Daily Reflections

Reflection, July 30

It’s hard to believe that we are already in the last week of July. Although the summer is still in full swing, once we turn the calendar over to the month of August, fall seems not that far away. One of the things I will be doing in September, apart from ironing out the details of worship in the physical church, is a wedding. I love doing weddings and I’m looking forward to this one, especially since we’ll probably be able to do it in the church.

When weddings are being prepared, there is always a rehearsal when the liturgy is gone over and the “choreography” of the participants is practiced. There is always one moment that stands out for me: As I go over the vows with the couple and I get to the part where I say “N and N have joined themselves to each other… I declare that they are husband and wife...” I always remind them that this is practice and I’m not actually marrying them, there at the rehearsal. We will have to wait for the wedding itself. No matter if I say the words. the couple will not be married until my intention is to marry them. I say this because I believe that words have power –power to shape our thoughts and the way we see the world.

And the power is related to the intention behind them.

I think we have probably all experienced empty words, where the words are there, but there is no intention behind them. The classic example of this is a politician’s platform pre-election which doesn’t always come to fruition once the election is over. A more down to earth example is the teenagers empty promise to take out the garbage or clean their room. But the power of intention can revitalize words and move them into actions. The politician with intention behind the promises can make an enormous difference in the lives of their constituents. The teenager with an honest intention to help their parents can make a valuable contribution to the household.

As believers, we make promises to God. Basically, we promise to cultivate and nourish our relationship with Godself through prayer and self-reflection. We promise to work for the good of our neighbour.

During a baptism of a new member into the body of Christ, we renew these promises in the liturgy. In a wedding we witness a couple’s vows and promises to each other before God. None of us want these vows and promises to be empty.

Keeping promises to God is of course in many ways a private endeavour. Promising to pray and self reflect cannot usually be seen by others. Many of the things we do for the sake of our neighbour are done anonymously. But it’s often easier to do these things as a community, especially for Christians, as a church community. When we see each other on Sunday and pray together in the sacred liturgy, we are inspired and uplifted by those praying with us. Our intentions are strong, but the ability to make those intentions tangible is easier when we do it together.

These days, we may find that our love of God and our intention to do God’s will are challenged by the lack of a physical church and the familiar ways of liturgy and fellowship. We have to work much harder to experience the love and strength of community during a Zoom or Facebook Live service. Yet we are doing it! We are connecting in new ways; we are seeing the love of God expressed in a different format.

Our intention continues to be to love and serve our God, and that intention powers our worship, in whatever form that worship takes.

We are now moving toward yet another spiritual challenge. How do we express our worship in the new version of church that we will be experiencing come September? Will we be able to juggle the physical and virtual communities? Will we be able to see through the limitations of the Covid realities to the things that unite us? I believe we will. I believe our intention to worship God individually and together are strong enough to weather this storm and come safe to the shore of God’s kingdom.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection, July 21

Since the onset of the current pestilence, trust has grown as an idea and, for many, as a larger part of life. We have come to trust health officials like Dr Bonnie Henry in British Columbia, Canada’s “Poster Girl” for the war against Covid-19. Premier François Legault’s avuncular manner in his daily media briefings for several months provided something of a bulwark and/or a balm for many of us. By promising to be transparent, he worked to gain our trust. That’s a big deal in an age when, although we Anglicans pray for our leaders, most of us find ourselves responding cynically to politicians.

For the sake of the commonweal, the common good, we are being forced to back away from the individualism that was reigning supreme in our lives and threatening to dissolve the social fabric by which we interact. Trust had grown nearly into a foreign idea, and the implicit social contract by which we live our days, from shopping to passing in the street to riding transit, was dissolving. That’s not the case this month and won’t be for the foreseeable months. As we trust that a vaccine will be discovered, we’re learning in the absence of one about having to trust one another to do the right thing and about having to think consciously of doing the right thing ourselves.

This has me reflecting on what we say in our Creed. It’s an expression of that very confidence in things hoped for and assurance of things unseen that Hebrews 11:1 speaks of in defining faith in our triune God. As our society recovers and/or reshapes and re-implements our understanding of trust, one vital aspect of the transformation is understanding that trusting in someone or something, a politician or a public policy or law, is freeing even when it appears to be constraining, limiting, or shackling. Like our faith in God, our common faith in what we need (not what we want) will effect, if not a cure, then a means by which to define the new normal, the one that will, by God’s grace, get us through. That will be freeing for us because it will diminish or eliminate the pressure we currently feel as we worry if people will put the common welfare ahead of their own wants.

After the definition of faith, the following verse in Hebrews is less well known: 11:2 reads “This [i.e. faith] is what the ancients were commended for.” If you prefer the King James Version, here is its translation: “For by it [faith] the elders obtained a good report.” That’s a dividend of our faith. Acceptance from our contemporaries and our successors is something most of us crave, even if it’s only a dim reflection of the acceptance God yearns to show us. We must trust that remaining faithful in stricken times and aiming to behave in a way that reflects God’s perfect light will earn us commendation, a good report.

Dr. Ian MacLaren

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Reflection, July 16 (17)

It seems ironic to be thinking about desert wisdom on a rainy morning, but that is where my thoughts are going today. In biblical times, it was common to see the desert as a place of spiritual challenge and growth. That arid landscape was the backdrop for many insights about God and God’s relationship to humanity. Jesus himself spent time in the desert, notably before the beginning of his ministry after his baptism by John.

I’ve been in the desert in Israel and I certainly found it arid! It was spring when I went though, and the desert was showing it’s green –a faint blush of vegetation on the rocky shale. During my time there, I learned a lot about how being separate from the worries of the world and seeing the endless vistas of barren rock helped many seekers find the peace and wisdom they were looking for. Entire communities sprang up whose whole purpose was to separate themselves from others and concentrate on learning what the desert had to teach them. I remember driving past the remains of the Qumran community where the Dead Sea Scroll were found. It was a stark, inhospitable place, and yet fertile spiritually in many ways.

As I spent time in the Judean desert, I couldn’t help but wonder what the desert might hold for me spiritually. Would I find some inspiration or knowledge there? What would it be like to turn away from the world, make the desert my home, and open my heart to whatever God had to say to me? Try as I might, I was utterly incapable of imagining myself in that position. The desert just does not speak to me in that way. I know many religious people throughout the ages would disagree, and I’ve heard some of my own friends talk about how inspiring a desert landscape can be, but I myself am not moved by it.

So am I doomed to lose out on this spiritual flourishing? I don’t believe so. We are all shaped by our environment and how it affects our inner life. I am a child of the Canadian landscapes: lakes and forests are my places of comfort and refreshment. When I want to leave the world behind and open my heart to God in a more tangible way, I immerse myself in nature and let the quiet of the trees quiet my soul.

Where the winds of the desert leave me uninspired, the wind across the lake will move my spirit. It’s not the landscape itself that will dictate what brings us closer to God, but how the landscape intersects with our soul. In scripture we learn that our God is not tied to a particular place, but present and accessible everywhere. We can quiet our soul in the desert or quiet our soul in the forest.

On this cloudy morning, the sound of the rain dripping from the trees brings me peace and opens the door of my heart. I relax into this familiar landscape, put aside the worries of this world, and let God speak to my soul.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection, July 9

Some of you may know that I have a six-month-old Labradoodle named Liam. He’s a very sweet boy, rambunctious and good natured. He’s sociable, with both dogs and people, and he lives to go to the dog park and run and jump with the other dogs. He’s sweet and cuddly and loveable, but I can’t say he meets the standard of the “perfect” dog. It takes him awhile to learn to do the things I want him to. And I would be very happy if he barked less and listened more! He is however a wonderful companion and I wouldn’t change him for any other dog in the world, no matter how smart or well behaved. He is his own doggy self, and that’s the self I love.

It reminds me a bit of how I feel about my family and friends: no one is “perfect”, but I love them all, not in spite of their peculiarities, but in many ways because of them. No one is a cookie-cutter “friend” or “child” but each are wonderful, precious, endearing, multifaceted people.

I was reading an excerpt recently from a book of essays by Thomas Merton called “No Man is an Island”. One of his ideas resonated with me. To paraphrase, he says that we cannot do God’s work effectively until we know the person God created us to be. God knows us intimately and rejoices in us, God’s own creation. If we are comfortable in our humanness and all our foibles and idiosyncrasies, we can be free to find the path that leads us closer to God self and find the role we are most suited for in bringing about God’s Kingdom.

