It was a very hot day and all the doors were open. Two giant fans did their best to keep the place cool, but they weren’t enough. Inevitably, the sounds of the city permeated the service. The choir sang a lovely communion setting by Josef Rheinberger, and as they sang the Kyrie Eleison I realised I could hear sirens from an emergency vehicle, probably a police car, somewhere near. For a while as choir sang the central part of the Kyrie, the power of their voices drowned out the siren; then, as they sang the quieter closing bars, I could hear it again - not intrusively, just somewhere in the background, but a telling reminder of the real life to which all us at worship must return.
Two days earlier, on our last day with our Rotary hosts Bill and Marjorie in Simcoe, they took us on a bit of a church crawl, starting with their own Anglican church of Holy Trinity, Simcoe and then visiting two early colonial churches, one in the little village of Vittoria, and a second down by the side of Lake Erie at Port Ryerse. It would be hard to imagine a more peaceful and lovely place, and not surprisingly many city people have holiday homes in the area, to which they can make their escape.
The church, however, was built as a memorial church after war. Port Ryerse bears the name of its founder, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Ryerse, who fought on the British side as an Empire Loyalist in the American War of Independence, and was granted land there in 1794 by the British government.
He settled down to farm there and built a mill. But war hadn’t finished with him. War between the USA and Britain began in 1812, and American troops invaded the area and, among other things, burnt down the mill. That war ended with the 1814 Treaty of Ghent and today you’d not think that anything violent had ever happened in or around the peaceful church and churchyard of Port Ryerse.
But it has. Whatever peaceful refuges we may find or make for ourselves, there’s no escaping the struggles of life or the reality of death. Jesus spoke plainly to his disciples about his own death, as we read in this morning’s Gospel, but they refused to hear and failed to understand. They’d signed up with the promised Messiah; they weren’t expecting struggle or pain but an easy victory and royal thrones. And they even started falling out among themselves about which of them deserved the best place.
Jesus, having overheard their discussions, was gentle with them, but uncompromising. If any of you want to be first, he told them, you must make yourself last and be the servant of all. James is equally uncompromising in our first reading when he talks about the wisdom that was so greatly prized in those days. Gnostic religions promised their adherents that gnosis, secret knowledge, would be for them a source of power and status - but that in itself became a cause for rivalry and argument, as people jostled for place and position.
Nothing much has changed, it would seem. The world’s still hooked on power and full of rivalry. Church should offer a different way, but even churches can become places of rivalry and jealousy, where petty arguments turn into feuds and petty positions of influence are fiercely guarded. A lot of damage can be done by the desire of people to be big fish in small ponds. So even in our churches we need to be self aware and community aware.
Wherever we find refuge or however much we learn, none of it has any value unless we put it to use. That’s the lesson both of Jesus and of James.
Toronto is a wealthy, busy and bustling city, the largest city in Canada and its financial capital. On a clear day, its skyscrapers, topped by the CN Tower, can be seen from the other side of the lake at Niagara. But I was very uncomfortably aware during our visit of the sheer number of down and outs and beggars on the streets. In a community of winners there are bound to be losers, and some of them had lost everything. Not far from our hotel was an army barracks. Outside the gates, a motley group of men were settled with bottles and cans. Perhaps they were ex-military themselves, and not coping with civilian life.
They become non-persons. After a while you don’t see them, don’t hear their voices or read the signs saying “Anything will help” or “Stranded”. When a problem is too big and scary, our sense of helplessness turns into apathy. After a storm, thousands of starfish were washed up and stranded on the beach. A little girl, out for a morning walk with her dad, started to pick a few up and throw them back into the sea. “You’re wasting your time,” said her father. “There are too many. You won’t make any difference!” “But I did make a difference to that one!” replied his daughter, as she threw another back into the sea.
There was a man lying on the sidewalk, and two other men seemed to be going through his pockets. My first thought was that I was witnessing a mugging, then I realised the two were Salvation Army workers, looking I guess for any medical information to help them get the right treatment. The hostel they ran was close by, and it looked busy. Faith is pointless unless it leads to action; knowledge and wisdom are pointless unless they make us better people; the one who desires to be first must make himself last.
Faith is never really about me and God. It’s always about me and you. Me and all the different yous I encounter in this jumbled and often scary world. It’s proved in what I do for others, or what I don’t do. Where will I meet Jesus this week? Where will you? Jesus today might well have set not a child, but a homeless person in stinking rags in front of the disciples, when he said, “Whoever receives one such, receives me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment