Tag Archives: victoria

First – a Person

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Sunday was my very first Sunday as curate at St John the Divine. After the service ended, I stood by the pulpit and shook hands with what seemed like thousands of people. Though in reality, it was maybe only a hundred and twenty or so…

In the midst of all of the “thank you” and “great sermon” comments, one person stopped and made a point of thanking my very specifically for something in the sermon that had caught their notice. They thanked me for how I referred to people.

I hadn’t thought much of it when writing – it has become second nature for me to talk about a person who has or is dealing with something in their lives, rather than make the identity of the person entirely wrapped up in that one “feature.” For example, I will talk about a person experiencing homelessness rather than a homeless person. It is a small shift in language, but for this person, it made a difference.

This afternoon I was doing clean up and updating work on this site and I came across a post that I wrote a number of years ago while working at the shelter. It reminded me of that after-church conversation and thought it worthwhile to bring it to the front again.

So, here it is: There is Always a Story.

Sermon for June 5, 2016

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Preached at the Church of St John the Divine, Victoria.
Main text: Luke 7:11-17
Referenced: 1 Kings 17:8-24

For the audio recording, please see here.

Jesus is on the move. I mean – every time we hear a story about Jesus, he is somewhere else, talking to someone new, doing something different. He seems to be on the road a lot in this part of Luke’s gospel and its amazing that anyone could keep track of him, let alone follow what he was up to or know who he was in a time before texting, Facebook, or twitter.

The best bet seems to be to keep close, to follow Jesus wherever he goes to see what he might do next. And in our gospel reading this morning, they’re following him pretty closely – Jesus walked 35 kilometres down the road into the town of Nain with his disciples, we read, and a really committed “large crowd went with him”

The large crowd jostling around, pushing each other to try and get closer to Jesus…, kicking up dust from the road…, kids running in and out of legs…

Who is this man? We aren’t quite sure, but he is doing some neat things, so lets follow him… Maybe we’ll be able to find out!

But as we approach the town of Nain, Jesus comes to a stop – and all of us in the crowd have to do so as well… bumping into each other as we all try to look and see why Jesus has stopped.

Our crowd walking into town has met another procession head on, just outside the gates of the city…

Instead of the cheerful chatter and sounds of laughter that have been resonating out of our group, the large crowd we have encountered from town is wailing and crying.

It’s a funeral procession. Death is marching through the town gates and leaving a path of hardship behind.

Someone in our group recognizes the woman at the head of the procession … she is a widow, they say. A single mother with only one son. And this body being carried into the cemetery is that son.

Death. Not only has it robbed the life of a young man but also robbed the life of those who he leaves behind. As many of us know, the social structures at place here meant that with the death of her only son, this widow, this single mother, is now shuffled off to the margins of society where she is like nothing and has nothing.

 

Not something that we do today, now is it? Or is it?

With the loss of a family member, those left behind struggle to find their place in a world that has undeniably shifted.

With the loss of a job, there is struggle for rediscovery of identity and reformation of relationships – let alone struggle for survival.

With the loss of a home comes shame and blame and guilt and all of the struggles of finding a new place in a hot housing market.

We don’t have to look any further than our parking lot or the once-empty grassy space six blocks down Quadra Street [reference: see this or this, amongst other things] to see what happens to those our society shuffles to the side when they cannot fit within the artificially created social structures that govern things.

It is too easy to think that we have nothing in common with each other: with those who live in tents or with the widow in Nain who has just lost her only son.

 

Loss. Change. It is all around and can bring us to tears. We wonder where God is in the midst of it all. We might even wonder if we are forgotten.

And then we encounter Jesus on the road out of town to the cemetery. I am not sure that those in the funeral procession knew it was Jesus. Or if they did know him, if they knew who he really was.

But that did not matter – Because Jesus sees them.

He SAW the widow – knew her situation – and was moved with compassion.

I’m not talking the kind of compassion that is tinged with pity or with some sort of patronizing “poor you” sentiment.

I’m talking about the kind of compassion that reaches down into your gut and stirs things up so that it is uncomfortable. The kind of compassion that compels you to do something.

Jesus is stirred so deeply by the brokenness of this widow and her unjust banishment to the sidelines of society that he moves towards her to act on his compassion.

 

As he moves towards the funeral procession and stretches his hand out towards the bier that the body lay on, I wonder if those in either of the crowds recollected a story they’d heard before about the prophet of God who’d lived generations earlier. The prophet of God we heard about this morning who brought a boy, the only son of a widow, back to life by laying on him three times and breathing the life-giving breath of God back into the boy’s lungs.

I wonder if they remembered that story and looked with hope at Jesus.

If they were expecting to see something similar where Jesus stopped the procession and laid himself out overtop of the dead boy, then I’m sure that they were disappointed.

All Jesus did was reach out and touch the funeral bier and spoke to the young man.

 

A simple action: reaching out and acknowledging him and the situation of those around him.