Often people think that they are not “worthy” to do God’s work. They look at others who are perhaps more talented, or more spiritual, or more humble than themselves and, in comparing themselves to those others, feel they cannot possibly compete. But it’s not necessary to be “perfect” to earn a place in God’s Kingdom. God delights in us all, finding us precious in our individual personalities. We don’t need to be talented in everything to properly serve God. It’s alright to be a terrible organizer, or to be a nervous public speaker, or an awkward writer, or a bad cook. God loves us just the same.

In our spiritual practice, I feel it is important to examine ourselves without fear, to find out our strengths and weaknesses and to rejoice in them as God does. Once we do, we can offer our gifts to God and God’s Kingdom with joy, knowing that they are valued. And we rejoice in the gifts of others without jealousy because we know that we are all members of the same body and beloved of the One who created us.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for July 7

Ecclesiastes 3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven

I must say that unlike many people I speak to, I love Montreal during a heat wave. Nothing grounds me more than the hot and humid weather that is so characteristic of Montreal summers. I love to sit on my balcony with a glass of iced tea and drink in the sun, feeling my pores open, my muscles relax and my tensions drift away. It something I long for all through the cold weather months –those few blissful weeks of a Montreal summer.

My dog is not of the same opinion as me, however. His dense, curly, black fur makes hot weather a torture for him. He much prefers flopping down in the air-conditioned comfort of the apartment, leaving me to drink in the heat outside. I do understand his position though, so I often take him for a long walk in the cool of the morning, before the sun gets too intense. It’s a beautiful time for both of us as he sniffs every tree and I take a few moments to enjoy the peace and plan my day.

This morning I found myself thinking less about the beauty and tranquility that surrounded me and more about September, and the reopening of the church building. There is a lot to think about! Not only do we have to come to terms with keeping the space clean to the requirements of both the government and the Diocese, but we have to ponder how this new dynamic will impact our parishioners. Deep in thought about the future, I realized that my peaceful walk was at an end and my workday had begun. I had once again missed an opportunity to live in the present beautiful moment and instead had spent time and energy worrying about what was to come.

I found it ironic that the summer months I had so longed for were being taken over by thoughts of the fall and winter and the tasks ahead. Why was I squandering the very season that I had looked forward to so keenly? I was living in the present, but with one foot in a possible future. I realized that it was important to just be.

We have probably all heard the expression “stop and smell the roses” and we acknowledge its wisdom. And yet it is so hard to put it in action! We so quickly begin to take for granted the things we wanted so badly when we didn’t have them. Our thoughts move us on to the next problem to solve and we lose the joy of our present blessings.

I am trying very hard this summer to appreciate the moments of peace and joy that God gives me. I am trying to be here now, without dismissing the present and quickly moving forward to the future. I am trying not to mourn in advance the passing of the summer, as my mind is already partly in the fall and winter. For everything there is a season, and this is the beautiful, ephemeral season of summer. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for June 30

I’ve recently been rereading one of the Cadfael novels written by Ellis Peters, the pen name of the late British author Edith Pargeter. Perhaps you’re aware of the series: it concerns a medieval monk who finds himself solving mysteries while tending his herb garden and participating in the Divine Office in a monastery in England. There are many books in the series, and I’ve read all of them.

As I was looking into Peters’s life and works, I came across this quote from an interview she did: “… I have one sacred rule about the thriller. It is, it ought to be, it must be, a morality. If it strays from the side of the angels, provokes total despair, willfully destroys—without pressing need in the plot—the innocent and the good, takes pleasure in evil, that is unforgivable sin. I use the word deliberately and gravely.”

In another interview (which I unfortunately can’t seem to find) she speaks about the effect Cadfael, her own literary creation, has had on her life. She said that he has made her a better person, more tolerant and peaceful, more loving. In writing his story, living with his narrative, those things which were perhaps dormant in her –those perceptions of grace—were made tangible in the character of Cadfael and so she was able to benefit from them, as she might have from a flesh and blood person. From the quote above it is obvious that Peters had a deep sense of the goodness of God and the virtues we are all called to express, and writing Cadfael’s story made her aware of them in her own life.

I must say the Cadfael has had an effect on me also. He is one of the literary characters I turn to for comfort when things seem to get out of hand in my life. I reread Cadfael mysteries not so much for the “whodunnit” side of them, but to reconnect with the compassion and love shown by the detective. It’s like shelter from the wind on a cold day, or shade and coolness on a sweltering one.

I believe that deep in our souls, God has placed a knowledge of Godself, and if we allow ourselves to, we can access and be nourished by that knowledge. It can be accessed through writing –not necessarily a novel as Peters did, but through poetry, journaling, or simply jotting down a few thoughts. It can be accessed through reading others’ works –a favourite author, a painter, or musician. I can even be accessed by conversation with a compassionate friend.

We are created to be close to God, if we wish it. Let us never forget that God chooses to love us, and we can also choose to love God. There are many avenues to a relationship with God. Let us always be alert to finding them.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection on Psalm 19, June 16

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

² Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they reveal knowledge.

³ They have no speech, they use no words;

no sound is heard from them.

⁴ Yet their voice^[b] goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

Reflection

This morning I woke up early, made my coffee and took my dog out for his morning walk. I do these things every day, but today was different. I usually work from home in these Covid times, sitting in my stuffy office with the sound of the traffic on Highway 720 a constant background accompaniment to my thoughts. My dog gets his walk on city streets, stopping briefly at a park on the way. But this week I am working from my cozy motel room in Kamouraska, where I’m spending my off time visiting with my daughter who lives there.

Those of you who spend time in the country will know what I’m talking about when I describe my walk this morning: the freshness, the calling of the birds, the intoxicating smell of the flowers. The lilacs are still blooming here –Kamouraska is a week or so behind Montreal in the late spring season. There’s a quiet road next to the river where we walked and the flowers, the quaint houses and the low hills across the river all worked together to foster a sense of peace and joy which have been lacking in me for the last little while.

As I walked, the opening verses from Psalm 19 quoted above kept running through my mind and I remembered a sermon I once heard many years back. The preacher suggested that God has a dialogue with nature that humans are not a part of. We can, however, observe it and be moved by it. I love this idea. Humans are part of the natural world, but sometimes we find ourselves alienated from it, lost in our own busy-ness and preoccupations. Yet if we tune into the everyday, natural, joyful conversation between nature and its Creator we are brought back to an acknowledgement of our own creatureliness and our dependence upon God.

Our souls are made to see the beauty of creation. We are made to appreciate what God has provided for us. Yes, on a quiet walk in the country we can’t help but be moved by the natural world, but even in the midst of the city, we can stop for a moment to listen to God and nature’s dialogue. There are still flowers and birds. The wind still blows through the trees. We can still look up at night and see the stars –not as many as one sees in Kamouraska, but they are still there.

No matter where our soul finds itself, the deep rhythm of the natural world is calming and healing. All it takes is to turn ourselves to the source of all creation and accept the freely given gift that God offers.

Rev’d Karla

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A Reflection for June 11, based on John 6:51-58

Jesus said: ⁵¹ ”I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Reflection

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. It’s not a common celebration in the low church tradition of which St Thomas’ is a part, but it’s certainly worth praying and meditating on. Often these prayers and meditations are done in a quiet church, with candles, sacred vessels, sometimes incense, and the people turn their hearts to the mystery of the Eucharist. One of the passages on which they might meditate is the one cited above, from John’s Gospel.

This is a difficult reading for many now, as it was for the people of the time. Of course everyone at the time was familiar with the story of the manna which came down from heaven when the Israelites were in the desert and which kept them alive when no other sources of nourishment were available. Moses was the one who implored God to save them and God did. This is a very sacred tradition among the Jewish people, and it was being challenged by Jesus.

Jesus said he himself was living bread which would nourish not just the physical life of the body, as manna did, the spiritual, eternal life of the soul. It is not a surprise that his listeners were scandalized.

In the Jewish Temple sacrifice, the “life force” of an unblemished animal –its flesh and especially its blood—was offered to God for many reasons: thanksgiving, guilt, to make peace, and as an atonement for the sins committed by the people. Often the priests, and sometimes those making the offering, ate the sacrificial animal. It was a way of coming closer to God.

For Jesus to make himself part of that equation was truly troubling. Yet, the spiritual reality of Jesus’ body and the power of that body to save is fundamental to our understanding of God and our relationship to God. Jesus fills the spiritual reality of God’s love and care for us with the undeniable physical reality of his human body. “Whoever eats my flesh,” he says, “and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” The connection between the physical and spiritual is the mark of the Incarnation.

