Cape d'Dor: paths to a beach

With spring beginning, I've been itching to get out and about in my 'new' area. I have been in Cumberland County ten months now, but anyway...

Some posts online gave me the hint there is plenty to see in the landscape around Cape d'Or. So one early evening this month the tides were right for a quick jaunt to a beach where the cliffs have not only their natural features, but some (rather dangerous) mineshafts.

I made my way, by car, partway up the road to the Cape, and walked once the last of the snow and ice filled in.

I bushwhacked just a little ways toward a brook that leads down to the rocky shore. The woods are lovely and I know I must come back at various times of the growing season to see what is flourishing here. As some online instructions said, the path down the brook to the beach was flanked by one of the mineshafts - seen here with ice lining it. The way down the brook to the beach was a bit of a wet rappel with some ropes. The evening sun was bright and beautiful. 

Heading east, a rocky point that I approached soon revealed itself to be a sea stack, with a long, narrow shape. Approaching it, it looked wide; passing between it and the cliffside, it was much narrower.

In a little cove by the stack I saw more ropes, leading up another rough, steep slope. But no brook - this was drier. I decided to take this way up, and track through the woods back to where I started. 

I had but a couple hours of daylight to explore, so this was just an initial scouting mission. I will be back to spend more time in the woods atop the cliffs, and on the rocky beaches below. Cape d'Or is about an hours drive from my home, so it is a place to return to again and again.

SERMON: Will Never Die

 10:30 am, Sun, March 26, 2023 - JGWhite / FBCA

(Ezek 37:1-14; Jn 11:1-45)

(artwork by C W Shelley & Cynthia McCarthy)

With what joke could I begin a sermon about death? I could quote Mark Twain. “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

Life and death. This is a matter for religion, as well as other disciplines. We are coming to prime time in the year for looking death in the face. Good Friday and Easter are on the horizon. Today, we went to scripture for two scenes of death, and life after death. The famous ‘valley of dry bones’ is a vision the Hebrew prophet Elijah had, at a time when the whole nation was destroyed, and many of the people were captives. The story of Jesus and Lazarus is a dramatic miracle story that John the evangelist tells us. In it, we have now famous words, such as, “I am the resurrection and the life. …everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

If I were to survey us, here today, about our beliefs on the afterlife, I’m sure I’d hear a wide variety of thoughts. I have been hearing many things for years, just from faithful people in Baptist pews. I remember Leota, who at Bible study would say she did not think we would recognize other people in Heaven. I remember Ruthe, who confided to me that she disliked funerals because of all the talk about eternal life – she didn’t believe in it. I remember Blair, who prayed at Bible study for the salvation of the Deacons and other members of the Official Board of the Church, presumably because he thought some might still be destined for hell.

125 years ago, two large Baptist groups of Churches in the Maritimes were talking about joining together – and they did unite, naming themselves United Baptists. In our official statement called The Basis of Union, we declared this about death: At death our bodies return to dust, our souls to God who gave them. The righteous being then perfected in happiness are received to dwell with God, awaiting the full redemption of their bodies. The wicked are cast into Hades reserved unto the judgement of the great day. And about the Judgment, it says, There will be a judgement of quick and dead, of the just and unjust, on the principles of righteousness, by the Lord Jesus Christ, at His second coming. The wicked will be condemned to eternal punishment, and the righteous received into fullness of eternal life and joy.

Plenty more could be said about what Baptists believed and taught, back then. Now, more than 120 years later, ways of understanding the afterlife, and of putting it into words, have diversified. There are a variety of teachings on how the afterlife works within Christianity, not to mention among Baptists, just as there was more than one thing taught and believed in Judaism, even back in the time of Jesus. The Jewish group called the Pharisees believed that there was a resurrection to happen, one day, for those who had died. The Jewish group called the Sadducees did not believe in such life-after-death, not to mention believing in angels, or maybe even human spirits.

Looking back to all the talk of death John gives us in the Lazarus story, I find so many viewpoints, questions, hopes and fears. Just take a peek, with me… First, there is the experience of expecting a death, or not expecting it. “This illness does not lead to death” Jesus said, about his friend in Bethany. In our lives, we have the question of is someone going to die of this? What a big question mark in our lives.

We see in John 11 the threat of being killed, something we can hear in the news every day, if we listen to it. 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Here is the threat of being killed by enemies. And Jesus made some!

We see in this story how people face death head on. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus used the term, ‘fell asleep’ about their friend, the disciples didn’t get it. Lazarus was dead. I am a person who prefers to use the word, ‘died,’ instead of ‘passed away.’ If I die, don’t put in my obituary ‘Jeffrey George White passed away.’ Please say I ‘died.’

So, to the town of Lazarus Jesus and his disciples will go – which is where Jesus had been threatened. So, Thomas, bravely, says, ‘let’s go and face death too.’ We don’t often face people who we expect might kill us. Others in this world do.

