“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” As they hear these words, Christians around the world will embark again upon another Lent. That season in the church year focused on the repentance of sins and the pursuit of holiness that begins with a cross of ashes smudged on our foreheads, and continues in fasting of some sort or other for forty days. Although there is no hard rule about what pleasure is to be set aside, its absence, like the presence of the ashes reminds us to consider what it means to follow a crucified Lord. What it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Coming to understand, own, and practice the claims of the Gospel—that is what discipleship is—occurs between two poles. The negative pole is called “mortification.” It is that “putting to death” of those parts of our selves that don’t conform to the righteousness of God revealed in Gospel and Law. Discipleship (in part) is a lifetime of unlearning those attitudes and habits that come all too naturally to fallen human beings, that appear so natural and wholesome, that are so enslaving.

According to the Christian tradition, seven such vices are the sources of all other moral evil. They are pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth: the seven deadly sins. Of course, this is neither the only, nor a full list. No list—whether found in Scripture or tradition—is final. And this, I think, is deliberate. Listing sins, after all, is a particularly seductive sin for the pious. We quite naturally and accurately spot the sins of others so that we may continue to overlook them in ourselves. Mortification is for individuals. It is not my task or yours to sniff out the sins of others. Tending to our own is hard enough.

Although it is a necessary part of discipleship, mortification is not its sum. The positive pole is “vivification.” The slow process of being “made alive” in Christ, the Spirit-enabled and directed embracing and practicing of those habits and virtues through which our minds are renewed, our bodies controlled, our selves transformed. Think of the duties laid upon believers by God’s law: to love one’s neighbors and to love God. Because the weight of these two commands—if seriously considered—can be overwhelming, we remember that they are not standards demanding perfection as much as destinations requiring progress. “No one will travel so badly as not daily to make some degree of progress,” wrote John Calvin. Let us “not despair because of the slender measure of our success . . . . [Our] labor is not lost when today is better than yesterday. . . .”[1] Good advice.

Vivification is also about learning to receive the comforts of life as gifts from God. It is a process in which our consciences become guided by principles like moderation, patience, and generosity as we learn to rightly to enjoy the gifts of creation: good food, good friends, good conversation, among the most important. And even here, even learning how to enjoy the Christian life, requires “no small progress in the school of Christ.”[2]

Christian discipleship is about dying and living. It is to be on the journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, to the cross and the resurrection. With Jesus, we will prepare to die; with him we will walk into the valley of the shadow of death; and with him, we will begin to live. The journey is intensely personal. But personal isn’t private. Only individuals can live and die, whether physically or spiritually. Christians, at least, need do neither alone.

This journey is one undertaken with others, one begun and ended in community. Dying and living with Christ begins and ends with sisters and brothers alongside us, struggling with us, bearing our burdens as we bear theirs, forgiving and being forgiven, praying with us, for us, and perhaps instead of us. It is a journey undertaken in and with the Church as the Church hears in Word and sees in Sacrament, God’s promise and command.

It seems to me that it locates us in two ways. First, it reminds us that God’s grace is not contingent upon our piety, prayer, or position in life. This is perhaps the most difficult lesson of Lent to learn, given its quite natural focus on sanctification—that putting to death of our old habits, attitudes and actions coupled with the careful nurture of virtuous frames of mind and patterns of behavior. The appropriation of a Lenten discipline may lead us (mistakenly) to conclude that we are, in fact, engaged in an attempt to stake a claim for the gift of God’s favor and the result is either one of two of the deadliest sins.