The modern world also has a problem with this passage, echoing as it does our strong distaste for cannibalism. But Jesus is not arguing for one human eating the flesh of another, but humanity partaking in the body and blood of God. Jesus is, after all, the Lamb of God.

Corpus Christi tends to be a very spiritual celebration of the Eucharistic act, where we take into our bodies the bread and wine, the flesh and blood of Jesus. This is indeed precious and holy. And yet, we must not forget the earthy, human aspect of Jesus’ teaching, as radical and disturbing as it may be. Jesus is not just a spiritual entity but is fully human.

As a church we cannot at the moment come into a church building in quiet contemplation of the spiritual and physical Body of Christ. We cannot even come together as a community to share Eucharist and celebrate our faith. But we do know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Our physical reality mirrors his physical reality and if we can’t take communion in our usual way, we are still partaking of the Body of Christ in other ways to the glory of God.

Rev’d Karla

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Tuesday, June 9, 2020 Reflection on Ordinary Time

Now that the liturgical celebration of Trinity is behind us, the church is moving into Ordinary Time. I confess that when I heard the original meaning of Ordinary Time was related to counting the Sundays after Pentecost (as in ordinal numbers) I was a bit disappointed.

I loved the idea of Ordinary Time happening in spring, with the liturgical colour of green reflecting that. It reminds me of gardens in bloom, fields planted, the singing of birds and people wearing their colourful spring clothes. Ordinary time… when the large sweep of intense emotion surrounding Advent, the Nativity, Lent, Easter Pentecost and Trinity are finally set aside, and our everyday spirituality is showcased. Ordinary Time goes so much farther than simply counting down the Sundays until Christ the King happens in November.

But this spring is like no other in recent memory. Our Ordinary Time is actually quite extraordinary. Yes, the natural signs of spring are there, but the colourful spring fashions now include matching facemasks, and people are more cautious when they greet each other in the street.

We are starting to come out of lockdowns and things feel like they may be returning to what felt like normal a short year ago. How we welcome it! Yet we know that we still need to be vigilant. The reality of the virus that has marked us has not gone away. As much as we long for ordinary time, the lessons learned during extraordinary time must still be a part of our present reality.

In a way, it’s like that in the church year also. The disciplines of prayer, meditation and fasting which were a part of Advent and Lent, and the heightened connection with God that we experience from the intense events of the nativity, crucifixion and resurrection helped us to prioritize our relationship with God. If we let the rhythm of the church year mark us, we can’t help but see how these events ground us in our faith.

But now it’s Ordinary Time, when the church is immersed in the day-to-day ministry of Jesus, the homely miracles and teachings, the grounded, earthy, human relationship between ourselves and our Lord. But we don’t forget those times of heightened spirituality, even in Ordinary Time. The Incarnation and Resurrection mark our every spiritual response with the deep knowledge of God’s love for us.

When times are chaotic and things are difficult we can come to a deeper understanding of our values and priorities. This is a hard learning, yet a precious one. When things become less fraught and it looks like we might be returning to a remembered “normal”, we don’t simply toss away those hard-won lessons. We integrate them into our present reality so they can inform us on the road ahead of us.

Rev’d Karla

Thursday, June 4, 2020 Reflection

Prayer: A Meditation on Ephesians 1:15-23

Rev. Stanley Brooks

Prayer is the way we communicate with God. It is about seeking God with a sincere heart, and cooperating with His will. It is the process by which we are moved by God’s Spirit.When we pray we express what we value and what we really want to see happening. Our words may be woefully inadequate in expressing our thoughts. However, what is of critical importance in prayer is the feeling that God is listening and cares about what concerns us. This knowledge of a God who cares can give us tremendous spiritual confidence.

Scripture is filled with prayer of different kinds. I love to read the Psalms because of their power to inspire and uplift. Throughout the Psalms we encounter prayer of many kinds, but especially prayer of blessing and adoration. Such prayers are raised by us to praise and honour God in response to all the good gifts we receive from him. When we make requests to God that asks for the fulfillment of a need in our life or the lives of others, we are engaged in prayers of intercession and petition.Such prayers acknowledge our dependence on God. Prayers of thanksgivingto God are rendered for the blessings we receive, for example, the life we have in the world that God has given us.

The reading for Ascension (Ephesians 1:15-23) is an extensive prayer of intercession and thanksgivingby Paul for the church he had started at Ephesus. Although Paul has been away from this community for a number of years, many other people have joined, and have come into new life in Christ. Paul has obviously laid a firm foundation. He continually gives thanks to God for the Ephesians because they have put their faith in Christ. Furthermore, he gives thanks for the fact that the genuineness of their faith is shown by the love they have, not only for each other, but for “all the saints,” namely, all those who are fellow believers in Christ.

What I really find uplifting is that Paul also prays that God the Father would bestow the Holy Spirit upon the Ephesians in His capacity as “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.’’ Paul makes this request in order that the church may gain deeper insight and understanding in the knowledge of God—that they may better understand the things of God and what God wants to share with them: “…since he has enlightened the eyes of your heart, I pray that you may know what is the hope of his calling; what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance for the saints.” Imagine what our Church could accomplish if endowed with a spirit of wisdom and revelation.

What the apostle is asking God is quite profound. He is praying that God will enable these Christians at Ephesus to understand and appreciate the purpose for which God has called them, a purpose that shall finally be fully realized when the kingdom of God comes in all of its glory. This purpose is to fully appreciate “the immeasurable greatness of his power available to us who believe.” The power Paul desires that they grasp is the very power God employed when He raised Christ from the dead. Paul believes that God desires that we employ this awesome power for our spiritual benefit through the accomplishment of His good purposes.

Paul’s prayer must have been a wonderful word of encouragement to the Church at Ephesus, and it should be a wonderful word of encouragement to us as well. We are called to love God with every fiber of our being. God’s desire is that the Holy Spirit will make heavenly things known to us in a deeper and more meaningful way. During these turbulent and dreadful times of Covid 19 we need more prayer than ever. So I encourage you to “pray without ceasing”asking the Holy Spirit to help us know in a deeper and more personal way the glorious life and purpose to which God has called us in Christ. We should never cease asking God to grant us greater enlightenment and illumination as we live out the life to which we are called.

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Tuesday, May 19, 2020 Reflection

Tuesday, May 19: Reflection on 1 Corinthians 12: 4-13

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;

5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord;

6 and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.

7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,

9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,

10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

11 All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

As do most clergy people these days, I find myself thinking a lot about community and what the new reality means for the Church. A few short week ago, it was pretty easy to think about the church community in a physical way: the community was the people who showed up at church, regularly or once in a while, or who were attached to the parish but were housebound and so peripheral to its life. There were also those who became a part of the community by default: through baptisms, marriage or funerals. This physical definition of a church community is fairly clear cut –the people who find themselves sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning in a particular church are what constitutes the church community.

Things are different now. Our community is less physical and more virtual. That has had many effects: some people feel they cannot be a part of this new unfamiliar way of meeting together, so they withdraw. Some people are very glad of this new reality because they can once again participate in the life of the worshipping community, even though they’re housebound. Others are drawn to us even though they may live far away. Most people are happy they don’t have to get up early to drive to the church and find parking!

But what knits together this new community? Yes, there are familiar elements: prayers, hymns, sermon, readings from Scripture, etc. But the most important element that binds us together is our desire to love God and follow Jesus. That desire to walk in the ways of righteousness connects us in love and acceptance. The reading above from 1^stCorinthians reminds us that even though we are all different, we celebrate and rejoice in our differences because that is what strengthens us in our earthly journey. In the midst of our separate experiences and talents, we still come together to listen for the Holy Spirit and be a community of love, whether in a church building or over a Zoom meeting.

Rev’d Karla

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Thursday, May 14, 2020 Reflection

I have been rereading a book by Mary Jo Leddy called “Radical Gratitude”. In a section entitled “Loving God for Nothing” Leddy says : “To dwell in the wonder of our own creation, the ‘in our beginning’, is to dwell intuitively in the mystery of the God who is the Creator of the world. This is the God whom the makers and shapers of modernity could not acknowledge because such acknowledgement would involve the fundamental admission that we human beings are indebted, in the most radical sense, for life.”

She goes on to suggest that we often find ourselves in a contractual relationship with God. This boils down to the idea that “I love God because God gives me the things I want, and I’ll do what God wants so that God will love me and give me those things.” But God has already given us life itself and the whole of creation to cherish and delight in. God loves us freely without us asking for it, and if we love God freely in return, we will understand the true meaning of worship –delighting in and being thankful for Godself.

The gratitude for what we already have, rather than the petitioning God for what we don’t have is very spiritually nourishing. Of course we already know this, since those we know and love are often (and sometimes annoyingly) telling us to “count our blessings”.

But human beings like to believe we are in control of our destiny (in spite of all the evidence to the contrary) and we hope that God will see it our way and give us what we want if we’re really good at asking. To simply praise God in gratitude for the world and our life with all its joys and challenges feels like a betrayal of our desire for “more” and “better”.

But ultimately, gratitude is the appropriate response, the spiritually healthy response. God has given us the entirety of creation. Yes it can be challenging, even heartbreaking, but here we are in the midst of its messy abundance and glory. And for that we call indeed be thankful.

Rev’d Karla

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 Reflection

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom

It is my firm belief that every member of our Church community across each Anglican Diocese is fully aware that COVID-19 and the crisis created by this pandemic has challenged us in unprecedented particular ways. We are being forced to think in non-traditional ways. This unprecedented situation has forced religious leaders to seek creative alternatives to community-based worship at a time when people are anxiously in need of spiritual support. In fact, Clergy across Canada are moving services to digital platforms as they adapt to ways that support their congregations amid this global catastrophe that has seen governments restrict large gatherings, rendering traditional worship impossible. Directing people to live-streamed services and prayers has been relatively simple for some, but unfortunately, not at all entirely fulfilling for most.

Life is as disrupted at St. Thomas as in the wider worshiping and secular community. The question raised therefore, is how do we remain an active spiritual church community in these circumstances? How do we as individuals adapt to church that has become less communal?

In meditating on the circumstances that St. Thomas and other churches face, I have been drawn to the Biblical text: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God.”(Colossians 3: 16.)

A closer examination of the word dwell reveals the meaning “to live in” or “to be at home.” More than ever, if we as individuals desire to remain rooted in Christ during these times, we must allow the Word of Christ to live in us and fully and completely have a home in our hearts and minds. The "word of Christ" refers to Christ's teachings, both directly as found in the Gospels as well as those explained by the apostles. Paul is emphatic that the teachings of Jesus "live" within believers in a powerful way.Paul is speaking about Christ’s message of the Kingdom of God and by extension his message of God’s plan of salvation through Him. At a time like this, Paul is calling all believers to let the Word of Christ live among ourselves by teaching one another the truths of God and the Gospel.Christ's word can also give clear direction and guidance regarding how to correct mistakes in what we believe and what we do. The limiting circumstances brought about by Covid 19 rule out any formal teaching at church, but it certainly can happen informally through daily conversations and interactions online. Nowis the time toconstantly speak the Word of God and the truths of the Gospel to one another, “in all wisdom.” In the Bible wisdom usually refers to the ability to take truth and apply it to life.

Paul also encourages the singing of various types of spiritual songs. His purpose is simply to state that music is to be used to let the word of Christ dwell richly within us.We are all supposed to sing, becausesinging is a means of giving thanks and praise to God. Oursinging is to be done with an attitude of thanksgiving. Singing praise to God is largely associated with showing our gratitude to Him, rather than focusing on ourselves or our own desires.

St. Paul is telling “the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse”and us by extension that this is the particular time to ensure that God’s Word reside deep within our being, nourishing our spirit and affecting our very soul, our mind, our emotion, and our will. The truth is that when God’s Word finds a home within us in a manner that is so abundantly rich, we inwardly experience its awesome vitality changing and uplifting us especially when we face difficulties. For the Word to dwell in us richly, we must allow it to get deep into our being, nourishing our spirit.

This is the time for closer Christian relationships, for reaching out to each other, thinking about and uplifting one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to God. We are a community of believers, and regardless of the circumstances surrounding COVID 19, our Christian life should be one that is so filled with the Word that our Spirits connect and bubble over with praise and joyful melodies. My friends, this is the time to give the Word of our Lord the necessary room within us that it may minister the riches of Christ into our innermost being,nourishing our spirit and affecting our very mind and emotion.

We may not have the opportunity to meet for worship and fully undertake the ministries which help to sustain our community, but we can daily seek the Lord himself in His Word, and praise him for his Word. This is an opportune time to read and study our bibles more, allowing God’s Word greater room to dwell within us. This is also the right time to reach out to fellow parishioners, letting the Spirit bring forth the riches of his word from within us to others. May we all be ones who daily seek and pray over God’s Word, receiving it into our heart, allowing it to make a home in our inward being, and as a result, share the Word of God to those around us in our community. By doing this we will understand what the Psalmist experienced that caused him to acknowledge God’s great goodness in this manner: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”(Psalm 119:105)

Reverend Stanley Brooks

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Thursday, April 30, 2020 Reflection

In my continued reading of CS Lewis, I happened upon a chapter from his book Undeceptions on miracles. It's an interesting subject and quite controversial, even in Christian circles. Some people believe in miracles unquestioningly, simply because we find miracles in the Bible and God can do whatever God wants. Others feel that there is always a physical explanation for miracles because God would not go against God's own rules set down in creation.

One of the things Lewis says is that miracles don't go against God's own rules, but are the intensification of those rules. For example, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus changed water into wine. That was miraculous, certainly, but actually God changes water into wine regularly through the growing, harvesting and fermentation of grapes. Similarly, Lewis says, when Jesus multiplied the bread and fish it was an intensification of God's natural multiplying of wheat in the field and fish in the sea. So in effect, the miraculous was in accordance with God's natural laws.

Another thing that Lewis said was that there are people who will never believe in the miraculous, even if they experience it themselves. They will always assume it didn't happen –that it was a hallucination, or a case of mass hysteria. One has to have an openness to the possibility. And I think this is where we often are as Christians. By definition believers believe. They do have an openness to God's work in the world, but not all believers believe in the same way: some are more gullible, some are more skeptical. I myself have heard about and experienced things which I am happy to call miraculous, and I have heard about things called miraculous which left me rolling my eyes in skeptical disbelief. I don't think we are required to all believe in miracles in the same way. But we should respect others' response to the reality of God's presence in the world.

If we look around us these days, the world is full of miracles, as well as fear and hopelessness. People are responding to help each other in ways they never have before, nature is healing, we are examining the very principles on which our society is built. If we look at the church, the Body of Christ, we can also see the miraculous as well the fear. Communities are being built, our faith responses are deepening and we are responding with eagerness to the challenges God is giving us. Whatever our level of belief in miracles, whether we see God as an intimate manager of events or a force in the world for good, we do know that God's love is upholding us and that is what is the most important. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...

Rev'd Karla

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Tuesday, April 28, 2020:

I was looking around in my library for something to inspire a reflection and I turned to CS Lewis –one of my greatest spiritual influences. In a compilation of his works, there is the full copy of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Since it's been awhile since I reread it, I was happy to open it again and follow Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter back through the Wardrobe into the land of Narnia.

For those who don't know the story, four children are sent to the country in war-time England where they find adventures in a magical world. I'm just at the beginning of my reread, where one of the children betrays the other and comes under the influence of the evil queen. Edmund, the betrayer is led to his actions by greed, pride, and cowardice. He knows right from wrong, but he still lets his lower nature control his actions. If you know the story, you remember that Edmund does repent but he is so caught up in the consequences of his actions that it takes the sacrifice of a force for ultimate good, the Lion Aslan, to finally defeat the evil which had ensnared him.

This, of course, is a familiar story for all Christians, and indeed Lewis was quite aware of what he was doing. I was a child myself when I first read this book, and in the chaos of my early life it shone as a beacon of integrity and spiritual love. Every child in this story is loved and accepted and sacrificed for-- not just the sweet ones who never misstepped, but the complicated, torn and confused ones!

I think it's a good time to remember that we are all precious and worthy of sacrifice, even when tensions and worry lead us to be our not-best selves. We know by the teachings of scripture that Jesus died for us, but let's open our hearts to the reality of that teaching, that we may feel in our hearts God's redemptive love and let that love nourish us always.

