Love

"The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end"" (Luke 1:30-33).

I was reminded this past Sunday that love can be incredibly inconvenient. Our Nativity pageant was told from the perspective of the innkeeper and his wife: imagine their ire when all these people kept showing up at their inn! They'd had a hard day's work, but here they all came, insistent, untimely, demanding. No wonder the innkeeper was perturbed! 

Love can be inconvenient. It comes -- and is demanded of us -- at times we weren't expecting. It is messy. It is entangled. It can be brutally heartbreaking. Love makes great demands on us. Nowhere are we reminded of this more than in the reality of God becoming flesh.

God chooses a confused virgin as the dwelling place for the Son as He grows within her. It's more than a little inconvenient.

Our God is born in a stable to a mother accompanied by no midwife to help her give birth. It's more than a little messy.

Jesus has a human mother, married to a husband who raises the child as his own, and a Father in heaven, which prompts him to disappear for a few days in the Jerusalem temple, leaving everyone else terrified. It's more than a little entangled.

Jesus' dedication in the temple is accompanied by Simeon's prophesy to Mary that "a sword will pierce your own soul also" (Lk 2:35). Her son, whom she loves, will leave his family to travel around preaching the good news. He will be both wildly popular and popularly reviled. He will die, horribly, on the Cross. It's more than a little heartbreaking.

Yet Mary "treasured all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:51).

For love of their son, Mary and Joseph became a refugee family as they fled to Egypt to save his life. Mary meets her son carrying his own cross, and watches him fall. She receives his body, and sees it lying in the tomb.

Sorrow and love and mystery, all bound up together. Most of us won't have to face the staggering loss that came with Mary's love. But we all know, from our own lives, that saying yes to love is bound up with messiness, with pain, and with inconvenience alongside the joy. Love fulfills our deepest human needs, but no one ever said it was easy.

Our longing for God is bound up with inconvenience. We are called upon to say yes to God in ways that aren't always easy. God comes into our lives in unexpected ways, sometimes in ways we don't enjoy. We are asked to step out of our comfort zone, to do things we don't want to do. This is what loving God entails.

God's love for us comes in the glorious manifestation of His promise, the Incarnation and final coming of Christ. Christ the King, Christ the infant. They are the same. Love in all its messiness is tied to love in its glory. We are preparing to celebrate God's coming into the world. Through it all, the thing that matters most is our own willingness to love and be loved, to embrace love in all its fullness and complexity. 

"And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing [...] And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:2-3, 13).

 

Joy

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 16-21).

Gaudate Sunday is all about joy. But this time of year, with the holiday approaching, isn't necessarily a joyful time for everyone. People are worried about money, about family, about all the things in their lives that haven't turned out the way they'd like. Hopelessness, darkness, and despair plague many. And we, as Christians, have the audacity to talk to them about joy.

It can be a bitter pill to swallow, this thing about joy. Why am I not feeling it? Is there something wrong with me? Am I missing the point in all my anxiety? People can be shocked, and even angry, when they realize they aren't feeling the happiness everyone around them is preaching. Why can't my holiday be like the one on the television?

Many people have said this before, but it bears repeating: happiness and joy aren't the same thing. Happiness is a feeling, an emotion, a sensation that comes about often due to an experience. Of course it can also be a person's disposition, true enough, but happiness fluctuates easily depending on how much sleep we've had or what we overheard our coworker saying behind our back. Happiness is like a bubble that expands, contracts, and can even be popped.

Joy isn't like that.

Joy is a thing that we can't always feel the way we feel an emotion. Joy is planted inside us by God and it's there all the time, but we don't necessarily feel it. Joy is something deeper, something more lasting, quietly guiding our lives.

Imagine the joy in Mary's heart when she saw the angel, when she said 'yes' to God and carried Jesus within her. Sure she felt happiness: she was carrying a child for whom she was full of love. But I bet she was also full of anxiety, of fear, maybe even panic. She didn't fully know what she was getting herself into. But she knew it could be bad. There would definitely be some kind of consequence. After all, you can't hide a pregnancy forever, not even a supernatural one.

Joy is like that: it hides underneath other emotions. It gives us strength. Other people can see it in us even when we can't see it ourselves. It brings us happiness, but it also leads us through pain and doubt.