One is despair. The focus on discipline may well lead some of us to conclude that we are not sufficiently disciplined, that we have not been sufficiently disciplined, that we will never be sufficiently disciplined. And in despair, some of us may conclude that grace is for us, undisciplined bodies and souls, and leave the repentance of Lent for others. And in so doing, we will have missed the point: repentance is not the foundation for grace. Rather, grace is the ground of repentance. Why should we repent? Why should we engage in those disciplines that remind us of our mortality, that expose our sins, that remind us of how far we have to go to attain the full measure of Christ? For no other reason than this: God has already chosen us to be the objects of his love. God has already chosen to lavish his favor on us. It cannot be earned, only received. For the words of the angel to Mary, in her ordinariness, are in fact words to us all: Greetings, Favored One! The Lord is with you! And if, like Mary we can, caught up in confusion, only utter, How can the be? We have the angel’s assurance: With God, nothing is impossible. No one can escape the grace that comes unbidden. And because grace has wholly to with God’s decision to be gracious, no one need despair.

But not all of us despair during Lent. It may be that, having accepted the mistaken notion that repentance is the ground of grace, we commit despair’s equal and opposite sin, pride. That is, we may come to the conclusion that we are, in fact, good enough, disciplined enough, repentant enough. It may be that deep in our heart of hearts, we really do believe that God owes us for our piety, our prayers, our positions of religious respectability. Like another character in Luke’s Gospel, we may, from our position of super-spirituality, look at our struggling brothers and sisters, and say, “I thank you God that I am not like them!” So Jesus reminds us that we are all like the tax collector in that same parable. He who prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” We are all alike on the margins. We are all alike in our ordinariness, in our frailty, and in our sin.

And so lent comes to us again as that occasion where we fast and pray and give in secret; as that time when God might set us free form the sins of despair and pride; as that time when, even as we remember our own frailty, our own mortality, our own sin, we might also remember the grace that has embraced us, redeemed us, and called us to new life in Christ. The grace that grounds our repentance and grants our faith. The grace that reminds us that, even if we are returning to the dust, that dust is beloved by God.

The True King

This is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany. It is that season of the year that follows Christmas, when we celebrate the appearance of Christ. It is also that season of the Church year that precedes Lent, when we prepare ourselves for the events of Holy Week and Easter, when we remember the climax of Jesus’ ministry, grieve his death on the cross and celebrate his glorious resurrection.

Epiphany is that time of year, in other words, that is devoted to reflecting on the identity of he who came at Christmas, of he who died on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Sunday. It is a time for asking just who this man from Nazareth is. And of course, this is a theme that has run through the various Gospel passages that we have looked at over the last few weeks. “Who is this man that he teaches with authority?” asked the amazed crowd on several occasions. “I know who you are: The Holy One of God.” said the demon in the synagogue.

In the story of the raising of the paralytic, which concludes the cycle of miracle stories that we have been looking at, Jesus declares, “So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins, rise, take up your mat and go.”

Now this theme that has lurked throughout the last few Sundays comes in this final passage to the fore. Now we need to put ourselves in the place of the disciples, and the crowds. Now we need to ask again, “Who is this man?”

Who is this man who calls seekers and sitters and skeptics? Who is this man who calls fishermen to fish for people? Who is this man who declares himself to be the enemies of all God’s enemies? Who is this man who claims to forgive sins?

He is the Son of Man—so Jesus himself says when he raises the paralyzed man. Rooted in Daniel 7, it’s a title for a heavenly figure who would in the end time receive from God an everlasting kingdom and the authority to rule it. When Jesus comes preaching that the time is fulfilled, that the kingdom of God is here, that it is time to repent and believe all the while taking for himself the title Son of Man, he is in other words, talking about himself. The Son of Man has come—the time is fulfilled. The Son of Man is reigning—the kingdom of God is here. The Son of Man will judge and forgive and heal and restore. Repent and believe the good news!

Now we must ask, in the glorious light of the transfiguration, what are we going to do with the Son of Man. For now, we have come to the climax to our epiphany journey. With Jesus, Peter, James and John we have climbed the mountain. We have just seen Jesus disclosed, revealed, made known in his glory. The glory of the heavenly Son of Man attested to by both the embodiment of the Law—Moses and the Prophets—Elijah. We have heard again God’s heavenly voice claiming Jesus’ as his Son, authorizing his words, and commanding our assent. Are you ready to make up your mind yet?