Rev'd Karla

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Thursday, April 23, 2020:

In my continued reading of Rowan William's book, Being Human, I came across this sentence: “...a loss of the sense of the sacred, a loss of the sense of being answerable to an intelligible gift, from beyond ourselves, in the long run entails more than simply the loss of God; it may entail the loss of the distinctively human.”

When some people think about what it means to believe in God, they often have the image of God as a big sky daddy that they have to please or else they're not going to heaven. They see God as another human being-- just more powerful. In this scenario, if you “worship” this God (that is, do the proper prayers and go to church on Sunday), God will like you and let you into heaven. This is a god you can bargain with, cheat if you're smart enough, hide things from, lie to and generally do what you can to make “God” work for you and get what you want.

We know of course that this is a very immature and limited view of Godself. God is not a human being (although the Trinity does encompass the humanity of Jesus) and does not act like a despot. God is not a mean boss, who is out to get you, but the unknowable, transcendent author of creation. Believing in God means opening ourselves to the mystery God exhibited in fashioning us and the rest of creation. We understand that our human identity is based on the understanding that we are not the ones who are authors of creation, nor do we always have power over our destiny. Look at what is happening in the world!

The accepting of the mystery of God and aligning ourselves to that mystery is what defines us as a HUMAN being, not just a being. It is essential to who we are. If we lose our sense of the sacred, as Williams says, we lose not just our sense of God, but our own true human nature.

Let's take some time to worship God the Creator in this (coldish) spring season, and be glad to be a part of that creation.

Rev'd Karla

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Tuesday, April 21, 2020:

I've been reading a fair amount of Rowan Williams (the past Archbishop of Canterbury) and a passage from his book Being Human struck me. He writes: “...we ascribe personal dignity or worth to people–to human individuals –because of the sense that, in relationship, each of us has a presence or a meaning in someone else's existence. We live in another's life.”

It seems to me that it's true we sometimes think about the term “person” as defining us as separate from others –what makes us “a person” is unique. When we say “It's personal” we tend to mean it's not your business, or it's something uniquely ours, something that distinguishes us from all others.

But Rowan Williams suggests that we can't be a person on our own, that our true meaning as a person comes from our interconnectedness with others. The poet John Donne write in the famous quote: “No man is an island, entire of itself...” We understand ourselves by the way we're connected to each other.

Yes, fundamentally, I'm a beloved child of God, and that is my primary sense of being a person. But my personhood also reflects the fact that I am a priest, a parent, a friend, and the list goes on. This morning I read a piece by Pope Francis on celebrating the Eucharist in the times of Covid-19, where he underlines the importance of community in the Christian faith. Yes we can have a personal relationship with God, and we should! But being part of a community is one of the things that defines us as Christians.

It is this sense of community that is being challenged in these days of social isolation. Our identity as people of faith, as Christians and as the parish of St. Thomas', becomes something we have to think about more, now that we can't gather in the familiar walls of our beloved church building.

It's easy, even tempting, to spend the days alone in individual communion with God, setting aside our common commitment to each other until we can get back to “normal”. But even now we can still stay connected to the greater Christian community by phone calls, participating in Sunday Zoom services, or just by doing our best in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, to act from the heart of love which is the gift God has given us.

Rev'd Karla

Saturday, April 18, 2020 – (7^th day of Easter)

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=453875130

Psalm 16

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

John 20:11-20

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the [Judeans], Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

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First things first, there is nothing about Mary Magdalene’s occupation or reputation listed in the Bible. She’s listed as one of the people at the tomb, present after the resurrection in all four Gospels. Sometimes she’s listed as those who were at the cross. Luke, being Luke and liking backstories, gives us the only other reference to her, in Luke 8, where she is described as someone who Jesus healed, “from whom seven demons had gone out.” She’s not the picture that Dan Brown describes in his Da Vinci Code novels (no spoilers), nor is she the woman of the night described somehow through tradition. She is, however, a powerful figure in the early church, and clearly an agreed upon witness of the resurrection. Mary, in particular, is called by Jesus to go and tell the others – a calling to preach the Gospel. She is the apostle to the apostles and the Easter message would have been lost without her and the other women as the first preachers.

Mary is easily my favourite character in the John story. Remember that in the first part of John 20, she still is the first one at the tomb, but she’s by herself. Not believing what she saw, she runs back and gets the others. Then Peter and the disciple who Jesus loved get into a footrace to get to the tomb, but then look in, and do precisely nothing. Mary is the only one who makes sense. She allows herself to grieve, to live in shock, to linger long enough to meet the risen Christ. Having met the risen Christ, she then no longer lingers and goes out into the community to proclaim the good news and to help fashion the body of Christ. In other words, she is gathered to the empty tomb, she receives the words of the promise of the resurrection, prays to be taken to the body of the crucified Christ, experiences the body of the crucified Christ no longer dead, but risen and tangible, and then is sent out into the world, not to linger with the body of Christ, but to go and be the body of Christ. She is our first apostle, she is our pattern for Christian life and practice. So that we too who are called, gathered, who receive the Word and promise of God, who hold the broken and resurrected Christ in our hands, and may also be told not to hold on to Christ, but to go and meet Christ in the world. Alleluia.

Friday, April 17, 2020 – (6^th day of Easter)

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=453871491

Psalm 16

Song of Solomon 5:9-6:3

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Now I should remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

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I often wonder what it must have been like for those first apostles. The fear, the inevitability that the death they just witnessed was going to happen to them. Our liturgical calendars reflect this in our saints’ days and commemorations. If an individual was martyred, the colour of the day is red, and if they weren’t, it’s white. The red days far outweigh the white. And yet, Jesus appeared to over 500 of the apostles, face to face. In spite of all of those difficulties, it’s my temptation to think that that would somehow make my faith easier, my proclamations more sound, to have seen Christ’s face.

Yet, listening to Paul’s writings in his first letter to the Corinthians, I think the life of faith is difficult no matter what. From Abraham to Moses, to Peter and Paul, to us as ones untimely born, the life God calls us to, the life of faith isn’t a straight path. We have to be reminded each year, “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” It is the grace of God given to us not in vein who keeps us in the life of faith – keeps reminding us that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. This grace of God is freely-given, unconditional love – a love as of a parent to a child. It gives us faith, it allows us to trust God and to trust God’s promises. It doesn’t judge us for who we are. It doesn’t come to us based on our own merits, it’s given to us freely. Love finds us where we are and brings us into the life of God so that this love can be magnified, so that this love resurrects us from death into life. Alleluia.

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Thursday, April 16, 2020 – (5^th day of Easter)

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=453826497

Psalm 16

Song of Solomon 2:8-15

Colossians 4:2-5

Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should. Conduct yourselves wisely towards outsiders, making the most of the time.

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At this point, we start to turn deeply into the 50 days of Easter. The Easter hams have been either frozen, made into pea soup, or eaten by this point. I’m not sure about you, but it was about the fifth day of social distancing/self-isolating/quarantining, that things became very real to me. It took me five days to realize what the new normal was going to be. Maybe I’m just slow to realize things. You’ll have to ask Rebekah. So now we’re looking ahead to the Second Sunday of Easter, rehashing what on earth just happened. We need to sit down with Mary once again and have her repeat the story starting from the beginning. It’s absurdity, really. The foolishness of the Cross, Paul later writes. It is the paschal mystery to proclaim that a dead man rose three days after a brutal state-sanctioned execution. A dead man rose from the dead, showed himself to Mary, and told her to go tell the others that he’s going ahead of them, to meet them.

But resurrection is never what it really seems. Nothing just goes back to normal. Dear ones, we are about to discover that in very real ways once this period of social distancing is over. Part of the reason is that everything is in constant change and constant flux. Things are constantly dying and are being remade around us. Seeds die and become plants, the earth wobbles through time and space, subtly changing shape and reforming, the cells of our own bodies die and are replaced. But nothing just simply returns to a previous state. A new homeostasis must be sought, achieved. The other reason why nothing just goes back to normal humans react to change by grief. Even good change comes with grieving that which is no longer.

Resurrection doesn’t mean that everything returns to normal. That is what we must be alert about in our prayers. Alert against disillusionment in the midst of difficult change, alert to our own process of grief, so that the paschal mystery may be made clear to us. That the resurrection of Christ is about our future, and not simply restoring us to where we were – a future bound eternally with God, a future that propels us into action into this present, making the most of our time. Alleluia.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2020 – (4^th day of Easter)

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=453826452

Joshua 3:1-17

Matthew 28:1-10

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Give thanks to the Lord for the Lord is good;

God’s mercy endures forever.