We all have a calling in this life -- to follow Jesus, to discern the ways in which he leads us, to follow Him with all of our strength. That is joy: joy planted in us, joy growing stronger, joy leading us onward into the light. Joy is the thing that helps us transform our pain through prayer so that it becomes something else. Joy is the thing that finds strength in our weakness and brings light into dark places. Joy is saying 'yes' to God.

In joy, our pain and sorrow becomes something deeper, something more meaningful; hidden in joy -- or with joy hidden within it -- we discover that God does not leave us alone, that our lives have a bigger meaning than ourselves, and that nothing bad can go on forever because it is never the end. Only a step on our larger path.

That doesn't mean that joy obliterates sorrow and sadness. It shouldn't, and it can't. But in it we find our darkest moments are being transformed. In it, we find the place inside us where God dwells, filling us with His love.

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name" (Luke 1:46-49).

Peace

"A voice cries out: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all the people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken'" (Isaiah 40:3-5).

Advent is a time of peace -- a time to find it, or make it, inside ourselves as well as in the world. It seems somehow less daunting to try and impose peace on the spaces around us: streamlining our possessions, reducing the clutter of our things, turning down the noise. Outer conditions of calm, quiet and austerity do help foster inner peace, as any Christian religious order in history could tell you. The kind of exterior life we live has an effect on the inner life of the soul. So the monastery is free from clutter and full of silence. It is structured by obedience and simplicity, allowing the mind to be freed for the discipline of inner silence.

One does not have to go to a monastery to find these conditions. But it's always necessary to carve that space out for ourselves somehow, or our souls will forever be turbulent and disquieted, caught up in the things and excesses of this world. Self-discipline is an important part of Advent as we foster a sense of quiet waiting in our lives. We are called to patience, to endure the wait with an anticipation that does not make itself busy standing still or trying to rush through it all.

But this type of outer silence is not the most challenging facet of finding peace. Music can easily be turned off, and solitude can almost always be found. It isn't enough just to manipulate the word around us by refusing to buy anything or put up the Christmas tree. Peace is fundamentally nurtured from within.

Peace comes from opening up the mind to let God in. Like a ray of light, God cannot inflame our minds if they're tangled up with all sorts of branches: the light gets stuck and lost in the dense forest, never reaching out to warm our skin.

Maybe God can't come in because we're so preoccupied with worry. Maybe God can't come in because we don't have time to listen. Whatever the reason we give for why the light doesn't shine, in the end God cannot come in where the soul does not want to receive Him.

We find many reasons within ourselves for our unworthiness, and to cover it up with excuses. We're afraid of what it would mean to truly encounter God. We're afraid it will burn. We're afraid of the truth of our own sin and the reality of Who God is, and what that could mean for us. The encounter with God is not an easy one, though He is Goodness. Even though Advent is not a penitential season, we do have to make room in our hearts by repenting of our sins and letting go the burdens they place upon us. The heaviness of it, the fear of God because of it, keeps us from experiencing the peace this season is all about -- the peace that only God can give.

We are called by the same voice as Isaiah to make our paths straight, and in the wilderness of our souls to prepare the way of the Lord. Then we shall see the glory of God and find peace as He remakes our lives, changing everything.

"Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts" (Psalm 85:8).

All The Single Ladies

How many of you have gone to a church service or event by yourself? How many of you have felt awkward about it?

Be honest now...

Having switched denominations out of religious conviction, rather than because of marriage or some kind of family feud with another congregation, I've gone to a lot of churches by myself, not to mention a good number of events at my own parish. I can't remember whether or not I've written about this before; if I have, I apologize for the broken-record phenomenon. That's the kind of thing that happens when you don't bother to update your lame blog for a few months.

Sometimes going to church services on your own isn't so bad -- or maybe even expected. When I was still Roman Catholic, I used to go to the weekday noon services at a downtown cathedral. Going alone wasn't bad: practically everyone else was there by themselves, too. And now, of course, I've gotten used to going to church alone because I do it every Sunday. I have a group of people that I sit with instead of hanging out in the pews all by myself, so that helps. I even have friends now who help me out by driving me home.

But let me tell you, going to a new congregation was really, really hard at first. The fact that it was in my hometown helped a little, and so did actually knowing one or two people who worshipped there. But it wasn't easy, sitting by myself, going home right away because there was no one to talk to at coffee hour, being new and not having any role in the new congregation.

