Who's an Apostle?

Early this morning – actually very early, I was visited by a memory of a time I was asked what an apostle was.  It is interesting and perhaps revealing what memories arrive unsought in the wee hours of the morning.   That time is often referred to as the witching hour for good reason.  They often seem to be memories of events that are not high on the agenda of things that you want the world to know about.  That was not necessarily so in this case.

My response to the question was, “an apostle was someone who has seen the risen Christ.”  Now this is not what might be called the usual definition.  The word usually refers to the disciples of Jesus particularly those who were sent to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ and evangelise.  The entry in Wikipedia notes:

An apostle (/əˈpɒsəl/), in its most literal sense, is an emissary, from Greek ἀπόστολος (apóstolos), literally "one who is sent off", from the verb ἀποστέλλειν (apostéllein), "to send off".^[1] The purpose of such sending off is usually to convey a message, and thus "messenger" is a common alternative translation; other common translations include "ambassador" and "envoy"

My answer to the question of apostleship was one that I didn’t give much thought to at the time either before or after giving it.  It was based on the apostleship of Paul who claimed that he was an apostle based on his vision of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus which occurred after the resurrection. 

He makes this claim to being an apostle a number of times including the opening salutation in this letter to the Romans, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,”.  The criterion for seeing the resurrected Jesus is also address in the first chapter of Acts by Peter:

So one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.’ (Act 1:21-22)

My early morning musings led me to wonder if this is a good definition for Christians today.  After all none of us were there during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension.  And very few of us can claim to have has a Road to Damascus experience like Paul.  So, what can it mean to have seen the resurrected Christ in our lives today?

If we take St. Paul as a model or type of the modern Apostle, Paul had his life completely changed from a fervent persecutor of the first followers of Jesus, to someone who can be seen as responsible for establishing what became the Christian Church.  After all, Jesus Christ did not set out to found the new religion of Christianity.  Paul understood that his vision of the risen Christ was a call to metanoia - to repentance.   He followed that understanding with action and changed his whole life.  Actually, he didn’t change completely.  He was just as fervent and dedicated – you might say fanatical - after the experience as before, just in a good way.

We can see the risen Christ in our lives as a call to repentance – a call to change course in our lives when it goes off course and misses the mark.  When our lives run into roadblocks to becoming the people God created us to be, we can watch for those signs of the risen Christ who comes and set us straight – probably not in as extreme a way as in Paul’s case -- but perhaps it might just be in another way that is hard to ignore.  Above all we can put these experiences into how we live our lives as Paul did.

That will be a true blessing on your journey. 

Sermon July 23, 2017 6th Sunday after Trinity

Being baptized in to death is not a very appealing idea.  I don’t know about you but the idea of dying is not something I embrace and welcome.

We do not normally embrace death.  Indeed, I was listening to a program on CBC radio this week —an episode of Ideas, that wonderful program that explores exactly as it is named— ideas for our world today.  This episode was an interview with Yuval Harari.  He is an historian who speculates about where humankind is heading.  A lot of his speculation is hopeful but a lot of it is troubling.

Harari proposes that the next great technological breakthrough is going to be the development of immortality—or at least the quest for it.  He proposes that no one would want to have a pill that would guarantee you a life span of a million years.  However, he says that everyone (he does qualify by saying almost everyone) would agree to living ten years longer in good health.  Harari proposes that technological breakthroughs will offer extended life and extended mental capacity to people.  However, as with all technology it will be at a price—one that is going to be very expensive.  What will then develop is a Brave New World with biologically separated classes—a cast system which will be based on biological inequality.

This is a very frightening possibility.  But if you look at the premise, who wouldn’t want to extend their lives by ten years of good health,  Then when the ten years is over you can be offered another ten years and so on and so one – ad infinitum.  It would be a renewable contract.  I certainly would like a longer life in good health.  But opening that Pandora’s Box of eternal life is another matter entirely.  I don’t know how many times I would want to renew that contract.

What would it mean if we did not have the reality of our mortality informing our lives?  We would certainly be tempted to believe that we were like God’s and live our lives accordingly.  Out mythological first parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden as God feared they would eat of the tree of life and become gods.  The danger of that temptation has been a reality since we began to walk this earth. 

How, then, does this relate to being baptized into death to being buried with Jesus by baptism into death?  It is exactly this desire to be immortal that the story of the Garden of Eden was warning against.  When we are baptized into death with Christ it is exactly what we are dying to.  We are dying to the old life in which we can have the temptation that we can be like god and have life eternal and all the power that goes with it.

