Pale Reflection. Black Mirror.

21 11 2013

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

A meditation inspired by Luke 20:27-38 and Arcade Fire’s Reflektor.

Where were we again?

Trapped in a prison, a prism of light
Alone in the darkness, a darkness of white

Oh right. That was it.

Entre la nuit, la nuit et l’aurore
Entre le royaume des vivants et des morts

Between the night, the night and the dawn, between the kingdom of the living and the dead, that’s where we were. Imprisoned somewhere entre la nuit et l’aurore, between the kingdom of the living and the dead. And the persistent question on our lips, the persistent question on our hearts: where is God in the midst of all this? Read the rest of this entry »


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Joni and Jesus: Poets of Endings

18 11 2013

by Brian Walsh

[On Sunday, November 17, the Wine Before Breakfast community joined our friends at the Church of the Redeemer, Toronto, for a service featuring the music of Joni Mitchell. The texts for the evening were Psalm 98 and the beginning of the apocalyptic discourse in Luke 21.5-19. The Mitchell songs performed were "Woodstock", "River", "Shadows and Light", "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", "Passion Play (When all the Slaves are Free)", "Both Sides Now", "A Case of You", "The Circle Game", and "Big Yellow Taxi". While this sermon makes allusions to most of these songs, the primary point of reference is "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." When that song, based on William Butler Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming," is performed just before the reading of this apocalyptic gospel text, it isn't sure whether the song interprets the gospel, or the gospel interprets the song.]

Joni

When things fall apart,
when the centre does not hold,
there will always be a blood dimmed tide,
loosed upon the world.

When nothing is sacred,
and innocence is drowned in anarchy,
then the best will simply lack any conviction,
while the worse will be full of passion without mercy.

It is never pretty when things fall apart.
And there is no cheap celebration when the centre cannot hold.

Maybe things should fall apart.
Maybe it was all a house of cards.
Maybe it was all built on lies.

And maybe the centre could not hold,
because it was a false centre,
rooted in idolatry.

But when you come to the end of things,
it doesn’t really matter how justified
and how necessary that ending might be,
it will always be violent.

Joni Mitchell is a poet of endings.
And it is no wonder that she is drawn
to William Butler Yeats’ apocalyptic poem,
“The Second Coming.”  Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Brian Walsh, Luke, Psalms, Season after Pentecost, Sermons, Wine Before Breakfast

God Bless Toronto: The Piety of Rob Ford

5 11 2013

 

by Brian Walsh

Ford

“God bless the people of Toronto.”

 So ended Mayor Rob Ford’s apology before the press assembled outside his office this afternoon.

And there were audible giggles and laughter from the audience.

He had just said,
“I sincerely, sincerely, sincerely apologize.”

Followed by,
“God bless the people of Toronto.”

Then came the laughter.

Incredible rudeness from the press?
An anti-religious secularist arrogance mocking religious sentiment?
Laughter at the only too obvious allusion to another discredited leader who was always invoking the blessing of God on America?
Or just the involuntary laughter at this cheap faux spirituality at the end of a faux apology?

After a threefold ‘sincerely’ maybe the insincerity of this little bit of piety at the end of it all was just too much.

Let’s be clear about something here.

Rob Ford was clearly embarrassed and it was incredibly difficult for him to make this apology. He said this was one of the hardest things that he has ever done. He said repeatedly how very, very, very sorry he is.

But what was he sorry for? Read the rest of this entry »


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Cloud of Witnesses :: Remembering Josephine Butler

3 11 2013

Josephine Butler (1828-1906) | Colossians 1:15-20
by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

Bright, blinding lights ahead.
You stare. Transfixed.
Unable to move, unable to see, unable to comprehend
All that is before you
All that you’re taking in
All that this could be.
All that this might mean.

Bright, blinding lights ahead
And I struggle to avert my gaze.
Transfixed, uncomfortable, unnerved.
Desiring deeply to move from this place
To look away, to close my eyes, never to be confronted
With all that is before me
With all that I’ve taken in
With all that this could be
With all that this might mean

For he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.

