He, Only

There is a green hill far away,
Outside a city wall,
Where our dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains He had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood.

There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven and let us in.

O dearly, dearly has He loved!
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do.

- Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895), 1848

Home

Think of it—Stepping on shore,
and finding it Heaven!
Of taking hold of a hand,
and finding it God’s hand
Of breathing a new air,
and finding it celestial air.
Of feeling invigorated,
and finding it immortality.
Of passing from storm to tempest
to an unbroken calm.
Of waking up and finding it - Home !

—Robert E. Selle

The Dance of Relationship

In the New Testament record of St. John (John 21: 1-14) we find that . . . Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, & two other disciples were together. "I'm going out to fish," Simon Peter told them, & they said, "We'll go with you." So they went out & got into the boat; but that night they caught nothing.

Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, "Friends, haven't you any fish?" "No," they answered.

He said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat & you will find some." When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, "It is the Lord," he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) & jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, & some bread.

Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish you have just caught." Simon Peter climbed aboard & dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come & have breakfast." None of the disciples dared ask him, "Who are you?" They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread & gave it to them, & did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

I want always to be reminded of of the nearness of God & of the fact that as promised, Jesus never will forsake His dear ones, who have responded to His call to follow Him. I want to remember this Dance of Relationship: that by God’s sheer grace we now have with Him, with each other and with our neighbour & world. “We are restless,” wrote St. Augustine, in the 4th century, “until we find our rest in God.”

It is just after Easter and this passage notes the third Resurrection appearance of Jesus to His disciples. Some of His disciples have gone back fishing but Jesus is on the shore, nursing some live warm coals, barbequing some fish fillets. He is appearing to them yet again - the One who promised He would never leave nor forsake them.

There’s so much in this passage . . .There is something here about evangelism – about letting down our nets once more. There is something here about empowerment – about saving our energy in ministry and work unless and until we are doing what we’re doing at the command of Jesus – for with His command comes His promise, enabling, fruitfulness & blessing.

There is something here about empathy – for the Stranger on the shore knows them more deeply than they know themselves. Knows their pain, disappointment & bewilderment, their desire to get on, now; to try somehow to make the best of life, when God seems so absent.

Behold I go ahead into Galilee (Jesus had told the women at the tomb) – tell my disciples . . . So it is that Jesus always goes ahead of us, leading - in our lives, families, relationships, in our jobs, churches, in our ministries. The near Presence is often an unknown Presence, because so often see but do not apprehend. Like the disciples here, we see someone but don’t know that it is Jesus. In the same way, says Jesus elsewhere: we often fail to know that when we see and minister to “the poor, hungry, marginalized, imprisoned, naked, weak – we see and minister to Him.”

But when we do recognize Him in the faces of others, and are moved to notice, feed, clothe, visit, house them, honour them . . . we do it to Him.

In the Dance of Relationship, God is With Us - and we are With God.

Says Leanne Payne – The experience of the Real Presence of the risen Christ filling & indwelling us is the thing that truly separates Christianity from all other religions. Writes C.S. Lewis – In Christ a new kind of human appeared & the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us.

We are invited to join the dance, invited into the relationship of the Triune God – a society of Three-in-One Persons, yet one God. Just as, in life (as Woody Allen puts it: Eighty percent of success lies in just showing up, so also in the Spiritual Life growth and maturity happens when we are present to God – when we ‘show up’ to Him.

Mark the gospel-writer records (Mark 3:13 ff) that Jesus went up into the hills and called to him those he wanted, & they came to Him. He appointed 12 – that they might be ‘with’ Him, & that He might send them out to preach & to have authority to drive our demons. He chose disciples that He might we with them. In those verses is the Gospel: the good news that Jesus calls us to be with Him, share in His life, to cooperate & share with Him in our life’s work, and ministry – finding thereby fellowship, healing and deliverance - and new release to be who we were created to be and to do what we were created to do.

With is the word of covenantal relationship throughout the Bible. We were created to be in relationship with God. The One who was with God from all Eternity has come to this planet to be with us, to be our Emmanuel (ie. 'God with us'). And He calls ordinary people to be disciples that we, too, may be with Him. We can be whole once-more in a restored relationship of love and service with God, for which purpose we were made.

What is the practice of the Presence of God? — How do I do that?

If I've been regenerated, born again, Christ lives within me; and so I can learn to call to mind that there is Another who loves through me and there is another who walks along side of me. I can almost make a game of it when driving and 'alone,' I can say: "Thank you Lord for driving with me today."

Of course, when our minds are working at something we are preoccupied. It doesn't mean we think about God’s presence constantly and at every moment, but that we call to mind this truth as often as we can, until it becomes almost first nature. We may soon find ourselves ‘praying in the Spirit’ as a matter of course, almost every moment.

In John 17, Jesus had prayed: I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message . . . that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me & I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. . . I have made you known to them, & will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them, & that I myself may be in them.

So, Jesus draws us into the relationship, work & ministry of the Godhead. God is drawn into our disappointments, grief & loss. Just as Death could not hold Jesus captive, so Easter and resurrection also means that we can’t kill Love – not finally, not fully. We can’t keep Love entombed or bottled up. Love always breaks out - always issues forth in new & changed ways, yet in its same essence & power.

