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Scarborough Presbytery Service

Toronto Scarborough Presbytery – 6 April 2008 – Michael Kooiman

Luke 24
13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. 28As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

I stand before you amazed by the passage of time. Eleven years spent in you midst, serving two pastoral charges. I am blessed that I can call many of you friends. We have prayed together, we have worked hard, and remained faithful to the Gospel call in this small part of the garden we call Scarborough.

Not long ago, I received another reminder of the passage of time. Staring blankly at an alphabet soup of letters projected on the wall, I was given the grim news: you’re gonna need these. How did this happen? How did this happen to me? Clearly it was time for further research.

It turns out I have fallen victim to a condition call “presbyopia.” Wikipedia says it stalks people “in the fifth decade of life,” a condition whereby the near-point of the eye is too remote to read with any comfort. Like a man obsessed, I needed to know more. Struggling, I read on: “Similar to grey hair and wrinkles, (can anything good come from an article that starts “similar to grey hair and wrinkles?”) presbyopia is a symptom caused by the natural course of aging.” Now I’m really hurt.

But there’s more. From the Greek, presbyopia means literally “old person’s eyes.” Now, that’s just mean. But it gets worse. Through this path of discovery I learned that “presbytery” means “old person’s meeting.” And that’s just cruel. It’s one thing to insult me, but to insult all my friends is just too much.

And so I speak to you this afternoon, humbled but mostly happy: happy to be invited to share the Word with you today.

***

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Then their eyes were opened: they were given new eyes to see. Breaking bread they gained new sight, they recognized the presence of the risen Christ in their midst and they were changed. Suddenly everything fell into place for them:

The identity of this stranger made sense.
The suffering of Jesus made sense.
The words of the women made sense.
Moses and all the prophets made sense.
Resurrection and new life made sense.

Their eyes were opened and whatever myopia or presbyopia that burdened their sight was suddenly gone. In the breaking of bread comes new sight. In the midst of brokenness they received new sight, and their perspective on the world was forever changed.

***

What did he teach them on the way? How did he “open the scriptures” as they walked the dusty road and night began to fall? Imagine the blessing of doing Bible study with the “Word of Life,” identity revealed or no. Where to begin such a look? The answer is in the text.

“Beginning with Moses and all the prophets,” he found himself in the scriptures and taught them to see. The pattern began in worship. We know that every Sabbath unfolded the same way: a reading from the Law, one of the five books of Moses, and a reading from the prophets. The custom was to read all five books over the course of a year, averaging five chapters a week. And they sat on rock.

So where else does Jesus mention the “law and the prophets?” A pattern begins to fall into place: In Matthew 7 Jesus says “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” We have a golden rule.

In Matthew 22 we are told to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” But there is more: “’Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” We have our great commandments.

And our last example comes from Nazareth: the law has been read, the scroll of the prophet unrolled, and Jesus begins to read a passage that will both anger and amaze:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4)

We have a description of our mission: the very essence of God’s Kingdom in poetic form. But this poetry gets a bad review, the people are not pleased, the hometown boy did not make good: the day of the Lord did not come to Nazareth that day.

So we have a golden rule and two great commandments and a mission project that is more relevant today than ever and a Saviour to put it all together to help us see. But do we see? Can we see the project Jesus describes, the simple rules of human love explained upon the road? Or is the near-point just beyond our vision, our eyes too weak to see?

***

I worry about our ability to see. Our friends at the University of Toronto have been busy tracking the changes in our city, using calculators and census tracts to study our income and how we relate to one another. They have looked over time, and plotted it on maps and added colours and released their work.

Imagine in your mind’s eye a map of Toronto, circa 1970, the rich tracts in blue, the poor tracts in red and the middle-income tracts in a lovely pale yellow. Imagine the blue zone running up the middle, veering past a future IKEA and all those meatballs. Now look to the core, and a sea of red, the old downtown and parts of the Yorks, east and west. Finally we see ourselves, in the right-hand column, a vast region of pale yellow, like a newly-painted house you’re about to sell. Can you see it? Do you know this place?

