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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Today, we are gonna start a new series together. I'm gonna say more about that in a moment because I actually wanna quickly plug where we just finished off. Listen, I know, alright, I think we all know actually that many of us are in and out through these warmer months and that you might not actually track with the messages and with community because you're away or you're gone. We designed our teaching in July and in August with this in mind actually, but you shouldn't sleep on our last conversation. I promise you.
Speaker 2:See, it could just be that I like hearing from my colleagues and having my mind and my heart stretched by their thoughtfulness, but I loved our discussion of patron saints. You may have heard of Renee Gerard or Amy Jill Levine or Mary Oliver or Anthony Bloom before we talked about them. It's also possible that you googled them while you sat here in church. That's fine. Either way, we hope that you caught a little glimpse of how this, this gift of a community, this work we do, it's drawn from the lives of so many incredible individuals.
Speaker 2:And it's helpful to see that our commitments to non violence and intellectual honesty and poetic sensibility and the mystery of what it means to pray, the things that make commons, commons. That these are part of a broad and an expansive and a beautiful tradition. So, you didn't have a chance to listen to those messages yet, please do. You will enjoy them, I promise. But you will also catch a glimpse of who we aspire to be.
Speaker 2:Now, before we jump in with both feet today, let's take a moment. There's lots of busyness, lots of distraction in our lives, and here we are sitting together. So I wanna invite you to pause, and let's pray together. Join me now. God, you are present in the gift of this moment.
Speaker 2:You're here in this chance to be aware of each other, to hold some space to feel and to rest perhaps, to pay attention. For you are the creative force behind all things. You're the sustaining force that guides us. And despite where we find ourselves, maybe all is good and right, and perhaps it's not. Maybe we find ourselves caught up in a very real life where there never seems to be enough of the good, where it can feel like there's so much that weighs us down.
Speaker 2:And for all we carry that we should not this morning, would you come and you would you remind us to let go? For all we face that we cannot control, would you come and be peace, the peace that we need now and in the days and moments to come? We pray together you would go before us now into story and into words that are meant to bring life to every place in us that might be dark or dry or neglected today. Gracious spirit, renew us. We ask in the name of Christ, our hope.
Speaker 2:Amen. Alright. Well, today, we are gonna move on into a series called what makes you happy. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about the roots of happiness, a day on the river, what I've learned, and finally, I'm gonna focus in on a particular story from Jesus' life that helps me see all of these things. If you've been around for a while though, you might remember that we did a series like this a couple of years ago when our teaching team each took turns talking and discussing something that makes us feel alive.
Speaker 2:It was a lot of fun for us as a team. The community enjoyed it as well, so we brought it back. And we do this because it's a nice summer vibe, but albeit with an awareness of how this conversation is shaped in some measure by our position and our privilege. I mean, I spent a bunch of time thinking and writing about what makes me happy. And you're going to have the leisure and the space to listen to four sermons about happiness if you want to.
Speaker 2:So let's proceed with our eyes open. Shall we? Because our intention with this series isn't to be self centered, but rather to engage all of life as spiritual practice. It's important to regularly pay attention to the places in our lives that spark awareness and healing and imagination. And doing this regularly is a crucial way to push back against the forces of things like apathy and discouragement when they come to us.
Speaker 2:It's also a great way to cultivate gratitude and to, as one medieval mystic put it, to practice the presence of God. That said, we live in a time when happiness has become the fascination of researchers across many disciplines. If you are looking for some breezy summer reading, you have so many options. There is the Journal of Happiness Studies, for example. There's popular books like The Happiness Project or The Happiness Equation.
Speaker 2:You know what? You might even think you could study your way to better days. Because as a species, we continue to search for and to find the scientific ingredients of well-being and the subjective experience of the good life. But the truth is is that the study of happiness has deep roots that stretch back thousands of years, at least to when ancient Greek philosophers were disputing two apparent paths to realizing the best of human experience. One of these ways was defined by the Greek term, hidonei, hidonei, which simply means delight or pleasure.
Speaker 2:It's actually where we get our English word hedonism. Right? And there were and are many specialists today even that contend that happiness is defined by the pursuit and the realization of pleasure or positive feelings. This contrasts with the idea of eudaimonia, which is actually attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. That term literally means human flourishing.
Speaker 2:And for Aristotle, it was defined by the cultivation of moral and intellectual potential. Aristotle thought that all of us should live an active and an engaged life regardless of where we are. Not squandering our consciousness, our skill, or our talent. So where hedonia means feeling good, eudaimonia means being and doing good. And while scientists continue to show that while the pleasure we experience is real, can be beneficial for many of us, in many instances, that same research is continuing to uncover how right Aristotle was.