Let Israel now declare,

“God’s mercy endures forever.”

The Lord is my strength and my song,

And has become my salvation.

Shouts of rejoicing and salvation echo in the tents of the righteous:

“The right hand of the Lord acts valiantly!

The right hand of the Lord is exalted!

The right hand of the Lord acts valiantly!”

I shall not die, but live,

and declare the words of the Lord.

The Lord indeed punished me sorely,

but did not hand me over to death.

Open for me the gates of righteousness;

I will enter them and give thanks to the Lord.

“This is the gate of the Lord;

here the righteous may enter.”

I give thanks to you, for you have answered me

and you have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected

has become the chief cornerstone.

By the Lord has this been done,

it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made

let us rejoice and be glad in it.

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If you will permit be to be a little Lutheran. (At least I waited a day.) in 1529, the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, wrote a small catechism to essentially fit on a poster that was to be hung up in your kitchen. He started with the Ten Commandments, then to the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism, then ends with morning, evening, and table blessings. Each of these components is broken up into sections. He then asked questions like, “What is this?” or “What does this mean?” or “What is baptism?” Which he explains, and through doing so, lays out the bread and butter of Christianity. He also wrote a Large Catechism that was meant for clergy and teachers, but the Small Catechism was meant for every day at home use. Throughout my life, I have found it both comforting and challenging, and most often, both of these at the same time. One of the sections that continues to ring in my ears is the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer – Thy will be done on earth is it is in heaven. Luther asks the question, “Was ist das?” or What is that?/What does this mean? He writes, “In fact, God’s good and gracious will comes about without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and among us.” You might ask, “How does this come about?” Luther continues, “Whenever God breaks and hinders every evil scheme and will – as are present in the will of the devil, the world, and our flesh – that would not allow us to hallow God’s name and would prevent the coming of his kingdom, and instead whenever God strengthens us and keeps us steadfast in his word and in faith until the end of our lives. This is God’s gracious and good will.”

I would imagine that the Psalmist is in this same vein. Salvation is God’s action, not ours. The gates are the gates of the Lord, not our gates. The stone that we thought cracked, flawed, something to be rejected, now in the hands of God has become the chief cornerstone. By the Lord this has been done, and it is marvelous in our eyes. In other words, In fact, the resurrection of Jesus would have happened regardless anything we had to say or do about it. The will of God is to strengthen us and keep us steadfast in faith until the end of our lives. In other words, God is love. And love is going to do what love is going to do. Those chains of the place of the dead, the place of nothing were bound to be broken. Love is going to do what love is, and that means the resurrection isn’t just going to stay within the triune God, but it’s going to infect us, and come about in and among us. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia.

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Reflection for Tuesday, April 14 (3rd Day of Easter)

Guest Poster: Pastor Matthew Schulz

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=453826370

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Exodus 15:1-18

Colossians 3:12-17

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

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In J.R.R. Tolkien epic fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings, and in the more Talmudic, Silmarillion, God, who is known in Tolkien’s Elvish as “Eru,” sings Middle Earth into being. The world isn’t spoken into some percussive beginning, it is sung, as a mother sings to her newborn. It makes sense to me. Hebrew is a chanted language. And singing is so much more embodied, so much more real. So, I’ve come to think that God continues to sing the world, us, all that exists into being. Each morning is a new variation on the theme of creation. A supermassive black hole from the Persesus galaxy cluster emanates a B-flat, some 57 octaves below middle C. Which obviously proves all of us tenors wrong, when we think God must obviously be a lyric Heldentenor, God is actually a basso profundo. Or maybe a more accurate description, would be more like the deep groans, the utterances too deep for words, of a woman in the intensity of labour; tinged with pain, purpose, and hope.

In the cacophony of the music of the spheres, God starts a recapitulation, a restatement of the theme in a completed way. It brings with it the lament of death, but this time God sings once again the song of creation in the resurrection of Jesus. Not just a simple aria, not a descant, but a full-throated remix of the song God sang 13.8 billion years ago. A song so deeply infused with the Holy Spirit that creates in us clean hearts, and that through the waters of our baptism brings our song from discordant self-reliance into perfect harmony with the one who was, who is, and who is to come. It binds us together with God, and in a great chorus together as the body of Christ, singing a more completed alleluia, a more perfect love. It proclaims the resurrection, the victory of Christ over discordant death and fear, and binds everything together in perfect harmony. Alleluia.

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Reflection for Holy Saturday

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

John 19:38-42

Reflection

Today marks the last of the Lenten reflections. Tomorrow is Easter. On this somber Holy Saturday, as we spend time with the shattered and confused disciples, let us pause in our own sad confusion and remember that God is with us as God was with them.

Here is a poem I wrote. I offer it to you with humility.

Time and timeless come together here, Beloved,

on this dark day

As we watched you press your back against the rough wood and gasp

As we saw the frantic beating of your human heart visible beneath your skin

Nothing could have been more human, more precious

And we saw your eyes, blurred with pain, still looking with love on the indifferent faces of those who offered you nothing but agony

How can we know such love and still be standing?

How are we not brought to our knees by it?

When you died, Beloved, the relief was almost as great as the sorrow

To see the pain stilled...

The love stilled

Where will you take us now , our dear and necessary Shepherd,

Now that your human body is ended?

Can we not step out of time with you, into the timelessness of God?

Have you truly gone where we cannot follow?

Can the pulse of our faith be tuned to yours

As we wait in this dreadful quiet,

the first day of your passing

the beginning of your absence...

We wait in the dull dark for you, Beloved

and hope that, and trust that, your timeless Love will lead us to where you are.

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Presentation for Good Friday

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1N2JVDIgnjVnKp1hBQuMv5uRXxxVvpJYYW30ymr8c0EE/edit?usp=sharing

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Reflection for Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ² The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³ Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴ got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵ Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” ⁷ Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” ⁸ Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

¹² After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴ So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵ For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶ Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷ If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

Reflection

This is a particularly difficult day for all priests, I think. I know it is for me. Maundy Thursday is one of my favourite Christian holy days, and the way we celebrate it at St Thomas’ I find particularly meaningful. We come together to share a common meal during which we share the Eucharist; it is my honour to wash the feet of my beloved parishioners and to remember that I share this service with our Lord; then we strip the altar, and as we do it recite verses from Matthew’s Gospel and Psalm 22. It is at the same time a holy, joyous and somber liturgy. And because of today’s Maundy Thursday Gospel reading, it always starts me thinking about what it means to be a servant.

For some, being a servant is such a negative thing. It can be filled with images of oppression, subjugation and disrespect. In the minds of some, a servant is less worthy, less valuable. It’s a temptation to see anyone who serves as being below the one he or she serves. Yet Jesus is acting as the lowliest of servants –washing the feet of his disciples, washing away the dirt and filth of the street. But the key here is that he is doing a loving act. He is not washing the disciples’ feet because he is being paid or coerced into doing it. He does it out of love and care. The disciples do not look down on him for this act, but as Peter demonstrates, they are humbled by it. We know what loving service is: we do it willingly and happily for our family and friends. We never feel it demeans us; we are just happy to be able to do something for someone who needs it. This is the model of service Jesus suggests we take on, not only for our nearest and dearest, but for all in need.

This model of servanthood is something all Christians should strive to emulate. We should all see that caring for one another is not demeaning and does not lessen us, but puts us in the same category of servanthood as Jesus. St Thomas’ is no stranger to loving acts. Our community offers loving service within our parish and in the greater community. Even now when we are so constrained by the necessary physical distancing, our people are looking out for each other and caring for each other to the best of our abilities.

In these times we rightly offer respect to those who are engaged in service to others in their daily lives: truckers, grocery workers, mail carriers, researchers, food delivery people, nurses, sanitation works, doctors, cashiers and so many more. We are beginning to understand the value of service when we cannot do things ourselves, when our busy lives are stilled for a moment, and we have the chance to re-examine our priorities and assumptions. Our hearts understand loving service, even if our society doesn’t always. In these final days of Lent, this is a useful spiritual exercise for us –to see what service is and to honour it, and to follow our Lord Jesus in the way of loving service all our lives.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for Wednesday, April 8, 2020

John 13:21-32

²¹ After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, “Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” ²² The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. ²³ One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him; ²⁴ Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. ²⁵ So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?” ²⁶ Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ After he received the piece of bread,^[c] Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” ²⁸ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. ²⁹ Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the festival”; or, that he should give something to the poor. ³⁰ So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

³¹ When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³² If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.