Now, imagine in your mind’s eye a map of Toronto, circa 2000, the shape of the map is familiar, but little else. Except, of course that band of blue in the centre, the band of blue that makes the riders of the Yonge line the best-dressed riders on the TTC. The core is different, more to yellow than red, with places like Riverdale and the Beach flirting with blue. And then to us, the pale yellow bastion, now almost completely red, meaning that our residents live, on average, 20 to 40 percent below the what we once called middle income.

Scarborough, the city that once provided the dictionary definition of “middle-class suburb” is dead and gone. Did we see? Or is the near-point just beyond our vision, our eyes too weak to see?

Dr. King died forty years ago this week, having visited the mountaintop, he got a glimpse of his country beyond the curse of racial segregation. In the last years of his life he took a turn, become more “radical” they say, having suggested that America has no business fighting in foreign adventures and even suggesting it was time for the richest country on the planet to consider some form of guaranteed annual income. Ending segregation, you see, is one thing, challenging the economics of war and the economics of inquality is quite another.

If Dr. King were alive today, still only 79 years of age, he would no doubt look at our map and say it looks like segregation. A city where the rich get to live in the middle and the rest of the map is red, the middle-class all but gone and the economic gap growing every day. In America they say that the only place racial segregation continues is in church, every Sunday morning. We look at our own churches and we scratch our heads that the neighbourhood’s changed but the churches didn’t. We may be the church for the poor, but will we ever become the church of the poor? How can we “bring good news to the poor” if the poor don’t hear the Word proclaimed or witness Christ’s body broken for them?

***

Soon, our convivial little grouping of 18 churches will pass into history. We will be broken into a bigger omelette, and after June 30, 2009 become an entity that takes up fully half of that aforementioned map of Toronto. We’ve already met once, and what I originally described as the birth of a new presbytery was more like a contraction. And however the labour goes, we already know that the outcome of this process will be a very large baby presbytery. And like a baby, this presbytery will take time to develop, crawling, walking, speaking, and understanding how to relate to others.

The benefits are obvious: new vision, more fellow travelers on the road, a look beyond our immediate area of concern. But there are dangers. Like Woodward and Bernstein, churches tend to “follow the money” and most of the money is not here. Nor, it would appear, are the greatest areas of need, with a raft of agencies downtown to fight poverty. Our job will be to point another map, this one by postal code, that shows that fully half of the poorest neighbourhoods in this new presbytery are in Scarborough. Five postal codes where up to 70% of the residents live in poverty.

***

The SpiritWork project will be spoken about and studied for years to come. People across the church know about us and the amazing thing we did. They marvel that a brave little presbytery put itself on the couch for seven years, learned more and grew more than was every thought possible. They marvel that we grounded ourselves in the Acts of the Apostles, that we developed leaders and learned to work together in new ways: that clergy became colleagues and congregational leaders became friends and through it all we were transformed.

These are things we cannot lose. We have a message to share, my frends. We are called to describe the ways we reinvented ourselves and remained faithful in the midst of all that change. And we are called to keep the project going, finding new ways to connect to our neighbours and make them friends.

***

I worry, at times, that our eyes are too weak to see. I worry that the near-point of our vision will drift further and further away. I worry until I look around.

I look around and see committed people gather to hear about the Kingdom project of Jesus, to understand his way.

I look around and I see the thousand ways we partner to solve the very problems that Jesus preached so long ago.

I look around and I see Bibles open and hearts open as we continue to bring the Word of Life to the very people God numbers as children.

I look around and I see the power of God at work in Scarborough as we lift up our prayers and give voice to our praise.

I look around and I see bread broken and wine poured to reveal the risen Christ who appears among us, encourages us, and promises that we never walk alone.

I look around and I see friends. I see the face of Jesus in every face here, and my heart burns that we are so richly blessed. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 8:32 AM