It’s just about six weeks ago that I wrote to you and borrowed Bruce Epperly’s phrase “living a holy adventure”, expressing hope and excitement that our journeys had been linked and that we were embarking on a “holy adventure” together. 

Today, as we approach Thanksgiving weekend, I write to express gratitude for the unfolding of our “holy adventure” so far. I give thanks for the ways that you have all welcomed me with such openness and warmth. I give thanks for our worship together, and for the ways we have navigated the change in the pattern of our Sunday morning worship, moving from a morning of both Zoom and in-person worship, to one service at 10 a.m. I give thanks that we were able to respond to volunteer fatigue with this change, and I am grateful for the understanding of those for whom Zoom was meeting a need on a Sunday morning. Part of living a “holy adventure” is living with eyes, ears, hearts and minds open to opportunities to move with God already at work, and we will continue to do that with all things, including being open to opportunities to connect on Zoom. I give thanks for the ways we are getting to know one another in community, in meetings, and one-on-one as our 
“holy adventure” continues. 

Last Sunday, I preached about “and”, suggesting that it is one of the most important words we have as human beings. Life is full of “ands”: joy and sorrow, praise and lament, faith and doubt, celebration and conflict. “And” frees us from striving for either/or and helps us to move between these things. We are both ourselves and an interconnected collective. We live both inner and outer lives. We are each uniquely and wonderfully made, and we are inextricably linked in the great collective of creation. “And” helps us to be in the midst of difference and diversity. I give thanks for “and”!

It is “and” that makes community – all of you, and me – and community includes both “being”and “doing”. We’re going to stay after the 10 a.m. service next Sunday (October 16^th) for a Volunteer Fair. We will celebrate the dedicated group of volunteers who are already “doing” on a Sunday morning: taking on the roles and responsibilities that combine to make our Sunday morning worship what it is. Heartfelt thanks to them! We also need to do some rebuilding and expanding of our volunteer groups. I invite you to do some discerning about what you are “doing” at Ascension. Please do plan to stay after church next week. There will be lots of space for questions, and for “demystifying” what you’ll be getting into if the Spirit moves you to take on more “doing” on a Sunday morning. 

This Thanksgiving, I give thanks that Ascension is a place where we can meet one another and feel all the “ands”, together. I give thanks that it is a place where we tend to both our inner and our outer lives, balancing being and doing. I give thanks that God is with us and we are with each other in the “ands”, on this “holy adventure”.  

Blessings to you and yours this Thanksgiving, and always, 

Victoria+

I’m a fan of process theologian and author Bruce Epperly, and I particularly appreciate his invitation to “live a holy adventure”. We are all living a holy adventure, and I’m filled with gratitude, hope and excitement that our journeys are now linked, and that we are beginning to live our holy adventure together!

Jesus shows us that our holy adventure is now. The time of God’s action and activity is now, and it is overflowing. Jesus draws us into that brimming over. He draws us into the ever-flowing current of God’s love and action and activity. Jesus invites us on a holy adventure that has us seek to heal and restore brokenness in each other and in our world. It is a holy adventure that sees us strive for peace, justice, dignity, wholeness and love in our interactions, and in our relationships.

There is much blessing and holiness in the pattern of our Anglican tradition and worship, and in faith-filled community. Our gathering, our liturgy, and our shared prayer and song and sacrament holds us in the flow of God’s action and activity in the whole of our lives and it carries us on our holy adventure.

I feel tremendously blessed that we are now held together at Ascension, in the flow of God’s love and grace. Here’s to our holy adventure, in Jesus’ name!

Victoria+

An address by the Rev’d Bill Baldwin, originally given at the Ottawa Muslim Christian Dialogue

A Theology for the 21^st Century

Bill Baldwin

I like the idea of a theology for the 21^st century because I need a theology to help me make sense of my life in the century in which I live.  Hans Küng would have been thinking the same way but needed to see his life story as part of a longer story – so he wrote A Theology for the Third Millennium (1934).

Each of our life stories is part of the longer story of the faith journey of our faith community, which is part of the story of humanity and that in turn is part of the story of life on this planet.  Theology needs to deal with all of this and this is especially clear in the 21^st century, as global warming, a global pandemic, and much else force us to know that we humans are one family and part of a global ecosystem.  

We live in a world of cultural diversity and much spiritual uncertainty.  In our Muslim/Christian dialogue group we have an important ministry to people who are trying to find their way.  Christian and Muslims share a common story, which we tell in different ways. 

Each of the Abrahamic faiths has a strong sense of being in a covenant relationship with God, but along the way there is an opening up to our need to learn from one another. In the Book of Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom journeys through the world looking for a home and finds a place to settle in Jerusalem. In the 4^th Sura of the Quran, God tells the prophet Muhammed about the messages he gave to Moses, to Jesus, and to the prophet himself and says he has formed his people into different communities so that they can test one another. (I would also like to see a discussion, in some depth, of how we look at our scriptures in our two traditions.)

Küng writes that Christian theology needs to be based on the witness of the New Testament writers to Jesus of Nazareth.  Most Christian theologians would agree but what is significant is his insistence that we need to keep going back to that.

There is a diversity of witnesses in the New Testament. The New Testament writers tells us about who Jesus was, what he was like, things he did and about his teaching.  There are quotations of things Jesus said, some of them probably accurate Greek translations of what he said in Aramaic.  There are remembrances written down a generation or two later.  There are testimonies to the person of the risen Christ in the life of the early church.  It may seem a bit messy but Küng is comfortable with the messiness.

From all these witnesses we can see that Jesus spent a lot of time helping people to understand that the Jewish Torah by which they were trying to live was a way of living out the commandment to love God with heart and mind and strength and to one’s neighbours as oneself and we know that he saw neighour as including all of humanity.

Over the past 2000 years, Christians have been trying with greater or lesser success to live out this vision of Jesus and sometimes they have gone badly astray. In the 21^st century, we have a secular society with a diversity of cultures and religions. Global warming and global pandemic force us to think about how we are interconnected while information technology makes it easier to be in touch with one another.  We are also being forced to think more about our relationship to the ecosystem of nature.  All of this makes Jesus’ vision of humanity more relevant than ever.

Thus, Küng’s emphasis on the New Testament writers’ witness to Jesus as the basis of theology is especially relevant in the 21^st century.  In this and subsequent books, Küng has some good questions for faith communities to ask one another.  He did not believe in giving answers before really asking the questions.

Küng believes there really was a need for reform in the 16^th century church but asks if it could have happened without schism and the wars of religion if people could have listened to one another. He also wants to be open to the truth in the different faith communities in our day.

Here, however, I note an absence of any reference to redemption through Jesus’ death on the cross.

Küng deals with this in a later book: What I Believe.  He contrasts the serene benevolence of South East Asian images of the Buddha with the image of Jesus on the cross.  Does this mean that Christians need to back away from talking about the cross?

I would suggest that it means that rather than theologizing about it we should turn to Jesus’ own words.  At the Last Supper, he speaks of “the new covenant in my blood” referring to how the prophet Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant written on people’s hearts. Jesus seems to have seen his sacrifice as a means of bring that to pass. 

Each of us is on a faith journey that is part of the much longer journey of the faith community to which we belong.  Along the way there are certainties and uncertainties. A theology based on the diversity of witnesses in the New Testament to Jesus of Nazareth is needed as we face the complexity of our own time.