And now to say something surprising: It’s okay to be unsure. It’s okay to be just a little worried about this man and the demands he places on your life. Who among us, whether we would class ourselves as Christians of long-standing, or short-standing, or not at all, cannot say that the Gospels have presented a picture of a man that is at once compelling and off-putting. Compelling because he is so attractive, so compassionate, so driven himself by compassion for the everyday needs of everyday people. And off-putting for the sheer power embedded in the words “Be quiet. Come out of him.” Or “I will it. Be Made Clean.”

Which brings us to the second context that we need to be aware of. The first context was our context as contemporary readers of Mark’s Gospel during Epiphany. The second context is the literary context of the transfiguration story in Luke’s Gospel. And once that context is made plain, second and even third thoughts will be seen to be appropriate. Let me explain.

The story of Jesus’ transfiguration in front of Peter, James and John comes just after the turning point of  Luke’’s Gospel. A point at which readers move a series of stories recounting victory after victory to a second series recounting what appears to be defeat after defeat.

In the first eight chapters of Mark, Jesus confounds his enemies. He dispatches demons with a word. He heals the sick, cleanses lepers, he even raises the dead. He bests his critics in debate, leaving them looking foolish. He even displays uncanny powers over the natural world itself, calming storms and multiplying food.

They end with Jesus taking his disciples north to Caesarea Phillipi, to ask them some pointed questions. Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am? And Peter, well, Peter gets it right. You are the Messiah, he says to Jesus. You are the Son of the living God.

And precisely at that point, the tone then changes. Then, says the text, Jesus began to teach them that he must suffer. That he would be rejected. That he would be killed and that after three days, he would rise again. The situation has just become very serious, indeed. Yes he is the Messiah. Yes he is the Son of Man. Yes he is the Holy One of God as the demons recognized. But he was going to fulfill this role in a way that nobody expected. His way will be the way of the cross. The way of suffering and death.

The rest of Jesus’ ministry, as it is recounted in the Gospel of Luke, will be so frustrating, so disappointing that we will need assurance that, indeed, we’re not wrong about Jesus. That our decision to follow Jesus was the right one.

So, it’s ok to be unsure as we move to the third context—the story itself. It’s ok to have doubts as we climb the mountain with Peter and James and John. And with them we see Jesus transfigured and revealed in the glory of his father. And with them we see him receiving the endorsement of Moses and Elijah. And once again, we hear God’s voice claiming Jesus as his Son.

The story is designed to show the uniqueness of Jesus as God’s agent. This is made plain at two points. First, having been taken up the mountain by Jesus and seen his glorious transfiguration with Moses and Elijah, Peter is overcome and begins to babble: “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles—one for Moses, one for Elijah. . .”  and before he can finish his remarks, he is interrupted by the presence of the cloud and God’s voice saying, “This is my beloved Son. Hear him.”  In other words, do not be distracted by Moses and Elijah. Pay attention to Jesus. He is God’s son.

Second, once the cloud disappears, along with Moses and Elijah, the point made by the heavenly voice is underscored. The disciples are to look for direction only to Jesus. Only Jesus, not the great prophet Elijah and not the great lawgiver, Moses, can accomplish God’s plan. At their best, they attest to the One who surpasses them. To Jesus, the heavenly Son of Man.

An altogether haunting passage. Jesus’ transfiguration has given the disciples a glimpse of the glory of Jesus when he comes n the full power of the kingdom of God. But they have been told that Jesus must first undergo the passion before this dream can be realized.

And we find ourselves this morning much in the same place as the disciples did back then. These  past weeks, we have been nearly overwhelmed by the power of Jesus’ words and deeds.

