SERMON: Green Pastors

 10:30 am, Sun, April 30, 2023 - JGWhite / FBCA

(Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25)

 [SCENE ONE] One year ago this weekend Sharon and I took possession of our house up on Clinton Street, and after almost ten months ‘on the job’ now, you have a pretty good idea what you’ve got. For one thing, you got a ‘green’ pastor. Yes, yes, I know my name is Jeffrey George WHITE, but I am green. Not green in name, like Dan Green, but environmentally green, nature-loving green, creation curious green.

At this moment, I am part of the CNC and the CNC. I am a member of the Chignecto Naturalists Club; in fact, in a moment of need, I ended up becoming President. And I am taking part for four days right now in the City Nature Challenge, in which citizen scientists log many observations of plants, birds, lichens, fish, mammals, insects, fungi – every living thing they can find. I’ve been trying to get as many pictures of as many plants and organisms as I can (up in Westmorland County, actually) and post them online to the iNaturalist platform.

Yesterday I spent some time traipsing and trespassing in woods up towards Cape Tormentine. I observed this plant: Eastern Skunk Cabbage, which I befriended when I lived in Digby County.

Why would I care? Why would I care for you to be interested? Because I am a Pastor, a Shepherd to you, who can share creation deeply with you. I even pick this out of the world’s favourite Psalm, number twenty-three. YHWY God is a Shepherd, lies me down in green pastures, leads me beside still waters, provides everything needed, and leads on right paths. This is the same ‘LORD’ whom we praise as Creator, Creator of life, all life. I truly learned that ‘pastor’ and ‘shepherd’ are the same thing when I spent time in Bolivia. In Spanish, the Psalm begins: El Señor es me Pastor.

This sermon is really a testimony. I am going to work back through time. Let me end Scene One by answering this: Why am I so green? Because there is so much to enjoy in nature!

Here’s SCENE TWO. Beginning with a ‘plant’ I observed yesterday for the nature challenge: Orange-Cored Shadow Lichen – which is not quite a plant – it is a combination of at least one fungus and at least one alga. Many of the lichens that grow on trees and rocks and the soil are very sensitive to disturbance: to tree cutting, to air pollution, and so forth.  Their presence can be a sign of health, of old-growth forests; the absence of certain lichens is a sign of a wrecked landscape. I am reminded by orange-cored shadow lichen of what Christian environmentalism is.

In my mind, I go back thirty years, to meetings of the CABF, which then was called the ABF, a left-wing Baptist group of which First Baptist has always been in fellowship. ‘Back in the day,’ I would meet up with a retired Old Testament professor at these meetings, Dr. Morris Lovesey. He knew I had first graduated in Biology and Chemistry; he himself had a degree in geology. Again and again, he would say to me: work with Christianity and biology, the Church and science! For years I was not sure what on earth to do. When I finally preached my first Earth Day sermon, in about 2012, I got in trouble with several leading voices in the congregation!

Our religion can truly at times seem to be ‘so heavenly minded we are no earthly good.’ But we are here, on earth, where God indeed joined us, as one of us: Jesus of Nazareth, our Good Shepherd. We heard, in Peter’s advice to believers in households of long ago, ‘Return to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.’ Good advice. Yet we can hear this word speak and take us farther than usual. Is God not the shepherd and guardian of this planet? This Universe? And are we not to be little shepherds under the Good Shepherd? If I am a ‘shepherd’ or ‘pastor’ among you, many of you are also guides to other people. We all must work together to make a difference in this world of earth, wind, fire and water, and of every living thing. You, be a ‘green pastor’ too.

Why am I so green? Because of many people God used to influence me. Dr. Morris Lovesey. My Digby friend, Jonathan Riley, who became an amateur lichen expert to save them and the local forests. Linda Vogels, whom I got to know and love at seminars about creation care, and who keeps speaking out about doing the right day-to-day things for mother earth, aka Gaia.

SCENE THREE (of four. These scenes are getting too long!). The last couple days I observed a lovely, common shrub sometimes called Northern Wild Raisin. The long, brown, suede-like buds are just expanding to open now, and become leaves. This bush, and its Latin name, Viburnum cassinoides, always takes me back to the summer of 1992.

Picture me, freshly graduated with my science degree, and working for the summer at Acadia’s biology research station on a Shelburne County island, called Bon Portage. Oh, to be twenty-one again, and spend the summer on a windy, maritime island. I did not learn many names of plants in my degree; I learned them ‘for the fun of it,’ that summer, working on this with a masters student doing his research at the same place. Viburnum cassinoides was part of the botany we learned there.

