Church of the Ascension

The Story at Home

Take Up Your Cross

The Story for the
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
in the Season of Creation
Sept 12, 2021

Mark 8:27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

Something to Do

Take Up Your Cross

Those who want to save their life will lose it…

The work of environmental justice is costly. It takes time, money, and energy. It is also, ultimately, life-giving and life-saving.

How will you take up your cross? What costly thing(s) can you commit to? Think big and stretch as far as you are able. Some possibilities:

  • adopt a vegetarian diet
  • give up your car
  • make a sacrificial gift to an environmental organization
  • increase the energy efficiency of your home
  • commit to a buy-nothing month
  • purchase carbon offsets
  • advocate for others to make similar efforts

Climate Justice

If you haven’t done so, sign up for Kairos’ Climate Action Month and receive theological reflections, informative videos, practical actions, and inspiring stories of people taking action for Climate Justice.

Something to Wonder

Who do you say that I am?

Who do you say that Jesus is? What names or titles do you use for him?
How would you describe him? What aspects of him are most important to you? Why?

You are setting your mind not on divine but on human things

This distinction is often interpreted in a way that diminishes the significance of material things but I believe that the created world is deeply divine so Jesus must have been making a different distinction.

What might that distinction be?

Something to Learn

Climate Defenders

Learn about people who have taken up their cross to serve as Climate Defenders around the world..

Madre supports grassroots work by rural and indigenous women who are on the forefront of the work to address climate change.

Global Climate Strike gathers stories by young activists.

Human Rights Watch reported on the challenges faced by climate defenders at home and at international climate talks.


Something to Pray

Holy God, we do not always understand your word or your ways. 
Give us wisdom and imagination and courage as we learn and grow. 

The story this week has made me wonder about…
         (what questions are still on your heart?)
Receive my questions and help me hear your answers.

The story this week has filled me with…
         (how are you feeling?)
Accept my praise, heal my hurt, ease my worry.

The story this week has reminded me of…
         (are there situations or people you are thinking of?)
Be with all who are in need of you.

In Jesus’ name, we pray.
Amen.

Justice for All in the Oikos of God

The Story
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
in the Season of Creation
Sept 5, 2021

James 2:1-10,14-17

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonoured the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Something to Do

The Oikos of God

This year’s theme for the Season of Creation is “A Home for All? Renewing the Oikos of God“. Oikos is the Greek word for household or home and is where we get eco, as in economics or ecology. We are invited to remember that we and all creation live together as members of God’s household and that we have a shared responsibility for the well-being of that household.

It is timely that our Season of Creation observations coincide with our federal election, a period of concentrated attention on how we order our national household. In today’s reading, James offers strong words to Christians who mistakenly think that their faith and their social and political actions can be independent of one another: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?”

Spend some time this week (and in the weeks to come) praying and talking about your political commitments and look through the election resources produced by two of Canada’s leading Christian social justice organizations: Kairos and Citizens for Public Justice.

Climate Justice

Climate change is a justice issue and a theological issue and I am confident that James would have included matters of climate justice in his call for true love of neighbour if it had been around at the time!

Sign up for Kairos’ Climate Action Month and receive theological reflections, informative videos, practical actions, and inspiring stories of people taking action for Climate Justice.

Something to Wonder

Convicted!

How does this strongly worded message from James make you feel? Why does it cause that feeling? And how do you feel about that feeling?

What does the message make you want to do?

Will you do it? Why or why not?

Faith and Politics

What is the relationship between your faith and your politics? Has it changed over time?


How would you describe the right relationship between church and politics?
Is it different than the relationship between faith and politics?
Has that perspective changed over time?

Something to Learn

Climate Change and Poverty

We know that climate change impacts people differently. Learn more about the relationship between climate change and poverty in these articles, organized from lightest to heaviest reads:

Canada’s Climate Emergency Impacts People in Poverty, from Canada Without Poverty

Why Climate Change and Poverty are Inextricably Linked, from Global Citizen

Poverty and Climate Change: An Introduction, from Cambridge University Press

Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Something to Pray

Holy God, we do not always understand your word or your ways. 
Give us wisdom and imagination and courage as we learn and grow. 

The story this week has made me wonder about…
         (what questions are still on your heart?)
Receive my questions and help me hear your answers.

