Pastor John Van Sloten

Last week, as part of my research for a sermon on Seeing Again, I visited a Yousuf Karsh photography exhibit at the Glenbow Museum.  I have always loved this famous Canadian’s eye.  He has a great gift for capturing the essence of his subjects.  And his dramatic use of light and shadow is compelling.  But what struck me during this visit was the impact of his words.  Along side each famous photo were words that identified the content and context of the image.  Many of the images I saw that day were of people I did not know.  So while the protrait might have conveyed strong emotion, truth or beauty, I really had no idea what I was looking at; until I read the words.  Then a great ‘aha’ would come over me, “of course that is what I’m looking at!” 

On Sunday (in my sermon) I decided to take the congregation through some of the same ‘aha’s’ I’d experienced.  I prefaced the first photograph of Jean Sibelius with these words, ““IMAGE only made sense when it had WORD beside it… We can only see when the WORD is beside us, it’s truth within us…”  (nudge, nudge)  Then up popped up the portrait of famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius…. and I paused for fifteen seconds.  Nice photo, interesting facial expression, but no one really knew what they were looking at.  Then I told them that this photo was taken the moment after Sibelius had been told that the playing of his most famous composition Finlandia ( a piece that captured the national struggle of the Finnish people against the Russian Empire) would double the wartime efforts and production of Finnish workers in Canadian wartime logging camps when it was played.  Then the portrait came alive… the beautiful sense of pride that one feels when one’s work so compellingly enlivens the work of others.  That ’catch your breath’ kind of moment that an artist feels when the power of his creation reaches and inspires another. 

Then I connected that sentiment of that portrait to the heart of God.  Surely God feels the same way when we are awakened by the melodious movements of his Spirit.  Surely God takes great pride and joy when his compositions do what they are meant to do, capable of doing.  Then we just sat there taking in the image for a second or two; Word bringing content and context and light to sight in such a powerful way. 

Then we did the same with two more Karsh images (Kriesler and Keller).  And the thought hit me, “You could write an entire book on how this Word enlightening Image phenomenon plays out.”   Other images from my past come to mind; a WW2 picture of Indian sailors in their life boat, the last time any of them is ever seen alive, the fact of immanent death bringing profound gravity to the gift of life, it’s frail brevity, and the viewer coming to see, for just a second, all of life the way God does.  “If they only knew what lay ahead”.  The unknown future of what we see, bringing timely truth to present reality.  And that’ s only one way words illumine image.  There must be a thousand ways this happens.  Words adding information about a preceding event, an emotion, a distracting circumstance, a detail about the setting, the presence of someone else off stage, a certain time of day, mood, health…  (and now I run over to my bookshelf and pull my Karsh book off of the shelf in order to discover some more contextual categories)…  relationship (Estrellita, Karsh’s wife)…  social standing (Governor General of Canada)… loves (Lady Clark with her dog Angus)… training, education and passions (Designer Johan Helders)… There are over 200 images in this book!

To me each of these different ‘ways’ that Word enlightens Image points to a different way that the Word (God beside us, Christ in us, The Spirit all around us) can bring light to what we’re seeing.  On Sunday we sang a song that speaks of the whole world being filled with God’s glory.  The opening premise of my sermon was that we are all more blind than we know.  How I would love to spend a month with Karsh’s works so that I could learn to see you more oh Lord.

Driving home from the U2 concert this morning I turned to my wife Fran and said, “I love the way this sermon is coming together!  It just seems so right… that church happens in this way.”  I  had just received an email from Tim in Edmonton passing on 12 of his concert photos for use in my powerpoint on Sunday (Fran was answering my email!).  Then Brandon posted a comment to my FB page saying he loved Bono’s line from the previous night, “Don’t put your faith in a cloud.”  “I need to include that line in my message”, I thought. Then I get a belated text message from Gary (our church music guy who’ll be doing 4 U2 tunes for worship on Sunday).  He was trying to find us on the field the night of the concert (we take sermon research seriously at New Hope, I was there, Gary was there, Keith our tech guy was there – mostly ogling the sound board I’m sure, and a few of our church leadership team attended as well.) 

Then, as I’m carrying all of these stories in my mind, I was reminded of the 20 different people who posted comments on my blog, or emailed me with their thoughts on how to preach the band this week.  I said that I was planning to use U2 lyrics to tell the Creation, Fall, Redemption, Return story, and asked if people could send me lyrics that coincide with either of the four narrative segments.  Tons of great insight resulted. 

And it all felt so right.  The community of God writing the sermons of God.  Church playing out in all spheres of life.  No lines on the horizon… no lines anywhere… the earth and everything in it, belonging to God.

Ok, moms, I’m working on my sermon for Mother’s day – on the maternal heart of God – and I’m wondering if you could help me out… by responding to the following two questions;

1. What’s the biggest thing that being a mom has taught you about what God is like?

2. How does your answer to question one resonate with the Bible’s teachings on the nature of God?

Thanks for your help in advance (I figured it would be a bit disingenuous for me to go and preach about something I know nothing about!)

