God, Goodness, Lord of all, may the humble meditations of my heart and the reflections of Christ’s disciples gathered here, be acceptable to you. And may your corrective whispers in our ears help us hear your voice instead of our own desires. Souffle ton esprit parmi nous lorsque nous réfléchissons ensemble. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in the faith, thank you for welcoming me in your circle. It is good to be gathered with those who praise God, those who gather in community to hear how we might better live in Christ’s light.
I am convinced that we do not gather in community on Sundays uniquely to praise God, but also to know God. The gift of Christ’s church is to have the chance to sit with other people of faith, to read scripture, to reflect on it together. I’ve often spent time wondering if someone can be a Christian if they merely pray, read scripture and worship God alone… maybe sitting at home without speaking to others about their faith and their journey. Is it possible to be a Christian without living one’s faith in community?
I’ve considered this for a long time. And as a minister, and as the Regional Executive Minister of the United Church, it is obviously in my personal interest that we have a healthy and thriving church… if everyone stayed home and kept their faith limited to their own personal experience, untouched by others, it would not be easy for ministers who serve God to find a way to be paid, to have a home and food to eat.
But there is far more to being a Christian than a personal and private faith life.
Quand nous allons à l’église pour vivre notre foi dans une communauté, il y a quelque chose d’important qui se passe à ce moment-là. Quelque chose que nous ne pouvons pas aller chercher dans nos appartements et nos chambres à coucher. Le moment de vivre sa foi avec d’autres nous offre le potentiel de voir plus clair et d’être transformé. Ce n’est pas pour rien que Jésus dit quand deux ou trois sont rassemblé en son nom, qu’il est là. La foi n’est pas une question de la vie privée, mais la société qui vous accueil au Canada semble majoritairement croire que la foi doit être rélégué au domaine personnel et sans expression publique.
Je suis entièrement d’accord que notre société soit reconnue pour sa diversité, un endroit où les gens de différentes perspectives puissent vivre ensemble… le rêve de l’harmonie entre tous les peuples de la terre. Je souhaite que le mosaique que nous créons dans ce pays soit un modèle pour le monde entier. Mais… cela ne devrait pas dire que l’expression publique de la foi doit être empêché. C’est justement dans l’objectif de voir comment la foi transforme la vie de nous tous qu’une diversité devrait se définir. Mais, dans le cas du Canada, et encore plus au Québec, la sécularisation de la société est une façon de cacher la différence, d’empêcher l’expression de la diversité dans notre contexte. Et pour moi, cela est un problème grave pour notre société… mais revenons à la question de la vie de communauté de foi.
Faith is a communal experience. Just look at how Jesus goes about shaping his ministry… by calling a group of disciples. By going out into the world and teaching, healing and guiding. Christ doesn’t stay separate from the world… Christ is in it, actively, and with others. Our model of ministry isn’t based on one guru teaching one person to live their life. Our model of ministry is to be with many others, to see and experience the full range of the faith experience… and most importantly, to be transformed by it.
This is what happens in the gospel reading today… Jesus takes Peter, John and James to the mountain top, again in community. In the Bible, when we go to a mountain, we are going to have a spiritual experience. Just think of the times when Moses goes to the mountain, when Abraham is tested, when Jesus preaches the sermon on the mount. So many times we think that going to a mountain top gets us closer to God who is up there! But the mountain top is important for other reasons. When we stand on a mountain top, we see things from a different perspective, something we cannot see when we are too close. We see the bigger picture.
And, in the gospel today, something else happens… Jesus is transfigured… we see him radiating light and shining brightly. Transformation happens when we see the world in a way that we hadn’t seen it before.
This is why sharing faith in community is so important. It is a place of relationship, transformation and seeing the world differently. Rather than being locked in our own heads, reading scripture from our own perspective, we encounter those who offer us new perspective and new understanding. When we are in relationship, we are transformed by it. We change our worldview because we get to see the world through the eyes of the other person.
