Dean Piits - Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Sermons

Homilies for Advent and Christmas 2006 and Epiphany 2007

The Very Rev’d Michael J. Pitts

Dean and Rector, Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal

Advent 1, 2006

Jeremiah 33:14-16

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

Advent has come round again with its lights and candles, its scent of expectation and maybe even hope in the air, and its yearly reminder that the locus of Christian faith is in the future. It is true we speak much about our heritage and our tradition, and it is important to maintain them, so long as we realize that the content of the heritage and the tradition is a call to commitment to the future, not a wallowing in the past.

There is, of course, at this time of year, a conspiracy between social custom and commerce to persuade us that the future is just twenty two days away, that it is called Christmas, and that what we have to do to prepare for it is to shop, shop and shop. But this morning, I would like to shift our focus to a different future.

I believe there are two ways of looking at the future. I shall be using, in the first part of these meditations, neither scientific nor religious language, but ordinary everyday language. I shall therefore ignore Einstein’s theories about time, in the same way as it is legitimate to ignore his theories about mass and space when playing pool. One way of thinking about the future I shall call straight line thinking. It works on the assumption that most of the conditions bounding the future will be much the same as the conditions of today, and therefore we can extrapolate and project forward, and work out ways of dealing with what we see the future might hold. The other way I shall call apocalyptic thinking (to steal a word from religious thought), which, in looking to the future, sees an impending crisis so great that we can hardly predict or even imagine what lies beyond it. The crisis might be global warming and all that that entails, it might be nuclear war starting in the Middle or Far East, It might be radiation terrorism or it might be the revolution and unstoppable mass migration of the poor and destitute from the environmentally destroyed areas of the planet.

Each of these two ways of looking at the future has its value and its problems. The straight line view can be too close to the optimistic liberalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Everything is getting steadily better, and, with a little more application of science, we can solve all the problems. We might think that that kind of optimism was surely brought to an end by two world wars and Hiroshima. But it is still with us, and might blind us to the very real problems in our world and in human nature. Every day in every way it may seem for us to be getting better and better, but for 70% of the world’s population it is getting worse and worse. Nevertheless, straight line thinking can help us to take a well informed, well thought out, look at the future, and make sound decisions about changes in human behavior and social patterns that need to be made to cope with the problems that we can see ahead of us.

The advantage of apocalyptic thinking is that, in keeping before our eyes the very real and horrendous problems that world society faces, it spurs us to action, and to changes, both in our own lives, and in our political and social habits. The downside is that the problems of the future mesmerize us and like a deer we stand immobilized, staring at the headlights of the juggernaut which is about to destroy us. Or we are disabled from taking action by paranoia. Both make very good news stories, while straight line thinking is less dramatic and therefore less newsworthy.

I find it interesting that both of my sons, who are scientists, tend to be straight line thinkers. Dad, who is a theologian, has tended always to think apocalyptically. This I suppose is because apocalyptic language and thinking has its roots in the Biblical story. We bring it to the forefront especially at this Advent season. It is firmly embedded in our creeds. [We believe that] he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead[i]. It is embedded in our Eucharistic liturgy: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again[ii].

But I want to stop and look now for a few moments at what I perceive to be a very serious theological problem at the present time. Much of the apocalyptic thought in our scripture and liturgy is expressed in the language of myth. Myth is an ancient and cross cultural phenomenon coming to us from beyond the mists at the edge of civilization and probably going back to the emergence, in the process of evolution, of the consciousness and self consciousness which now distinguish humanity from the rest of life on our planet. It is so universal that not only its forms, but also its content has a remarkable similarity and consistence across many societies and religions. The stories recounted in myth are both about time past and about time future, but it is important to realize that time is not an important element in myth. To steal a word, perhaps a neologism, from Karen Armstrong, the language of myth is the language of anywhen. The content of myth is story which helps us to align our inner sensibility with our outer reality. The stories are to help us to understand who we are and where we fit as human beings, and what is our function in society. They are stories which help us to cope with the swings between the ecstasies of joy and the overwhelming sorrows of life.[iii]