And I stand there transfixed, unable to move, unable to see, unable to comprehend the vastness, the implications of what this might mean. Unable to wrap my mind around what it might mean for such a thing to be true.

This one. This man. This Jesus. Conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. This very same Jesus who suffered under Pontius Pilate. The very same one who was crucified, died, and was buried. This one. The image of an invisible God. The firstborn of all creation. The one who has been raised from the dead.

If you’re anything like me, and I don’t know if you are, you stop. You stare. Transfixed. Excited. Worried. Unable to comprehend what this might mean.

You stop here in the heart of Colossae, an outpost of the Roman Empire. In the heart of East Vancouver.

You stop, transfixed.

Transfixed by what, in this world, sounds like fanatical heresy. Unable to move, for fear of being accused of treason. Worried to look, for fear of being named a co-conspirator. Unwilling to comprehend the power and the extent of this claim. Full comprehension might mean the end. Read the rest of this entry »


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Becoming an Indigenous Church

18 10 2013

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

IMG_4167So what could this look like? What would church look like if we Canadians weren’t so captivated by what’s going on south of the border? What kind of church might we imagine if our minds weren’t so colonized by the US of A?

One of my biggest wrestlings lately is simply this: What might it mean to become a church indigenous to this time and this place - a church that is truly native to its context?

The reality is that such a church could probably never escape from its colonial history. But perhaps, if we were serious, we would find ways of being church that are native to this land. This land. Not someone else’s. Read the rest of this entry »


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Why We Aren’t the Church Any More

17 10 2013

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

Making its rounds this week is Steve McSwain’s HuffPo article “Why Nobody Wants to Go To Church Anymore.”

I get it. I do.

But then again, I don’t.

Christchurch 2011 - St Johns Anglican ChurchIt seems as though so many of the most-talked about end-of-the-world and end-of-the-church articles being passed around these days come from the United States (love y’all).

And while that isn’t a problem per se (they have a right to lament the transition, nay, death, of the church), it leaves me feeling a little exasperated.

It leaves me exasperated that we’re still talking about those things in Canada, because the death is already with us.

And while some areas of our Bible Belt remain in denial, the majority of us cannot deny this any longer. Those of us in Quebec or British Columbia have no excuse. Death is with us, has been with us for some time, and we need to figure out what it means to be church here and now, not in a cultural context that is 20 years behind the already-marching-decline-of-Christendom-that-is-our-reality.  Read the rest of this entry »


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Global Policemen?

27 09 2013

by Tom Wright

We’ll smash down your doors, we don’t bother to knock;
We’ve done it before, so why all the shock?
We’re the biggest and toughest kids on the block,
And we’re the cops of the world, boys;
We’re the cops of the world.

I heard the late Phil Ochs – some say greater than Dylan himself – sing that song on a chilly night in Toronto in March 1968. The Vietnam war was at its height. You didn’t have to be a hairy hippie, or a metropolitan Marxist, to laugh harshly at the American idea of the ‘global policeman’. And yet, forty-five years later, some still cling to it, and harangue President Obama for failing to live up to it (Tim Montgomerie, The Times, September 16).

Ochs, Dylan and the rest used up most of America’s limited supply of irony. We have just commemorated Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. Yet for King (assassinated a fortnight after that Ochs concert), the word ‘cops’ would have evoked the cynical segregationists of the old South, enforcing racism with clubs and dogs, murdering any who tried to investigate – like Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, the subject of a song by Ochs’s contemporary Tom Paxton. ‘Cops of the world’? Think Abu Ghraib. Think Guantanamo Bay. Or think Donald ‘Stuff Happens’ Rumsfeld.

robertsonA further irony. One of Obama’s greatest achievements has been to transform hawks into newborn doves. The fundamentalist leader Pat Robertson said soulfully on the radio the other day that you should never start a war whose outcome you cannot see. More hollow laughter: had Bush still been in power, Robertson would already be blessing the cruise missiles. But if the only ‘principle’ is that whatever Obama says is wrong, suddenly the hard right say what they should have said ten years ago. Read the rest of this entry »


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