Thank you. I came among you in 2016 as a southern Ontario boy who knew what rural Ontario was like, but had no idea of what rural Manitoba was like. I had little idea of what was awaiting me. You have been kind, generous and compassionate to me. You have taught me an entire Encyclopedia Brittanica’s worth of knowledge in the experiences I have had serving you. I have come to love this place and all these people, both north and south, and I give thanks to God for your patience and wisdom in teaching me how to do this job.

It has been my privilege to walk with you, to learn from you, to advocate for you and to tell the world about the wonderful dedication and ministry that I have seen in Brandon. I am in awe of the laity who keep our parishes working, the clergy who are preaching and visiting and working day be day to care for the people of God in this place.

After 31 years of being ordained, I would like to observe that it is the nature of ministry that we are in a never ending cycle of beginnings and endings. Births and deaths, time turns on, and our lives change. I have imprinted on my mind many faces who are no longer with us – who have been gathered to Jesus and serve and praise him in his nearer presence. I give thanks for all of them too.

As I prepare to move to Kingston, Ontario, I wanted to take this opportunity to encourage you. The Diocese of Brandon has a great deal to offer to the whole church. We are living witnesses to a form of reconciliation and walking together that is a possibility in the church. We wait for each other. We listen to each other. We bear one another’s burdens. None of this is to say that there haven’t been difficult times, there have! But the ability to bear with the crises and trauma of every day life are in fact a sign of the resilience and gospel love which we have for one another.

I believe the next steps for the Diocese of Brandon are healthy ones which will deepen our commitment to reconciliation, broaden our educational offerings and deepen the commitment to discipleship which is already active in our midst. I am proud that for the 7 years, 6 months and 15 days I have served you as the Bishop of Brandon, I have been a part of your lives and part of the tremendous changes we have made. Not to us, but to God be the glory. God has done great things in our midst and will do greater still if we keep to the right path and walk with one another in trust of his plan and his will. I ask your blessing as I go, and tell the friends and family over in Ontario about your wonderful souls and the joy of knowing you. God bless you all.

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So much of putting Easter into action can be put down to living a new life, as a new humanity in a new way.  The new thing Jesus was doing in all of creation had been accomplished and so we were called to live in a way that showed forth that new life, new humanity and new world that we lived in. The readings after Easter each week assist us in facing all of the doubts and misunderstandings that follow from that new life. Thomas and his unwillingness to open his heart which had been broken only three days before. The blindness of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, reminding us of who the good shepherd really is, Jesus reassuring us that he is indeed the way to the Father, the assurance that the Spirit would not leave us orphaned and finally, just before Pentecost, Jesus prays for his disciples, that they would be one with him and with one another.

These weekly lessons are meant to strengthen us and reassure us that we have not been left alone in this new world, as a new humanity. The loss of what we knew is being comforted by God who is reassuring us that the new thing that is being done includes strength and hope for the days to come. You may not recognize it, but new life is not only on the way, it is here in your midst – now.

This mirrors the reaction of Mary Magdalene in front of the tomb on Easter morning. So focused on caring for the Lord’s body that she cannot recognize him as risen and glorified – Jesus has to call out her name in order to be recognized. Mary was determined to live out the consequences of the terror of the last three days, so determined that she couldn’t recognize the new life that was standing right before her. God is promising a new life to us, one that is so filled with his love and glory that we wouldn’t recognize it if we saw it, and those around us might not recognize us when we are in it. This is the promise of the resurrection: A new and deathless life.

So it is time to put Easter into action. Time to live in a way that opens hearts to God and sees new life around us. Time to recognize in those who are unseen or forgotten the people whom Jesus came to love and serve. Time to join in the chorus of praise and glory to the One who has made all things new around us, and in his own ultimate goal, defeated death itself.

May this Easter season continue to bless us all as we begin to recognize the gift we have been given and then grant us the will to live it out.

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I think too often we think of our own situation as resurrected in Christ, but not quite ready to step into that new life yet. I know I have been redeemed. I know that I am loved by God, but in some ways I think of that empty tomb as a safe place to hide: I know what God has done for me, but I am frightened of what that might mean.

In that case I imagine Jesus calls us out of the dark and cool peace of the tomb; into a riot of colour and the sound of birds and wind and the blinding light of the rising sun. You are no longer dead. You have been resurrected and that means that you must now find what it is that God has resurrected you for.

I was raised in the church that was obsessed with whether or not one was “saved”. It was a natural part of our language and I had understood clearly that I was saved from sin and death, so long as I kept to the straight and narrow road that I was always being warned about. However in all the years that I attended church, it was never made clear what I “saved” for! This question was a revelation.

The risen Jesus confronts me with a new life and this means that I have to look beyond the way I had always thought of myself, and what I had always thought about the world and my responsibility in proclaiming that new life. So….I’m risen with Jesus, and I have been given a new life. I have overcome sin and death and the grave because I have been buried with him in his death and I stand with him in the garden because I am raised with him to new life. Now what?

This is the question that faces us every Easter season. We celebrate on the day of the resurrection, but what about a few weeks later when the lilies have drooped and the brass is tarnishing again and the attendance at church as normalized after the Easter rush?

Then the good news has to grab us in a new way. The choice to leave the garden tomb is the choice to explore the new life we have been given and the new world which love has made for us. It requires risk. The risk to love, to be loved, and even to be rejected, but it also means that we face whatever cross that follows firm in the knowledge that death is a temporary inconvenience in the kingdom. It only holds us for a bit, and then we are back to living and This is why we can’t praising and preaching and caring and loving like we were before.

The drama and solemnity of Holy Week have led us to the glory of the empty tomb and can lead us to a new life with a new purpose. This is why at Easter we make our song : Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! We even learn to sing that song at our own graves because they will be emptied too.

Easter is about Christ rising from the dead, but even more so, it is about us being raised for a purpose: to live to his glory.

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Human nature says so much about our resolve and our ability to see through a task. The number of jokes among my gym-going friends when the crowds of early January thin out so quickly by the third week are significant. Some of my more dedicated gym-going friends hate January because of all the new people who show up and are gone within 6 weeks. Then the gym quiets down to the regular folks who use it at their regular times and the cycle continues.

The Christian life is an example of the need for the disciplines which the Lord taught forming and training us to respond to the highs and lows of our life in the way that a disciple should. Regularity of prayer, focus on and study of the scriptures,

participation in parish worship and fellowship – these are the “going to the gym” of being a Christian disciple. They are the exercises which focus us and form us to be the persons that God has created us to be. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are another set in our repertoire of spiritual exercise. They are meant to break down our ego so that our spirit might be strengthened. This way, Christ can grow in us and continually teach us to live into the promise of eternal life.

If prayer, fasting and almsgiving; regularity of prayer, study of scripture, attendance at worship and fellowship are all the exercises we are meant to use to build up our spiritual muscles, then Lent is the seasonal gym in which we are put through our exercises and seek to develop further.

I have seen personal trainers who encourage and push their clients to reach the goals they have set, and rejoice with them when they achieve the gains they have been attempting while they develop themselves. Lent is slightly different. Lent is a period of time set aside to prepare ourselves for the Easter celebration. It’s not like we are seeking to fit into a better bathing suit – that’s not the kind of preparation I am thinking of – rather, that we are taking the time to focus on the magnitude of God’s love for us, and so we are preparing ourselves to meet him on Good Friday, facing up to our sin, and rejoice with him on Easter Day where we are set free from fear and death.

I should note too that this time set aside for us comes around every year like clockwork because of our human nature. We are meant to do this again and again so that we don’t forget it.  It is only human to be impatient, to lack compassion, to be angry or short with others. It is human nature to be selfish and blind to the needs of others. It is human nature to fail at the goals we have set and hide from responsibility. Scripture tells that whole story from the very beginning in the garden. Human nature will get in the way of our relationships with one another and with God. In order to overcome this we need discipline – and to be disciples.

So it is time to think about our Lenten disciplines, and concentrate hard on our exercise regimen so that we can deepen our relationship with God and be ready to enter into the Paschal mystery more deeply. This practice can and will change our lives if we just stick with it…and the best part is we are not alone while we exercise. We are surrounded by other disciples who are also working to become more patient, kind, compassionate, prayerful, wise or any other number of gifts the Lord would like to lavish upon us.  We only need to get started and now is the time.

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– Psalm 27:1
(Book of Common Prayer translation)

It is ironic that we dig so deeply, first into Christmas and then into the Epiphany Season in what is the darkest and coldest part of the year. This of course is both a cultural inheritance to us which is the result of the northern hemisphere having its winter in these months. I am reliably assured by friends in the Southern hemisphere that the stories of light triumphing over darkness, of Christmas and the holy family hiding from the evil King Herod on a winter road strike differently in midsummer. 