When we are baptised we die to the old life of desiring to be in control of our live and trying to maintain that control of ourselves and our world.  Jesus came into the world to show us that this way of being was wrong.  The old way of being was a way that wanted to control our lives to the extent that we try to ensure that God would give us what we want.  The old way of the covenant was to live in a way that God would give us what we want.  The Israelites believed that if they lived according to the commandments —not just ten but all 900 or so of them—God would grant them a favoured existence.  In effect, God would give them what they wanted.  God sent his son into the world to show us that there is another way. 

It is a way that is based on love.  He tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and mind and strength; and to love your neighbour—including your enemies—as yourself.

He also came to give us the grace of forgiveness.  When we do not follow this commandment—when we do not try or when we try and do not succeed—we will be forgiven and we are given the opportunity to try again.  That is the new life that we are born to when we rise out of the waters of baptism.

How then are we to live in a life of love; loving God and loving our neighbours?  Well the Gospel hymn gives us a pretty sound picture of what it would look like. 

O Master, let me walk with thee
in lowly paths of service free;
tell me thy secret; help me bear
the strain of toil, the fret of care.

Help me the slow of heart to move
by some clear, winning word of love;
teach me the wayward feet to stay,
and guide them in the homeward way.

Teach me thy patience; still with thee
in closer, dearer company,
in work that keeps faith sweet and strong,
in trust that triumphs over wrong;

In hope that sends a shining ray
far down the future's broadening way,
in peace that only thou canst give,
with thee, O Master, let me live. Amen 

The Holy Spirit and the Church part 2

Last week I reflected on the attitude of the organized church to the Holy Spirit.   I believe that the organized church, at least in most established parts, does not revere the third person of the Trinity.  As I noted, if the Holy Spirit is given the attention and reverence it is due, religious leaders would not have the control that some believe is necessary to ensure that Christianity, as they understand it, will survive and thrive.

The question I want to explore further is whether or not the Holy Spirit ever destroys what is there or does it just bring about transformation in the world.  I believe after some consideration I clarified my position regarding the transformative nature of the Holy Spirit. 

The best example of the work of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came with roaring winds and tongues of fire and speech.  Those present were so transformed that a new church was born, one which spread quickly over the known world.  There was no destruction in that act; rather, something new was born.

However, when viewed from the perspective of those involved it can be very different.  The lives of those who were present in that room were changed radically.  They were no longer the same people.  They were now new people in a new way.  They went out from that place and changed the world.  To them it must have seemed like the old way had died.  Richard Rohr addresses this, “I see transformation and change occurring in three stages: order > disorder > reorder”.   When the old way dies the birth pangs of the new order can seem to be like destruction and perhaps even chaos as the new way takes root.  The wind and fire of Pentecost caused confusion to those who witnessed it. 

This process of transformation is captured wonderfully in the sacrament of baptism.  As I discuss in my sermon this week, in baptism we die to the old life and are born to the new life.  This is done symbolically in the Anglican tradition by pouring water over the head of the baptismal candidate.  Unfortunately, this is not direct enough for people to realize what it represents as it does not truly capture the impact of what happens—the symbol has lost much of its energy.  When we are immersed into the waters our old selves are drowned and die.  We are born anew when we rise out of the water.  This is exactly what is portrayed in the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.  Jesus was fully immersed by John.  When Jesus was raised up out of the water the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove.  Immediately after that, what happened?  He was “led” by the Spirit into the wilderness for a forty-day spiritual retreat/vision quest. 

The Gospel of Mark states, “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him”.  I prefer this version to the other Synoptic Gospels of Mathew and Luke which has the spirit leading Jesus.  I believe that usually we resist the new life that the Holy Spirit brings because our lives are going to be changed irrevocably in ways we cannot fully conceive or perhaps can conceive and do not want to embrace.   People do not generally embrace change. 

The prophets were often reluctant to take on their missions given to them by God as in the case of Jonah.  Richard Rohr distinguishes the role of the prophet from the role of the priest in the church today:

The role of the prophet is to lead us into sacred space by deconstructing the old space; the role of the priest is to teach us how to live fruitfully inside of sacred space. The prophet disconnects us from the false, and the priest reconnects us to The Real at ever larger and deeper levels. Unfortunately, most ministers might talk of new realms but rarely lead us out of the old realm where we are still largely trapped and addicted. So not much genuinely new happens.

This brings us back to the Holy Spirit and organized religion.  We have a “divinely intended tension” between the old and the new.  How do we as Christians seek to follow where the Holy Spirit is leading us and maintain and renew a community which we are called to as the church, born two thousand years ago on the Day of Pentecost?  We need to let go of what is no longer gives us new life and try and discern where the Holy Spirit is calling us.  That is truly a challenge but one that we are called to. 

Blessings on your journey,

Greg