From the Bishop's Desk

This past fall, our church began a four year deep dive into some of our primary Christian faith practices. Our National Bishop invited us to join her in a new four-year emphasis on Living our Faith, as together we pray, read, worship and love. From September 2019 until September 2020, ELCIC members were invited to join in a year of prayer. Little did we know what that might mean for us as the early spring of 2020 unfolded.

The last public worship service I attended was on March 15, 2020. It was during a joint meeting of the ELCIC National Church Council and the Anglican Church of Canada Council of General Synod. I have no idea whether or not in-person worship will be a possibility for us by the time you read these words in early August.

My spiritual life has been sustained by prayers and worship that are both private and public. In private prayer I feel an intimate and close relationship with God, much like a child to a parent. When I pray and worship in public, I come to God as part of a community, the communion of saints both here and beyond. I am but one voice in the timeless prayer of the ages!  Both are enriching but in very different ways. I need them both.

Here’s the thing. I was not surprised to find that my private prayer life has been enriched during these months of lock-down and physical distancing. I expected and hoped that might be the case. Where I have been surprised, however, is by the ways that public prayer and worship, have not only been possible, but perhaps even enriched and enhanced during these strange days where we cannot physically congregate as church.

It has been an absolute delight to share in prayer and worship with so many of our congregations, pastors and deacons over these months. Those experiences have all been mediated in some form; some high tech and others low tech. I’ve experienced livestreams, pre-recorded video, audio feeds, printed prayers and sermons; I’ve worshiped and prayed with individuals over the telephone. These experiences are surely not the same as coming together to pray and worship “in-person” with flesh and blood brothers and sisters. But they are certainly “real” experiences of communal prayer and worship. They are not “virtual” as the word is often used; as being somehow fake or less than authentic. They are very real, very authentic; albeit mediated in some form.

By most accounts, and I have been checking in with our rostered leaders regularly throughout this time of pandemic, we are connecting with more people, and in more ways, than was the case before the down. More people are gathering and connecting for worship, bible study, prayer, conversation and fellowship.

Bishop Susan’s call to prayer has surely been answered within the life of our church, but in ways that none of us would have ever imagined when it was issued. Whenever we get back to what we once considered “normal” – and we now know that it will be anything but normal – we must continue to practice and build upon all that we have learned. In the midst of circumstances that are simply awful, we have received precious gifts from the Spirit. We dare not squander them.

Dear friends and colleagues,

Grace and peace be unto you!

Next Monday I will begin the fourth in a series of zoom calls with our synod’s rostered leaders in our 17 Ministry Areas. In our most recent series of meetings I highlighted the need for our rostered leaders to practice good self care and to maintain a proper work/life balance. This of course includes taking adequate time off on a weekly basis and to make sure to take vacation days.

Our rostered leaders have been doing a magnificent job of leading and caring for God’s people in the midst of these extraordinary circumstances. They have quickly adapted and learned new ways of engaging their ministries. They have been working very, very hard and they need our support and encouragement to take care of their own physical, spiritual and emotional well-being.

The article found at this link, which by the author’s own admission may “overstate the case”, is nonetheless a helpful caution to us all concerning the potential toll this pandemic time might take on our rostered leaders. This is what we need to prevent occurring. https://johndobbs.com/the-coming-pastoral-crash/

In an attempt to help ensure that our rostered leaders plan for and take summer vacation days, our ELCIC Bishops and Assistants to the Bishops will be preparing sermons for congregational use throughout the summer: June 14 to September 13. The sermons will be provided in both text and video format. Each week, the materials for the coming week will be loaded to a folder in BOX by Tuesday at the very latest. BOX is an easy to use application for facilitating file sharing. For instructions on how to access these resources, rostered ministers are invited to please email tgallop@elcic.ca (subject line: Summer Sermon Series).

Thank-you dear brothers and sisters, for all that you have and are doing to make plainly evident that “the church has not closed.” Through God’s grace and your work as congregational leaders, pastors and deacons, you have ensured that our church is alive and well and engaged in ministry; extraordinary ministry! I am so grateful. I am so very proud! Soli Deo Gloria!

Wind, fire and a group of fearful friends. And then suddenly the Spirit descends and all is utterly, eternally, irrevocably changed. The once fearful disciples cringe no longer. Wishful thinking and timid whispers yield to a bold proclamation of passion and resurrection. Jesus’ disciples are quite literally given a “second wind” and in that instant the Church of Jesus Christ is born.
   Pity the poor lector who’s assigned for Pentecost Sunday! Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Cappadocians etc. etc. What a strange combination of participants! But we shouldn’t be surprised. The Christian community as described within the New Testament is characterized by some amazing combinations of people; Jews, Samaritans and Romans, rich and poor, slave and free, male and female. And for some, both then and today, this is a frightening prospect.
   Some years ago I was at a continuing education event where Susan Briehl shared the story of a friend whose two daughters were preparing for the impending birth of a third child. The youngest of the two seemed to be adapting to the idea of an expanded family quite well, but the eldest seemed to be focussed on this coming birth in an excessive way. She was always asking questions. “Where will the new baby sleep? Where will the new baby sit when we eat supper? Where will the new baby go in the car?” 
   Finally the mother sat down with her daughter and asked her if anything was bothering her about this new baby. “Are you worried about something?” And it was then, that the real question came out. The little girl said, “Well, whenever we go out, you hold my hand and daddy holds Sonja’s hand. So when the new baby comes, whose hand won’t get held?” 
   There’s a sense in which this describes our natural response to the kingdom’s radical inclusiveness. Part of us feels that if God’s embrace is defined too widely, if it were to really include those who are different from ourselves – both young and old, black and the white, men and women, gay and the straight, weak and strong, rich and the poor – we might somehow end up with nobody holding our hand. 
In the Gospel accounts Jesus promises that he will never leave us orphaned. He will never let go of our hands! But those same accounts also call us to reach out and grasp the hands of others. Indeed, this is one of the primary themes of the Gospel narrative. Over and over again we encounter a kingdom wherein people who are in the darkness of separateness and aloneness and are called out of isolation and into the light of a new community. 
   Each Pentecost Sunday, as the party is ended and the candles are extinguished, we are sent forth to help fulfil God’s birthday wish for the world! In part, that involves becoming a more visible sign of the kingdom’s wonderful diversity. It means expanding the circle and grasping hands that have previously been spurned. It means going beyond the safety of our comfortable definitions of who is in and who is out, and to follow the light of God’s presence to whomever and wherever that light might take us. May God grant us the faith and courage to make that journey.

