Month: November 2010

Wine Before Breakfast, 7:22am
Wycliffe College Chapel, 5 Hoskin Ave.

Sand or Rock?

If you are going to talk about building something … a kingdom no less … then you are going to have to talk about foundations.

And really the Sermon on the Mount has been about the foundation all along.

A most unlikely foundation for something as imperial sounding as a kingdom:

built on the foundation of the poor in spirit, not the rich in power,
those who mourn, not those who have it all together,
the meek, not the controlling,
those who hunger for justice, not for wealth,
the pure in heart, not the double-dealing backroom boys,
the peacemakers, not the war-mongers,
those who are reviled and persecuted, the bottom of the bottom.

That’s the foundation for this kingdom that Jesus is talking about.

Who would have thought that these folks would be the salt of the earth and the light of the world?

And that was only the beginning. Read more Wine Before Breakfast

Wine Before Breakfast
Wycliffe College Chapel, 5 Hoskin Ave.
Tuesday, November 16, 7:22am

Stones or bread?

I’ve been reading Sara Miles’ wonderful memoir Take this Bread recently and that has got me thinking about hunger. In the book Miles tells the story of her own conversion around the Eucharistic table at St. Gregory’s of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. She came to the Eucharist one day, ate bread, had her life radically transformed and decided that she needed to offer bread (and vegetables, and fruit, and all kinds of other food) to the hungry people of their neighbourhood. One of the wonderful things about the food pantry (a ka “Food Bank”) at St. Gregory’s is that it happens around the altar, not stuck in a basement far away from where the body and blood of Christ are on offer at every Eucharist.

Sara Miles ate bread and her deepest hunger was satisfied. And so she offers bread. She offers to feed the empty stomachs of her hungry neighbours and in doing so touches a hunger that is deeper than the stomach.

We don’t run a food pantry at Wine Before Breakfast, but a number of us are involved in reaching out to our most vulnerable neighbours with food and drink, a smiling face, a warm bed, a place of safety.

In tomorrow’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us that we only need to ask and we will receive, knock and the door will be open to us. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?”

Bread or stone? It seems to me that we live in a culture that offers us stones for bread. Whether we are talking about the industrial products that are passed off as food or the deepest hunger for meaning and direction, there is something about the consumerism of global capitalism that fills us while leaving us empty. Indeed, fills us while making us hungry for more of what does not satisfy.

Isaiah asked, “Why do you spend your money for what which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” Why settle for stones, when there is bread on offer?

Jesus is the bread of life. We come to eat every Tuesday morning.

Wine Before Breakfast, bread with breakfast. Come and eat.
And bring your hungry friends.

In Christ,

Brian Walsh
Campus Minister

Dave Burke will be preaching,
Andrew Federle will be breaking the bread,
Bethany Osborne has done the baking,
the Kensington Boys are cooking the muffins,
the Amish Sausage is back,
and the Bandhood will be leading our song.

Dave’s preaching.
Andrew Federle is celebrating.
The Bandhood is leading in song.

Start Time: 7:22am
Date: 2010-11-16

Wine Before Breakfast
Wycliffe College Chapel, 5 Hoskin Ave.
November 9, 2010

Empire, Money and Anxiety

Last week I went to hear Brian McLaren speak at the Church of Redeemer and in response to a question about atonement he began, “When Constantine converted Christianity …” and then paused. “When Constantine converted Christianity, not when Constantine converted to Christianity, things in our view of atonement changed.”

Now this email isn’t about atonement theology, as interesting as that may be, but rather about what happened when Constantine converted Christianity. Well, one of the things that happened was that the Sermon on the Mount had to be relativized, reinterpreted, spiritualized, marginalized and, in the end, fundamentally dismissed.

Okay, so the church historians out there (are there any church historians on the WBB email list?) are bristling at this gross overstatement. But think about it.

“You cannot serve God and wealth.”

How can a church wedded to empire ever possibly believe such a thing? I mean the church has been proving Jesus wrong on this one for centuries upon centuries. Heck, we take the folks who have most clearly managed to serve God and wealth and appoint them to the boards of our churches and Christian organizations, and when they give enough money we name buildings after them!

So then when he concludes this section of the sermon by saying “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you” we actually manage to interpret this as a guarantee of prosperity!

Well if last week’s section of the Sermon on the Mount cut through the bullshit of much of our prayer life then this week is going to cut through the bullshit of how we relate to money and wealth. And Jesus is also going to deconstruct much of the anxiety we have when it comes to security, money and status.

Bethany Osborne will be preaching and has also written the prayers.
David Julien will be breaking the bread,
and Sara DeMoor has crafted the liturgy with Deb’s well chosen music.

Rich faire, but not the kind of riches that Jesus is telling us to shun.

Hope to see you in the morning.

Brian

Wine Before Breakfast
Wycliffe Chapel @ 7.22am
Breakfast to follow.