A Temple People

So, let’s start with a confession. I admit that, at times, when not at my best, I walk into sanctuaries for a College Sunday or when invited to assist faith communities dream about the future, that cynicism has reared its head. I have and do find it challenging. I have gotten stuck when hearing a desire for the old days, a lament of where the young people are, perhaps even the gnashing of teeth about how to get more people into pews, so those in leadership can hang up their mantle of Discipleship, which they no longer find a light burden. In these temples, I have not always experienced the sacred, but rather privilege and coloniality’s obscuring shroud.

49 Jesus said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know I had to be in my Abba’s house?”

In the last several years, the place where despair meets the temple has felt closer to the surface than I have ever experienced. It sometimes feels like a road rash at which you work until you realise that your worrying has broken the skin. Even in the midst of the pandemic, the last several weeks have only amped up the weight that one brings into the sanctuary.

We have experienced violence that has broken the veneer that might lead us to believe we are immune. As the trauma experienced in James Smith Cree Nation reached out coupled with multiple gun related events in Saskatchewan, a friend from South Africa shared that, for them, this is normal; it just does not get reported anymore. This numbing is not the way things are supposed to be, but it is what sometimes happens when we get habituated to the way in which we are involved in causing and/or experiencing marginalisation and oppression. It is what happens when cynicism and despair find their way into a temple without Hope.

On the third day, they came upon Jesus in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.

When Bill invited me to consider offering a Reflection, I knew we were going to be using the Saskatoon Theological Union (STU) Covenant as a cornerstone. I also recognised the challenges we have collectively and individually experienced. Thinking of this invitation, as I sat watching the ritual of goodbye to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, I saw this ornate temple, filled with pageantry and beauty, and the tension of power, Empire and many layers of challenge that felt overwhelming. I was admittedly unsure how to speak about Good News tonight.

Then I heard young Wells, our neighbour’s child, singing a tune that reminded me of another young boy. A child who chose to be in temple, both at the beginning of his wisdom dawning and the last place, as an adult, where he made a public entrance. Jesus spoke wisdom that awed, and that reminds me of the import of any temple in which we find ourselves–In our particularity, as the Staff and Faculty of the Saskatoon Theological Union.

So, for what are we supposed to listen?
What questions might we ask?

We are, as a learning community, engaged in journeying with people who are Called to be in the temple. In these sacred places, where humanity meets Holy Mystery, listening is foremost an active aspect of discipleship. Whether that is listening to a community’s context to understand how practice and theology might help to bring healing or food to the hungry, or hearing about how some of our doctrine have caused harm and require revaluation, the people who come into our midst are seeking companions to further prepare them in their specific locations and places.

Our covenant is just one step, as a living document, that we commit to this shared journey in ensuring that the temple is a place of Light and not diminished, even extinguished, by human cynicism and despair. As the STU Covenant Group listened to our communities in the shaping of this living commitment, it naturally led and leads to questions.

Whether as academic wondering with critique about what a community shares at temple, (Pause)
whether as a disciple journeying with their flock in temple asking questions to release the promise they alone carry, (Pause)
or in our colleges and denominations asking questions about how we might do more together than any one of us could on our own, (Pause)
listening and questioning are revelatory promises of liberation.

Mary stored these things in her heart, 52 and Jesus grew in wisdom, in years and in favor with God and people alike.

In these challenging and hopeful days, when we walk with one another and the Other, this faithful commitment invites wisdom’s dawning. From the beginning of one’s ministry being encouraged to listen and ask, becomes a lifelong relationship with learning that actively nurtures compassion.

In these challenging and hopeful days, when the STU walks together, this faithful commitment we share invites us to recognise wisdom dawning in our midst. In nurturing another’s Call to ministry and knowledge’s formation within our learned walls, our institutions develop a lifelong relationship to learn and adapt to what the temple is telling us the world needs from the Good News.

49 Jesus said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know I had to be in my Abba’s house?”

May It Be So