We have seen little tender shoots that, full of surprising life and power, grows up and heaves-up even the pavement, a slab of cement; – a grave-stone marker. And like that, Jesus says to us — I’m still here; I’ve not gone anywhere though you cannot any longer see me. I am part of the greater Real, in Eternity, in which Space and Time are but a ‘closet’ of God’s creation. I’ll always be with you, always near you, ever in relationship with you. You will be in me and I will be in you.

In The Dance of Relationship I may be More Fully Present to Myself - and to Others

Leanne Payne, who writes, teaches and ministers in the ways of God’s inner healing of our lives, of our deep hearts, when asked — ‘What is the most central & prevalent deficit that you find in people who need emotional healing?’ responds - Well, they fail to accept themselves. They haven't negotiated that step during puberty when they are to finalize & to get their identity separate from their mother, and then to receive the affirmation of a father. Most of them are going crazy between age 40 & 50 – trying to figure out what in the world is wrong. They've never negotiated that step. They're still looking for permission to be. They're still looking for affirmation. So they're emotionally dependent in some way.

In this passage of Scripture, the disciples are together again, working – but Jesus is absent - or so they think. But what if He is present - really and truly present - to us as he was to them: very near indeed. What might that mean for my marriage, family, friendships, church, my work and life and ministry?

The mutual & reciprocal relationships with brothers & sisters in the family, in the Family of God – for it is never good that we should be alone. Yes, we need time for retreat; time with ourselves for reflection, time for listening to our own heart and to the still, small voice of God, time to be more present to ourselves and present to God. And yet we must also return once more and be present to others.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, St. John’s letters exhort us to have fellowship with God & with Jesus Christ and they remind us that when we walk in the light we are called to ‘fellowship with one another.’ In fact, when we do not love one another, says John, we cannot say we know God – for God is love and He dwells not only in the praises of His people but also in the loving inter-actions of His saints. He is present in the dance of the relationship.

James Olthuis writes in his book, Daring to Risk — Caring-with is how we humans belong together in the spaces between us. These spheres of between, these dances of relationship are wild spaces of love. They are not voids nor vacuums, spheres alive with love’s coursing – the place & resource for healing, the matrix of love. They are wild because they are unpredictable & uncharted. And therefore venturing into them is to risk.

They can be special places, beautiful places, where we meet & experience healing in cadences and rhythms, when God’s love is there. The action & movement of love in the dance of relationship is a risky, uncertain, often disconcerting dynamic – yet it is the only place where we can find the promise of renewal & rebirth.

We need each other more desperately than we know for we were made for relationship(s), with Go and with each other. Loving and caring is how we make and support the healing connections among us in all our differences. The sharing of love, hearing and being heard, seeing and being seen, touching and being touched, giving and receiving, blessing and being blessed – is at the heart of the human journey. In tapping into God’s love as a power beyond ourselves we both find ourselves and we connect with others.

Again, Olthuis: To practice compassion is to be a co-worker in God’s ministry of reconciliation and transformation, in the power of the Holy Spirit . . . for the sake of the world. This is the mysticism of the ordinary life.

The Dance of Relationship is with My Neighbour and With My World

God is bringing back into relationship all people, places and things. There is a word about justice here – and about the hope of the human heart for Peace – not only in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere in this broken, divided world – but in our own marriages and family, in our own deeply pained, broken, warring, divided and oft despairing heart.

There is a word here too about welcoming and including ‘the stranger’ the immigrant – the ‘foreigner.’ This is so important for Christians living, for example in Toronto which is, according to the United Nations reports: the most culturally, ethnically-diverse city in world. 50% of the people living in the GTA were not born here; one of every four new Canadians lives in the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area). There are over 200 nations represented and hundreds of languages and dialects. One third of the population speaks a language other than English.

There is also a sense of ‘with-ness’ for Toronto disciples in that God is bringing the world to Toronto. What an opportunity and privilege it is to be with Jesus in His work of welcome and blessing, literally showing the love, welcome, justice, peace and joy of the Kingdom of God to new arrivals to the GTA.

I think, for example, of the good ministry of Mathew House (a displaced refugee welcome and settlement house) where people are loved to faith in Jesus. To be in mission, as Toronto churches, may mean inviting them to be with us - in our homes, before ever we have them into our churches. It might be more helpful, sometimes, to simply open our homes – or host a block party.

When new immigrants of the last five years were asked if they have been invited to a neighbour’s home – someone who’s been here for some time (that’s me and maybe you), they say, no they’ve never been invited. “Would you like to be? — The inevitable answer is ‘yes.’

Perhaps the more difficult task today is not to get ‘the world’ into our churches, but to get Christians into their world – fully immersed: interacting, loving, caring . . . simply ‘being there’ – for others’-sake. This is to take seriously the incarnational reality of Jesus’ Presence and His life and ministry in and through us. We must try to be, much more intentionally, as salt & light ‘there’ – being with, caring for, doing for our neighbour, on his and her turf.

