Waking up to wonder
A hand tapped me on the shoulder.
I turned around to face a smiling stranger.
"You're the girl who preached in Iona Abbey on Sunday," he said, nodding eagerly.
For a moment, I was taken aback. In Canada, someone might have recognized me but no one would have called me a girl! Yet, here I was, waiting to board a ferry to the Scottish mainland, miles from anywhere I could call home. I did not expect to be recognized, but the stranger was right. The previous Sunday I had preached in Iona Abbey for the first time. I hadn't anticipated what my role there might mean.
I found my tongue. "Yes, I am," I smiled.
We chatted as we walked up the ramp to the ferry. This man, an English tourist in his early seventies, had come to the Abbey as part of a bus tour. Buses from the mainland scheduled their Sunday morning trips across the Isle of Mull in order to drop passengers at the Iona ferry in time to make worship in the Abbey.
"I'm not much of a church-goer at home," he said. "But the Abbey is really something special."
Iona Abbey is truly something special. Steeped in centuries of history, it is surrounded by the stark beauty of the Isle of Iona. Lying off Scotland's west coast, Iona is a tiny island, three miles long and a mile and a half wide. Yet, for generations, it has been a place of Christian pilgrimage. These days it's also a popular bus tour destination. My brief encounter in that ferry queue began the reflections that led to this book. That day, I was just a few weeks into a contract position with The Iona Community, one of its full-time staff working in and around Iona Abbey. As a member of the resident staff, leading worship at the Abbey became a regular part of my activity. As one of the ordained ministers on the staff team, I often marvelled at the privilege of celebrating communion in that holy and historic space. My encounter with this eager stranger opened my eyes to the considerable responsibility which accompanied that privilege. Day by day and week by week, we invited constantly changing congregations of people from all over the world to engage the mystery of God's presence in worship. Neither staff member nor stranger could anticipate how any of us might be moved by our encounters in that special place.
"Invisible we see you, Christ above us." These words come from a prayer written by George MacLeod, founder of The Iona Community. MacLeod had a marvellous way of weaving strands from Scotland's Celtic heritage into his provocative and political prayers. It was humbling to think that some of my words would join his within the invisible tapestry of prayer woven by generations of worshippers at the Abbey. So often we enter worship, aware of the broken threads and incomplete patterns in our own attempts to pull our lives together. Yet the longer I listened to guests and visitors on Iona reflecting on what happens in worship at the Abbey, the more I came to trust that God's Spirit would work with us there, no matter who we were or how we'd gotten there. Somehow we would be awakened to wonder. George MacLeod often referred to Iona as "a thin place" where "only a tissue paper" separates the material and spiritual worlds. The Spirit opens people's eyes in that holy place — not only to things we've never had the opportunity to see before, but also to things we have overlooked in our own lives. Above all, the Spirit awakens us to the invisible company of Christ.
Going through the motions
This sermon explores John 2:1-11, the story of Jesus turning water into wine to save a wedding from a crisis. On my mind were discussions we seemed to have every year among staff at a point when at least a few people found attending worship each day more of a burden than a gift. I was also struggling with a text that is often interpreted to present faith in Christ as an improvement on Jewish prayer and piety, an attitude that can contribute to Christian complicity in discrimination against Jewish people. Our heartfelt discussions suggested to me that an interpretation of this text ought to take into account what Christians themselves experience when something once fresh and provocative has become familiar and alienating.
This story of a crisis at a wedding
Is for any one who has ever felt, even
for a little while,
that we were just going through the motions when it came to our faith.
If we've ever nodded off in a sermon,
stayed in bed on a rainy Sunday,
or lost heart or hope in God,
Jesus comes to the wedding in Cana
to wake us up by tossing his wine in
our face.
180 gallons of it.
Jesus has arrived in the nick of time
to drench us in God's promise
that the good life is still waiting for us.
There is better wine in store than what we've tasted so far.
The cup of salvation is filled with abundant life,
if we will just allow ourselves to drink deeply of God's love.
This story is a challenging reminder
that our prayerful reflections,
our beautiful and dignified liturgies,
our familiar and steadying services —
all these are only preparations for the fullness of life.