Speaker 2:That it's the cultivation of eudaimonia or happiness with meaning. This has lasting, measurable, and more fulfilling outcomes in our lives. And with this in mind, let's turn briefly to something that makes me happy, and that is fly fishing. Now, if you don't know and if you're immediately scared, quick non technical description here. First of all, if you've ever been on Deerfoot and you see someone standing in the Bow River like this, assume they're fly fishing or hope they're fly fishing actually.
Speaker 2:This is actually my son, Brandon, down on the Elbow West Of Bragg Creek a couple weeks ago. Fly fishing is generally a technique that involves using light artificial lures that mimic insects to get fish to come to the top so you can catch them. Because those lures are so light, the method often involves a casting technique where the line is rhythmically tossed forward and back. You've probably seen somebody practicing this in the park with their fishing rod. Right?
Speaker 2:Trying to get the momentum and to achieve the distance necessary. And that limited range is actually why anglers often have to stand and wade in the water in order to reach the fish where they are. Now, I wanna be completely clear that I am a novice in this practice. Just picked it up about four years ago. And Commons actually has a number of expert anglers, some in the room today, hanging around.
Speaker 2:My guess is that there might be a few of you here today also who dabbled with this practice. This is partly maybe because of this city having an avid outfitter subculture. It's also because Calgary is right in the heart of one of the world's great fly fishing watersheds. See, don't know if you know this, but the tributaries and the running water around where we are sitting right now are among the best, especially to the South and to the West and to the Northwest of this city. And people come from around the world to explore and to fish right here.
Speaker 2:Even even the bow itself flowing just a few 100 meters south of here. It's an incredible it has an incredible reputation as a destination river. It's home multiple species of trout to get they get people waiting and casting around the twelve months. Now, many of you are aware that I like to spend some of my spare time outside. The last time we did a series like this, I talked about my love of hiking and wild places.
Speaker 2:And to that end, this sermon might feel like a bit of a retread or a bit of a sequel. And you know what? I'm not even sorry about it. I'm not even gonna evade the charge. Because I am enamored with the light and the rock and the trees and the landscapes of this place where we live.
Speaker 2:Few things make me happier than when I am driving west with a pack that has snacks in it and several hours to go somewhere where I am freed to venture where I've never been. And listen, if you are indoorsy and you don't know how to connect with this affection I'm sharing with you, that's fine. I'm gonna have more to say about what our pursuits teach us about living spiritual life in a second. Don't tune out completely. The truth is is that like most of you, I spend the majority of my life inside, often in meetings or in front of my computer.
Speaker 2:Consequently, discernment is not intended as a moral imperative to get outside where it's cold and all the bugs and the ferocious mammals are waiting for you. I get it. It's not for everybody. What I am trying to convey is less how you should get outside and start fishing. Because a, I don't know if you'll find it compelling and b, I'm not that good at it.
Speaker 2:But also, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to explore for just a second why it's captivating for me. And I can only speak from my experience. How a day on the river has taught me something of life's passing. How it's always moving. And how there's nothing I can do to stem the stream of time.
Speaker 2:My days on the river have taught me to take deep breaths when I am frustrated more than any therapy could. To zoom out from the knot in my line or the knot in my life and take in the wide expanse of any given moment. See, I often spend my days on the river with people that I love, relationships that are a great inexhaustible spring of happiness. This is something that we all long to find and drink deeply from. And then finally, my days on the river continue to connect me with tangible forms of ecological awareness and advocacy, such as the current ongoing local effort to prevent clear cutting scheduled for Kananaskis in this coming year.
Speaker 2:And why? Because I walk the riverbeds, and I observe the species that are impacted by invasive industry. This is the kind of happiness worth pursuing for everyone, whatever the place or the practice. The kind of happiness that wakes you up, that restores your soul, the kind that asks more of you. Now that said, one of the reasons I wanted to give you just a snapshot of this part of my life is because it's emblematic of my love for learning new things.
Speaker 2:This love is why I'm a sucker for the random historical fact or the obscure sports statistic. It's why I love non fiction and longitudinal studies and even the occasional celebrity gossip. You can't judge me Because learning makes me happy. In part, because it is so fiercely and self aggrandizingly pointless at times. See, some learning will make you better.
