Every now and then I wonder: is it still working?
This ancient faith, the stories of God made human, the stories of God with us, amongst us, the story of the God who pitched a tent in our midst, the one who settled down and moved into the neighbourhood.
Is it still working?
Not the church in its institutional dimension, its ability to attract people to join in.
But the ancient story. The daily unfolding story of a God who loved all of humanity so much that one day God shows up amongst us, born as a helpless baby, to show us what God is like. To show us, to remind us, to model for us, a life—a communal life—that is centered in gratitude for God’s daily gift of life.
Is it still working?
Is it still working in your life, the story of Jesus, the son of God, who leaves behind everything—all heavenly glory, all power, all dominion, all the ways of compulsion and delegation, all the way royal and godly—to show up amongst us. To nurse at his mother’s breast. To be raised—however imperfectly—by Mary and Joseph. To be taught the ancient songs. The ancient prayers. To play games in the alley-ways with the neighbourhood kids around the corner. To hide in tall grasses. To search for and catch painted frogs in the marshlands.
Is it still working in your life, the story of Jesus, the one who grew up in a world that had no space for him or his people. Who grow up in the shadow of oppression, marked in body and mind by injustice. The one who was raised In a world and in a community torn apart by war. Ravaged by marauding armies. Whose crops and fish stocks were decimated, as if by locusts when the Roman legions marched through, taking what they willed, whether food, supplies, or the girl next door as tribute. Growing up as he did, there was no-one he knew who went untouched by oppression.
And so we ask again—Is it still working?
Is it still working, the story of Jesus, who under the threat of all these things, rises up as a leader, as a teacher, as one who says to his neighbours, who says to those in his community, that there is a way. A way given by God. A way of resistance to the dominant ways of the world. A way of resistance to the logic of our society and culture hell-bent on consuming everything in its path.
A way of resistance to an extractive impulse destroying people and our sense of place, our sense of love and hope, of belonging and worth. Our sense—that ancient sense— that deeply human sense that in God’s eyes we are enough.
Is it still working?
The way of Jesus, the way of prayer. How is it working in your life?
How is the way of Jesus—the way of listening to the cries of your neighbours—leading to heart-felt and generous response?
How is the way of Jesus—the way of listening to the cries of Creation—changing the way we live? If we will not listen to the voices of the activists, will we at least listen to the painted frogs and wandering elk? What about the olive-sided flycatcher and whitebark pine? How about the white grizzly or the gerrard rainbow trout?
Is it still working, the way of Jesus who repeatedly drops everything to respond to the sick and the weak, the outcast and the widow, the ones displaced—even all these years later—by the inhumane logic of war?
Sometimes, caught up in the question that so many are asking—is church still working—I forget to stop and check—is the way of Jesus still working in me? Is it working in you? Is it working in our community?
Have I given myself over, have I surrendered my life to the way of Jesus? Or do I just keep working, just keep doing, just keep marching along without listening for the whisper of the one who calls each of us by name?
And so this week, caught unawares, or perhaps more truthfully, caught up in all of the busy-ness, God intruded on my self-importance as if to ask:
When you pray, do you listen? When you come to worship, do you show up with an open heart? When you encounter the scriptures, are you open to a new word? Or are you trying to tell the scriptures what they ought to mean? Are you so fixated on finding ways for the church to start working in ways you think it ought that you forget to pay attention to the ways in which Holy Spirit is already breathing in your midst?
Today’s gospel contains within it words of comfort. They have been comfort for me, at least, for many years.
“Come to me,” Jesus says. “Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
And so it is. When we attach ourselves to Jesus. When, like oxen in a field we shoulder the burden together, what happens? The shared burden becomes lighter. This is not just an invitation for us as individuals, but for us as a people too. Are we weary? Are we tired? Have we given up? This call is for us, too.
Sometimes we forget that it is our culture and not Jesus who taught us that we ought to go it alone. To be independent, not interdependent. Rely on no-one. Least of all each other. Least of all God..