La foi est une pratique qui se fait en communauté et en relation avec d’autres. Il ne s’agit pas simplement d’écouter le pasteur et d’accepter tout ce qu’on nous dit… et ce n’est pas uniquement une pratique d’adopter les perspectives des autres sans réflexion. Quand nous sommes en communauté, la nouvelle perspective qui nous est offerte nous donne la chance de nous questionner, de mettre au défi ce que nous avons toujours crus. Être en dialogue avec d’autres sur les grandes questions de notre foi n’est pas un signe de faiblesse, c’est une source d’approfondir notre foi… et ultimement, d’être à l’écoute de Dieu qui parle par l’intermédiaire des paroles des autres.
Vivre sa foi en communauté nous offre l’occasion de mettre au défi nos égos, nos idées fixes, nos préjugés. C’est justement ce que Paul nous dit dans la lettre aux Corinthiens. Il nous met en garde de permettre notre propre volonté de voiler la Bonne Nouvelle. Une communauté de foi nous donne l’occasion de nous assurer que nous pouvons voir plus clair. Une foi nourrie par d’autres est une foi transformatrice qui nous permet de voir plus loin… ça nous donne une perspective à partir de la montagne.
But even a community of faith can be misled. The gods of this world, money, selfishness, ego and self-importance can mislead us all. I invite you to look at what happens on the mountain top… and to whom Jesus is speaking. Elijah and Moses. Jesus himself is speaking with elders of the faith, rooting himself in a prophet and a liberator. Elijah who had to spend a lot of time correcting the people who had gone astray. Elijah the prophet who had to say some unpopular things that people were not ready to hear because they were attached to their ways of doing things. The people in Elijah’s time were misled and God needed to send Elijah to correct them.
And Moses, the one who liberated the people from slavery. The one who kept people moving through the desert even when it was hard and they didn’t want to go anymore. Moses, the one who saw the Promised Land, but never had the chance to step foot in it.
It is not an accident that Jesus would be speaking to these two people on the mountain and being transformed by that experience… he is not ignoring the history of his faith, he’s consulting it, connecting to it, being enlightened by it. Jesus is demonstrating one of the key foundations of Christian faith: Tradition. The experience of his Jewish faith was not being ignored, it was respected and revered. When we practice our faith alone, without connection to a community that has a tradition and a history, it can be easy to be misled. Jesus reminds us this by his own actions… know your roots, know your tradition.
La réponse de Pierre est, pour moi, une des plus intéressante. Faisant face à une expérience remarquable et transformatrice, il suggère d’implanter trois tentes. Pierre veut tout de suite mettre les trois figures, chacune dans sa propre tente. Il veut rendre physique l’expérience spirituelle qu’il vient d’avoir. Je pense que sa réponse est très humaine… nous voulons renfermer l’esprit dans une place pour que nous ne la perdons plus jamais. Nous croyons que l’envol de l’esprit peut être sauvegarder comme un pain congelé ou une photo dans son téléphone. Mais, malheureusement, il est impossible de préserver l’expérience transformatrice de manière physique. Nous pouvons seulement faire de la place dans notre cœur et dans notre esprit pour la transformation.
De toute façon, une transformation ne peut pas être le but ultime ou la fin de l’histoire. La transformation ne s’arrête pas. Nous ne pouvons pas le couler dans le béton pour qu’elle soit figé. La transformation est le début du changement, pas la fin.
When Peter suggests that three tents be placed at this location, he is trying desperately to confine the experience, he’s trying to hold it in one place so that it doesn’t change… but that’s not how transformation works. A powerful life-changing experience cannot be contained, it is only the beginning… there is a lot more change to come as a result of that. You can’t nail it down. It’s alive and colours everything we do from that moment forward.
Faith lived out on your own is isolated from the Holy Spirit. It is dry, unchanging and not alive. Faith needs community to give us perspective, to give us the benefit of everyone else’s experience. God is like the elephant in a dark room… each of us reaching out and experiencing a part of it, but none of us understand the other person’s experience unless we allow them to describe it to us.
I’m a big fan of movies. I love to walk into a cinema and experience the world described to me by someone different than myself. I enjoy putting myself in someone else’s shoes… to understand their concern, their joy, their pain. It makes me more empathetic, it makes me sensitive to things I would not have understood any other way. For me, faith lived in community does that as well… it changes me, opens me up to realities I didn’t know before. It helps me appreciate others and value their relationship with God.