We have seen Jesus’ identity disclosed: he is the heavenly Son of Man, who has been given a kingdom by God, who has been authorized to rule that kingdom by God, and whose reign will never end. The climax of that disclosure is the story of the transfiguration itself. Where Jesus is seen in his glory.

But that picture would be one-sided if we did not go on to stress that Jesus’ way to that glory is not a way of glory. It is a way of suffering. It is a way of the cross. It is a hard way. It’s like the eye of a needle. It’s like a narrow door opening on to a rough path. Few there be, says Jesus, that find it.

You have glimpsed Jesus in his glory. Now, will you follow Jesus to the cross?

I am not yet done the book, Where the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford, 2012) but there are some real gems there! I’ll write something more substantial later. For now, here are a couple of points that I would like a little help with.

(1) I undestand Plantinga to be saying that “soft methodological naturalism” (i.e., empirical sciences exclude God from hypotheses not as a metaphysic or theological presupposition, but as a matter of empirical practice) is not inimical to theism in general or Christian faith in particular. Hard methodological naturalism (which does presuppose atheism) is opposed to religious belief. All you need to be a scientist is the former; the latter is a metaphysical claim that is itself unscientific because empirically unprovable.  Do I have him right?

(2)I understand Plantinga’s Argument To Design as continuing his classic position in Reformed Epistemology: Design is something you have to be argued out of–not simply because it is there, but because our brains are structured in such a way as to see that it is there. I understand him also to say that such a position is actually stronger than how Paley and Behe are typically understood. Again, am I reading him correctly?

Plantinga is always a challenge to read–all the logic chopping can be really dry–but I am really enjoying this one!

This past weekend, it was my pleasure to preach at the ordination of my former student, Joey Royal, in Yellowknife. I thank +Andrew for his kind welcome to his Diocese and +Stephen for permitting me to go. My sermon is reproduced here with Joey’s permission.

Identity, Community, Task and Content: Reflections on the Call

Well, Joey, here we are. God has brought us both along different paths to a place where neither of us thought we would go when we first met. Do you remember when we first met? At Providence? I don’t remember our first conversation, but I do remember that one of our first ones had to do with Karl Barth and whether or not he was actually a Christian. Well, maybe he was a Christian. But you wanted to question me over whether he was orthodox. Over whether he was a trustworthy transmitter of the faith once delivered to the saints.

You were coming from a Brethren background and I, though by then an Anglican, was happily serving as a lay theologian. And our paths crossed at a non-denominational, evangelical Protestant college in Southern Manitoba. A College which, though it welcomed all sorts of Christians, was simply because of the demographics of its location, basically Baptist in orientation.

From that place—and I know that our walks with God did not begin there—but from that place, from that intersecting of paths, God has brought our paths together again. Here. In Yellowknife. On this wonderful occasion.

God called you to Huron College in London, then he called you to the North. Most of all, God called you to Orders. That call has been recognized and affirmed by the community of faith. And tonight, you will receive the symbols of your office in the first step of that external recognition. Bishop Andrew will lay his hands on your head and commission you to proclaim God’s wordand to care for God’s people. You will come even more closely under Bishop Andrew’s authority. You will be ordained a deacon.

God’s call has been recognized as part of your identity—to be a deacon is not simply to do certain things. It is to be a particular person. God’s call will now admit you to a particular community—a community of brother and sisters. Fellow servants called to care for God’s people in and through the ministry of proclamation and service. God has called you to particular tasks—to do certain things.  And God in that Call, God has given you what you need to be this person, to take your place in this community, to do these things.

I would like for the next few moments to reflect with you on each of these points.

First, Joey, you have been called to a particular identity. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;” these words, first uttered to the prophet Jeremiah as God commissioned him to his ministry to proclamation, are tonight given to you. And they are weighty with reality.

These are not flowery sentiments given to make us or you feel good; nor do they promise an always bright and smooth future. Certainly, if the subsequent ministry of Jeremiah is any indication, if the ministries of those whom God has called give us any clue, we cannot take these words as a sign that you will have an easy life and ministry.