I don't think I'm an expert at how to be 'the new guy' in a church. But I do know that it's harder to be new if you also happen to show up alone.  If you have kids, they'll make friends in Sunday school and you have an automatic 'in' with the parents of their new little friends. If you have a spouse or partner, then you have at least one person to talk to. But show up by yourself and, wow, there's no easy group for you to break into. Unless of course you go to one of those hip city churches that have large groups of young people who came by themselves. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure those places really exist. I may have made them up in my imagination.

At any rate, it's not so hard to blend in to a new congregation if you show up every week. People get used to you pretty quick, and eventually someone might ask you to sit with them. Say yes. Stay for coffee hour and try to get to know a few people: if you're lucky (which I was), most will be overly welcoming of the new person because they want you to keep coming back. Someone will usually talk to you so you don't end up standing around by yourself feeling like a loser. After the newness factor wears off, it may temporarily get harder to find people to talk with at coffee hour, but if you stick it out you'll probably end up with a few solid groups that will permanently welcome you into their conversation.

I've discovered the most difficult church events to go to alone are the ones that are themselves temporary, and made up of temporary new groups. Like ecumenical worship events where no one else from your congregation bothers to show up (has never personally happened to me), or events that bring together a scattered group of people for a specific purpose. I've been to a few of this type of event, one just this past week. These are the hardest events to go to because they aren't sparsely populated enough for everyone to gravitate together but also don't tend to reach a critical mass of attendance where people can legitimately get lost in the crowd. When everyone comes with a ready-made group, or knows a lot of other people, it can really suck to come on your own, especially if they're all relatively used to hanging out with each other and you aren't.

I thought it wouldn't be so bad because I did know some people pretty well. Unfortunately they were running the event, which effectively means that for mingling purposes I showed up alone and barely knew anyone.

The worst is when you know some people but haven't seen them in a really long time, so they say hello, and you have a little conversation, but then it's time to move on and you don't have another social group to go to but they do. Yeppers, awkward.

No wait: the worst is when you know one person talking with a small group and you try to join their conversation but they won't let you. Double-awkward for everyone.

No, no wait: the worst is when you say hello to someone you know and haven't seen in a really long time, and they're obviously and manifestly not interested in talking to you. Yep, they don't care. And then, of course, you're standing there and no one says anything, and you're thinking 'coming over here was a tactical error, how the hell can I get away.' And then you just walk away because the fact that they're not talking to you, and don't want to, is really really embarrassing. Triple awkward!!

Of course, quadruple-awkward is the moment when you realize you've exhausted all possible mini-conversations and have to either leave or stand alone at the cheeseplate feeling sorry for yourself because you couldn't convince anyone to come with you to this thing in the first place.

It's also awkward when people ask what you've been doing and you have to answer, "writing a food blog and pretending to work on my thesis that will never be finished because, frankly, I just don't have it in me." That's awkward, but not for church-related reasons.

Having experienced this, from now on I will seek out the random alone people at church events and talk to them, maybe try to suck them into my own conversational groups. I know what it's like to be that person. I think it's hard to notice them if you haven't been through it a few times yourself. If Jesus can touch the unclean and eat with sinners and save the child of the Samaritan woman, I guess I can suck it up and hang out with the loners if it ever turns out I'm in the popular group.

One really sweet woman invited me to come to another event the night after at a community I used worship with. But really, I couldn't do this to myself two days in a row: girl, alone, surrounded by people she doesn't really know but who know each other, without having drafted some poor sucker to come with her. For us single ladies, sometimes church can really suck.

Having said all that, here's my list of tips on how to deal with showing up to a medium-size mixed-group church event by yourself:

-find a nice corner chair and surround it with all the other nicest chairs in the room. When people's feet get tired and they want to sit down, they'll end up sitting around you and will have to include you in their conversation.

-own a smartphone or a phone with a full numeric keypad. If worst comes to worst you can text people, or pretend you're texting people, every time you end up standing all by yourself.

-convince a friend to call you at a certain time so that you have an out for leaving early (I'm sorry I have to go, my best friend's goldfish just asphyxiated and she needs me to come over. But I had a really lovely time, thanks for inviting me).

-bring a sock-puppet or treasured stuffed animal. That way, you'll always have someone to talk to.

-keep going back to the cheeseplatter. If you don't manage to strike up a conversation, at least you'll get to eat lots of cheese.

-fall on the floor filled with the Holy Spirit and start speaking in tongues. I guarantee they'll pay attention to you after that.