Dieu a créé un monde avec une diversité incroyable. Si Dieu a créé l’homme et la femme à son image, chacun d’entre nous contient un élément de la nature divine, sans toute le contenir. C’est à nous de travailler à mieux comprendre l’ensemble de la création de Dieu, présent sous toutes ses formes, pour mieux refléter l’essence de Dieu. C’est pour cette raison qu’il est important d’ajouter à nos perspectives et de ne jamais prendre pour acqui que nous avons l’ensemble de la vérité. Quand nous restons isolés sur nous-même, il est facile de commencer à croire que nous avons toutes les réponses… parce que nous n’avons personne pour alimenter notre réflexion plus large et plus complexe.
Jésus transporte trois disciples au sommet de la montagne pour qu’ils puissent voir plus loin, d’avoir une perspective transformée, entendre la voix de Dieu et de revenir renouvelé par le moment. Ce n’est pas par hasard que Pierre deviendra la pierre angulaire sur laquelle se reposera l’avenir de l’Église chrétienne. Il a été enseigné comment voir plus loin, même quand il propose une idée farfelu comme l’implantation de trois tentes…
When Peter responds to the transfiguration with a desire to preserve the experience, to make sure that Elijah, Moses and Jesus have places to return to, he is responding from his limited perspective. He thinks the work of the divine can be contained and held in one place. He’s still holding on to his way of thinking. I can almost see the other two disciples look at him after he makes this suggestion and shake their heads. In this moment Peter is being shaped by his experience (the desire to pitch tents), by tradition (the presence of historical figures like Moses and Elijah) and by community (John and James). These are the three pillars of faith that we understand to be critical to Christian life: scripture, tradition and reason/experience.
Without community, tradition is almost impossible. Without community, experience and reason are limited to our own minds, without community scripture is limited to our own understanding. When Paul is writing to the Corinthians, he is warning that community that the Good News will be clouded by their own desires and their own egos if they are not able to let that go and hear the words of the Spirit through their community. The early Christians in Corinth were well known for their fighting and disagreements… Paul is suggesting that they listen to each other, that they understand that the desire of God is expressed through all of them, not just some of them. They all see a small part of the picture if they rely on themselves… they see better when they are in community with one another.
Les communautés qui s’isolent du monde sont les plus susceptibles de devenir radicalisées, et de se croire uniquement qualifié pour comprendre le monde. Mais l’isolement ne fait que renforcer nos tendances de semer la division entre nous et les autres. C’est justement l’isolement qui rend la compréhension du monde plus difficile. Et voilà aussi la source de division, de haine et de mépris – le contraire de ce que Dieu nous demande de semer.
Alors nous, pour vivre pleinement notre foi, il nous faut la vie communautaire… malgré que là, avec nos différences, nous pouvons parfois trouver ça difficile. Notre diversité peut facilement devenir notre source de frustration et de conflit. Et c’est justement pour cette raison qu’il faut faire face à notre plus grand défi… la certitude.
Certainty can be our biggest challenge when we live out our faith in community. If we are absolutely certain of something, we begin to do as Paul warns… we proclaim ourselves instead of proclaiming Jesus Christ. When we refuse to hear one another, we proclaim that we are more important than the one who saves us. Certainty is not faithful. Faith is precisely the opposite of certainty. When we hold a faith in God, we admit that we do not have all the answers and that we may be wrong. We will make mistakes and our faith will evolve as it should. Faith cannot be contained in a tent on a mountain top. Faith cannot be kept in a locked room. Faith is living, transforming, moving us increasingly out of the darkness and into the light. Certainty comes when our earthly lives end and we meet our creator, that moment when all things become clear. Until then, we live in faith, always struggling to understand, always evolving based on the perspective we get from the mountaintop, on the perspective we get by being in community and sharing our experiences and our journey with God.