We may certainly pray for those things and thank God if and as they occur. But the call of God does not guarantee those things.

No, the call of God, this passage tells us, has to do in a profound and real way, with who you are. Something prior to actions and events. It has to do in a basic way with your identity. “Before you were in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I consecrated you.” Tonight, the Church recognizes that these words—even as they apply in our text to the prophet Jeremiah, tonight the Church recognizes that they apply to you. That the call of God defines your identity Joey, in a fundamental and foundational way.

God’s call comes before your nationality and race. God’s call comes before your family and personal history. God’s call comes before the clothes you wear, the money you do or don’t have in the bank. It even comes before your love for Jen and her love for you. None of those things are bad things! None of those things are to be despised. All of those things flow into the man you are and the man you are becoming. But none of them is basic. None of them is primary. None of them gets behind God’s call.

God’s call comes to you, Joey, before you were born. It comes even before you were in the womb. The call of God uniquely constitutes who you are and who you are becoming. It comes before everything else—however good and wonderful and enjoyable those other things are.

The call of God defines you, Joey, like nothing else can. Tonight, we are not giving you anything new as much as we are recognizing just whom you have always been. Whatever spiritual gifts you receive tonight—and you will!—they will not be call of God. They will be the tools you need to do what God has already called you to do.

Now why does that matter?

It matters because all the other things we use to construct ourselves—all the other things I’ve mentioned . . . things like race and place and spouse and family—all those other things can and will be taken away from us at some point or other. God may even have to strip you of something that you hold most dear—he has done that with me—to remind you that the call tells you who you are.

There may even be a time when you find yourself in a position similar to the prophet Jeremiah, cast into the pit of Malchiah, up to his neck in filth having been abandoned by all but the God who called him. Even then, and then more than any other time, rest in your call.

The call came before you were. It defines you. It makes you, you and shapes whom you will become. Rest in that call when times are good; rest in that call when they are not. The call of God is who you are.

Even if there are times when it seems like the call of God is all you have, however, because of the call, you will never be entirely alone. The call of God rests on others with whom you share that call.

There is a sense, of course, in which this is true of every Christian. When the writer to the Hebrews penned the words that we read this evening, he wasn’t talking to the clergy. He was talking to every believer. “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so easily, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. . . .”

All of us who have been baptized are part of this community of faith that extends from Abel to the end of time, that encompasses the church militant here on earth and triumphant in heaven.

But, it seems to me that it is particularly true for those of us who have been called to ordained ministry, who have been called in a unique way to serve this community of faith, that we form a community, too. A community within the community, so to speak.

As of tonight, you become part of the community that includes many of the Church’s great saints—Athanasius and Bishop Isaac Stringer and John Stott.

More than that, you will become part of that community within the community made up of individuals who, throughout the last two millennia, opened the book anonymously. Who visited the faithful, who evangelized and bore witness to the world, and did so without ever earning a name in any of the history books. People like Barney Wood whom no one but a very few remember, but whose faithful ministry led to the discernment of well over a dozen vocations, including my own.

I do not know how your call will unfold Joey. In the mercy and timing of our Lord, you may well become a Stott—you certainly have the intellectual gifts for it; or you may well become a Barney Wood—faithful, anonymous, with a huge if indirect impact for the kingdom. Either way, you are part of a community. You are not and will never be entirely alone.

I trust that you will rest in your call to this community if you ever find yourself like Jeremiah in the pit.

More than that, though, I trust that when the invitations to clericus come at the worst possible time, or when a Deanery event feels like just one more thing on an already too-long-to-do list, that you’ll remember that you’re part of a community. And in clericus and in Deanery functions, we build that community. We—ideally anyway—use these get togethers to encourage each other to lay aside besetting sins, to persevere in the race before us, to keep our eyes on Jesus.