Speaker 2:Some learning will be essential to your growth. Some learning is important for your vocation in the world. But one of my favorite kinds of learning is the kind that is simply an open armed acceptance of all that is. Where there is no utilitarian pursuit. To learn for the sake of knowing something and remembering it.
Speaker 2:To learn for the sake of discovering something and being surprised by it. To learn for the sake of being. Being who I am and who I was meant to be. And taking up fly fishing has proven it's proved to be a master class in this kind of learning for me. On the one hand, it does this because when I fish, I catch the fish and I release the fish.
Speaker 2:And to some, that is the definition of a pointless activity. Some of you are looking at me like, what? You actually try to catch them and then you just let them go again? It's cruel. The truth is is that I don't fish to fill my frying pan or my freezer.
Speaker 2:I fish for the love of fresh air and water, for the beauty and admiration of resilient trout species, and I've also come to realize I fish for the feeling of not being good at something. Quick backstory here. I didn't grow up around people who fished. No one in my family did, so I didn't learn how. But I did, by some chance of serendipity, to end up with a son who is enamored by reptiles and bugs and fish, nature over nurture, I assure you.
Speaker 2:And when he was quite young, he started to hound us to take him fishing. And I avoided it for a couple of years, passively resisting his curiosity and his willingness to try something new. Until I was able to avoid this. Until he shared this burning desire to learn how to fish with our friend Devin. And some of you might know Devin.
Speaker 2:He's a long time member and leader around our community. He also happens to be a terrific angler. So Devin took us out. My son is much smaller in this photo than he is now. And, I didn't have a clue.
Speaker 2:I was more than a little insecure about knowing nothing about this thing we were gonna spend all day doing. But, Devin outfitted us, he picked the spot, he guided us, he taught us some basic skills, and we had a perfectly magical day. In part, because the conditions were amazing, nobody else was there on the river with us, but also because Brandon, my son, caught his first fish that afternoon. There, by the side of this tranquil green pool nestled in a nook of the Highwood River, he finally pulled one out of the water. It was an incredible moment.
Speaker 2:I was trying to film and I was screaming, and Devin was there with big big smile on his face. And right afterwards, this is what happened. Brandon just put his head down. I don't know why that makes me emotional. He was so speechless.
Speaker 2:Just overwhelmed at the beauty of it all. And in our trip since, I've had some incredible experiences despite being so bad at this. There's so many tricks of the trade and there's new gear to master and there's a skill of reading water to develop and then there's also the insects. You have to pay attention to when insects hatch to be good at this and I'm so woefully bad at it. But you know what?
Speaker 2:I keep going. And there's two things that become really clear as I've learned to practice not being good at something. The first is that the more I choose to keep putting myself into a position to learn, the more I choose to bring my son along for good days and the days where we don't see fish much less catch any, I finally get a little bit better at dropping what bell hooks, feminist scholar says is the false mask of fearlessness. This persona that many of us probably struggle with, but it's one that Hooks argues many men especially are socialized into carrying and putting on in the world. It's a persona that locks many men, people like me, into positions or into prisons of expertise.
Speaker 2:We stay where we have specialized knowledge. We stay where we have a false security that's developed from choosing to never be vulnerable. And these are prisons that keep us away from new experiences and deep emotional awareness and away from those that we are afraid to be anything other than strong and in control with. The second point of clarity, well, it's that the most meaningful learning I've gone through hasn't been done alone. The discovery that generally I can't learn anything without having to learn from or with another person.
Speaker 2:That to choose to grow and to try new things and to be bad at something as I develop, this actually connects me more deeply to other people. And I have discovered this from those who keep coming to the river with me bad as I am. Like my buddy who just a couple weeks ago called down to me in the water as I'm struggling and said graciously, hey, Scott. You open to some coaching? For you, it might be an author, might be a mentor, might be a manager, might be a colleague, might be a friend, might be a coach, might be your therapist.
Speaker 2:There's no end to the ways that happiness might appear in you where you least expect it, right there in that place where you don't know and you can't control, but you choose to be curious and to try and to learn. And this idea has become central to how I think about the things that bring me happiness. The things that keep me learning, things that keep me curious. And it's convinced me that to pay attention to this is deeply spiritual. I've come to this conviction through my experiences I've been relating to you, but also because I've begun to see hints of this principle in the stories we have about Jesus' life.