For us, the triumph of light over darkness, one of the central themes of Epiphany is summed up beautifully by Psalm 27, the psalm which is regularly sung in this season. The Psalm is reminding us of both the faithfulness and power of God to be the very bedrock of our life. That we need not fear any of the slings or arrows that might be sent against us while we celebrate and revel in the light of Jesus Christ which has been a revelation to us. A revelation which is the sovereign act of God for our good.

In the early church, when the teachers and preachers wanted to explain the will of God and the desire of God to love us completely, they used the language of light. Think back to how many prayers you have heard talk about “the light of the world” or ask God to “illumine our hearts”. The scriptures themselves are meant to be “light to our path and a lantern to our feet”. The language of light seems to be a natural one in explaining what it is we are seeking from God, or what God is Christ has been sent to do for us. I want you consider one more way in which light is used in how we think of our Christian life together.

No one gets to “own” light. If you strike a match in a darkened room, the light can be seen by everyone. Depending on where the lamp is placed, the whole room can share in its warmth and power to show the way. Making your way through a darkened place, holding your torch (or cell phone, I suppose) makes the way safer for any who are following.

Share the light! Share the light of God which you have received. Lift it high so that others might find their way to the same peace and serenity you desire in your walk with Jesus. The world is already filled with so much darkness that we need to lift one another up into the light of Christ’s presence, through 

prayer, through fellowship, through our daily life and walk together. We all know the passage “let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven”. We say it at every baptism, and it is meant not only to be an encouragement, but a way of life for daily living that we might lift one another up. This new year of 2023, let us all commit to lifting one another up into the light of Christ and showing the way forward for those who are struggling.

Do not let judgement or jealousy lead us to darken other’s paths. Let us not lay stumbling blocks before those who may be struggling, but rather let us help one another pray, and ask the Lord to illumine the way forward “out of darkness and into his marvelous light!”

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– Romans 8:24-25

I have made it no secret through the years that I love the season of Advent. The music of this season, the darkening days, the scripture we read which tells us of the expectation of God’s might final acts in this world, they all add up to a season of hope for me. This hope is different than the garden variety hope which we all learn as children. This is not the expectation of a coming party on a birthday, or the countdown to the end of school and beginning of summer holidays. Those are all instances of expectation – but the expectation is for something we know, or have experienced before. In Advent, we are expecting a might act of God, which we cannot know, for it is the stuff of faith.

Expectation can be a powerful force in our lives. Anyone who has tried to get a child to sleep on Christmas Eve when the expectation of the next morning is so real will know whereof I speak. Expectation is a state where we allow our minds to wander into the particular delight, the single pleasure for which we have been made to wait. Fantasies of the Christmas Tree piled high with presents, or day dreaming about the long lazy days of summer while sitting in a classroom in the middle of June are good examples of the power of expectation.

But hope, especially in the kingdom of God is not like that expectation. There is expectation to be sure: we expect God to arrive and with a mighty arm set up his kingdom, return to the temple and begin the reign of justice and joy which had been foretold. But we can’t exactly daydream about what that will look like because we have never seen it or experienced it fully before. We have definitely had flashes of it. We have experienced moments in our lives where God may have swept us off our feet with the power of his love and the transforming power of grace. These are flashes…inklings of what is to come. They are not the whole kingdom, rather they are a flash of the sun off of a lake: blinding and beautiful, but a reflected glory.

Advent is about what we cannot see, cannot know and yet believe will change everything. Advent is about hope in the coming Kingdom and in the One who will bring this kingdom into being. Hope is the most powerful emotion because it can make suffering bearable. Hope can make expectation and its power fade, for when hope is present, trust in the outcome becomes a matter of faith, and not a matter of knowledge.

We are now entering Advent, and my prayer for you and the Diocese of Brandon is that you will feel the power of hope which the Christ brings to those who put their trust in him. That there is something, someone, coming that will change everything for you. It was to the forgotten, the hungry and the broken that he came. The rich and the powerful did not need the hope which he came to bring. They weren’t even interested in the message which Jesus proclaimed until they began to understand that his preaching might upset their comfortable lives. Jesus is still here, calling us into the deeper hope of the kingdom, still preaching the end of the powers who have oppressed and broken the people of God. Advent is about that hope: the topsy-turvy kingdom of God where the meek inherit the earth and where those who mourn are comforted.