You belong to the community of the called. It is a community with quirks. It is a community with saints. It is a community with sinners. It is a community full of men and women who are somewhere in between. It is a community that surrounds us and prays for us and upholds us.

So, the call of God is who you are and at the same time, the call of God admits to you a group of men and women who share that vocation. The call is indeed about your personal and corporate identity and their intersection.

And within that intertwining of personal and public personae, you are called to certain tasks. And that brings us round to the Gospel lesson for this evening. You might like to think of this passage as Our Lord’s first dress rehearsal for what would follow, first in the sending of the seventy in the next chapter, and then in the book of Acts, with the commission to take the Good News to Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and eventually to the entire world.

In our passage the 12 are given authority over demons and disease. They are commissioned and authorized, in other words, to be healers of both souls and bodies. They are sent out to proclaim the kingdom and to heal.

Tonight, as you are ordained, you are being authorized and commissioned to do the same thing: you stand in the tradition of the apostles to bring healing to minds and bodies, and to do so through the unique gifts and tools that are yours as a deacon.

I would like to think that you remember one of my lectures on parish organization in Geneva, and on how John Calvin understood the office of the pastor. For it seems to me that it is applicable here.

Calvin believed that the pastor was called primarily to be an exegete of Scripture. And he believed it was to be done in two places and in two ways. It was to be done publicly and generally in the pulpit as, week in and week out, a pastor would bring the gracious words of Law and Gospel to bear on the lives of the people he (they were only men at that time) had been charged to serve. And, it was to be done privately and particularly in the homes of believers as the pastor visited his parishioners, to bring the gracious words of Law and Gospel to bear on individuals.

In pulpit and in living room and in hospital room and in jail cell Joey, as you bring the Word to your people, never forget that the Gospel is Good News for the healing of the nations; that what you have been called to proclaim is the good news of salvation, of healing, of the restoration to wholeness for God’s people and for the world.

Bring the Word to people and let it do its healing work. Allow the grace of God—the grace that comes to our ears in the Word proclaimed—to be seen and touched and tasted, too as you help serve the sacrament.

And that brings me finally to the content of the Call. Of that content, St. Paul in our lesson wrote, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Paul—who, as he told us earlier in the epistle to the Philippians—had more reason than most to boast now considered it all rubbish—the Greek word is, you will recall, more earthy than that!—he considered it all rubbish in order to gain Christ.

The content of your call, Joey, is a person. He is the one you are to give to others through Word and service. He is the one given for the healing of the nations and the healing of our souls.

And that means you will stand between your people and Jesus. You are called to be transparent to his glory. You are called to be a channel employed by the Spirit to bring Christ to his people. You are called to give your people Christ.

You will bring Christ into places of light and happiness and into places of darkness and loss. You will bring Christ to people who will receive you; you will bring Christ to people who will not.

But you will bring Christ.

Not the glories of the prayer book, or Anglicanism, or a particular expression of Christianity. You will bring Christ. Everything—no matter how good those things they may be, no matter how boastworthy or beautiful—everything set next to him counts as loss.

He is the one who is the content of your call. He is the one whom you have been charged to give away. He is the one who has chosen you to be a vehicle for his grace. Know him, and the power of his resurrection, and whether your ministry is popular or not, whether it is well-known or anonymous, it will be fruitful.

Joey, you have sensed the call of God to ordained ministry as a priest in God’s Church. That call from here on will be the definer of who you are. That call is shared by many many brothers and sisters. Don’t be afraid to lean on us; let us, from time to time, lean on you. That call is to bring the healing of the Gospel through Word and Sacrament to people who need it whether they know it or not. And the content of that call is Christ himself. You will serve him by serving others. You will serve him by giving him away.

Because before he formed you in the womb, he knew you; before you were born, he consecrated you. Before you took your first breath, he had placed his hand on you and said to you, “This one belongs to me.”