Nous étouffons l’Esprit Saint si nous exprimons avoir toutes les réponses. Nous essayons de renfermer Dieu dans une tente, dans une boite ou dans nos églises. Nous refusons d’écouter notre frère qui offre une perspective différente que la nôtre. Tout ça ne veut pas dire que nous allons toujours être d’accord avec notre prochain… mais Dieu nous demande d’écouter avec le cœur ouvert, d’évaluer en utilisant la tradition, l’écriture sainte, et la raison, et de permettre une évolution si cela est nécessaire face à l’expérience de l’autre. Et parfois, après avoir bien écouté, il est possible que notre perspective originale soit confirmée… mais l’exercice peut nous permettre d’approfondir notre foi – et d’être sensible à l’autre personne… si rien d’autre, pour créer de l’empathie.
I’m currently learning Spanish. I learned my two languages as a child and never really had to study grammar or vocabulary because things come more naturally when we are immersed and exposed to languages at that age. What I am realizing now is that I have to be willing to make mistakes if I am going to learn. I don’t like making mistakes. I want what I do and say to be correct from the beginning. I don’t like being wrong.
But learning a language is like learning anything… we have to be willing to try something before we get good at it. Faith is no different. Peter shows us a willingness to make mistakes, so say things that are wrong… and to learn from those, grow and evolve from them. That too is transformation. It’s just not as much fun as being right all the time… but God didn’t create us to be perfect, God created us to constantly encounter people who think differently than we do, who have experiences that are different from us. And the ability to learn.
This is the gift God gave us of living in community. Of understanding that our perspective isn’t the only one. That what we have learned is the product of our experiences… which are always going to be different than those of our neighbour.
Alors je nous invite cette semaine, lorsque nous préparons pour le Carême, d’affirmer notre humilité et notre sentiment d’écouter profondément. De s’ouvrir à la vie communautaire avec toutes ses joies et ses défis. Et vous, en tant que communauté en développement, de créer une culture dès le départ, qui reconnait la diversité comme un don divin. Si, en partant, votre ministère est axé vers les personnes qui arrivent de plusieurs différents pays avec des cultures et des parcours différents, il sera essentiel d’exercer vos muscles d’écoute et de flexibilité. De maitriser votre mission avec passion.
The United Church of Canada has been strengthening its own muscles to accommodate diversity: theologically, culturally and linguistically. As a church, we’ve spent almost 100 years seeing ourselves as Canada’s church, but we haven’t always demonstrated an openness to diversity. For many years, our church believed in supporting colonial approaches that told those who were different that they should change who they were so that they fit into the norm. Indigenous communities, racialized communities, even Francophones were told to change so that they could speak English and participate in British cultural practices. We have learned in the last few decades that this was not how we should live in community. Celebrating the diversity of who we are means learning and growing from each other… colonialism says that we have all the answers and we will force you to accept them. It is precisely the opposite to the way Christ lived and challenged the world he served.
Every time a Pharisee or Herodian challenged him on an aspect of religious faith, he would offer new perspective and a different way of seeing things… the United Church continues to work hard to live into this style of ministry. It isn’t easy, but we’re starting to find ways to do it.
My hope is that your presence in our church family will help us continue to live into this reality and bring new and energizing perspectives for all of us. I invite us all to take a walk to the mountain top and broaden our understanding of God’s will for us.
May we all follow Christ’s example and face the world with open hearts, listening for the whispers of the Holy Spirit as it speaks to us about other ways to see the world. May it be so for all of us. Amen.
- Rev. Éric Hébert-Daly is the Regional Executive Minister of Conseil régional Nakonha:ka Regional Council, Eastern Ontario Outaouais Regional Council and East Central Ontario Regional Council of The United Church of Canada. This bilingual reflection was shared with an African swahili-speaking emerging community of faith on February 11th, 2024.
The United Church of Canada
- Established in 1925
- Three founding denominations: Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists
- Biggest protestant church in Canada (2800 communities of faith, 1800 ministers)
- Largest period of growth 1960s
- English/French dynamic in Canada
- Articles of faith, creed, song of faith
- Congregationalist perspective is still very present: individual congregations make most decisions, ministry personnel subject to those decisions (authority)
- Regional Councils (16), Regional Executive Ministers (6), gatherings
- General Council
- Manual
- Ministers – Ordained, diaconal, DLM, lay worship leaders, CDM, women and men
- Continued association with United Methodists around the world
- Partnerships with specific denominations (recognition of ministry, shared ministry)