Myth played an important role in both religion and social life right up to the end of the medieval period, and continues to do so in some societies and cultures. But from the 6^th century BCE another language grew up beside it, the language of rational thought and analysis, applied to the tasks of government, technology and military endeavor. This language blossomed from the 16^th century CE, and became the basis of both physical science and the humanities. Both were so spectacularly successful that the very word myth in the language of the western world came to refer to something which was not factual, or not true. This coincides with the accelerating tendency from the 16^th century to the present day to concentrate solely on the reality of the outer world and to ignore the reality of the inner self, repressing its demands. It is interesting to note in this context that the thinking of both Freud and Jung about the relation of conscious and sub-conscious life draws on the mythical language of the Greek tradition, and in the case of Jung on other sources of mythical language.

Now for the theological problem: liberal theology from the mid eighteen hundreds onward tended, in line with the general thinking of the day, to lay aside the mythical language of the Bible, especially around creation and the end time, and pursue its thinking using the language of science. To borrow a word from computer-speak, mythical language was quarantined.

But as more recent Biblical scholarship has realized how much of Biblical language is mythical, quarantining has become less of an option, since then not much is left. This quandary has called forth two solutions, one which I consider healthy, and one which I consider much less so.

The healthy solution is to see the greater part of the Bible as story, as narrative. Yes, there is certainly some history there which can be used with the tools of modern historical analysis, along with disciplines such as archaeology and historical anthropology, to reconstruct “what happened”. But the important function of our scripture lies not in the provision of material for history, but in the provision of story which continues to help us answer those basic human questions about who we are, about how we can cope with the joys and sorrows of life and about how we can balance the inner and the outer life. Along with this view of scripture goes an understanding of liturgy as a dramatic presentation of the story for the community. All this is totally in line with the ancient linking of myth and ritual in most religious traditions.

The less healthy solution is to bastardize the myth and treat is as the language of reason, and to insist that it reveals truth as fact which is contrary to the carefully acquired knowledge of the sciences and humanities. Thus God made the world in seven days, and geophysicists, evolutionary biologists and most other scientists are evil bible deniers. This is unhealthy on several levels. It refuses to take the language of the Bible seriously. It promotes a serious dishonesty if not schizophrenia, since most of our everyday activities are based on and depend on the findings of science.

But there is, I believe, an even more serious and unhealthy aspect of all this. When those who take this line turn from past to future, there is a movement of so-called end timers, who take the end of the world myths literally and who believe that Armageddon is just around the corner. This leads them to believe, inter alia, that global warming is all part of the great plan, that the spread of nuclear armaments is a good thing, since a nuclear confrontation would actually start the Armageddon process. The frightening thing is how well organized and financed these groups are, and how much influence they have on the policies not only of Washington but of Ottawa also.

So I believe that we who espouse a more rational view of our religion, of our faith and of our future need to stand together, to stand up and be counted. We need to struggle not only with the physical social and political problems of our world and its people, but also with those who pervert our religion of peace and compassion and used it as a tool of violence, oppression and dehumanization.

The future of which Advent speaks is not the future of a cozy over-stuffed Christmas, but of a real struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

Christmas Midnight 2006

Isaiah 52:7-10

Hebrews 1:1-12

John 1:1-14

Let me start by wishing you all a very happy Christmas. Next let me explain why we are departing, this year, from a long established tradition, namely that the Bishop celebrates the beginning of the Christmas season here in his cathedral. We have to blame his absence on the pesky Archdeacon of Montreal,[iv] who has spirited the Bishop away to the community of St Matthias, since that parish is presently without a rector. Thank you to my colleague, Canon Joyce Sanchez, for taking his place at the altar.