Hope

"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory [...] Therefore, keep awake -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake." (Mark 13:24-26, 35-37)

Advent is profoundly mysterious: the time that is coming, that we are waiting for, will come like a thief in the night, at a time we know not when. Who can know for sure what that day will hold? The angels will gather the elect, but will we be among them? After the Son of Man has come on the clouds and gathered the elect unto Himself, what will our existence in glory be?

Mystery, mystery: all the things we anticipate but do not understand. All the certainties we are uncertain of.

We know that Jesus has come. We know that He is coming again. But about that day and hour no one knows. It's unsettling, this time that pulls together the past and the future into an uncertain present, looking backward and forward into a veil beyond which we cannot see.

We are called to prepare a path for the Lord -- like Elijah, to make a straight path in the desert. Wait, and be watchful, always making ready, for we do not know when our Saviour will come. Advent calls us to prepare ourselves for God's coming, to make ready for the final day by immersing ourselves in a period of watching and waiting.

We do not watch by looking resolutely forward, by focusing ourselves on that which we cannot see. That is not really hope: that's an obsession with trying to predict or catch the very moment we cannot grasp upon the instant of its awakening. Nor do we watch by turning backward to what has already past, what we know and understand, because hope cannot live looking behind itself. We watch by preparing within ourselves a silent space, a place within which we immerse ourselves in the present moment, the time in-between.

What we know to have been is part of our hope: the Incarnation we prepare to celebrate fills us with certainty about who God is. We know that Jesus has come. What we know is coming is also part of our hope: our longing for the future fills us with direction and a yearning to be with God. But hope is primarily about the present, because it can only be experienced now.

Our hope and longing for God's coming is like watching a sunrise. We know that the sun has risen a thousand times before. And we know that if we wait long enough the sun will come up above the horizon. But it is by immersing ourselves in the blackness, by watching each moment pass without hurriedly imagining a future where the sun is risen, that we open up a space inside our hearts to see the light seep in.  

Dawn is gradual and sudden, a crack opening up to the light in myriad ways. It illuminates us with longing and sweetness for each moment as we experience it. The past and future never really fall away. But only by really being in the moment can we experience the awe and mystery of what is taking place. We prepare ourselves by being fully immersed.

So, too, the mystery of Advent springs upon us suddenly and is quickly gone. Through patient hope -- a hope that longs by a willingness to see each moment as one in which God is coming -- we abide in the coming of the Lord. 

The Lord has come and the Lord will come. In hope, we live in the conviction that the Lord is coming always, and everywhere.  

"for in every way you have been enriched in him [...] He will also strengthen you to the  end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." (1 Corinthians 1: 5, 8-9)

Honored

Have you ever felt overwhelmed and honored by an opportunity that's presented to you? This Sunday, I felt that to an amazing degree: my parish priest asked if I would be interested in preaching for our upcoming Lessons and Carols service. The service by itself would be a big deal, coming as it does at such an important time in the liturgical year. But this service is extra-special because it's ecumenical -- members of all the local churches have been invited to attend. We're raising money for the charity Agape, and last year there was a really great turnout. By which I mean the church was full.

And now it looks like I'll get to preach at it.

It isn't like I'm not humbled and overwhelmed every time I get asked to preach. I am. I'm grateful and excited for every opportunity. And it isn't that I've never preached at a 'big' event before: I've done a baptism, Back to Church Sunday, and the service for the ACW of the deanery. But this is totally, completely a big deal, and certainly the most important event I've been asked to speak at.

First thought that went through my head? Terror.

Second thought? Yep, I'm terrified. And the priest is insisting I don't have to do it and he doesn't want to pressure me. But there's no freaking way I'm giving up this opportunity just because of a little fear.

I wonder if maybe that wasn't something like what Mary felt when the angel appeared to her and asked her to bear God's child?

I know, I'm being awfully presumptuous by comparing myself to the Virgin Mother. Obviously the situations are nothing alike. But still, I think that our everyday experiences give us insight into the miracle of God's work in the world, let us see intimately into the mystery of the Incarnation and the love God has for us.

She must have felt terror when he told her. She must have felt fear, and overwhelming awe, and humility that she was even being asked, even as he told her it was okay to say no. But in the midst of her fear, her uncertainty, her feeling that she couldn't possibly ever be enough, she reached out and grabbed that opportunity. She said yes: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (Lk 1:38).