Reflection

Being betrayed is such a bitter thing. All of us have experienced it, and I’m sure all of us have in one way or another done it –it’s part of the human experience. It can seem trivial, as when someone we thought was a friend organizes a get-together and doesn’t invite you. It can be profound, as when one spouse cheats on another. It can be something you shrug off with a roll of the eyes, or it can be a life-changing event which destroys your faith in humanity and goodness. At its worst, it’s part of the dark human desire to manipulate and use each other to one’s own ends.

Jesus was betrayed by Judas. Jesus knew it, even if the disciples didn’t. That was a betrayal so profound it changed the way we see humanity’s relationship with God. That betrayal acknowledges that even with Jesus standing before him, the words of Jesus ringing in his ears, the actions of Jesus tangible and present, Judas was still able to put his own agenda first. Yes, Judas was instrumental in the glorification of Jesus and his betrayal was a part of the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. But it was still a betrayal.

That brief final sentence in verse 30 is so poignant: ”And it was night.” Judas left the warmth and light of Jesus’ presence to go into the darkness, a darkness that led at the last to his death in guilt and anguish. No matter how he had rationalized it to himself when he was contemplating betraying Jesus, the extent of his betrayal was finally made clear to him, and he knew there was no going back.

One part of this story that I find moving is not expressed in John’s Gospel but in Matthew’s. When Jesus says is will be betrayed, the disciples ask him “Is it I, Lord?”. Despite the fact that none of the rest of them were contemplating the kind of betrayal Judas was, they were still unsure that their actions were in keeping with Jesus’ plan. It’s not always so clear cut. We don’t always understand our own actions.

And none of us really know the effect our own actions might have on someone else. Nor can we always assume that what we experience as a betrayal was actually intended as one. Experiencing betrayal and committing betrayal are never unidimensional. The effects are not always straight forward. We can only trust in God, who loves us all, to be with us in the light and in the darkness, in the trust and in the betrayal.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for Tuesday, April 7, 2020

John 12:20-36

²⁰Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²²Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

²⁷“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ²⁸Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” ³⁰Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. ³¹Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. ³⁴The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” ³⁵Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. ³⁶While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

Reflection

“Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder.”

When is it thunder and when is it the voice of God? It’s not always obvious. Sometimes it feels like we are living in two different worlds at the same time, the world of the mundane and the world of the spirit. The world of the mundane can be very satisfying in many ways. We enjoy the pleasures of life as we were meant to. We eat, we connect in loving acts, we enjoy nature’s odours and beauty. God’s created world with all its beauty leads us gently to a spiritual reality which brings us closer to God’s self. This is very easy to wrap our minds around when we look at the positive aspects of the mundane world. But what is harder to understand is how even the painful aspects of the created world can bring us closer to God. We want our trust and believe in God to shield us from all pain.

It is difficult spiritual work to see God in the hurt and pain and despair, and often people cannot find their way to that place of peace and trust. Jesus himself, contemplating what was ahead of him, said “Now my soul is troubled”. But his spiritual connection was such that he moved quickly beyond his fear into trust that God would reveal God’s self even through what looked in the mundane world like total disaster. In this week before Easter, we remember the pain that precedes the resurrection and we acknowledge that God is glorified, even through that pain.

Jesus says to us in this time of uncertainty: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life”. The challenges of the world can overwhelm us. But we have to look beyond this present time of panic and uncertainty into the spiritual reality of God’s love for us. If we are able to live both in the mundane world and in the world of the spirit we will follow our Master and be, like him, children of light.

Reflection for Monday, April 6, 2020

John 12:1-11

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 'Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?' (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, 'Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.'

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

Reflection

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, …” This very famous quote from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities has been referenced many times these last few weeks in response to different people’s actions during the Covid 19 quarantine. On one side, we see an outpouring of support for those who are in distress, aid for those who are in need, and compassion for the suffering. And on the other side, we see people hoarding necessary equipment, lashing out at each other, and putting fear before compassion. People tend to respond according to their nature.

In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, we also see people responding to a crisis according to their own nature. There is a party in celebration of a miracle during a difficult time –Lazarus has been brought back from the dead. As is her practical loving nature, Martha serves the guests. Mary makes a loving symbolic gesture towards Jesus, washing his feet with perfume. These two women are putting their energy into showing love and gratitude to Jesus. Judas on the other hand, is showing his nature --hypocritical and self-serving. Although seeming to advocate for the poor, he actually tries to negate the loving actions of Mary and Martha. Jesus’ response affirms what Mary did: no matter what terrible thing is happening around us, there is a place for love and gratitude.

The religious authorities of the time also act according to their nature. Rather than responding to the miracle of Lazarus’ resurrection with awe and thanksgiving, they plot to kill him once again because this miracle perturbed their political agenda. Even now, the danger of political power is always that there is a temptation to serve oneself rather than the people one is elected to serve.

Acting according to our nature as Christians is something we are all called to do in every circumstance of our lives. These days it is even more vital. As we embark on this last holy week to Easter Sunday, let us purify ourselves from anger and fear, nurture our loving nature, and be a warm supporting presence to all, for whom Jesus was willing to die.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for Saturday, April 4, 2020

A reading and reflection for Saturday, Apr. 4

John 11:45-56

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’ But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death.

Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and were asking one another as they stood in the temple, ‘What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?’

John 11:45-56

Reflection

In Jesus’ time, the Jewish people had a very precarious hold on the land of Israel. It was actually Roman land and the Jewish people were there by the forbearance of Rome. The situation was not very stable. The common people were restless and looking for an end to the occupation. In fact it was hoped that Jesus himself would be a military leader to end the oppression. On the other hand, the religious leaders were not in a bad position personally. If they could placate the Romans, they had a pretty sweet deal. Possibly they did have a concern for the common people, but politically it was to their advantage not to rock the boat with anything that brought down the wrath of Rome. And Jesus was certainly set to rock the boat!

There might have been individuals among the religious leaders that were in agreement with Jesus’ message. They all acknowledged his miraculous power. But the consensus was to do what was safe and advantageous to them personally, to leave Jesus to the wolves, to buy their own safety with his blood.

How often do we find those people in power in our own situation doing the same-- sacrificing the good in favour of upholding the status quo? And how often do we support them and applaud them for doing it? We can all so easily be slaves to safety, closing our eyes to a difficult truth. When Caiaphas said “…You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” he was talking about political expediency. But God used the deeper spiritual truth of this statement to show God’s love for the whole of humanity. Jesus was one man who died for the whole human race.

In this way God shows us once again that darkness can become light and death can become salvation. Even things that are done for the basest of reasons can bear unexpected life-giving fruit. Literature is filled with examples. Our lives are filled with examples. On this day before Palm Sunday let us remember how easy it is to be swayed by a crowd. Let us think about how Jesus challenges us to hear the truth and trust in that truth to free us from our fearful clinging to safety at all cost.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for Friday, April 3, 2020

A reading and reflection for Friday, Apr. 3

John 10:31-42

The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus replied, "I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?" The Jews answered, "It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God." Jesus answered, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, you are gods'? If those to whom the word of God came were called 'gods' - and the scripture cannot be annulled - can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, 'I am God's Son'? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father." Then they tried to arrest him again, but he escaped from their hands. He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him, and they were saying, "John performed no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true." And many believed in him there.

John 10:31-42

Reflection

As I was perusing Facebook this morning, I came upon a post from a restaurant owner who was offering free food to anyone who was a health professional. In one of the comments, someone said “God bless you” to which the restaurateur replied that, with all the things he had done in his life, he didn’t think he was on good terms with God. The commenter protested that this good act would make up for a lot of bad actions.

I was struck by this example of the power of actions. Words are important of course and we know that encouraging words are wonderful and can make an enormous difference in people’s lives. But there’s something so immediate about actions –so powerful. Jesus was also aware of the power of actions, as were those who came to Jesus’ new message. His ministry was built on the deeds of power that he did. And these deeds of power showed in tangible form that his authority came from God. We still understand this. It’s not for nothing that the saying “Actions speak louder than words” is part of our collective wisdom.