And with Jesus’ simple action, the young man’s breath, his life, came back into him and he sat up.

No, if the crowds were looking for fireworks and the supernatural like they had seen with Elijah, then I am sure they were disappointed. However if they were looking for resurrection, they experienced it.

Yes there was the resurrection of the boy, the only son of the widow, that that was in and of itself a spectacular event.

But there was also another, perhaps more subtle resurrection.

If resurrection is revitalization, bringing life back into something, or causing something that had been sidelined and forgotten to exist again, then surely the widow was resurrected as well.

With Jesus’ action and acknowledgement, she was restored into community – brought back from the margins and given new life. And perhaps the community was resurrected as well as they saw the injustice of their structures challenged and they found a model for how they ought to react: seeing, being moved by compassion, and acting.

 

Perhaps that is the biggest miracle here: that God is alive and active in and through us. God has compassion for each and every one of us and is the one who is moving in the world around us. God is living and God is active.

Because resurrection is not some one-time event that happened on Easter Sunday some two thousand years ago for us to commemorate each year. It is not a means of escape whereby we can leave this world behind and go some place where it is all sorted out.

Resurrection is ongoing in our lives as God is abiding in and through us. We are invited to practice and bring resurrection into each corner of our lives through following the model of Jesus: seeing, being moved by compassion, and acting.

And it is an ongoing practice because, in reality, it is a lot easier to deny the resurrection than it is to affirm it.

Every time I participate in systems of injustice, I am denying the resurrection.

Every time I walk by a person on the street who is experiencing homelessness and ignore their humanity, I am denying the resurrection.

Every time I let my white privilege get me one step ahead of everyone else, I am denying the resurrection.

Once and awhile I actually affirm the resurrection by living it.

By actually seeing the people that God brings across my path.

By allowing myself to see and feel and be moved with compassion.

By loving those around me and acting out of my compassion.

 

And so I’m not asking you to believe or not believe in people rising from the dead – I am asking you to believe and live the greater miracle: the life-giving resurrection power of God. I am asking you to consider whether wholeness is being restored around and through us, whether resurrection is affirmed, and whether Jesus is proclaimed.

Wholeness is restored, resurrection is affirmed, and Jesus is proclaimed.

Let it be, amen.

Ordination

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I have no words to describe last weekend. Instead, I will direct you to my Dad and his photos of our ordination.

This week we each had our first full days of work at the church. I have an office and keys and have begun to find my way around the parish. I am preaching this Sunday, my first Sunday in the parish, and I don’t know whether to tell people to come or to stay away!

God has called us on a marvellous adventure and day-by-day we seek to discover how we serve God and God’s people

A to B in 4500km

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Apparently it is May.

In the last month, Matthew and I have: completed our Master of Divinity degrees, finished up my work with CMHA, said goodbye to family and friends in London and surrounding cities, packed up our house and overseen it being loaded onto a moving truck, and packed up the corolla and driven through six states and five provinces with ourselves and a cat.

Screen shot 2016-05-07 at 11.39.55 AM

After 4500km, we are in Victoria!

13091910_10101404984637131_5467908939173001290_nIt is a bit surreal. A month ago, we were both finishing up our last week of classes and looking at spending the next couple of weeks writing papers. It is hard to believe that three years (2.5 for Matthew) are over and done already. In so many ways, it feels like just yesterday that I was packing up everything in Victoria to move to London. And now it is all in boxes again…

The boxes remain on the moving truck and we are eagerly awaiting their arrival sometime in the next week or so. Meanwhile, we drove ourselves across the country, stopping in Minneapolis, Brandon, Lethbridge, and Sorrento before heading over to the Island.

For Matthew, most of the drive was new. For me, the entire route south of the Great Lakes was a new adventure and the cross prairie trek was a lovely reminder of the beauty of our country, as it has been 20 years since my family made our first major move from Belleville to Lethbridge.Attachment-1 IMG_7009 IMG_7011We crossed Manitoba and Saskatchewan in nearly one day, flying along the prairie Trans-Canada highway. Matthew marvelled at the flat flat flat of the land, attempting to see the horizon at every turn (who am I kidding: there were no turns in the road) but continuing to remark instead: “Nope, it’s still very flat!”

I drove from Swift Current to Lethbridge. Once we turned onto Highway 3 from the Trans-Canada, it was remarkable how familiar things began to look. I learned to drive in Lethbridge and it showed. I was still able to navigate the city quite well, taking Matthew by my old home, down to the Oldman River Valley to see the famous high level bridge, and around by my old high school.

bridgeThen it was off north through more prairie to foothills, through Calgary to the mountains. We could see the mountains from Lethbridge, but it never ceases to amaze me how one can drive all day and not seem to get any closer. Three hours from Lethbridge, however we finally entered the Rockies.IMG_7017

Their majestic peaks were still topped by snow and there were some valleys thick with snow alongside rushing streams as we wound through the mountain passes. Then we were out, into the Interior.

We stopped the night in Sorrento, BC, about an hour outside of Kamloops. The Anglican Church has a retreat centre there and a good friend works there full time. The last time I was at Sorrento was exactly three years ago, when I attended “ACPO” – the Advisory Committee on Postulants for Ordination and was recommended for theological training in advance of pursuing ordination in the Anglican Church of Canada. Talk about full-circle. It is a beautiful haven on the Shushwap Lakes with amazing programming all summer long.Attachment-1 (1)

From Sorrento we drove down the Coquihalla, through Vancouver (waving at Dad and Colleen as we travelled the new South Fraser Perimeter Road to the ferry terminal. After a one-sailing wait, it was onto the Spirit of Vancouver Island and over to Victoria.

We are blessed to have wonderful friends and colleagues in Victoria with whom we are staying while we wait to be able to get into our new suite. It has been an adventure and we are looking forward to what comes next!

Tweed Riding

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Today was the second annual Victoria Tweed Ride.

We all got dressed up in our finest tweed etc. etc. and gathered on the lawn of the Empress before beginning our bicycle ride around town.

It was a gorgeous day.

Sunshine like that makes me happy.

One stop saw us spend some time at the Moss Street Market. It was the first time I’d been able to visit this year and it resulted in me having some magnificent Wicked Dilly Beans by the Food in Jars Canning Co. with my dinner this evening. Yum! I don’t know if I have tried anything pickled that I did not like.

After wandering through back streets and main roads, we made our way to Craigdarroch Castle for lunch and tea.

What a perfect day.

(Well, almost perfect. I broke my saucer as I got home. It is in five pieces so I may be able to glue it.)

Thursday: The Bicycle Edition

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Now that I live downtown, I spend less time on my bicycle. However, I also find that I’m doing a little more in the way of “riding for fun”. Since I am mere minutes away from Dallas Road by bicycle, it has become more of a cycling destination for me than anywhere else ocean-side in Victoria (my previous closest ocean involved a heart-attack-inducing hill).

This weekend is the Tweed Ride in Victoria. What is that, you ask? Basically, we’re all going to cycle around town in our fancy tweeds, stopping here and there along route, including tea with fine china on the lawn of Craigdarroch Castle. I’ll update with outfits etc. after the ride.

In preparation, I spent last weekend doing a bit of a tune up on my bicycle, including a full clean, replacement of the handlebar tape – we’ve gone from obnoxiously bright blue to sleek metallic grey, and adding a shiny new bell. I had high hopes of a removable basket for the front, and even cycled to three different shops to check them out, but forgot to take into account that drop handlebars don’t do baskets very well/at all.

In unrelated-related events, I was going through some of my bookmarks and items “favourited” on Etsy this evening and have compiled some pictures of some fantastic things that should probably make their way onto my bicycle at some point!

So I already have this. It is fantastic, though I haven’t yet used it for a six-pack or a polo mallet. For the Tweed Ride, I plan to use it to hold my Beatrix Potter lunch box (who knew I still had that?!? Mum’s writing is on the inside with our phone number from Bleecker, so it has been around for awhile!) which will contain sustenance and my tea cup and saucer. Pretty fantastic invention, if you ask me!

By the same makers, there is the wine bottle version. I think this would be very handy for the next potluck bbq or birthday party I attend. Alas, one lovely thing from the Walnut Studio is probably enough. For now (they have a can holder as well! and lovely saddlebags, if I had a saddlebag holder). If I’m not careful, my accessories will soon be worth more than my bicycle!

I’m not too keen on the idea of having a rack on the back of my bicycle with large, unwieldy saddlebags. I swing my leg over the back and I could definitely see myself catching on one. Plus the weight. And it might look funny. Basically, I am very resistant to the idea of saddlebags. But these… oh my! They are lovely! And they come in different colours! I like how they fit right underneath of the seat, attached to its base, so that there is no way that I would find it annoying from the foot-swing-over point of view (though I could see myself getting annoyed at it hitting the back of my thigh if that was a possibility). They do, however, seem to be quite spacious and, while I couldn’t do my grocery shop into one of those, it would hold a one-person picnic and book. Really what more do I need on a lovely sunny day.

Just when I thought that I was sold on one of the above bags, I had to go and see this lovely beauty by the same maker. This looks like it is not only more spacious but would be more functional as an off-bike bag as well as on-bike. Unfortunately (or luckily, depending on your perspective), her shop is closed for a few months, so I will have to make do with admiring from a distance.

Lastly, because everything can’t be overly serious, there are the planters. Seriously, how could one not become attached to the idea of having small planters on the bicycle! It is like spring all year round!

But in all seriousness, I love my bicycle just the way it is and am pretty happy with how it rides and with the bits and pieces I currently have attached. It is just fun to dream! The weather is supposed be lovely in this part of the world for this upcoming weekend. I hope it is in your part as well, and that you get to head out for a walk, if not for a bicycle!

(Images from the linked websites)