When the Church talks about Mary, it is most often about her humility, her acceptance of the will of God. The way she is a good and faithful woman. But we don't talk nearly enough about her courage. Mary was a very brave woman. She said yes even in the face of fear and uncertainty. She didn't give in to God, the way someone gives in to a powerful demand because they cannot resist it. She grabbed hold, with both hands -- she said yes 'come what may.'

Mary the brave one, Mary of the strong heart. Mary who asks her son to perform his first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana, Mary who follows her son to the Cross, Mary who wraps and perfumes his body and lays it in the tomb. Mary who waits with the Apostles for the Spirit to come.

Mary who says yes to an angel and carries her beloved son inside her, her past and future wrapped up in these precarious moments, as precious, fragile, and uncertain as a newborn wrapped in swaddling clothes.

We can all learn a lot from Mary. She teaches us that fear is not something that needs to hold us back, that we can and must push through it if we want to realize God's purpose in our lives. We must not let fear stop us from grasping and cherishing the moments of our lives. As we keep these things treasured in our hearts, to ponder and wonder at them, we must nevertheless go through the uncertainty, through the doubt, and through the fear with humility and courage.

Humility and courage. Doubt and fear and overwhelming uncertainty are normal parts of our lives, and we are not meant to be ashamed of them. What we are meant to do is take hold of the moment in spite of them, and let God do the rest.

Lesson from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Now I realize that it's been a while since I've posted anything. And by a while, I mean many eternities, if you were measuring time based on the lifespan of a goldfish. So obviously I expect few people will read this, given that the world has undoubtedly moved on to reading blogs that are updated with something resembling regularity.

I also realize that Buffy isn't a canonical book of the Bible. But really, who's going to call me on it?

A few months ago, I bought the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer series on DVD and started watching it. This wasn't some kind of nostalgia for the halcyon days of my youth or anything -- when the show first aired, I never watched it. But I caught a few reruns when my cooking show got cancelled, and I was hooked! Lo and behold, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was not the over hyped show that I thought it was! The actors are skilled, the plots are good, and the scripts are amazing. It's truly, truly worth watching (in case you've never seen it).

But I digress.

Yesterday, I watched the episode titled "The Body." In case you haven't seen Buffy, and don't want me to spoil it for you forever, please stop reading now.

This is the show where Joyce Summers -- Buffy's mom -- dies suddenly. It's pretty heart wrenching, especially since she'd recovered so well from her earlier illness. Watching this show, you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. When is the monster going to attack? Is this all some kind of evil demon plot of false memories? Will it turn out that Glory, the evil goddess of the demon realm, killed Joyce to get at Buffy? Will vampires take advantage of the situation and try to kill Buffy?

Barring one undead incident in the morgue, nothing like this ever takes place. Nothing terrifying jumps out of a closet, or turns out to be hiding in the house. There is no demonic element to Joyce's death. There's just the relatively common-place aneurysm.

But you keep waiting for that moment, for that other shoe to drop. In the end, you realize that the most horrifying thing of all is not monsters or demons or unexpected plot twists, but the sheer reality of death itself. Even while Buffy battles with a vampire in the morgue, her sister Dawn stares at her dead mother, riveted and frozen, uncaring of everything else that's going on.

Death is the horrifying thing.

For all the killing that goes on in the show -- dead vampires, demons, various unholy creatures, unfortunate bystanders -- you don't ever really think about death. It doesn't so much touch you as it is something that happens. Death never really has consequences.

It made me think about how we don't really understand it, and how we as a culture go out of our way to avoid really thinking about it. Many times, we circle around the question of death: we use euphemisms, we discuss the aftermath in platitudes. Other people's pain is uncomfortable and incomprehensible because we don't want to face those issues ourselves. We say things like, 'he's at peace now,' or 'she's gone to a better place.' For some people, death is even something glamorous, something to be almost courted or dared. But do we really know what happens after death, or what occurs during those final moments?

As Christians, it's tempting to say we know what death is, what it means. God has told us in the Bible. We've heard stories of Saints. There are various interpretations of what happens to you after death, which of course vary depending on what kind of a life you lived, but in Western Christianity they all involve some sort of uninterrupted continued life that goes on forever.