The story of the Samaritan reminds us how easily may we be locked into ‘church work,’ forgetting that the work of the church is to love and care & to bind up the wounded and to promote and show justice, healing, mercy. Our neighbour is in need. Often she or he won’t come to our churches. So we must go where they are.

Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche Community in Richmond Hill, writes: 'It's not just doing things for people but discovering we are changed when we come close to them. If we enter into a friendship with them, they change us. Here we touch a mystery that the person we might reject because of prejudice is the one who heals.' For the Christian all of life’s blessing comes through: living and working and in being with Jesus; living in the Presence of God- He with us and we with Him, in the dance of relationship.

Several fragments of a Greek version of some sayings of Jesus were found in Egypt in the late 19th century. In one of them, Jesus says: Where there are 2, they are not without God, and when there is one alone – I say, I am with him. Raise the stone, and there you will find me; cleave the wood, & there I am."

Jesus will not physically walk by us today (for, as St. Paul writes: from now on we know longer know Him after the flesh). Nevertheless, He is still near – very near. And by faith-full Christians may still may see, & know, and embrace Him. He calls us to join in a Dance of Relationship with Him – and with God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit. We will dance in a new way with ourselves & with each other – and with our neighbour and with our world.

And so I pray - Lord, I’m here . . . and you’re here: Walk with me, enlighten me, forgive me, fix me, nurture me, love me. And release me to dance with you and others in my world, joyfully before the Father on His good earth and in Kingdom-coming.

Godspel

The Gospel of the God of life to shelter us;
the Gospel of the God of life to help us,
to keep us from all malice, to keep us from all anguish,
Christ Himself is Shepherd over us,
enfolding us on every side.
He will not leave us forsaken, nor let evil come near us.

- from Iona Community Worship resources

Notice

Here is the obituary for Dad as it appeared in The Hamilton Spectator.

BARBER, Arthur Freeman - Peacefully on March 28, 2007 at Cama Woodlands Nursing Home, Burlington, at the age of 86. Beloved husband for 62 years and friend of Mary (nee Almas). Loving father of Beth Anger of Burlington, Rev. Dr. Laurence Barber (Jane) of Etobicoke, Muriel Heska (Bill) of Fonthill, grandfather of Timothy Anger (Chrystalla), Matthew Anger, Andrew Barber (Dana), Rebekah Barber, James Barber, Beth Heska, David Heska and Ryan Heska, and great-grandfather of Joshua Anger, Nathan Barber and Elizabeth Anger. Also survived by his sister Marjorie Withers of Burlington and his twin sister Frances Cameron of Walkerton. Predeceased by his parents Gordon and Annie Barber, infant sister Dorothy, sister Dora Roberts, brother Rev. Albert Barber, and great-granddaughter Jillian Barber. Freeman was a longstanding member and honorary elder of Compass Point Bible Church (formerly Park Bible Church) and an active member of the Gideon Bible Society for 35 years. Visitation at SMITH'S FUNERAL HOME, 1167 Guelph Line (one stop-light north of QEW), BURLINGTON (905-632-3333) on Sunday 3-5 and 7-9 p.m. Funeral Service will be held at Compass Point Bible Church (Kerns Road Campus), 1500 Kerns Road on Monday, April 2, 2007 at 1 p.m. Interment Greenwood Cemetery, Burlington. Thanks to the caring staff at Cama Woodlands Nursing Home. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Gideon Bible Society or Compass Point Bible Church would be appreciated. www.smithsfh.com

Stepping Over

Arthur Freeman Barber

March 24, 1921 - March 28, 2007

My Dad's life Journey has taken on a new Reality. He has now entered into a 'place' beyond space and time as we know it - passed into eternity, last Wednesday just after 2:00 pm, with Mom holding him, my sisters Beth and Muriel gathered 'round - and Bill, Muriel's husband, singing the words and echoing the sentiments of one of Dad's favorite hymns of God's Presence, love and keeping power - playing quietly on a cassette recorder at bedside.

I got there about 10 minutes later but I had said my good-bye(s) so many times in recent weeks.

The next day I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

It's been an awesome week - with all of the details one can imagine, and family preparation, gathering, vigil and remembrance, and greeting hundreds who waited patiently for almost two hours in long lines at the visitation at Smith's, Sunday afternoon and evening. And then the farewell from Dad's church and the long car-line, police-escorted trip to Greenwood Cemetery to lay his body to rest - awaiting the Great Day.

I had no sense of leaving Dad in the cold earth, as we were driven by funeral coach back to the church and to a further reception of friends and family; for, indeed, he is not there - only his now soul-less body 'thumbprint,' as it were, of one who's real existence continues elsewhere - perhaps not far away, in the greater Beyond.

And the Hope of seeing again is firm within me - not merely born of credal word or magical thinking, but imparted somehow as a firm, strangely settled Peace, sprung from a faith that is sheer gift ('cause I don't think I could normally manufacture it, given the circumstances). I say this, not in any way to boast, but humbly to give thanks - for God's sustaining power for me, for all of us.

I say thanks, too, for the privilege of living all these years with a father who, again, by God's grace, was a truly good man.