In the Diocese where I was ordained, one of the more cantankerous archdeacons reserved the right to teach all new priests how to celebrate Communion. We'd already been priested - most of us had said our first Mass at some point already but he started from the opinion that we'd done it badly. And so we were trundled up-Island for a weekend of browbeating. Apart from a morning spent poring over the Canons of the Diocese of British Columbia, we had to learn the various 'manual acts' - movements, gestures and hand positions - associated with the celebration of Holy Communion. One of these manual acts, of course, occurs at the epiclesis which appears, in our liturgy nowadays, as an element following the Eucharistic narrative (the story of what Jesus did and said when he took bread and wine at the last supper). The priest will place his hands over the elements with his thumbs interlocked and invoke the Holy Spirit over these gifts of bread and wine. I could have told the archdeacon that I knew all about that. I had already gotten quite a fright at that moment in the service at the Church of St John the Evangelist in Montreal during my training.


I was the subdeacon there for a while (looking vaguely like a scruffy young hippy who'd been mugged by angry sacristans and dressed up in a tunicle but that's another story) and it was my role to stand to one side of Father Slattery as he celebrated Mass, be prepared to remove the pall from atop the chalice at the appropriate moment, genuflect when he genuflected and to raise the edges of his chasuble during the Elevation. It was all new to me - the churches of my youth had been nothing like this and I wasn't yet convinced. That is, until we got to a point in the liturgy one Sunday morning where Father Slattery placed his hands with interlocked thumbs over the open chalice (unlike the illustration above where there is a pall covering the chalice).

St John the Evangelist in Montreal was, at one time, sinking into the mud. Cracks had begun to appear in some of the masonry as a result of the shifting foundations and questions emerged as to whether the building would survive the slow sink into the ground. Then they built the Metro - Montreal's subway system - in 1967. The line ran right under St John the Evangelist and the structural work managed to prop up the building to such a point that any further slippage was unlikely.

Father Slattery had just gotten to a particular point in the liturgy where he spread his hands over the elements on the altar when a train ran under the church. Things are more connected than we might think and the vibrations ran up from the train to the structure of the tunnel to the foundations of the church and to the altar and all that sat upon it. The clear mirror-like surface of the Communion wine rippled. I said to myself 'My God, it's true'.

Years later I am able to explain all this with recourse to the physics mentioned above. I do, however, still find myself filled with awe and expectation that God honours those particular moments in time when dumb things are presented to him with a reasonable hope that he will change and animate them.

And I will never forget at which particular point in the Mass that hope is expressed most clearly - almost defiantly - in words that beg some immediate answer.

See what the dog brought up!


So what's the deal with jellied salads? I didn't like them when I was young. I was forced to eat 'just a spoonful' and was told knowingly that I'd grow to like them with time. I remember them back in Winnipeg when I was small - most particularly the evolving configurations of Tomato Aspic - appearing regularly like successive incarnations of the Buddha at church suppers and family events. They were still on the table when we first moved to Victoria, B.C. in 1965 - glorious 'oeuvres' in scarlet, green, pink or dappled grey. And then nothing. *Poof* - they went out of style, or were declared 'infra-dig' by the leading women's magazine. They disappeared.

It was the sixties. The Summer of Love was just around the corner and there was no place anymore for the formality of these compositions - for bits of egg, meat or marshmallow suspended in a product which was meat-based but, please - made from what bit of the beast, exactly?

One wonders if there's not a prejudice against mixed things - the laws in the Old Testament proscribe garments made of mixed materials. American television is still remarkably coy about portraying the relationship of couples across the colour divide - even after the changes of the last 40 years. Recordings of a saxaphone playing baroque favourites just don't sell.

For my part, I never liked jellied salads simply because there were all these 'bits' and they were never frankly one thing or t'other. Children prefer stories with predictable endings. Try changing a predictable ending the next time you're reading to a small child. Listen to the protests. They detest ambiguity.


At the table, they are forever holding up a bit of food on their forks and asking 'what is this'? and 'do I like it'? Before they risk a taste they want to know which category it belongs to. We pretend that children maintain a natural openness to new experiences but that's a load of old bollocks. The child's question at table is that of a rigid purist.

Those of us who are old and compromised - we take ambiguity as a matter of course. We'll never be able to proclaim our purity and excellence in any one thing so we might as well empty the fridge of any leftovers not crowned with green fuzz and plunge them into goop and serve them up to our relatives.

When it comes to the shocked expression on the face of the wee boy looking at this wiggling green tower, we can only sigh:

"Just wait kid. One day, when the wife has left you and you've been overlooked for promotion and your knees don't work any more, you'll be scarfing down that stuff as if it were your last meal!"

Among the Canadian contributions to the world - apart from snowmobiles and plexiglass there is of course Glenn Gould - with all his neurosis and ability. He wouldn't let you touch his hands which he would keep dipped in a pail of hot water prior to any concert. He brought his own slumping little chair with him. He gave up public performance altogether quite early in his career. There are two famous recordings of the Goldberg Variations. One, recorded in mono in 1955 and another in 1982. I'm particularly partial to the earlier recording but to everyone his own. A video has been circulating on Youtube in the last few days with a version of the Aria and seven of the variations that more resembles the later recording and has Gould with all his eccentricities. He hummed while he played. He wouldn't stop. There are a few recordings of various works where this becomes problematic. In most cases you learn to live with it.