So many people are now doing good actions! In our church, people are stepping up to offer whatever service they can –running errands, delivering groceries, and connecting with people who might feel isolated and lonely. In our society, people are stepping up to help each other in so many ways. These actions express the desire to work toward the common good, which is the hallmark of the kingdom of God. In the darkness of these times, let’s rejoice in the capacity for goodness in action which God gave to us at our creation.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for Thursday, April 2, 2020

John 8:51-59

⁵¹ Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” ⁵² The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and so did the prophets; yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’ ⁵³ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets also died. Who do you claim to be?” ⁵⁴ Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, ‘He is our God,’ ⁵⁵ though you do not know him. But I know him; if I would say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him and I keep his word. ⁵⁶ Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.” ⁵⁷ Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”^{[a] 58} Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” ⁵⁹ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Reflection

This must have been a hard teaching of Jesus’. It is here that his divinity is acknowledged and affirmed. “…before Abraham was, I AM” equates Jesus with God, the great I AM. People had to make a leap of faith to follow Jesus into the radical new way of thinking, one that is justified by the resurrection. Those that did started an entirely new way of thinking about the divine. But the events described in this passage happened before the resurrection, when the Jewish authorities were still deeply invested with the old ways –the tried and true ways. No wonder they wanted to stone him! What he said sounded crazy –or demonic.

New things have a way of unsettling us. We like a challenge, but not that great a challenge! We want to be able to rely on old patterns. We know their limits. It’s not scary. Our own church has been clinging to old patterns, and these are nourishing and life giving. But God so often has other plans for us, and so it seems these days. Our own church community is working hard to see what our identity is in this time of change, how to know God and make God known.

Every era is presented with a new way of thinking about Jesus. Every generation has to live anew the challenges that our living God offers us. Jesus didn’t just die and be resurrected 2000 years ago. His death and resurrection are part of the living reality of our faith. The doubts and fears we have about our lives and our spiritual relationship with God have always been part of the narrative between God and God’s people. During this time of Lent and our society’s collective upheaval, let us in our own St Thomas’ community embrace the challenges God has offered us to bring us closer to the great story of Jesus’ own Lenten journey, from pain into triumph; from uncertainty into affirmation.

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Reflection for Wednesday, April 1, 2020

John 8:31-47

³¹ To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. ³² Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

³³ They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

³⁴ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. ³⁵ Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. ³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. ³⁷ I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. ³⁸ I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”

³⁹ “Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. ⁴⁰ As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. ⁴¹ You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

⁴² Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. ⁴³ Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. ⁴⁴ You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ⁴⁵ Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! ⁴⁶ Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? ⁴⁷ Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

Reflection

As I read the scripture passage today, I can’t help thinking about the idea of an “echo chamber”. That’s the term used when people filter out any input that doesn’t match what they already believe is the truth. They only hear what reinforces their previous way of thinking. There seems to be something of this going on in the passage: Jesus’ truth was dismissed by the authorities because, as Jesus says:”… you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word”. They had no room for his word, even if that word brings life and spiritual health. It didn’t fit their preconceptions.

I believe we also have to be on guard against having no room for Jesus’ word. We too have our preconceptions and would rather not have them shaken. But Jesus challenges us to a radical way of being in the world –seeking justice and having a fierce love for the weak and disenfranchised.

This is a time when all our normal routines are shaken up. We have to find our way in this new wilderness. How do we act with love? How do we see God’s work even in the present chaos? We turn to Jesus in prayer and we ask him the way. Jesus will never let us down. He is the Son of the Father and brings us together into the family of love.

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Reflection for Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Again Jesus said to them, ‘I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.’ Then the Jews said, ‘Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, “Where I am going, you cannot come”?’ He said to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.’ They said to him, ‘Who are you?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Why do I speak to you at all? I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.’ They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father. So Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.’ As he was saying these things, many believed in him. John 8:21-30

Reflection

We like to feel close to Jesus, as if he were our friend. And Jesus encourages that. His followers were his friends, and he met up with many people in his community, eating and drinking with them and going to suppers and parties. Jesus’ human nature is very important to us. His role as “Emmanuel” –God with us– is a vital element of how we experience God in the world.

But Jesus is also more than a good friend. He is from above, and his relationship with God is something we strive for but cannot achieve the way Jesus does. Although we might be tempted to see the divine nature of Jesus as alienating (the Jewish authorities definitely did!), we are also comforted by Jesus’ divine power to save. His spiritual, Godly nature can be relied on to save and guard us in times when the merely human can falter and fail.

In times of trial (including this one), we know we can turn to Jesus not only as our friend, but also as our compassionate God, whose power to uphold and strengthen is part of our faith.

Rev’d Karla

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Reflection for Friday, March 27, 2020

John 7:1-2,10,25-30

7After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him. ²Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near.

10 But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret.

25 Now some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, ‘Is not this the man whom they are trying to kill? ²⁶And here he is, speaking openly, but they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah? ²⁷Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.’ ²⁸Then Jesus cried out as he was teaching in the temple, ‘You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. ²⁹I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.’ ³⁰Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.

Reflection by Rev’d Karla

Jesus calls to us through scripture in the midst of his Lenten journey to Jerusalem, crying out “You know me, and you know where I’m from”. And what was the response? They tried to arrest him. They refused his radical message. They wanted to put him back in the comfortable box of crazy rabble rouser. That would be so much easier to deal with! But the story had not played out yet –Jesus’ death and resurrection were only on the horizon, not yet accomplished. Things were not clear, even for the believers. This was something so new, so unexpected –one can hardly blame them for having trouble believing in the truth of God through Jesus. Even with the best will in the world, how hard it is to see the presence of God clearly. How easy it is to cling to old ways of thinking and acting.

These days, our society is being shaken up; our views of what it means to be a follower of our Lord are being revised. But we do have some experience with trust. We have some knowledge of what our Lord wants us to do. Our hearts are not unfamiliar with God’s love. Let’s continue in our Lenten journey trusting in the One we have learned to rely on, in times of joy and times of sorrow, in times of confidence and times of fear. And let us remember each other in prayer, now and always.

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Reflection for Thursday, March 26, 2020

John 5:31-47

Jesus said: ³¹ “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³² There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.

³³ “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. ³⁴ Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. ³⁵ John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

³⁶ “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, ³⁸ nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. ³⁹ You study^[a] the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

⁴¹ “I do not accept glory from human beings, ⁴² but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God^[b]?

⁴⁵ “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷ But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

Reflection by Rev’d Karla

When John was in the world, he had a prophetic voice: “Repent and be saved!” He was reminding people to renew their relationship with God and to do that which is pleasing to God: love God and love your neighbour. His authority came from scripture and the long history of the Israelite search for righteousness. People who heard him were inspired to look deep within and let the power of God change them.

When Jesus was with the world in the flesh, his God-given authority was shown in action: teaching, healing, and casting out demons. Jesus did not just speak about a renewed relationship with God, he manifested it in his own life and works. With John, it was as if we were seeing a newscast; we might be moved to act, but the call was from a distance. With Jesus it’s like being part of the action. There’s an immediacy about it that demands our attention, that changes us on the spot.

John’s prophetic voice and Jesus’ divinity are still with us. We see what needs to be done, we ask for God to strengthen us, and we do what is necessary to manifest the kingdom of God in this imperfect world.

May we keep each other in prayer and listen for what God is asking of us in this difficult time.

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Reflection for Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶ In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷ to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

³⁵ The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called^[a^] the Son of God. ³⁶ Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. ³⁷ For no word from God will ever fail.”

³⁸ “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation when Mary learned of the coming of the New Normal. Her world was about to be turned upside down. This girl, about to embark on a traditional marriage, must have thought she knew what the future held. But it was a very different future than what her society considered traditional! On the negative side, she was to have a baby out of wedlock with all the world of trouble that entailed. On the other hand, the baby was Jesus –our Lord and Saviour!

When our lives are thrown into turmoil we remember that God’s blessings are with us abundantly. In this particular time of apprehension about the COVID-19 virus we search for the ways in which God shows us God’s blessings: the comfort we offer, the solidarity and support we give to each other, and the time for reflection which was so often missing in our busy Old Normal. In our prayers today, let us spend some time in gratitude for those blessings.

Rev'd Karla

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Reflection for Tuesday, March 24, 2020:

John 5:1-18 New International Version (NIV)

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

I’m always struck when Jesus heals someone by him asking “Do you want to be healed?” It seems obvious what the answer would be –“Of course I want to be healed!” But sometimes we would rather stay in our familiar infirmity, whatever it is, than venture out into health.

These days we are all afraid of the Corona virus, whether we or someone we care about will get it. But we are also in a position to spend time thinking about our spiritual lives. This is a time of reflection. Let’s ask ourselves what kind of healing God is calling us to do. Even in the midst of fear and uncertainty, do we want to be healed? Or are we tempted to drown in fear of the unknown… Rev'd Karla