You work on a biology research station – a whole island for a classroom – and you meet many fellow travellers on the journey of learning about this awe-inspiring world. I met birders, not just birdwatchers: birders, and joined the Nova Scotia Bird Society. By boss was actually an ornithologist, Dr. Peter Smith, who got married that very summer to Linda Lusby, formerly of Amherst.

Our Biblical image of the Shepherd with all the sheep who know the Shepherd’s voice rings so true. The Good Shepherd wants, works, to keep us together. Sometimes, a common enjoyment of nature is one way God brings people together.

Why am I so green? A shared joy in nature, shared with the most wonderful people. And we share life with so many other life-forms. All one family; all gift. Siblings of Wild Raisin.

SCENE FOUR. Another plant I observed this weekend of the Nature Challenge: the Pitcher Plant, carnivore of the bogs. This has been a favourite of mine since before I first saw one.

I first saw one on a camping trip to Briar Island, with the Middleton Baptist Christian Boys Group, at age 12. My one and only photograph from that wonderful, boyhood experience is me with a blooming pitcher plant in hand. I have a weak memory. I remember barely anything from that four-day wilderness camp, except that it was an amazing time. I even ended up with ‘Camper of the Year’ award!

My childhood was blessed with opportunities to enjoy nature. The summer I was six we moved to the Annapolis Valley and my backyard suddenly was my grandfather’s 20-acre campground, with lots of wild spaces. My other grand-father in Ontario was a gardener in his yard. I had houseplants inside our house, and wildflowers planted outside.

“You were going astray like sheep,” wrote Peter to his Church friends, long ago. The ways we humans have gone astray in our lifetimes includes creation crushing. Children today – all the upcoming generations – need the support of our Faith, which calls us into right relationship with Creator and creation.

Why am I so green? Nature was my backyard in my formative years. Family members were plant growers. My Baptist Church took this kid out for wilderness camping on islands: Briar Island, Mosher Island, even Isle Haute.

We do walk thru a dark valley on earth right now… In the environmental crisis, the Good Shepherd is still with us. This is what we need to remember. This is how we live. This is what the next generations needs to know, from us. They get lots of good info from schools and so forth. What hope, what plan, do we, Christianity, give them? What community and togetherness does Christ make possible? Let us, Church, be ‘a green pastor,’ in other words: a team of good shepherds, guides in creation. Seek this miracle with me: that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will find that goodness and mercy will pursue and chase them all the days of their life.

                 SILENCE

Pezzlewig and Waterfalls

I've been wandering in the hills north of Five Islands, NS, for years now. Well, at least making an annual trip. Ever since a friend from 5I pointed out where her mother said the bloodroot grows. And where something like that grows, other nice plants grow. This area was once well inhabited. On maps it is called New Britain. Another local name is Pezzlewig - I'm not sure of the spelling.

I went up there the other day, to see if the bloodroot was in boom, and to hike all over the East Branch of the Bass River, known for a few nice waterfalls and one abandoned mine adit. It was an overcast, cool day, so the bloodroot was up but not open wide. Always nice to see it. 

Standing by these flowers one happens to have a view through the trees to the islands in the Minas Basin. 

Another early bloomer in Nova Scotia is beaked hazelnut, a shrub I saw quite a bit of. The female flowers have their vibrant colours out now, and the male catkins are shedding their yellow pollen.

The falls along the river were wonderful, and there were more of them than I was expecting. I ended up hiking, up and down, up and down, for about thirteen kilometres. Well worth it.

Another spring ephemeral I found in a stand of hardwood trees was Carolina spring-beauty, just about to open. It it had been sunny, they might have been unfurled.

Always on the lookout for lichens, I saw some very nice specimens. The upper right photo, globe ball lichen, is uncommon, and indicative of old growth. The lower left is a favourite - yellow specklebelly - and this one had a few little apothecia upon it, a very rare sight. 

I was very happy to find, in a small bit of swampy woods, several black ash trees. Sacred and purposeful to the first peoples, it is not common, and I had just recently become confident at identifying it. 

Though April has not had much precipitation, and the snow in the woods is just about gone, there seemed to be plenty of water flowing. 

I did find the adit, across the river from where I hiked. I did not bother getting wet feet to see it up close or discover how well it is sealed up to prevent entry... or not. See it, with a yellow sign, up the hill across the river?

Here is the route of my ramblings. 13 + Km. This included a lot of ups and downs along the little valley of the East Branch Bass River. Not to be confused with the Bass River that flows through the village of Bass River, in the same county. 