Not all my predecessors have been big fans of Santa Claus. They felt rather pressed to make a choice for or against the predominant commercial Christmas culture. Fair enough. The United Church of Canada has tried to at least bridge the gap betwen the two.

This is what the Scottish House of Bishops looks like prior to the retirement of our Primus, Bruce Cameron. Idris Jones of Glasgow and Galloway (second from the left) is our new Primus. The Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney is still vacant. Their attempt to elect a new bishop 'failed to elect' and so the process begins all over again.

One big Union! The Wobblies still have a site. Get your hat, your songbook, your pin and your penant! A very small organization which nonetheless terrified everybody at the time. They pulled much greater weight than they deserved at the time. Everybody was terrified of them. They were under every rock, behind every employee giving the boss a sideways glance. With their songbooks, their posters and their comic books they were merely masters of the new media. They gave the impression that they were more numerous than they ever were. It's a bit like the plethora of embittered Evangelicals posting everywhere on the web. It's all you hear, yet when you count up the number of these folks who you've actually met face to face who share their views you've maybe started on the second hand but that's about it.

Just in case you're wondering. The handle 'Raspberry Rabbit' came about when a member of the old 'Anglican' list posted a recipe not unlike this one on the list one day. It was too good a name not to adopt. It's also the name of a drink. Seems to me that I wrote a few jokes under the name.

I've gotten away with quite a bit over the years by pretending to be a lagomorph.

Sermon notes on Matthew 4:12-23

The broken down houses in the village of Bethsaida at the north end of the Sea of Galilee highlights the loneliness of the place. It's been abandoned for centuries - this town of Andrew and Peter and James and John. Everyone has gone. One of the lonely houses here has been identified as the House of Zebedee the fisherman - marginally bigger and perhaps more prosperous than the neighboring buildings. In fact, one of the loneliest characters in the New Testament must certainly be "old Zebedee", himself, in this week's reading from Matthew's Gospel. Zebedee began his day in a boat by the Sea of Galilee with his two sons James and John. He finished it alone after the two boys stepped out over the gunwales onto the beach and became followers of Jesus. They formed part of a coterie of men and women following Jesus who proved a disruption to their extended families, who broke out of their niches in village hierarchies, who disappointed their parents and who ceased to function within their guilds and syndicates. As such they wasted an education and abandoned whatever promotions they had received to this point. Nothing was ever the same again. Not for them. Not for their families.

They might have been called quitters or splitters or leavers. Someone out there, no doubt, considered them an utter waste of space.

Now old Zebedee has no one to fish with. That's a shame. It's not by accident that the reader feels the poignant loneliness. He could not possibly have been made to understand that his sons had left something good for something better. His boys were simply up and gone.

These opening chapters of the Gospel are about exciting times - Jesus is calling together his band of followers. We are here reminded that we can start again in the midst of life - that the call of Christ comes to those who already have a history - that there are none of us nailed into place.

But every "turning to" is a "turning away" and every "yes" is a "no". How many doors have you shut in your lifetime? And do you regret these departures? In your cleaving to Jesus, in your excitement about his words and your recognition of the compelling part of his character which seemed to call you out directly, were you at all conscious that you were leaving something behind? Did you hear the door click?




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Sermon Notes on Haggai 1:15b-2:9

A project manager? Of course! A couple of good hammer-and-nail men. Even better! But why would you need a prophet on a building site? Maybe so God can be heard saying something to the people like the following:

“The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.”

This line from the prophet Haggai, beloved of stewardship preachers across the ages, comes from the mouth of one of the Minor Prophets. Along with his contemporary Zechariah and the prophet Malachi (who lived a generation afterwards) Haggai prophesied to the nation following the return of the Jews from Babylon and during the period of their rebuilding and reestablishment in the land of their fathers. This week’s reading from Haggai is significantly enriched by reading the events recorded in Ezra chapters 3-6 but particularly from chapter 4 on. After having received permission and encouragement from the Persian King Darius himself for the rebuilding of the Temple, and having seen the emergence of capable leaders, Zerubbabel and Jeshua, it was the people themselves who began to lose heart and to listen to those voices within and around them which suggested that failure was inevitable. Momentum was lost and doubts abounded.

Enter the preacher - the prophet: What Haggai does here is to remind the people that the resources they need to complete their work and to fulfill their destiny as God's people in the land never really were locked up in the hand of their adversaries after all. Nor were these cut off from reaching their destination because of the logic of the balance sheet. The needed resources - in this case silver and gold - were given into the earth by God and God can release them for his purposes.

Let the adversaries think they control them, then. God will shake those nations up. Let the balance sheet say what it does say. The chief weapon in God's hand is his word and the retelling of his mighty acts in the past. The proper response to God's promise, spoken through the prophet, is courage. The project will move forward when the hearts of men are turned.





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