Speaker 2:And what they tell us and hint to us of of God's nature and of our truest nature too. One of the clearest examples, it's a short one. I'm gonna share it with you now. It's found early in the gospel of Luke. We read there that Jesus and his family, they had custom, this family practice of going to the city of Jerusalem for a religious festival and that after that particular festival was over while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2:His parents weren't aware of it. Jesus' parents eventually realized that they've lost him so they put out a yellow alert for the son of God and they start looking. And after three days, they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them, asking them questions. And everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. Such an interesting picture, isn't it?
Speaker 2:The preteen Jesus so enamored with the temple and all the activity and all that's going on with the groups in conversation about the scripture, he forgets who he's with. He forgets who he is, like most 12 year olds actually. And the gospel goes on to say that his parents were bothered. They were astonished. But that from that time, Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and men.
Speaker 2:And that might seem like an innocent one off vignette, but I think there's some substantial theology baked in here that relates to what I've been talking to you about. See, this is one of many texts that scholars use to discuss Jesus' self understanding. To speculate how Jesus was aware or if Jesus was aware that he was Jesus. That he was divine while he was living a human life. And this has become a particular theological fascination of mine.
Speaker 2:How Jesus seems to be aware of his identity at certain moments. Clearly feels he has certain work to do, but also how he had to grow into it as this story and text imply. And Christian theologians use the term hypostatic union to try and describe this concept. And what they're trying to get at with that terminology is simply that in his underlying substance, Jesus was truly divine and truly human. That as N.
Speaker 2:T. Wright puts it, the human Jesus discloses in himself the being and the nature of the true God. Which is to say that in this little story, as we catch a glimpse of Jesus caught up in the moment and asking questions, listening to others, letting thoughtful answers come, and as we learn from this story that Jesus grew in wisdom, grew into wisdom, that he developed, that he matured, that he advanced. We he we see here that we catch a glimpse of curiosity as a divine attribute. We catch a glimpse of curiosity as a pathway into being more fully human.
Speaker 2:Listen, the the gospels show us that Jesus will go on to ask more than 300 questions. And sure, many of these are rhetorical, they're there for his audience to engage them, but I don't skip past the fact that so many of the questions Jesus asked give us a picture of how God in Christ explored the world and drew near to the world with questions and curiosity. Remember, Jesus asked things like, who do you guys say that I am? Why why are we all so afraid? What what do you want?
Speaker 2:He asked in one instance. And right at the end of the story, we hear that he asked his friend Peter, do you love me? And if we are to accept that it was at least in part in the asking of these questions, in the practice of curiosity, in the act of listening, and in the cultivated self awareness that Jesus became more like Jesus, that Jesus learned to be God's self, that in the questions God learned how to be human. Couldn't we give ourselves space to do the same? I mean, when's the last time you thought about how much you've changed in five years?
Speaker 2:Or had the courage to ask yourself what you think your greatest untapped potential is right now? Have you ever thought of those questions as spiritual or as Christ like? There's so many more ways to be courageous and curious like this. When we ask ourselves questions like, what might happen if I get the help I know I need? What would it sound like if I was open to a particular relation to a particular relationship instead of closed off to it?
Speaker 2:What might it look like if I were to hold my anxiety with some tenderness instead of fighting with it as I act in an area of my life where I've been so afraid? What would it look like for you to pay attention to the pleasure and the delight that connect you to other people? Or to be honest about how you're so deeply happy when you're caring for those you love and you serve and how you want to be there more often and you wanna do that more. See, fly fishing has taught me to let such questions surface in my life. And, I'm convinced that these are the kinds of questions that help us grow deep roots of happiness.
Speaker 2:Happiness with meaning. And why? Well, because they're formed by the kind of curiosity that we see in Jesus. And because I'm learning that they guide me into the life that Jesus shows me is best. And listen, while the river and the fish and the deep blue sky may not be where you source your happiness, I do hope they inspire you to go and find out where you can.
Speaker 2:Let's pray. Loving God, we choose to pause and let all of this sink in. Maybe a a word or an image or a memory that comes to us. All of these things are the great mystery of your tender voice and your work in us and we don't wanna rush. We're so grateful for spaces like this.
Speaker 2:Even as we choose to acknowledge the ways that you have kept us, how time and time again you have guided us in those places and with those where we know we come alive. Spirit, you are always there. And in those places where we are less than perfect, where we fail, where we're bad at things, where we have this recurring opportunity to face our fear, let go of the masks that we wear, we pray, would you come and would you help us to be curious And would you help us to learn well? Would you help us to discover meaningful happiness? And let us see the ways that you are always there in those spaces too, inviting us further into the kind of life that Jesus shows us is possible.
Speaker 2:We ask these things in the name of Christ, our hope. Amen.