I noticed lots of other things growing, many of which are just budding out. Spring is here; the onset is always wonderful. The photo I share is an extreme example of the fallen trees that barred my way, from time to time. Mostly red spruce, and some of them huge, they were down all over the place. 

SERMON: Known in Breaking Bread (Earth Days 1/6)

 10:30 am, Sun, April 23, 2023 - JGWhite / FBCA

(Ps 116:5-14; Lk 24:13-35)

Today we begin a series of Sundays I’m calling Earth Days. Following ‘Earth Day,’ yesterday, we will pay attention to our life in creation, with our Creator. We have begun with the simple theme of food and drink, the basics of life.

Our sacred scriptures are filled with eating and drinking, sowing and reaping crops, and ritual sacrifices of food. The story of our Faith is filled with stories of breaking bread, and of growing it, and sharing it. Here is one example, a parable, a Bible parable, but a parable you might not know, even though we are Bible scholars. 😉

Listen to me now.

    Give me your closest attention.

Do farmers plow and plow and do nothing but plow?

    Or harrow and harrow and do nothing but harrow?

After they’ve prepared the ground, don’t they plant?

    Don’t they scatter dill and spread cumin,

Plant wheat and barley in the fields

    and [spelt] along the borders?

They know exactly what to do and when to do it.

    Their God is their teacher.

And at the harvest, the delicate herbs and spices,

    the dill and cumin, are treated delicately.

On the other hand, wheat is threshed and milled, but still not endlessly.

    The farmer knows how to treat each kind of grain.

He’s learned it all from God-of-the-Angel-Armies,

    who knows everything about when and how and where.

That’s from the end of Isaiah chapter 28. You might think of better-known parables about food. Stories Jesus told, and stories told about Jesus.

Like the that poignant tale we read today, of that big resurrection day, when a couple lesser-known disciples were walking to a village outside Jerusalem, met up with a fellow traveler, and told him all about what had happened, what had happened to Jesus. Then the three of them stop for the night. He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. It was Jesus. When did they know He was with them? When they ‘broke bread together.’

The sharing of food is the sharing of fellowship with the Spirit of Jesus. A prime time for us to know God is mealtime. We have a God who eats with us. No wonder we say ‘grace’ at meals. We have an unseen Guest. Or, perhaps, we are the guests of God at earth’s table, every single day. Daily, some strawberries appear. No wonder the Jews have Passover, which is a ritual meal of simple foods. No wonder we Christians have Holy Communion, which is a ritual meal of simple foods.

Of course, food is not just a symbol or a tool to point to things spiritual. The food and drink that sustain life are important to God, as much as they are important to us. From the ancient Hebrew instructions to leave crops in the fields for the orphan and the widow and the foreigner, to the many prayers for rain and for harvest in times of drought, the roots of our Faith run deeply into farming & gathering & food preparation.

The story of Jesus the Messiah is the story of God who joins creation, who becomes Someone hungry for food and thirsty for water. Christ is our great connection with the Divine, and Christ was a physical being, a human, to make that connection. God’s work of making relationships right is, in part, so that everyone gets food. ‘The Kingdom of God is a Party.’ Does Jesus not illustrate this with His miracles of feeding thousands?

And no wonder fasting is such a powerful spiritual practice. It is a very practical, physical activity. It is used across many religious traditions. For us, it keeps us knowing we do not live by bread alone. And yet, we do die without food or drink. Fasting keeps us in touch with what it is like to be hungry. If you are like me, and your stomach never goes empty and growls, you need an occasional experience of what hunger actually feels like!

No wonder we see the kosher diet in ancient Judaism, which may seem so strange to us today. So many foods are not to be eaten – even touched! – in order for people be holy, a special people, set apart for God. Think about it: food is so central to the life and religion of the Hebrews… and Christians.

No wonder we see in the Bible God’s ‘preferential option for the poor,’ as it is called. If God has any favourites, it is the poor and needy, hungry and thirsty. I always think of Mary’s words when she celebrated the news that she was to birth the Messiah: [God] has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. (Lk 1:53) That’s some of God’s best work. And ours too.

So, no wonder we have a designated ‘benevolent’ budget, and a benevolent committee. No wonder we cooperate with others in Amherst in the Xmas Cheer program: enough food to eat is not enough, there should be food for celebration also! No wonder that our little start at offering a ‘warming centre’ each Monday soon became mostly about sharing good food. No wonder we support what Canadian Baptists used to call ‘The Sharing Way,’ which is our relief and development work around the world, getting food to places of famine and war and natural disaster, getting wells drilled and water purified.