We go to heaven or hell or purgatory-then-heaven, and we used to go to limbo which as it turns out has been officially debunked. From heaven we can look down on the world and see it's goings-on, we can worship God and, some people believe, pass along requests for intercession if we're close enough.

But there isn't a concept of life stopping. There's no concept that there might be nothing, even for a little while. Or that, when we 'wake up' in the afterlife God might have made us significantly different that we used to be simply by removing all our faults. We believe in a continuity that outlives the body. Even Buffy tells her sister, face to face with the body, that it 'isn't here: she's not here anymore.' We envision some sort of departure, and those of us who share the Christian faith tend to believe that the thing that departs you lives on.

We celebrate elaborate funeral rituals that express our beliefs about death. But, in the end, isn't death the final mystery? How could we ever know what lies behind it, what God has in store for us? Our faith isn't about knowing. It's about trusting.

But it's really really hard not to know. So, of course, it's only natural that within the framework of faith we try to explain it to ourselves. I think part of the reason so many of us find death scary -- even when we see it on a fictional show -- is because part of us knows that we don't really understand, no matter how strong our beliefs are. I know I feel that way. And maybe we're not supposed to understand. It is a great mystery, after all.

On the show, Anya (who is a thousand-year-old ex vengeance-demon) says it best: "But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she can't just get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."

I think maybe at this time of year, when we're thinking of eternity and the end times and the world to come, and we're waiting for Jesus to come, and about to start pondering the miracle that is new life and the Incarnation, that this is a time to think about death and what it means to us. For all that we can't comprehend it, as both an end and a beginning, it is the fundamental human experience that we share with every living person.

And, through the miracle of Christmas, a mystery that we share even with God.

Rainbow Fish -- Get Out Of That Net!

This Sunday at church we had a double-Baptism: two very cute little children being welcomed into the community, accompanied and supported by parents, godparents and family. A great opportunity to show them what we're all about -- as the priest said at one point in his homily, to do our duty by leading people to Jesus.

Some great readings, too. In the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples to leave behind their nets and become fishers of men. Exactly what we're called in Baptism to do -- to bring people to Jesus by using all our gifts to catch them up in a love-affair with the Gospel.

The homily began by asking if we have, in this day and age, the courage to follow the Faith of our Fathers. A Biblical Faith.

The homily was mostly about gays.

The words 'gay' and 'homosexual' were never actually used. But it was obvious what he was talking about. He said things like that the idea that we need to engage in 'moral expansions' is bad. That the idea it's okay to live this way or that way, any way we want, is wrong. That God is eternal and unchanging, and what He always hated He still hates.

The words 'repugnant' and 'abomination' were used.

It was terrifying. As bad as when that guest speaker from Jews for Jesus (or whoever) came to our church and told us to pray for the conversion of the Jews because all his Jewish friends and family who didn't believe in Jesus were going straight to hell.

I found myself thinking about those poor people who were there for the Baptism -- what must they be thinking and feeling? Were they thinking: your homophobic sermon is ruining my special day? Were they thinking: who are you people? Were they thinking: that's it, Christianity is definitely not for me? Or were they thinking: right on, brother!

Mostly I was thinking about me, and how I wanted to run away in terror. I worry about speaking up. This is odd for me, since at one point I went head-to-head in a radio interview with one of Canada's experts on why gay marriage is wrong. But now, I worry that if people in my church know how strongly I disagree with the things he said, I wouldn't be allowed to preach anymore. I'm supposed to preach next week.

If you want to call what I do a ministry, which I guess you could if you were desperate, it's a very fragile one. I read from the lectionary, set up a Morning Prayer for the church once a week, am on parish council. Sometimes I get to preach. I have no certification or licence from the diocese, so it all depends on the forbearance of my priest and the community. I have not forgotten, and cannot forget, what it means to live with secret convictions, to fear that what precious little I have could be taken away. And I fear that without honesty everything I say is meaningless anyway.

I had to remind myself that taking Eucharist is not a political act. Receiving Jesus' gift of Himself in no way implies that I agree with the message. Sacrament and sermon are not indelibly connected. But I still felt a little like a traitor.

The message I got from the sermon is that Jesus sends his disciples out to become fishers of men. And if you happen to catch a gay or lesbian fish, by God you have to throw it back in the water because God doesn't want to eat that kind of fish. That's our Baptismal mission.

But that isn't the faith I believe in. That isn't the kind of Christian I believe we're called to be. And that isn't the kind of God I could love.