Next we see the big question that nags us in the face of death. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” A bit later, when her sister, Mary, meets up with Jesus, she says the exact same thing. And later, some of those standing by wonder why this miracle worker had not prevented Lazarus from dying in the first place. Here are the ‘what ifs.’ So often, in death, there are ‘what ifs.’ If only I had been there. If only they had gone to the doctor sooner. If only they had not been in that place at that exact time. If, if, if.

Another issue around or mortality is simply: what is death? How final is it? 25 Jesus said to [Martha], “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”  Some of what He says can sound like contradictions. Here again is the question of when is death death? When is it final, when is it not? An old hymn speaks of: Death of death and hell’s destruction.

Land me save on Canaan’s side.

Billy Graham used to say, in sermons, “The death rate is still very high. 100%!” Maybe death counts and is final, sometimes, but could also not count, not matter anymore?

Then for us, there is how death impacts us, even if we feel confident our beloved one will be OK, and we will be with them again. 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” Here is an expression of real grief that goes with loosing someone through death. Even with Lazarus about to come back to life, Jesus is visibly upset, even angry, as well as tearful.

Of course, there is the key question of eternal life. What is it, really? 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Life after death. It happens. Apparently. Some people are not expecting it, not looking for it. And the raising of Lazarus is not quite the same as the rising of Jesus – who we think can never ever die again.

We are in a place – in a congregation – for sharing our spirituality and growing together in our understanding. The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones was, for Elijah, a message of hope not to individuals, but to the whole people of Israel, scattered as they were, away from their Promised Land. And it was a dream sequence, a parable or sorts, seen before his eyes. It was not saying that a large group of dead Hebrews would be coming back to life. It was telling that the lost and scattered nation was going to live, going to get back to their land, going to be together, going to be free to worship God and be a light to the nations around them.

I know some believers now take the story of Lazarus, raised to life, and that of Jesus – alive after being crucified, dead and buried – and hear hope for more than individual people. Resurrection is for groups, it is for people who have not died yet, it is for families that had been broken. It is for so many and so much.

Some of you who go back in this church fifty years know of whom I speak when I tell of a man whose fiancé suddenly died in a car accident just before their wedding. Years later, that man spoke of ‘resurrection’ when he told of his dearest friends, who took him that summer and travelled with him, and spent a lot of time with him, and got him moved to a new church where he was due to move. Roger called it resurrection.

Thanks be to God. I could say: God alone resurrects. Yet God does not do this alone. Relationship is needed. When Ezekiel prophesied to the dry bones, God put flesh and skin on them, and breath into them, yes. But Ezekiel had his part to play in the vision. When Jesus raised Lazarus, in was in the context of the family, and the tears of the community. And, Jesus prayed to His Father God. Their communication was part of the moment.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” said Christ. ‘When you die, you will live. When you put your hopes in me, you will never die.’ “Do you believe this?”

Artwork by C. W. Shelley and Cynthia McCarthy.

SERMON: What do you say about Him?

 10:30 am, 4^th Sun in Lent, March 19, 2023 - J G White / FBCA

(Eph 5:8-14; Ps 23; Jn 9:1-41)

 I heard a very interesting talk the other day, on radio. Author Thompson Highway spoke, in his fifth Massey Lecture, about death, from the perspective of monotheism, Greek mythology, and indigenous spirituality. In the Q & R after, he confessed he finds Jesus of Nazareth lacking in humour.

He's a wonderful man; I love him very, very much. But, I've never heard him laugh. A laughing deity he was not. And I've never heard the Christian God laugh either. And that's my point; there's something missing there.

What do you say about Him? About Jesus? Perhaps your presence here now speaks for itself, though we each would say something unique if we put it into words. I could ask you to speak of Christ now – and one day I will have a proper ‘dialogue sermon’ – and open up conversation. One day...

The story of John’s Gospel, chapter 9, is a well-told story, as stories of Jesus go, in the Bible. An unnamed young man is healed of blindness, and no less than five times is asked who or where the man was who performed the miracle.

Actually, there are also a few questions here about who this fellow is who claims to have been healed. Perhaps that makes us shy today – churchgoers often do not want to talk directly about the Son of God as Someone we know personally. Others may ask for explanations from us; we simply say what we know. Our best conversation is not to explain, to give a mini-sermon: the best is to tell our experience. Don’t try to make up what you don’t know: say what you know, and confess what you don’t.

Look at this scene again. 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

Where is this Jesus for whom we sing today? In whose name we pray? To whom we dedicate the finances we share? About whom the preacher should speak? Often it is in His absence that we speak of Christ. He is gone, after all, and we await His return, right? Yet we also say the Spirit of Jesus is always available. It is both/and. To my mind comes the image of a banner in the chapel of the Springhill Penitentiary.