Yesterday, April 22, was Earth Day, the 54^th annual Earth Day. But, if every day should be ‘earth day,’ then today and tomorrow we can be trained by the God of the earth to do food better than before. We know the troubles of hunger in our populated world: the situation is disastrous in many places. And I’m just talking about hungry people. What about the plants and animals of the world? How much rain forest is destroyed so people can grow palm trees for the palm oil in our crackers? How much fossil fuel is used to bring us grapes from Chile in the winter, and so. many. other. products? We even call them ‘products,’ as if these are all produced just for us. Like the term we have for tending our own lands and waters: department of natural resources. Resources? The trees and fishes are more than resources for our use. But I am getting ahead of myself. My Earth Sunday for Living Things is next week, April 30.

A dear friend told me this story, once. A number of years ago she was working part-time in Halifax, and would sometimes pack her breakfast to eat early, down at Point Pleasant Park.  One early morning, she parked her car – just about no one else around – and went off to eat the bread and cheese and fruit she’d thrown together. 

A stranger approached her.  A rough looking man.  He… he was begging.  He wanted some money, for a coffee or whatever.

My friend was nervous.  She was a 70 year old woman, alone in the early morning there.  But, she bravely told him, “I don’t have any money to give you, but I have a bit of breakfast here, & I will share.”

The man looked at her, then went off quickly without saying anything, towards a nearby building.  “Was he gone?” the woman wondered.  “Did he go off to bring some friends back with him?”  She sat down at a picnic table and started to open up her breakfast.

My friend told me, with tears, what she saw next.  She saw the man coming back… to her table.  He had gone to the bathroom.  He had combed his hair.  He had washed his face, and his hands.  Done up his shirt, for breakfast. He sat down and shared breakfast with my friend.

In one of His stories, Jesus said, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…” (Mtt 25:34-5)

Every way food is shared, every time bread is broken, may these be times to know and be known by God.

SERMON: The Outcome of Our Faith

 10:30 am, Sun, April 16, 2023 - JGWhite / FBCA

(1 Pet 1:3-9; Ps 16; Jn 20:19-31)

 Let’s start with a mini-episode of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Last month I went out into the wet woods near here looking for one of the earliest spring flowers in bloom, Skunk Cabbage! Let me tell you about this incredible plant – it’s one of my favourites. It comes out of the mucky ground in March looking like a red onion. While the snow is still everywhere, the flower buds create their own heat, and melt a hole in the snow above. It does indeed smell skunky: all the better to attract the first flies and gnats that appear at the end of winter. Once the plant grows its big, green leaves, the roots that go deep into the mud shrink, and pull the plant down deeper. What talent! 

How good are you at believing the incredible, the amazing, the unbelievable? Well, what I have told you so far is all true. You are likely told, once in a while, something that is hard to believe. You have to be convinced, you need proof, or at least time to think it over, or just see for yourself.

Spiritual faith is often like this. In the New Testament texts today, we see a confident faith, and a lack of confidence: Peter’s encouraging letter, and Thomas the disciple doubting that Jesus was indeed alive again. Your reason, or mine, for doubting things today, is not the same as Thomas’s situation. We are a long way off from those resurrection days of Jesus, in the flesh. Thus, we are, after two thousand years, still facing the same tragedies of humankind, the same repeated evils that we people do, and same unsolved mysteries that bother us.

In the mid-twentiety century, prof at Union Theological Seminar in New York, James Muilenburg, said to his students, studying to be ministers, “Every morning when you wake up, before you reaffirm your faith in the majesty of a loving God, before you say I believe for another day, read the Daily News with its record of the latest crimes and tragedies of [hu]mankind and then see if you can honestly say it again.”

Sometimes we still gather, like this, to get encouraged, to find hope, to be able to say again, ‘Yes, I believe it!’ Sometimes we still gather because we know someone else needs us to have a bit of faith for them, and help them out.

It is Easter. It is a Sunday, so it’s a weekly easter. In the Church Year, it is the second of seven Sundays of Easter. So we sing hallelujah again. We are people of faith; this is what we do.

To celebrate the outcomes of our faith, we need to start with faith itself. And where the good comes from; what is the Source? As I say, sometimes we look for faith, we need it, we want it, we feel a bit short on our supply of deep believing.

What did Peter’s nice paragraph of good stuff end with? You are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. The one thing I want to say about this today is: there is always a tension, always two directions we come at faith in God and salvation. It is from God, and it is up to us.

Where do you start?