And the fullness of life comes as a gift from Jesus Christ
to refresh our souls and make our hearts glad
so that we can live with commitment and purpose in
God's world.
But how are we going to claim the gift Jesus brings?
In this story, Mary gives us a clue.
She looks for Jesus and tells him what's gone wrong.
Then she challenges him to do something
and she expects him to make a difference.
If we are to follow Mary's lead,
first we have to consider what's going right —
and what's going wrong —
in us and around us.
It's important to name before God in worship the situation as we know it.
Yet the situation will be a little different for each of us here
as well as for anyone we know who stayed home today.
Living with Christ is to drink deeply from the cup of salvation,
whatever situation we find ourselves in,
and to feel the warmth and energy of God's goodness deep in our bones.
Jesus came to Cana as a sign
that life with God is a celebration of mercy and love;
it is a promise that fills us with hope and courage.
So for a moment
think about how you were feeling when you got out of bed,
while you were going through the motions of your morning.
Think about the last few days
or weeks
or years.
Be a little daring like Mary.
Offer your situation to Jesus.
Hold it up to him in your heart.
And believe that he is holding out his cup —
the cup of salvation —
with a gift that is meant for you.
Drink deeply of God's love and receive what you need,
whatever you need.
For God has more than enough love and life and laughter
to fill every thirsty soul.
Amazing Space
A guest hurried over to me one afternoon as I walked through the Abbey cloisters.
"Nancy, where did you get that sweatshirt with the picture of Iona Abbey? I've been looking for one in every shop on the island."
I paused to give her question some thought. I knew I didn't have a shirt with a picture of the Abbey on it. The guest could see my puzzled look.
"You had it on this morning," she said. "You know the one with the poem on the back."
A light dawned. And I began to laugh. "That shirt came from Saskatchewan."
Now it was the guest's turn to look puzzled. Saskatchewan is not one of the place names that Canada shares with Scotland!
"It's not the Abbey on the front of that shirt," I chuckled. "It's a grain elevator."
That someone could confuse a prairie grain elevator from the plains of Western Canada with Iona Abbey will make many of us laugh in disbelief. If you could see the image on my shirt, however, the mistake would be more understandable. In a washable reproduction of a lovely painting by Saskatchewan artist Henry Ripplinger, a road curves toward the tower of the grain elevator in a way reminiscent of the path approaching Iona Abbey. That tower is square with a peaked roof, rather like Iona Abbey's signature Benedictine design. But the most striking thing about this picture is the sky. The tower is set against the deep reds and oranges of sunset, made more glorious by fingers of indigo clouds reaching across the expansive horizon. A gorgeous prairie sunset. The kind of sunset that sweeps across Iona in the summertime to fill another expansive horizon and bathe the Abbey tower in its blessing.
Iona Abbey is not the only towered structure from which hungry souls are fed. As I reflect on this mistaken identity and think about what I've read between the lines at Iona Abbey, I am struck by a parallel with Jesus' life of prayer. Jesus sought out the wilderness, the emptiness of the desert, to enter the fullness of God's presence. With its barren hills and wide-open horizons, Iona offers that same paradoxical gift — the empty wild filled with anticipation of something, someone more than we can see. Perhaps this is what George MacLeod sensed when he spoke of Iona as a "thin" place where spiritual and material worlds touch. Yet, as much as I have come to love Iona and the Abbey, I also know God's breathtaking presence in the vast prairie wilderness I call home.
To be empty and full at the same time — a paradox of our encounters with God, wherever they happen. Only as we empty ourselves and pour out to God our deepest longing do we find God filling our souls with living water that seeps into the well from which we draw our daily lives. Paradox beats at the heart of Jesus' identity, that very earthy life in whom the holiness of God takes flesh. George MacLeod points us to this paradox in his prayer: "Invisible we see you, Christ above us, Christ beneath us, Christ beside us." Only as we divest ourselves of what we expect Christ to look like are we given a glimpse of his surprising smile in eyes that meet ours — at our daily bus stop or in the exchange of his peace.