As we look back over the past year, I am sure that we all have things in our personal, family and career lives which have brought us joy and for which we are thankful. But there is never a year of unmixed blessings and I am sure also that there have been experiences of loss and sadness, whose memories are especially poignant at Christmas time. But when I speak of not unmixed blessings, I am thinking more of the wider life of our communities and our world. Fighting and death continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. Civil strife, oppression, poverty and famine stalk the earth in so many places. Children are abused, enslaved and compelled to fight wars. Women are violated and denied their human rights and equality. More and more we seem to need to define ourselves not by who we are, but by who we are not. In order to know our own identity, we set the other over against us. From there it is a short step to begin to deny the humanity of all the others who are different from us and then to demonise them. All this is set in the context of an abused environment, which is rapidly losing its possibility of supporting and nurturing human life on our planet. If the unseasonably warm weather of this fall and the past decade is not a trumpet call to action in fighting climate change, then I do not know what else is needed.

As I began to reflect on this homily however, it was two events closer to home that especially forced themselves into my mind. One was the collapse of the overpass on highway 19 in Laval. The second was the tragic shooting in Dawson College. Both of these events can represent for us countless other tragedies around the world, and both are symptomatic of a malaise which affects our society and our world. That sickness, I believe is this. We have put so much effort and energy into growth and the creation of wealth, that we have neglected the infrastructure.

When the infrastructure in question consists of bridges, sewers, water mains and power distribution systems, then that is the domain of engineers, technicians and politicians. The preacher can do little more than call attention to the problem. Similarly when the infrastructure under discussion is the life-supporting biosphere of our planet, then theology has only a limited sphere of influence and action. Though I would ask you to note that psychotic theology, particularly when it is allied with political power can do indescribable damage in this area.

But, as an expounder of Christian faith, I want to call your attention to another kind of infrastructure which has equally been neglected, namely the inner life of the human person. If we have put so much effort and energy into the material side of our lives that we have ignored the ultimate questions of who we are and what purpose we should be fulfilling in our lives, then we are part of these vast scale problems, rather than part of their solution.

Tonight, once again, we hear the voice of John the Evangelist reverberating down the ages, The word was made flesh. The baby we placed a few moments ago, in his manger beside his adoring parents, the visiting shepherds and the animals, is not just one more child born into a cruel, unjust world. He is, we believe, for us, the focus of everything that it means to be human.

The classical statements of our faith (and I paraphrase them here into more everyday language) describe the person of Jesus as fully divine and fully human. In other words, when we gaze on the baby in the manger, or when we gaze again at Jesus on the cross, we see what God is like. Again, when we hear the story of the life, work and relationships of Jesus, we hear a story of what human life can and should be like.

Let me lay before you some key qualities which I believe, emerge from the story we tell tonight, qualities which describe both the nature of God and the ideal of a fully human life.

Vulnerability

The God whom we gaze upon tonight allows himself to be born of a woman’s womb and to be nurtured by a woman’s breasts. Later he will place himself into the hands of those who will torture and kill him. Is this a God of power who zaps those who disagree with him, and commands his followers to do likewise? I don’t think so. This is a god who opens up ways of loving acceptance and relationship across all the barriers that human beings can erect. This is a god who calls on his followers to open their lives to the other, to open their hearts and inner vision to see that god is incarnate in every human person of whatever race or creed, social custom or way of life.

Compassion

Our English word compassion comes to us from Latin, and bears the meaning both of suffering and feeling with and alongside, the other. But when it is used in translation of our Hebrew texts, there lies behind it a word closely related to the word womb. The God of compassion is the god who gives and sustains life, and who provides the intricately interconnected matrix of the biosphere through which that sustaining takes place. When Jesus has taught the crowds all day on the mountain, he feels compassion for them, and enables his disciples to assuage their hunger. Is this a god who wants his followers to amass personal wealth as a sign of their salvation, without any concern about the effect it has on others, and without concern about its effects on the nurturing matrix of the biosphere? I don’t think so. This is a God who cries out for us to live at peace and in justice, to share the good things of the earth with equity and to work to ensure that the biosphere continues to nurture all life in the generations to come, even if we have to suffer a major reduction in our use of it in order to do so.