I guess I have been so trained to understand the gospel in terms of the grace of God, that I say it is all up to the Eternal One. Salvation is a gift to us. What we just remembered Jesus doing is what accomplishes our renewed life that never ends. Christ comes back to life, and gets busy doing things like dispensing peace/shalom to His people, filling them with God, with the Holy Spirit, and giving them His power to speak real forgiveness to others. Give, give, give: this is how God does it. As the evangelical tradition says, it is grace, which is an unearned gift from God, something we cannot do for ourselves.

Yet what do we humans do? We have faith. We put our confidence in God, in Christ Jesus. Rely upon God instead of relying upon ourself. Nowadays, as it says, we are blessed for believing Jesus even when we did not get to see Him in the flesh, his broken, born from the dead, flesh. We do read the New Testament teachings about being judged, one day, by Christ, and think we must have to be good, or good enough.

But grace tells us all our being right is nothing – we put on Jesus and everything right and good about Him covers us. Hmm. I make it very simple by thinking faith is us opening a door that God gives us, with a whole wonderful world inside that we can walk into. We do have the choice to walk in, or not.

Well, let us get to the actual outcomes of our faith. The outcomes? I hear this word used more and more these days. Lots of organizations and agencies talk about outcomes now. For instance, our NS Public School Program says: Curriculum outcomes are statements of what a learner knows, is able to do, and value upon the completion of the learning process. 

So, Faith: what are believers going to know, be able to do, and be upon the completion of our lives? We could start by looking at the list from 1 Peter 1 that we read earlier. From the Christian Faith the outcomes can be:

the salvation of our souls,    (which is about now & forever)

a new birth,          (which is a new life in us, somehow)

a living hope,   (which is also this eternal life, starting now)

an inheritance,     (which is an indestructibleness we get)

protection of us,  (for all the good things we are here for)

rejoicing,      (that is, enjoying God and everything good)

love of Christ,      (we get a great relationship with Creator)

believing Christ.  (we get to enjoy Jesus as real)

You may well glean other things from this rich paragraph at the start of the first letter of Peter. Yet other outcomes of being a person of Faith can include the things we saw in that scene with Jesus and the disciples, just after Jesus arose. I already mentioned them. Jesus speaks peace, shalom, to His friends. (Salvation is friendship with Jesus, I’d say.) Christ speaks the Holy Spirit right into them – that’s God whom you get to have with you everywhere. The Saviour speaks about forgiveness: forgiving others, or not forgiving. This is a great power and responsibility: it is part of the package.

And it leads us to a third thing to rejoice in: the social side of salvation. There is something about faith that is not alone, not all private, not only personal. It is our faith, shared; not your faith and your faith, and your faith, and my faith. We are celebrating the outcomes of our shared faith in Jesus.

The old, 20^th century story is told of the evangelist preaching to a big crowd. He’s getting everyone excited. ‘Amens’ are heard from the congregation. He asks, “Don’t you want to go to heaven? Who wants to go to heaven? Stand up!”

The crowd stands up, they all stand up… all but one person. The preacher can actually see her, and so he speaks out: “Ma’am, you’re the only one; don’t you want to go to heaven?”

“Pastor,” she replies, “I do, but I thought you were getting a group ready to go tonight.”

There is a good point in that story. The bit about ‘going together.’ The social side of salvation, the shared faith we proclaim. As Charles Peguy said, “We must be saved together. We cannot go to God alone; else he would ask, ‘Where are the others?’”

I believe this goes for our faith life here and now, as well as after this life. One of the outcomes of our Faith is togetherness, family, fellowship, relationships, community, team. To use some Bible terms, faith is about reconciliation – we have a ministry of reconciliation – and it is about unity: Jesus prayed that His people would be one as He and God are one. It is about Church, which, in one sense, simply means the gathered ones, those gathered together. ‘I will build my ecclesia, my gathered ones,’ said Jesus, ‘and the gates of hades will not stand against it.’ We gather, and we scatter, we gather, and we scatter: as one.

First Baptist is an outcome of our faith; Hallelujah! Aside from all the human structure and tradition we have developed, and our faults and shortcomings, we are a creation of salvation. We, First Baptist, are an act of God. & not just in 1809: today. We are wonderful, in the midst of the wacko messes we get ourselves into. I love those words in 2 Corinthians that tell us we have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

The glorious, resurrected Jesus is here for us to share, with us just as we are today. A power, a treasure, in clay jars. Not in one clay jar; in us all, in all these clay jars.

The outcome of our faith is a Life that is the good life, and together we get to share it. Alleluia! Amen.

Economy Point Hike

So I tested out a new app on my phone - Strava - with a beach hike at Economy Point, starting at Thomas' Cove. It happened to be a nice, low-tide day, so down I travelled the Lynn Road. I'd only been down that one once before in my life. 