This Easter Triduum will be unlike any we have experienced. Three short weeks ago, most of us expected we would be back in our churches by now, basking in the familiar patterns of rite and ritual, grateful to have concluded these enforced days of separation. Now we wonder about Pentecost and even beyond. What began as an annoyance has become an existential threat. Holy Week has actually become the narrative trajectory of our lived experience.
   A chorus penned by John Lennon has been looping through my head the past few days. “Nobody told me there’d be days like these. Strange days, indeed!” It actually makes me smile because, in truth, I’ve been told plenty of times; and throughout my life. In Sunday School I’d been taught the story of the people of Israel with its attendant tales of plague, woe, misery and hardship. From my mom and dad I’d heard the stories of the Great Depression and what it meant to live in times of fear, uncertainty and scarcity. I still remember the cold war era “duck and cover” drills we experienced in early grade school. I had been told the story of my maternal great grandmother who had died when the Spanish flu had ravaged the community of Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1918. I had been told there’d be days like these, lots of times! I’d simply forgotten.
   But there’s no forgetting now. Nothing feels the same. Everything seems different. The world really has changed, in ways we are only beginning to know and understand. But some things haven’t changed. And the truth of some things have, indeed, become clearer and more focussed. The love of family. The need for community. The faithfulness of a loving God. Our dependence on these things has become crystal clear, as indeed they always have for those within the human family, both past and present, who have found themselves living, like us, in uncertain and fearful times.
   Many people, me included, have also been depending on you to help us spiritually navigate these strange waters. As your bishop, I need you to know that I have been deeply moved and powerfully inspired by the faithfulness and creativity with which you have engaged that work in recent weeks. Whether low tech, hi tech or no tech! You have faithfully lived out your vocations in beautiful ways that are appropriate to your respective contexts! I am so very proud of you! 
   Dear sisters and brothers, as you lead our people through the Great Three Days, I want you to know that I have never felt more connected to you; in prayer, in faith, in practice. You are a blessing to me and you have made my heart full. Looking ahead, we know that things may well get worse before they get better. But we also know that in faith, we will – indeed and in time – get through this. Remember, strange days can also bring strange blessings. But they are blessings, nonetheless. May you experience 
such blessings in abundance as you lead our church during these holy days! Resurrection is coming!

Count on it!

In his book Free At Last?: The Gospel in the African-American Experience, Carl Ellis talks about theology through musical metaphors. He writes, “Like classical music, the classical approach to theology comprises the formal methods of arranging what we know about God and his world into a reasoned, cogent and consistent system. Classical theology and classical music reflect God’s oneness. The unity of God’s purpose and providence is reflected in the consistent explanations and consonant harmonies of classical music and classical theology. “
“But God is not just classical. God is also jazz. Not only does he have an eternal and unchanging purpose, but he is intimately involved with the difficulties of sparrows and slaves. Within the dynamic of his eternal will, he improvises. God’s providential jazz liberates slaves and weeps over cities!”
He concludes, “Theology bears analogy with music in that it too can be approached as formal or dynamic.” Classical theology is concerned with “propositions” while Jazz theology is concerned with what happens when those propositions interact with pain, life and the moment! “

I think the church’s theological vocabulary needs both classics and jazz. In life as in music – it’s only by having spent time in the woodshed learning the old standards – doing our scales – that we develop the dexterity which allow us to syncopate, improvise and respond to the call of Divine Love! Likewise, in life as in jazz, no moment is just a moment. Every moment is pregnant with the possibility of God being revealed to us. Each instant of life has the potential of God using us to make something beautiful; broken strings and all! Our theological language need to reflect both these realities. 
The same God whose Spirit song called this world into being, is still preserving and sustaining it, still improvising with us, in us and through us. And because of that we are able to do wonderful things with the instruments that have been given to us! As such, I would ask you to consider the possibility that the Holy Spirit might be composing yet more beautiful music for the Church to sing. It may well be that the very best of humanity’s collective song has yet to have been sung!
So long as our bass line continues to be a strong and abiding faith in God our creator. So long as our common melody is expressed in lives lived in praise of Jesus our Saviour. So long as the harmony of our song remains grounded in the continued presence of the Holy Spirit working in; among and through us for the world’s salvation; this can and will be most certainly true! AMEN