This Sunday Calgary’s Mayor is going to be one of the sermon texts I’ll be speaking on.  What do he and his policies tell us about the nature of God?  After the message we’re going to have a 15-20 minute dialogue about what it might look like to be better citizens.  The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:7, TNIV  The Apostle Paul wrote, “The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation.”  So we’re called to be ‘for’ our city.  What does this mean?

Here’s the question we’re going to be discussing Sunday,

“Given what you’ve just heard about God’s heart for government leaders and our city, how do you see the church (& yourself) contributing to the building of a better Calgary?”   (You can either comment here, text a response on Sunday, or step up to the mic and talk then)

… of me blowing glass (we edited out the part where I swore after burning my hand).   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gXm5BzysR4

Here are a few quick pics I took at a friend’s wood shop yesterday. 

“This concert experience was totally different because of what we did at church this morning,” said Kailey, a fellow New Hoper who sat (stood dancing) beside me at the Arcade Fire explosion last night.   She’s right.  It was… for me too.  I must have seen twenty of the the same people who were in church that morning, that night at the Corral.  And there really was something about the correlation between what happened Sunday morning and what happened Sunday night.  That morning we’d sung/listened to four of same songs they played that night.  That morning I spoke about the “child-like” authenticity, forthrightness and integrity of the band.  That night I saw it expressed in each of the band members, via their dance, their voices, and their intense facial expressions.  That morning I spoke about AF’s stinging indictment of the modern man – our empty, sleepy, suburbs; our weak worldview capitulated lives; how we’re all in line for a number but we don’t understand -  and that night all of the prophetic power of those sentiments came down to bear on that Calgary crowd.  

That morning I spoke of listening to the music and, at times, feeling the Spirit of God hovering over the lyrics.  That night, as Arcade Fire sang Intervention, church organ keyboards in the background, it felt like Jesus was in the room… indicting the “faithful” for their failure to love others as they love themselves.   That morning I took three quotes from the song and interpersed them with three quotes from Jesus (directed at the hypocritical, judgmental Pharisee religious leaders);

“Working for the church, While your family dies
You take what they give you, And you keep it inside”  Arcade Fire

 “Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ In this way, you let [people] disregard their needy parents.” Jesus in Mark 7:10-12, NLT

“Who’s gonna throw the very first stone?  Oh!  Who’s gonna reset the bone?  Walking with your head in a sling…” Arcade Fire

 “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Jesus, John 8:7, KJV

 ”Been working for the church, while your life falls apart. Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart, every spark of friendship and love will die without a home.” Arcade Fire

 ”Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to…^.you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness… You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean… “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”  Jesus in Matthew 23, various passages

And then after I read all six quotes I said, “Jesus speaking back then – directly – and today, via Arcade Fire… ”  That night, as I stood there scanning the congregation, it felt like the scenes were reversed!  That morning we brought Arcade Fire into church.  That night Jesus showed up at their concert.  Powerful.

This is what makes me cry.  On a day when nothing seems to be moving fast with either the book or my level of sermon inspiration, I make this Arcade Fire/Biblical text connection.   In a new song called ‘City with no Children’ I hear, ”I feel like I’ve been living in a city with no children in it, a garden left for ruin by a millionaire inside a private prison,”  and the words just grab me… and I can’t move on.   I keep thinking “no children in the streets… no children in the streets.”  And the image of a ruined garden just hovers in my mind… the parallel to our ‘East of Eden’ world palpable.  So I head off into the Old Testament prophets, knowing that it’s there somewhere, and find these words from Jeremiah;

“For death has crept in through our windows
      and has entered our mansions.
   It has killed off the flower of our youth:
      Children no longer play in the streets,
      and young men no longer gather in the squares.”  Jeremiah 9:21, NLT

And I lose my breath for a moment… at God’s amazing parallels, at how he’s above time, and authors all truth, whispering it to prophets old and new. 

And then, after I come down from the mountain, a Google Alert surfaces with a link to a national news story on the book, and then I get an email request to come speak on the topic, and…  the beauty of it all is; in recent weeks I’ve been thinking about  how I need to  balance my day job/real calling and the book – that I really need to put my heart into continuing journey into the idea, developing it, growing it, and living it FIRST…  the rest will take care of itself. 

And so it does.

This Sunday I’m going to be preaching on a modern day parable about the crash of a Nicaraguan drug plane.    (here’s a pdf of the story)
What do you think God is saying through this?
Short video of this sermon – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I-CBSl5R0A
Full video – http://blip.tv/file/3508929

This Sunday I’m preaching on the connection between the biblical concept of ‘joy’ and the psychological concept of ‘flow’. I need some help. When does time stop for you? When do you find yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing, and never wanting it to end? Is it painting, or making love, or playing volleyball, or talking before a group, or rock climbing, or listening sympathetically to someone else’s troubles? (These questions come from Dr. Martin Seligman, Postive Psychologist) If you have an answer to any of these questions, post away!