Originally Preached at St. Stephen's, Summerland.
You know, I can’t think of a better pairing than a wedding and that song we just heard: Steve Bell's version of Bruce Cockburn's Lovers in a Dangerous Time. Part of that has to do with the fact that our friend Dave played that very song the day that Ericka and I were married in October 2006.
So when Ken emailed me with the liturgy for this week, and I discovered that he'd picked this song, I didn’t quite know what to do. In an instant, a rush of memories came back, memories of that time in my life. We were living in Toronto. I was finishing my Master’s in Theology, Ericka finishing hers in Political Science. We had met, quite coincidentally, at an early morning Eucharist service at the University of Toronto, called Wine Before Breakfast. Each and every week, bleary eyed and tired, we’d file into the chapel at 7.22am for Eucharist followed by Breakfast in the Chaplain’s office.
This community was my first real introduction to the music of Bruce Cockburn, a real favourite of campus Chaplain Brian Walsh. In this song, like much of the Cockburn catalogue, it’s the evocative imagery that does more than tell a story. It immerses us in the story, helps us feel the story too.
Don't the hours grow shorter as the days go by?
We never get to stop and open our eyes
We met in the fall of 2005 and were married in the fall of 2006, so much happening in those intervening years. Building a relationship, building a home that was good for us, and extended hospitality near and far. Jobs that worked out. Jobs that went sideways. Always learning more about ourselves. Always learning more about each other.
For a while I took a job in the neighbourhood church, their building that once sat 1200 would see 30 on a Sunday. I worked with young people and built partnerships for outreach, and along the way Ericka voiced something that I couldn’t at first acknowledge when she said, “I think this place is killing my faith.” And I knew what she meant, I could feel it too.
There was so much about that place that felt like it was rote, routine, respectable, the right thing to do. Somehow it all felt so flat, as though what we said and did in that place, meant nothing beyond the walls. It felt as though the words of Jesus, as though the good news of his life, death, and resurrection, as though the community that formed around him, the early church, had little bearing on how we ought to live our lives.
It felt as though this had little to say about the God of liberation and love, the God who is still speaking, still active, still moving in our lives and in the world. The God who calls us to pay attention to the world in all of its ups and downs, and to respond, in some small way to the neighbour at your doorstep.
One minute you're waiting for the sky to fall
Next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all
Our lives in those days were precarious. Not as precarious as some, not as precarious as the lives of young people now, trying to afford anywhere to live in this country, the way the cost of housing has become so detached from the incomes available to most of us. I always felt jealous of my parents’ generation, and what they could afford. Now that I have kids, I have deep worries for them, and how they’ll make it in this world, the way the economy’s going, the way the cost of living is going, and how disconnected these things are.
Lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time
This is a song of sensuality in the shadow of empires. A song of intimacy and connection in the glow of cable news. Released as the first single on Cockburn's 1984 album Stealing Fire, Lovers in a Dangerous Time is a song of desire and longing, of beauty and grace. And yet all around, the threat of danger. You may remember the dangers of that time–the Cold War, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and very much present for Cockburn, the Guatemalan refugee crisis. This is all backdrop to the song. It's in the air.
To be lovers in a dangerous time is to bravely choose love, and to be love, and to make love, in the face of the powers that push us towards desperation and fear. It is to choose joy and revel in celebration as an act of resistance.
Sometimes when I read the gospel stories, I forget their backdrop. I forget the world in which these things take place. It’s easy enough for me to place that wedding at Trinity Anglican Church in Cambridge Ontario. It’s easy for me to place it somewhere familiar, somewhere known. A beautiful fall day. The only nice weekend that month.
But what I often fail to do at first glance is place these gospels stories in their context. To remind myself that when all this joy and high-drama with the wedding planner is taking place, this is not their only problem. The people are under the thumb of an autocratic ruler. They’re under the nose and in the sights of an occupying army. There is death and destruction in the air. Forests burning, fish stocks and farms decimated. Families, communities, livelihoods plundered to feed the insatiable appetites of the emperor and king. The economy is a real mess, and Mark Carney’s leadership bid will come 2000 years too late.
These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This fragrant skin, this hair like lace
Spirits open to thrust of grace,
Never a breath you can't afford to waste
And yet in the midst of it all, Mary notices the need. She notices the need, she speaks up, she tells her son, and after a bit too much back-talk from young JC, he gets to it. I don’t know what tips him over in the end, but he finds some helpers and gets to work.
Maybe it’s this realisation that what the town needs, in the shadow of destruction, is a party. A chance to celebrate. A chance to let off some steam. To celebrate that life goes on, that life is dazzling and beautiful, even on those days we’re waiting for the sky to fall.