This passage from Matthew’s gospel starts with Jesus reflecting on the ways in which we resist. The ways in which people who hear the good news—whether by John or by Jesus—resist anything that demands something of us. Anything that seems uncomfortable. Anything that would lead us beyond the comfort of our preferences—our preferred friends, our preferred way of worship, our preferred way of gathering, our preferred way of meeting.
All too often I—all too often we—resist God’s invitation into the way of vulnerable self-giving love. Vulnerability is difficult. And it comes with risks we aren’t often ready to take. Classic Anglican and English propriety doesn’t help either. In fact, it stands in the way of the kind of life to which Jesus invites us.
Jesus and John show up vastly different prophets with a shared message. John with his camel hair coat and unkempt beard. Eyes wild as he snacks on locusts and honey, known for his hard-hitting turn-or-burn sermons and resolute sobriety. Jesus shows up at every party, turning water to wine. Like John, he calls out the people in power. But he also calls people in—the stray, the outcast, the searching—all invited home.
Yet it doesn’t matter. While both Jesus and John are calling people to the Way of liberation, the Way of God, the way of Life, both are rejected. By us. By those of us who wrongly assume that this whole Church thing is primarily about comfort when it is the exact opposite.
The stray, the outcast, the searching, these are inconvenient to the religion of predictability, yet welcome into the improvised dance of life in the Spirit.
As a church, we have pushed many to the margins who would cause us discomfort. Members, and leaders too. It’s no wonder the church struggles. We have lost our ability to listen for and to dance with the Spirit. We have forgotten that in God’s great garden, a closed system, a closed ecosystem, is a system soon to die. Without nutrients born of decay, without the intrusion of pollinators into our airspace, life turns to death.
And so this week, I have had to contend with a gospel that refuses to be domesticated. A gospel that refuses to confirm that I’ve got everything right.
I’ve had to contend with a gospel that, if it is to be good news for all people, requires an openness and a vulnerability beyond my comfort. Beyond my sense of how things ought to be.
This week we can’t outsource the church’s problems.
We can’t simply say “the church isn’t working,” without first asking “how is the gospel working in and through me?” How am I encountering God? How is God confronting me? How am I being invited into transformation, or perhaps a recovery of childlike faith? How are we being invited to profess, to proclaim, to embody the faith that is within us?
In today’s Epistle, the apostle Paul talks about doing what he does not want to do, and not doing what he does. We often read this on to sins we consider menial—lying, swearing, whatever. But there’s a deeper struggle that we face. The struggle to bear witness to Jesus in the face of our discomfort. Jesus gave up his life that we might live, but we struggle to talk to anyone outside our small circle about our faith.
Later in Paul’s letter to the Romans—chapter 10—the apostle asks,
14 But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’
This is not a call, of course, to beat people over the heads. The way of Jesus is not the way of oppression, but a way of sharing news that is truly good for all of Creation. The way of Jesus calls us to bear witness to what we have seen, and experienced of the divine life. The way of Jesus calls us to give testimony, to put words to our sometimes indescribable encounters with the divine, to engage our curiosity as we pay attention to the God who is still breathing, still working, still shouldering burdens alongside his people to this day.
And so this week, I want to ask you directly:
How might you—how might we—bear witness? How might we embody good news to the searching young person we see at the post office? The single mother making ends meet shopping at the Donation Store? The person we sit next to regularly while quilting? The stranger picking up carrot cake at the cafe while passing through town?
And I want you to think about that. How will you find a way to share the gospel story with someone in your life? And after you've thought about it, I want you to act on it. And if you want, I'll be there to accompany you, to coach you, to work it through.
Is it still working?
Of course that's a question that we will find ourselves asking from time to time But if it's the only question, we've somehow missed the point.
A better question is this: is God still working?
And with every fiber of my being, even though I can’t name all the ways this is true, my answer is yes, yes, yes.