The story this week has filled me with…
         (how are you feeling?)
Accept my praise, heal my hurt, ease my worry.

The story this week has reminded me of…
         (are there situations or people you are thinking of?)
Be with all who are in need of you.

In Jesus’ name, we pray.
Amen.

From Fear to Peace

The Story
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
National Indigenous Day of Prayer
June 20, 2021

Mark 4:35-41

On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” 

Something to Do

An Evening Outing

Go for an evening boat ride or, if not a boat ride, an evening walk “to the other side”. The other side might be the other side of the neighbourhood or the river/canal or the city. Notice the changes around you as you go. Are you still in familiar territory or have you found something new? When you reach the other side, look back and consider where you came from. Do things look different from here?

Be Still

Jesus calmed the storm raging around the disciples, revealing that the power of God dwells within him. But that’s not the only storm Jesus calms – he also calms the storms that rage inside us. In the midst of the chaos that swirls around us, and sometimes within us, Jesus speaks: “Peace. Be still.” Spend time in stillness this week and let the peace of Jesus quiet the storm.

Something to Wonder

Afraid of the Storm

It is just good sense to be afraid when you are in the middle of a big lake during a big storm – but perhaps the storm itself needn’t be feared. In what ways might a fear of nature be at the root of some of humanity’s problems? How could we reframe our response to nature’s power? How might that shift our relationship to God?

Teacher, do you not care?

Have you ever said this to Jesus? Perhaps you need to say it today. It can be a scary thing to say but it can also be a freeing thing, naming your need and your worry and your anger. It is a way of focusing yourself on the presence of Jesus and orienting yourself towards his teaching rather than the storm so that you can handle whatever is raging around you.

Something to Learn

Chaos and Liminality

The disciples and Jesus are in the middle of the lake – not yet where they are going and no longer where they were. In this in-between time, chaos erupts in the form of the storm. Jesus calms the storm but they remain in the midst of crossing.

Reading this story as metaphor leads us to think about liminality – that state of being at a threshold, neither here nor there – and the chaos that experience can generate. Victor Turner, an anthropologist researching and writing in the 1960’s, developed the idea of liminality as a way of understanding the work of ritual in human culture and it has since become a key concept in many social science and humanities fields, including theology.

For the ambitious or eager: read one of Turner’s essays on the subject here: “Liminality and Communitas“.

The Pandemic and the Process of Becoming by anthropologist Sarah Osterhoudt is a first-person reflection on liminality in the context of the pandemic.

Leading in an In-Between Season is an interview with Susan Beaumont on liminality in the context of congregational and faith life. Beaumont is a practical theologian, consultant, and spiritual director.

Something to Pray

Holy God, we do not always understand your word or your ways. 
Give us wisdom and imagination and courage as we learn and grow. 

The story this week has made me wonder about…
         (what questions are still on your heart?)
Receive my questions and help me hear your answers.

The story this week has filled me with…
         (how are you feeling?)
Accept my praise, heal my hurt, ease my worry.

The story this week has reminded me of…
         (are there situations or people you are thinking of?)
Be with all who are in need of you.

In Jesus’ name, we pray.
Amen.

Land and the Kingdom of God

The Story
Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 13, 2021

Mark 4:26-34

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. 

Something to Do

The long, green, growing season

The Reign of God is revealed all around us, in the beauty and miracle of the fruitful earth. God gives growth and life, for us and for all creation. Receive this healing gift this week – spend time outdoors, visit a farmer’s market, tend your own garden – and feel yourself filled with the new life that comes from God.

Revisiting Parables

Last summer, we spent a lot of time with parables and trained our eyes to see them in our own lives. Spend some time seeing parables around you again – and listen to the parables members of Ascension shared with us on July 26, 2020.
The Kingdom of heaven is like… a collaborative sermon of shared parables

Something to Wonder

When the grain is ripe

The first parable in this week’s story includes the work of the farmer who plants the seed and then, seeing when the grain is ripe, goes out to the harvest. What does the farmer’s inclusion tell us about the Reign of God? What field have you been given to tend? What stage of growth is it at?

Like a mustard seed

The second parable in today’s story offers us a tiny seed which grows beyond all expectation in order to provide a home to the birds of the air. Where are you in this parable? Are you a tiny seed, waiting to grow? Are you the strong branches, providing shade and shelter? Are you a bird, building a nest?

