A couple of weeks ago I was in Tofino to take the Sunday service. If you have been to Tofino on Vancouver Island, you know that it is surrounded by stunning scenery of sandy beaches, crashing waves and west coast forest. Gorgeous. My dog loved it too, the best sticks seem to be found there.
And the church is a lovely wood-frame structure built in 1913. A few parishioners were happy to give me a little tour and descriptor of some of the history. There is a picture at the back of the church that was taken shortly after it was built. There it is more than one hundred years ago surrounded by tree stumps and very few other buildings. The surroundings are different today. They say it was built on that location to have the most beautiful view on Vancouver Island, and the outlook is spectacular: mountains in the background, water in the foreground and islands in between. Feels like a song could be written about it. But I couldn’t help but wonder, that after the church was built, what was supposed to come next? Was it simply meant to be a statement on its own or did it stand for something in particular? And this interaction between the church’s structure and the church’s ministry has been discussed ever since the ascension of Jesus.
A while back Barbara Brown Taylor was speaking out at VST. In one of her talks she mentioned a student she had in her class who had a huge number of tattoos all over her body. Barbara noticed one day that she had a new tattoo on her shoulder which was but one word and a conjunction at that. For she had the word AND in lower case and clear print embedded in her skin. Just “and” nothing else. It turns out that the young woman had agreed to be part of an author’s plan to have words from their book tattooed on the skin of a large group of people. They could choose any word from the book and she had chosen AND. In a way it was a rather strange marketing and community-building exercise but the story had me intrigued. For it begged the question And what? What comes before and after the conjunction? It also leads to And so? And why? And if? And when? And evermore.
I realize that I need to get out a bit more; but I spent some time reflecting on that tattooed AND. I realized that in fact it was a great theological and church congregation quotation. Because our job is to look back at the past and remember some great times and wonderful events but if that is all we do as a church then we miss the point. We look back only for that to guide us as we ponder AND so, what now? The Church, the universal Church gets far too caught up in the past, it seems to me. We look at the Holy Scriptures, our Bible, our history and see how Christ and many people of faith acted long ago and wish it were the same today. God seemed so present, so obvious, so clear back then, where is God now? Where is God working now? Those first followers of Jesus seemed to have it so easy in terms of believing but it is hard to have faith in this day, in this time, in this place. The world is so different, human beings are so different. But our role is not simply to look back at the days long ago but look out now and see that God continues to call us, to invite us, to speak to us, to be with us and awaits our response in the here and now. We are the ones now being called to carry on the message. We are called to be AND people.
At the story of Jesus’ ascension that we celebrated on Thursday, the disciples are left gawking at the sky, staring into nothingness once Jesus had gone from their sight. It is one of my favourite stories in the Bible because of what happens next. They were left staring wistfully at all that was… and then in their midst are two folk who seem to have one role. And that was to say to those standing around and staring, “Get on with living into the gospel.” The words are different in the Bible, for they are quoted as saying, “why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” But I like my translation better, stop gawking and get on with it: with loving your neighbour, being peacemakers, being salt and light in this world. You see the role of Jesus’ followers was not to simply sit and wait but to get on with living the faith. A faith that was not about debating the correct pronunciation of Isaiah or the length of the hem on white robes or the correct order of when the gospels were written down. No, we are called to recognize God the Holy Spirit working in the world of today. To recognize the ANDs in our lives, the conjunctions, the expectations of something more. The ANDs that navigate us through the horrors, difficulties, challenges of life. The ANDs that provide a map that helps us see light when it can feel like darkness around us. ANDs that say I trust in the love of God for me and it propels me to trust in the love of God for other people. ANDs that are not satisfied to stare off into space wishing things were different but feed our souls by recognizing the holy within our heart and soul here and now. Recognizing that we need to connect our spirit with this Holy Spirit to make sense of life and death and illness and breakdowns. Recognizing that we have a role to play in bringing Christ back into our world not to judge and condemn but to lift up and draw together.
You see “and” is a conjunction which joins at least two things together. It can’t really stand on its own. ANDs are not satisfied with only themselves they need an Other. ANDs imply community; they rely, even demand, that there be others, that there is more, that the picture is bigger than our own minds can fathom. ANDs are all about relationship and connecting and joining together. Maybe we are being invited to tattoo AND upon our hearts and live it, so that we see we are not alone in this world, we were made for relationship, for connections, for love, for grace, for passion, for joining together. For we are never separated from God or our neighbours.
In the gospel for this day, Jesus said this: “Righteous God, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I them.” This is the point I am trying to make too: the love of God is within us and the presence of Christ is found within us. It was not just something that was offered long long ago but is known to us, even us… but don’t just let it sit there. Let it stir something within you. Let those thoughts get under your skin, be imprinted on your skin, stuck in your brain, tattooed upon your heart. And then let it propel you in your life. Let it touch you when you are buying the groceries, making lunch, going to sleep at night. Let it touch you, affect you, unsettle you.
Because our role, like those first followers is not simply to admire an amazing history, there is a place for that but it is not our calling. Our role is to build connections between ourselves and God, between ourselves and others, between our faith and our lives, between our day to day living and the compassion, hope and grace of God. We are called to be conjunctions or connectors.
Our world at the moment seems to be filled with so much division, so much separation, so much selfishness. With world politics at the moment, there is a feeling that greed is supposed to be what we are about, that hording what we have is the goal, that taking all that we can get before someone else can get any is the purpose, that our neighbours in this world are only the ones who look like us and act like us. But as followers of this Jesus, we know this is all false. We know that we are called be bridge builders, community strengtheners, neighbourhood connectors. We know that the first are last and the last first, that the meek are blessed, that grace is central to living. We know this because we are followers of this Jesus who has changed our lives by encouaraging us to be people of the AND… people willing to live into a gospel of hope that challenges the priorities that seem be being held up right now. The world needs people who understand that the word AND might just be the most important word for it links and does not separate. And we have had that word prayed over us when water was splashed upon our foreheads in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. May it be so in our living.