It was a beautiful day, as the photos show. Not real warm, and certainly breezy. I did not see a lot of wildlife: a couple eagles, as one would expect.

This 'balancing rock' appeared on the cliffside just a few years ago, and it is still hanging on:

The beach is a lot of sand, with some muddy spots, and plenty of sandstone boulders at the base of the cliffs. When I was done, I could see the tide coming in. It is speedy, just like a tidal bore across the beach, and pretty soon it is a raging river. Best not to linger out on some rocks or a sand bar with the tide turns.

SERMON: Recognizing Jesus

 (Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18) J G White 

10:30 am, Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023, FBCA

 Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!  This could be all that needs to be said.  It is as simple as that.  Jesus - human and God - is executed, and then is alive again.  Hallelujah!  How have we met Jesus alive? When did you recognize him?

Think again of that amazing moment when Mary Magdalene lingers at the tomb of Jesus that is suddenly empty. What has happened? And then the talks with the gardener; but it is not the caretaker of the cemetery after all. It is the missing Jesus. When He speaks her name, Mary, she knows him at last!

So many days of our year we seem to have complex problems to solve, disagreements to resolve, or personal sins to absolve.  But at the heart of our Faith, and our church community, is a personal God: Jesus.  A God we recognize!

A little boy was sick on Palm Sunday and stayed home from church with his mother. His father returned from church holding a palm branch. The little boy was curious and asked, “Why do you have that palm branch, dad?” “You see, when Jesus came into town, everyone waved Palm Branches to honour him, so we got Palm Branches today.” The little boy replied, “Aw Shucks! The one Sunday I miss is the Sunday that Jesus shows up.” (sermon central)  

We celebrate today Jesus who shows up.  Though His appearances are often subtle and subversive.  How has Christ appeared to you in your life?

Today brings us all to Jesus, to point to Him, to enjoy Him, and marvel at Him, to put our confidence in Him, to lift Him up above other things that might seem important.  

Jesus once said, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:32) He was referring to his execution by being hung on a cross of wood, a common death penalty at the time.  But today we find Him up and alive!  

This day is simply all about Jesus. Jesus, plain and simple. We are here to recognize that fact. Yet when He gets up and is alive again, He is no show-off.

When John the evangelist tells the story, here in chapter 20, he does not mention the spectacle that Matthew does. No earthquake, no angel descending from heaven, Jesus’ described as bright as lightning is not mentioned. The tomb guards shaking and the fainting dead are not noticed by John. Jesus is simply there, not even attracting attention. Not even being recognized at first, by one of His dear friends. Jesus Christ is simply present, alive, with them.  

Perhaps you have experienced moments and ways Jesus has appeared to you that were simple, almost ordinary. And yet, your recognized Him. And when we recognize the presence of the Son of God, we see Him for who he is.

Christ is greater than the angels. Those angels who opened the tomb, or any other impressive spiritual creatures.  Hebrews chapter 1 speaks at length about this.

Christ is greater than bunnies & chocolates & Easter dinners.

Christ is greater than the pagan origins of “Easter” or “Christmas,” and any other troubles with our religion.

Christ is greater than the Passover and the Jewish sacrificial system out of which He lived His life. 

Christ is greater even than the sacrificial atonement theories of Christianity. He is our ransom, our substitute, He pays our debt, He inspires by example, He wins a victory. all of this, & more.

Christ is greater than the best churches we’ve got, with the best vision statements, leaders, preachers and teachers, ministries, and music.  And Christ Jesus is better than the worst of Churches and Christian history.  

You know one of my own favourite themes about Jesus and what He offers.  He is available; the Kingdom has come near.  This is one of the best ways to put it. God and the good life is available to people - no matter what is happening in their lives.  Amid all the personal problems and disasters, and all the successes and happy moments, the best thing going is Jesus.

A wonderful Roman Catholic Priest colleague of mine (Michael Walsh), years ago, said this at a community Good Friday service: Jesus Christ died for me personally so that I might have life forever.  But unless I experience this salvation as a personal gift to me, my response to Jesus will always be less than wholehearted.  In order for Jesus to give me life, I must be open to that life and live my life for Him.  Jesus wants to give me life and salvation is a gift.  But it is a gift that must be received and Jesus is always waiting to open our hearts so that we will receive the gift of salvation.