INVOKED OR NOT

GOD IS PRESENT

I also remember well that, just the way that banner was hanging, with some waves in the fabric, it looked like it said (believe it or not) SMOKED OR NOT  GOD IS PRESENT!

Perhaps the onlookers in Jesus’ day thought the man who claimed to be healed of blindness was on something. ‘Is it really that blind guy?’ they asked. But it was him, and he was only under the influence of vision in his eyes, for the first time. The miracle worker had left, so the young man kept getting asked the same questions. 17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”

Who is Christ? What do we say about Him? When we speak of meeting God, so often in ‘churchland’ people default to the dramatic, evangelical experience. And a few people, some of you, have had such a happening, or more than one.

Some people tell their stories, and in great detail. I think of folk like Eugene (not his real name) who in his younger years had a terrible marriage, and as he was getting to the end of it, was getting into church, simply because he could sing. He got recruited into a local United Church choir, before he even believed in God or anything! Then, he did have a series of dramatic, spiritual experiences, his ‘born again’ experience, he calls it. Eugene even can tell of an evening when he was at home, saw a bright light, and had an ‘out of body’ experience, looking down upon himself. He met God quite dramatically.

That did not mean he knew all about Jesus, suddenly, or understood what happened to him. He did feel some healing and help on the inside, and he started a journey.

 Whatever our experience, whatever we have learned about, or not learned, we are where we are. & we say what we know. Look at what the healed blind man said about Jesus of Nazareth. 25 “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” ...If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

Like the healed blind man, other people have a dramatic life experience – a miracle, perhaps? – and that becomes a touchstone for them. I remember, years ago, Lorne coming in to speak with me. He was thinking about being baptized, and has an idea to do it while his elderly and very devout parents were still alive. The one thing Lorne told me, at length, was a near death experience he’d had, working up north, years before.

 One spring day, Lorne was out on his own, driving a huge excavator across the white, wind-swept muskeg. The land was starting to thaw, and any time of year has its dangers. Suddenly, it became obvious he was crossing a pond, when the ice broke and the excavator went down, down, down, into the black, mucky water. In those icy seconds of darkness that seem like an hour, Lorne scrambled to open the cab and get out. Hitting his head on the top of the doorway, he scalped himself. He managed to climb or swim up on top of the excavator cab, and could just reach the surface. He got out. He climbed out. Soaked and freezing, and bleeding, he got back to camp and to safety.

He survived! This, for him, was a near death experience, a miracle, a rescue by the Almighty. I guess it was his one big religious experience. He did not explain anything else about faith – he simply felt he had been spared to live his life, by God.

 Lorne never did get baptized, as far as I know. Baptism is one clear way to obey Christ in the Bible, but plenty of Christians never seem to go through with this. They follow some other ways of being disciples of Jesus, but don’t quite get to that beginning step, that initiation, that declaration.

I noticed that the healed man in John chapter 9 speaks about becoming a disciple of Jesus. He makes a rather brave defense when the Jewish club called the Pharisees interrogate him. They kept at him, and 27 He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”

Of course, the Pharisees did not! They are Jews, ‘disciples of Moses,’ as they put it. The more the healed man is questioned, the more he seems to be headed toward trusting and following Christ. He’d just had the most amazing day in his life – he gets to see with his eyes for the first time – and he is responding. Even while this man, Jesus, is absent, and then a topic of conversation. The dramatic moments of our lives, when we think we meet the Spirit, transform us, after the miracle moment is over.

I remember the story Iris and Ron told me, years ago. I got to know them early on when I became the Senior Pastor of their church. In fact, the Search Committee interviews with me had happened in their den at their house: Ron the Chairperson, Iris making us tea and cookies. 

They told me how they formed a very strong bond with the Baptist Church, years before. They had three sons. Once the boys grew up, the first one got married, and the young couple had a baby. But next the young father got ill. Seriously ill. Terminally ill. It all ended in hospital, as these situations often do. In those final, critical moments, the young man’s parents, Iris and Ron, found the presence of God to be very clear, and the visits of the local Baptist minister to be very timely. No wonder they served God in that congregation ever after – they could never forget how the Good Shepherd had walked with them through their Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

For me, this was a real story of death and resurrection. And a real story of meeting God. ‘What do you say about Him?’ About Jesus?’ At the end of the story of the healed blind man, Jesus goes to talk with him. This healer, who had be absent, is suddenly back. Christ uses one of the titles for Himself he used quite a bit, ‘The Son of Man.’ ‘It is I, speaking to you now.” “Lord, I believe,” the man said, and worshipped Jesus.

I wonder what that was, his worship of Jesus there, standing around, outdoors. Even more, I wonder what your worship of Jesus looks like, when you see Him on the street.

And my worship, out there?

We say what we know how to say, and bow in the ways we know how. We get silent, and pay attention. We laugh when we feel joy, and when life humbles us. We answer others with our own answers, our experience.

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light – for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.