Empathy

If vulnerability and compassion come into my mind from the writing of St John, empathy is a quality which is at the core of the work of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. God is the one who, in Jesus, takes human form, enters into the very nature of our humanness, who is born among us and within us. Empathy is to feel and suffer, not just alongside, but within the other. Is this a god who asks his follower to draw the boundary line so tightly around ourselves that others are forever excluded and denied? I don’t think so. The God of empathy is a god who asks us to live inside the other, especially the other who is most different from ourselves. This is a God who calls his followers to a radical unity which rejects no one.

Love

As, with the vision of the inner self, we gaze tonight on Mary and Joseph looking on their firstborn child in the manger, we see not only their love for him, but his love for them. And we see, in that, an icon of the love which is the heart and core of the universe. Only if that same love is at the heart and core of our inner lives can we live and breathe, nurture and be nurtured, rejoice and grow in sympathy with the rhythm of the universe. Without that love we join with all the human lemmings of our world rushing not just towards self destruction, but towards the destruction of life as it is meant to be.

As I look around the world today, I am often horrified by what I see and hear of the cruelty and violence of human beings. But I am presently even more horrified by what I described a moment ago as a psychotic or sick theology which is rampant in the world and making every effort to take over our own church. It is the theology of a patriarchal power- hungry god, whose interest is only in those who obey his every whim. It is a theology of power-hungry people who ask us to sign on the dotted line and exclude all others. It is a theology of people who exclude vulnerability, compassion and empathy from their inner lives in following their god. But that is not the God I see reflected in the face of the baby laying in the manger, the teacher feeding the crowd, or the man dying on the cross for his challenge to both the religiosity and the empire building of his day. I believe we are called to care for the infrastructure of our inner lives precisely with the vulnerability, compassion, empathy and love which flows from God’s being, and which offers the hope of salvation for our world.

Epiphany 2007

Isaiah 60:1-6

Ephesians 3:1-12

Matthew 2:1-12

Consider, for a moment, the humble mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae.[v] This tiny brown critter, less than a quarter of an inch long is presently chomping its way through the lodge pole pines of British Columbia, and in recent years has found a tasty alternative in the Jack pines of Alberta. Some of its cousins are doing similar damage in the forested regions further south along the west coast of the Americas. In previous centuries the mountain pine beetle had a useful function in a defined ecological niche. The trees it killed provided fuel for natural forest fires, which not only cleared away dead undergrowth, but also provided the heat needed to open the cones of the lodge pole pines, thus continuing the cycle of natural forest regeneration. The fires, and also the cold of winter kept the numbers of beetles in balance with the natural habitat.

Then along came the 20^th century version of homo sapiens. The commercial exploitation of forests led to arboreal monoculture of lodge pole pines, providing the mountain pine beetle with thousands of square kilometres of delectable food resources. Forest fires were controlled to preserve the investment in the trees and global warming led to conditions which no longer killed off the beetles in winter. The result was that the beetle has already invaded Alberta, and threatens to destroy the Boreal forest right across to the east coast. This together with global warming could change northern Canada into savannah.

That is only one small part of the crisis which threatens our world, and more especially the world of our children and grandchildren. Add to that the melting of the ice caps which threatens to result in the flooding of global coastal plains and estuaries which are the home to millions if not billions of the world’s population. Add also overpopulation, straining food and fuel resources and turning arable and grazing land into deserts, especially in the poorest parts of the world. Add also the poisoning of air, land and water through industrial production. Add again the human tendency, when faced with crisis, to draw the boundaries tightly round ourselves and those like us, and to fight against anybody whose existence or action threatens to franchise that boundary. Then hit the sum button on the spreadsheet. The future does not look pretty.

Epiphany, which here we celebrate today, is about the manifestation of Christ to the world. The huge question we, his 21^st century followers, have to ask is how do we present Jesus and his meaning in this disastrous world of ours.

When St Matthew tells his story of the birth of Jesus, he tells us that the Holy Family were visited at their home in Bethlehem by wise men or astrologers, who came from the east. Notice that they were not, at this stage of the tradition, kings. Nor did they arrive on camels. The tradition did not take on concrete solidity with the writing of the gospels, but continued to flow through the interpretative and liturgical life of the church to the present day. But notice too that, in Matthew’s story, they came from the east. They represent the possibility of the confluence of the ancient wisdom of the east, whether Indian or Persian with the tradition arising from the Jewish people and scriptures.

