of this theme.  As it happens, today is the ninth day of Christmas – so I think that our topic – Dare to Imagine God’s Dance is particularly appropriate.  After all you know what happens on the 9^th day of Christmas?  Well, according to the song the Twelve days of Christmas:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me - Twelve drummers drumming, Eleven pipers piping, Ten lords a-leaping, Nine ladies dancing. 

So today we have nine ladies dancing – a coincidence, or synchronicity, or perhaps good planning?  Did you know that each of the gifts in the twelve Days of Christmas represent something?  The nine ladies dancing represent the nine fruits of the Spirit as noted in Galatians 5:22-23, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  That is a wonderful way to begin to consider God’s dance.

I want to begin by a quote from Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis:

 In its truest sense, religion should reconnect human beings—bind them again—to the creation, to one another, to the Divine, to Love. Rituals, song, prayer, preaching, reflection, dancing, meditation—all of these religious practices are intended to bind us together in love and restrain us from harming one another. Religion should reconnect us to the ground of our being, to the source of our existence. . . .

Religion should help us see how our biases about color, gender, sexuality, and class cause deep hurt to both body and soul.  Religion should reconnect us to the ground of our being, to the source of our existence. 

Here we have someone’s vision of what religion should and can be.  Dr. Lewis mentions many different ways which we can do this – one of the ways is to dance.  I believe that they all can be summed up by the dance – to dance together to overcome our biases and to heal the deep hurts which those biases have caused.  How are we to learn to dance the dance that God has called us to?  To find the road which God calls us to travel, we need to go back to the beginning and see where we have been – indeed where all of creation has been and how God’s dance came to be.      

To do that, I want to tell you a story - let us image how God’s dance came to be.  Many of the best stories begin, “once upon a time.”  However, this one is different – it begins, “once upon before time.”  That’s right it begins before there was time.  Indeed, it begins before there was anything – no earth, no sun, no stars, no planets and certainly no people.  However, here was one thing – a very important thing.  There was God.  God was alone – alone all by God’s self for – well, I can’t say this was a long time because there was no time yet.

God was just God and wasn’t doing anything except being God.  Then everything changed and God decided that things should change.  God decided that rather just be, God would do – God would act.  God decided, in a flash of brilliance worthy of God, that God would dance.  Now there had never been any dancing before so it was new to God and God had to figure out what dancing was.  After some thought, God decided that to dance you had to have music so God called on the music of the spheres…

Tune in next week for the next part of God’s dance.  May you be blessed to hear the music of the spheres on your journey.