Something to Learn

Theology, Land, and Indigenous Teaching

Two articles from the Political Theology Network:

Indigenous Stewardship and the Death Rattle of White Supremacy by Natalie Avalos
Native peoples in the Americas understand the universe as alive and sentient. All phenomena in it are understood to be a distinct expression of life force, or spirit. Since all persons – human and other-than-human – such as plants, animals, rivers, winds, and mountains are expressions of spirit, they are understood to be interconnected and contingent.

Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: On the Nature of the Concept by Brian Burkhart
Indigenizing philosophy through the land then is more than a culturally distinct way of philosophizing… it is a process of decolonization in the form of a revitalization of the relational modes of Indigenous life grounded in land as the relational ground of kinship and human beings as grounded in and inextricably entwined with this relational kinship ground.

Something to Pray

Holy God, we do not always understand your word or your ways. 
Give us wisdom and imagination and courage as we learn and grow. 

The story this week has made me wonder about…
         (what questions are still on your heart?)
Receive my questions and help me hear your answers.

The story this week has filled me with…
         (how are you feeling?)
Accept my praise, heal my hurt, ease my worry.

The story this week has reminded me of…
         (are there situations or people you are thinking of?)
Be with all who are in need of you.

In Jesus’ name, we pray.
Amen.

Renouncing Satan and Turning to Jesus

The Story
Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 6, 2021

Mark 3:20-35

The crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain Jesus, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” – for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.” Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” 

Something to Do

Tying up Satan

Jesus ministry of exorcism was strange enough to worry his family and attract the attention of the authorities and it hasn’t gotten significantly easier for us to deal with in the centuries since. The supernatural register used in the Bible doesn’t always sit easily in our modern minds but, regardless of how we imagine Beelzebul, we must surely acknowledge that evil continues to hold power over people and institutions in a myriad of tragic ways. This is the evil we renounce at our baptism; it is the evil from we which we ask to be delivered in the Lord’s Prayer; it is the evil we name in confession and in intercessions as we ask God to set our world free.

This past week brought a stark reminder of evil in our country with the recovery of the remains of 215 children, buried in an unmarked gravesite at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. This is news – and it is not news. It is also an important moment for advocacy and justice work: the strong man has been tied up by the outbreaking of truth and empathy and now is the time to plunder his house!

What can we do?

  • Keep learning
  • Add your voice to political campaigns
  • Give your money
  • Orient and re-orient your heart and mind towards justice and hope through prayer, critical thinking, and conversation

Resources for doing all of that:

Who are my mother and my brothers?

Again and again, Jesus rejects simple understandings of biological family in order to emphasize the importance of God’s family. Some Christian communities bring this teaching to life by calling everyone brother or sister. This teaching is also related to the Indigenous teaching that we are all relations – humans, animals, plants, water and all creation.

This week, use family words – brother, sister, mother, father, cousin, sibling, etc – to talk (or think) about the people and nature around you. How does it feel? Does it change the way you think about anything?

Something to Wonder

He has gone out of his mind

Jesus’ family seems to have been genuinely concerned about his mental state which led them to dismissing his teaching. Have you ever dismissed someone’s gifts – or been dismissed yourself – because of assumptions about mental health? What are the roots of that reaction? What are the consequences?

Whoever does the will of God

What is the will of God? Start by answering that question in a big, general way and then get more specific.
What is the will of God for me? For my church community?
How can I/we live out the will of God at this time? What choices do we need to make? Where should we put our time and money? What behaviours do we need to cultivate? What will we do?

Something to Learn

A Brief History of Satan

There’s a lot of important learning in the first “to do” offering of these week’s Story at Home so I will only offer one additional piece in the Something to Learn section: Wikipedia’s very thorough article on Satan. It offers plenty of rabbit trails to follow, if you are so inclined!

Something to Pray

Holy God, we do not always understand your word or your ways. 
Give us wisdom and imagination and courage as we learn and grow. 

The story this week has made me wonder about…
         (what questions are still on your heart?)
Receive my questions and help me hear your answers.

The story this week has filled me with…
         (how are you feeling?)
Accept my praise, heal my hurt, ease my worry.

The story this week has reminded me of…
         (are there situations or people you are thinking of?)
Be with all who are in need of you.

In Jesus’ name, we pray.
Amen.