One way to respond to the events of what we call Good Friday and Easter is to look for Christ in others. Remember, as you look around the pews, here or any pews, each other person you see is on some journey with God. From delightful obedience to desperate struggle, we are a variety.  Remember to look for God in the life of the other person. The person you idolize, the one you appreciate, the one who doesn’t attract your attention, the one you dislike, the one you’d rather never ever meet up with. Remember, theirs is a personal experience of the Spirit, different from yours.

Another thing to do is to take the joy and glory of Easter Day and enjoy it 52 times a year - every Sunday an Easter.  It was exciting this morning at 7 am to gather in Victoria Square, next door, with other believers, and then have joyful fellowship in here. It was a joy to walk with a cross and bless some places here in town on Friday morning.  But on every ‘usual’ Sunday, shall we anticipate a special time with our living Saviour?  Yes!

A third thing to do is seek His Lordship over every project in our lives. We plan a vacation... with Christ. We raise our children: with the Master’s guidance. We seek a medical doctor’s care: with the Great Physician at our side. We befriend a neighbour: in the name of our Saviour and Friend, Jesus.  

Christ as the centre, around whom everything revolves.  Lift Jesus Higher, says one gospel song.  For Jesus once said, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." (John 12:32)

Author and evangelism professor, Leonard Sweet, says: “We lift Him up and He does the drawing…  It’s not ‘come to church,’ it’s ‘come to Christ’.”  But Sweet finds, in his American context, that Christ is often missing from the churches, and he is missing Christ.  That breaks his heart.  

Jesus Christ is alive.  So our gospel, the good news, is alive today.  What is the Gospel? 

There is a Kingdom, of sorts, that is God’s.  It has come near, it is available, people can enter this kind of life that is with God and from God.  The opportunity to turn around and receive it is here. Jesus speaks of this, Jesus lives it, He is it, He provides it. 

We people can be saved from evil, sin, wrong, pain, injustice, even death.  The reality of Jesus Christ is the way.  

We can be saved for good works - to do well and make a difference in this life. We can be saved for eternity with God and God’s people, and God’s new creation.  

And our Gospel is rooted, simply, in the story of Jesus: crucified and risen. That’s how it happens. What He does. So today, we celebrate the Jesus we recognize. We, now, get to be the witnesses of all that He did, in Judea and in Jerusalem, in Yarmouth and Middleton and Tidnish and River Hebert and Amherst.

SERMON: Maundy Thursday Chapel Service

 

12 pm, Maundy Thrs, Apr 6, 2023 - JGWhite / Christ Ch Ang

(Psalm 113; John 13:31-38)

Welcome to ‘Maundy Thursday.’ Perhaps many of you are like me, and will be worshipping again later, at a holy communion service, here or somewhere else. Then, we will mark the Passover meal of Jesus and the disciples. 

Here and now, you have a Baptist Christian, in an Anglican building, calling the shots for 25 minutes for a mixed bag of believers. So great to be together! And you have been very cooperative: so obedient. J You have followed my every command.

This is a day for pondering how we follow commands. At least, one command. Following up on yesterday’s noontime reading, we’ve now finished John chapter thirteen. Here, Jesus says, ‘I give you a new commandment.’ A new mandate, I like to call it, on this Maundy Thursday. Our name for this day comes from the Latin mandatum novum: new commandment. ‘A new mandate I give unto you,’ we might translate it.

Commandments seem so strict and definitive. How do you command love? Yet that is just what Jesus did. ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.’

Christ makes commandments, mandates, and obedience, into a new, organic reality. Think about it. There may be many things you say you love that are strict and clear-cut.

I love hiking, I’d say, because I truly appreciate and enjoy and care for the outdoors. I love walking on beaches and exploring the shoreline. So, around the branches of the Minas Basin and Bay of Fundy I pay attention to the tide schedule. ‘Time and tide waits for’ no one, we rightly say.

Years ago, when camping on Moose Island in the Five Islands, this struck me, while reading the Psalms. To love the laws and ordinances of the Lord includes loving the tide times. It is a set schedule (not by us!), it is unstoppable, it must be obeyed. Those ebbing and flowing tides control your walk to Moose Island, and around it, and your walk back to the mainland.

So I love the tide schedule. Because so much is possible for me when I know it and obey it. I can see the tidal bore in Maccan if I know the bore times that people have figured out. I can dig clams somewhere when the water is out. I can boat around when it is in.

So, in other ways, we figure out the laws of love, among us. Thanks to Jesus, our Teacher, we get to be apprentices of compassion and care and enjoyment and respect for others. So it is a new command, this mandate to love one another. We have learned so much about care for others and wanting the best for them. And I dare say there is yet more for us to learn, in the practice of love.

Worshipping together, let us see the love of Christ.