In the event, that possibility lay dormant. Following the events of the first Easter the followers of the risen Lord moved west. There are, it has to be said, legends about some who went east, such as St Thomas, but they remain legends which play only a small part in the overall story. As they went west and grew in numbers, the first followers were forced into defining themselves as Christians, first, over against non-Christian Jews. Then they had to define their beliefs over against the official state cults of the Roman Empire, and over against the very popular mystery cults. By the end of the fourth century, that which had started out as a way towards the wholeness of humanity became the way, bounded by fixed creeds and a powerful and power loving church structure backed up as needed in preserving its integrity by the force of the state. Later on the church could see Islam only as a heresy and an enemy, even though Islam made a place for Hebrew and Christian traditions within its own tradition, and a place for Jewish and Christian communities within its empires. Having conquered the west, at least as far as the Atlantic, the church moved north, and faced with Germanic and Nordic paganism, brought a few aspects of it into the fringes its own tradition, but for the most part extirpated and suppressed it.

I want to suggest that, in ways that I have no possibility of substantiating in one sermon, this history of Christian expansion and exclusiveness, with its conviction about the absolute truth of its claims, has had much to do with the human and ecological predicament in which we find our world today.

If I am right about this then we have an urgent need to go back to our roots and consider again some of the directions we have taken. Our presentation of Jesus and his meaning to our 21^st century world may require a radical review of the history of our tradition and a radical re-shaping of it for the future.

I want to suggest that one small part of this process may be to look again at today’s story of the wise men from the east. In her book, The Great Transformation,[vi] Karen Armstrong develops the idea of Carl Jaspers that the years 600 to 200 BCE saw a huge change in the direction and development of the religious traditions of humanity, across the world from China to Greece. Jaspers called this the Axial Age. Armstrong reviews the period before the axial age in each geographic area and then proceeds to describe the transformation as it occurred in each tradition. Many common themes emerge but for me the most striking is the movement of religious tradition from being a bulwark of warfare and group survival to being a way of becoming more fully human and a source of compassionate care for all of humanity.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we find the image of the compassionate God among the writers and editors of the period of the Babylonian exile. The Hebrew word for compassion, as I mentioned in my homily at Christmas midnight is related to the word for womb. Compassion is a protective, nurturing, feminine image of God. In the Gospels when Jesus is described as having compassion the Greek work refers literally to a gut feeling. But it is not merely a question of semantics. The whole Gospel picture of Jesus is one of a person who cares deeply for humanity, and especially for the poor, destitute, wounded and rejected members of the human race. But it is by no means a picture of a soft, warm and fuzzy, gentle Jesus, meek and mild. The Gospel speaks of a Jesus who will challenge to its roots all that denies humanity to people, be it law, religion, power, injustice or discrimination. In this I believe Jesus is a true exponent of the values of the axial age. This too, I believe is what the wise men from the east can represent.

But the tradition turned them into Kings. The tradition turned from compassion to conquest, the conquest of empires, the conquest and enslavement of peoples, the conquest and exploitation of the land, both its surface and subterranean resources. Today one branch of the tradition is used to support the suppression of all who are different, be they women, people of other race or religion, or people of other sexual orientation. It is also used to justify the continued over-exploitation of the biosphere and the continued exaltation of growth and the creation of wealth over the needs of the poorest of the earth.

How then do we present the compassionate Jesus to our 21^st century world. I believe by ourselves striving to become compassionate people, remembering that this involves not only dedicating our lives to others and to the whole of humanity, but also dedicating ourselves to the religious and political struggle against all that dehumanizes.

Today we celebrate Epiphany, but in just six weeks time we shall be approaching Lent. Maybe Lent this year should be a time to consider what changes we could make to our lives to become, through our social, economic and political choices, people of compassion, seeking to be followers of a the compassionate Jesus.