And maybe, thinking it through, thinking through Jesus’ ministry, and the ways in which he is always seeking wholeness, restoring people to community, people who have been pushed out and excluded, maybe he has the poor couple, their family, the wedding planner in mind, acting preemptively to change the story.
No longer will this be known as the wedding where the wine ran out. Oh no, this will be the wedding where the wine got better and more plentiful with each passing day.
Sometimes it seems like this is one of the lesser of Jesus’ signs, and yet it seems to fulfil much of the same purpose as many of the others–restoring people to one another, restoring people to God, restoring people to love, to hope, to belonging, to having and being enough.
When you're lovers in a dangerous time,
Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime
When Brian preached at our wedding, those years ago, he shared this:
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time,
Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime:
It is criminal to close down your options
In a world of infinite choice
It is criminal to say enough
In a world of insatiability
It is criminal to say I do
In a world of duplicity
It is criminal to tie the knot
In a world with no strings attached
It is criminal to offer yourself in an act of momentous giving
In a world where everything has its price”*
And yet the gift of God is completely and unreservedly free. Freely, freely, you have received. Freely, freely, give.
It makes me think and wonder about what that might look like here in this community. What are you discovering? What will you continue to discover as you share in ministry with Summerland United? What will you discover in this relationship, as you enter it, as you explore it, about how to love one another, how to love the world around you?
Because there have been moments in the past few years when you--this community--have been waiting for the sky to fall.
And there have also been moments, haven’t there, when you’ve been dazzled by the beauty of it all?
In the midst of life and all of its ups and downs, in the midst of building relationships with one another, with members of the other congregation, with the wider community, with other Anglican congregations here in the South Okanagan, your spirits open to the thrust of grace: the challenge and the invitation along this road is to continue to stay open. To be open. To bravely and recklessly love God. To bravely and recklessly love one another. To bravely and recklessly love this beautiful Creation that God so profoundly loves.
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
You gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight
Which brings us to the end of all of this talk about love. It can sound mushy, of course. But it’s not. To love, to truly love in this world, I believe, is both vulnerable and brave. It’s that openness to grace, and that recognition that nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
We live in interesting and difficult times. Times that for many of the most vulnerable people in our society are absolutely frightening. It’s not the Cold War anymore. It’s not HIV/AIDS. But there are wars, and there are rumours of wars.
There is exponentially expanding income inequality and there are people being left behind. There is increasing hatred of and violence towards our 2S/LGBTQIA+ siblings. Truth telling and reconciliation is still needed. Generations younger than ours aren’t sure what kind of planet we’re leaving them, but are sure it isn’t going to be good.
We gather here week in and week out to worship the God of self-giving love. We worship the God of justice and joy, compassion, and peace. But worship isn’t limited to what we do here, of course. It’s more than words, more than prayers, more than music.
Worship is embodied. It is lived. It’s living the vows of our baptism everyday. To worship is to stay open to the thrust of grace. To worship is to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.
The second single off of Stealing Fire, the single released after Lovers in a Dangerous Time, is called “If I had a Rocket Launcher.” And there are times, perhaps, when we see the injustices of the world, the ways people are being abused, the ways of war and genocide, the ways of ecocide, killing the planet, the shifting political climate. Next week in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is going to have some very pointed things to say about his mission, the mission into which we are called to participate.
But today, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians reminds us that each of us has been given a gift of the Holy Spirit for the common good.
The gifts you’ve been given as individuals, as a community, are not to be hoarded, but to be shared. Shared as we choose to follow in the way of Jesus, as we choose to be a foretaste of God’s kingdom. A place and a people where others will see that Jesus is alive and active in this world. Because of how we love. Because of how we kick at the darkness. Because we know that the darkness will not have the final word. Because we live as though the words God spoke from the beginning—it is good, it is good, it is good / you are good, you are good, you are good–because we live as though those words are true.
Perhaps we have heard that oft-quoted statement from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when he proclaims that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I live in such hope. But hope without fidelity and brave love, what good is that?
Sometimes for the moral arc of the universe to move towards justice and joy, a mother needs to bend her son’s arm, refusing to take his back-talk, sending him off to the kitchen to make it happen.
Which is another way of saying that we all have a role in this. We all play a part.
And so today, as Christ’s very body in this place, maybe we ought to listen to Mary, quit the back-talk, and do our very best in our worship, embodied in our very lives, to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. Why? Because we are lovers. Lovers in this dangerous time.
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Footnotes:
*The entire sermon can be found in Brian J. Walsh, Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2011), 40-44.
