Author: crc

New Wine…Before Breakfast

Something new is going on.

The lame walk,
sinners are forgiven,
bureaucrats of the empire are leaving their jobs,
and all the wrong people are coming to dinner parties.

“You know that something is happening,
but you don’t know what it is,
do you, Mr. Jones?”

The scribes figure that this is all blasphemy.
The man presumes to forgive sins!

The Pharisees are offended by the dinner guests.
Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?

And even John’s disciples are confused.
What’s with all this eating and drinking when we’ve all got used to fasting and John’s rather limited wilderness diet?

And Jesus replies:
in a world of human brokenness and sin we are called to be priests pronouncing forgiveness;
remember, God requires mercy, not sacrifice;
and don’t go pouring new wine into old wineskins.

At Wine Before Breakfast, we are all called to priestly ministry!
We all have the vocation of forgiveness!
We are all called abandon our service to the empire and embrace priestly ministry in the kingdom.
We are all called to the banquet of sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors
– Jarvis Street, Bay Street, and St. George Street all at the same party!
It is an early morning party!
A Wine Before Breakfast party!
A new wine party!

Let’s be careful that we don’t constrain that new wine in old wine skins.

Come on out to the party on Tuesday morning at 7.22am.
Forget your perfect offering.
You see, only sinners are invited.
Know any other sinners to bring along?

Andrew Asbil will join the rest of us priests in breaking the bread, pouring the wine and opening the word.

Wine Before Breakfast
Tuesdays @ 7.22am, Wycliffe College Chapel
Breakfast to follow

Dear Wine Before Breakfast friends:

I am not a person who has many enemies. You know, real enemies. Not just people who maybe don’t like me, but people who are a threat to my very life.

But every time I come to Central America I am confronted by the reality of violence. Stories of the military murdering people in a church. Stories of exhuming the bones of children who were massacred.

When you face that kind of brutality it is not surprising that people develop deep hatreds. Indeed, the very sight of a uniformed soldier in the context of a military dictatorship can occasion fear and anger.

Jesus must have known such emotions. He grew up in a military dictatorship. He had seen the brutality of the occupying forces. He undoubtedly had heard the stories of Herod’s violence shortly after his birth. Some of those murdered boys could have been his cousins.

But his Kingdom was bigger than either the Roman empire or the nationalist zeal and revolutionary fervor of Israel. His Kingdom faced the violence but refused to ape it.

While this is demonstrated most radically on the cross, the expansive nature of his Kingdom was also evident throughout his ministry.

A Roman centurion  comes to Jesus to ask for the healing of his servant. He knows that he doesn’t really have any basis for the request. He wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus told him to go to hell, but somehow the stories about Jesus gave him courage to make his request.

And Matthew tells us that Jesus was amazed at the centurion’s faith and he healed the servant.

This is an expansive love, and it is offensive. This is offensive to every mother who has lost a son to a military junta. This is a slap in the face to every 1^st century Jew or 21^st century Latin American who has had to live under a state sponsored violence that has stripped them of their land, the livelihood, their hope, their children.

This is the breadth of the Kingdom.

I’m in Costa Rica as I write this and I look forward to returning to Toronto on Monday evening in order to be with you all at Wine Before Breakfast on Tuesday.

Sara will be preaching,
Judith will break the bread,
and Deb Whalen will be leading the WBB Band.

Welcome back to WBB. If you want to bring some muffins or other baked goods, let Sara know.

Wine Before Breakfast
Tuesday, January 11 @ 7.22am
Wycliffe College Chapel

 

Last Wine Before Breakfast of 2010!

Guns, Death, and Advent

There are some events that you remember exactly where you were when you heard the news.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Tiananmen Square.
The 911 attacks.

For me, I know exactly where I was when the news came over the car radio that a man was shooting students at the École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989. As the news kept coming out of Montréal it became clear that this attack was directed towards women.

Twenty-one years ago today fourteen women were murdered. Their crime was that they were women.

I don’t know what Advent was like for the friends and families of those women and the others caught in the violence, but I’ll bet that their Christmas was awful.

Violence has a way of wrecking Christmas, doesn’t it.

And gun violence continues to destroy lives in our country, and in our city. But in Toronto it isn’t women who are the prime targets of this kind of violence. It is Black men and they tend to be turning their guns on each other. This year we have seen thirty-eight deaths, thirty-eight murders, in the Black community.

Last week, our WBB sisters, Jacqueline and Sky, led a service to remember those deaths and to pray for hope.

This week we bring some of the prayers from that service to WBB.
This week we pray for hope in the face of such violence.

Remembering the Montréal fourteen.
Remembering the Toronto thirty-eight.
Remembering all whose lives have been scarred by such violence.

And we pray against the odds that some new life would sprout from the stump of these cut down lives.

We pray that One will come with a spirit of wisdom and understanding,
a spirit counsel and of strength,
a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

We pray that following such a Messiah, we too would judge not by what our eyes see,
nor by what our ears hear,
but with righteousness and justice.

We will pray, “Come soon, Lord Jesus.”

Wine Before Breakfast
Tuesday @ 7.22am, Wycliffe Chapel

David Neelands presiding,
Brian Walsh preaching,
The WBB Bandhood leading our music,
Jacqueline Daley leading our prayers.

Festive food, including hot apple cider, will be served for breakfast. Why not bring some friends?

In Advent hope,

Brian Walsh
Read more Last Wine Before Breakfast of 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