Looking to Him this week, let us know the love of God.

Going out and going about our days, let us share this love.

SERMON: Hosanna! Who Is this?

 10:30 am, Palm & Passion Sun, Apr, 2023 - JGWhite / FBCA

(Isaiah 50:4-9a; Phl 2:5-11; Mtt 21:1-11)

 One year after we arrived in our previous town, Alex and Sharon arrived there, from ON, Alex to be minister of one of the other churches, Sharon to be an emergency room nurse. Sharon White and I became good friends of this couple. We were sad when they left that town before we did.

But we were also happy for them. They had opportunities to move to Newfoundland, where they wanted to work and eventually retire. I was one of Alex’s references. NL was where that Sharon had been born, and where her father still lived.

After one year there, I think Alex was not thrilled with his ministry in the two churches he served, and Sharon was not happy with her work at the hospitals. They also discovered they did not fit into their part of rural NL; they were not into hunting and fishing and ATVing and all. After one year, they moved back to Nova Scotia. They are very happy.

So it sometimes happens. What we expected, not to mention hoped and worked for, turns out very differently. In some cases, we say things turned out rotten; at other times we realize things got better by not following our plan.

Such is the story of Jesus, today. We call it ‘Palm Sunday,’ welcoming Jesus as a humble King into the Holy City! We also call it ‘Passion Sunday,’ remembering that he ended up arrested and tortured and cruelly executed. It seems the majority of people, even those who had followed Jesus, gave up on Him when He did not take over the city and force the Roman Empire out. He ended up taking the path that Philippians 2 describes. A path of suffering that much like the servant of Isaiah 50. He did not hide his face from insult and spitting.

We welcome Jesus! But, does He do what we want? Is Christ who we expected? We too may switch from “Hosanna! Hooray!” to “Who is this, anyway?!”

Yet what God accomplished in Jesus is indeed great, the best. What seems dreadful at first, becomes amazingly wonderful. But we people tend to go through a rejection, a disappointment, to get to that point. I think it happens in life in many ways.

A person is impressed and emotionally excited about Christian faith. They are touched, somehow, and simply love what is going on in a Church. They get involved. They try some new things, maybe about praying, or serving other people, or whatever. But then things get dull. Or go sour. Or don’t quite prevent some tragedy from happening. ‘This is not what I expected, not what I was looking for.’

Someone else follows Jesus in the best ways they know how for a while, maybe a long time. Then, they start truly reading the Bible – the whole Bible. And it alarms them. They find a lot there they did not know about, or they find way too much of certain things: violence, or sexism or other subpar attitudes. Someone else find out about Christian history, which is a mixed bag of miraculous blessings for so many and disgusting tragedies perpetrated upon others. Or, yet others discover a great leader in Christianity fails them, terribly.

Hosanna, hurray! ... Who is this, anyway?

Before I finish, I need to clarify: there is a big difference between the failures of religion, and what feels to people like the failures of God and Jesus. Perhaps that is exactly the important thing to notice. We may expect Christians to be better than they are – why doesn’t God make us better?? Yet Christ remains incredibly better than all of us, all the while shining through, peeking out from within us.

Our Christian symbol continues to be an execution tool. Our central ritual keeps being about the life leaving one body and going out to millions of people. There is Something bigger than life and death here, greater than failures and evil. When we feel God did not do what God was supposed to do for us, we have taken our next step to learning what God is really up to; as much as we can know this.

 What have we expected of the Son of God?

What do we show of Christ?

In his BBC Reith Lecture, a few months ago, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spoke of freedom of worship and freedom of religion. In the Q&R after, he said: One of the things that I often want to say to others in the Church, and in other religious communities, is that the worst message we can convey to the society around us is embarrassment and anxiety. And quite often, religious communities convey that. We're worried, and we'd like everyone to know just how worried we are.

The retired Archbishop then said, I want to say the opposite of that. We're not there because we're worried, we are there because we believe we have some gift to offer into the conversation, and that's what motivates.

At this time of the year, we declare that taking a journey with Jesus is worth the trip. Again, we walk a Holy Week with the Master. Again we see how the Divine agenda was better than the human expectations. ‘To conquer death, you only have to die.’ To win over violence, you only have to suffer and not ‘fight.’ To live a good life, you only have to give it away, to the world.

Church, shall we go out seek, seek, seeking attention and recruits and survival? Or shall we continue to go out into our corner of the world with Gifts: good wisdom, real help, deep answers, and a holy Presence?

Think on these things, this Holy Week. Pray.

May the Spirit of Christ be near, and answer.