May that hope grow in you each and every day as we approach the birth in time of the timeless Son of God.

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As a bishop I spend a great deal of time visiting in parishes and nosing about in parish halls. One of my favourite things to do is inspect the line of photos usually put up of all the former rectors of a parish. Often called the “Rogues Gallery”, I have my own place hanging on walls of parish halls back in Ontario. I see in them such faithfulness and commitment to the work of helping the people of the land through all of time. Dusty photographs of Ivor Norris standing proudly with confirmation classes; Or Wilfred Thomas standing by as the members of Synod stand around him. I often think that we are doing our best to honour their work, for in many ways we are their living legacy. 

You might think that what we leave behind when we depart this life is memory (often in the form of photographs) and stone – usually a headstone marking that we lived. Beyond a will and the financial settlements that follow us, the permanent testimonies of our existence on this earth are usually few in number. Unless you count the lives we have the chance to touch. I still tell stories of my grandmother, who died in 1972. I still remember stories about my great- grandfather told me by those who knew him late in his life – and he was born in 1857! 

You and I, while we live now are the living legacy of those who have gone before us. We are the love letter that previous generations have written to the future. This is a beautiful thought and it comes with a large dose of a sense of responsibility in that we are in the process of writing our own letter to the future. We are the people that others will one day tell stories about. We are making, right now, the memories that will be treasured – or worried over for generations to follow. 

The Diocese of Brandon is a place where we are learning to love and transform our lives into the Christ-like persons we are meant to be. We are proclaiming a gospel that is life-giving, and, reconciling us with the traumas and broken hearts of the past – this gospel is calling us to be brave about moving into the future to which God has created. The photographs on the wall, or the headstones with names we love are the remnants of the lives and loves who were once transformed and now rest with the Father in heaven. 

Be mindful as you spend time with the little ones, or the youth as you speak of your faith. It is our responsibility to pass on to them what was handed to us by those who taught us to pray. Be the love letter your ancestors wrote, and become yourself the message to the future upon which the next generations can rely. Be more than stone, and more than photograph. Be the loving arms which someone will remember long after you are gone. Be the heart of faith that others will teach long after your own heart is with God. 

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Much ink has been spilled over the politics of the pre-Lambeth period, and the decisions around the “Lambeth Calls”. Each call is a statement of commitment of the dioceses of the Anglican Communion to work toward the intended goals set out in each of the calls. The calls covered: Mission and Evangelism, Safe Church, Anglican Identity, Reconciliation, Human Dignity, Environment and Sustainable Development, Christian Unity, Inter-Faith Relations, Discipleship and finally, Science and Faith. The final texts of these calls which were worked on this summer will be made public as this year unfolds.

In the controversies that developed in the days up to Lambeth I had to observe that the press did not seem to be attending the same conference I was. What I heard on my phone and through texts and tweets and messages did not match with the conversations and goodwill I had experienced around me. 

What I experienced was very much an breaking through of the Holy Spirit into a group that was seeking to find a way together to give witness to Jesus Christ in all the varied contexts we faced. It looked to me like to those who were looking to find a path forward, the Lord supplied one through the wise intervention and teaching of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have come away from Lambeth with a sense of gratitude for our church and its mission and through the whole world.

There are parts of the communion that look nothing like us. There are parts of the communion that look similar, and there are parts of the communion with whom we share the day to day struggles of our work in the kingdom. But one thing was made very plain to me, and that was that we are all seeking of the will of God to serve in our culture, our community and in spite of the history which we carry with us every day.

We face many challenges in the Diocese of Brandon. But we are blessed beyond measure that we have the faithful laity and clergy working together for the good of the kingdom right where we are. We have many challenges to face, not least of which is the development of clergy resources and getting people whom God has called to step forward in faith and serve. I am confident that the Lambeth Calls, when they are published will help us in a way forward on Mission and Evangelism, Safe Church, Anglican Identity, Reconciliation, Human Dignity, Environment and Sustainable Development, Christian Unity, Inter-Faith Relations, Discipleship and, Science and Faith.

I thank you all for the privilege of serving as your bishop and representing you at Lambeth and I was proud to tell the story of the Diocese of Brandon and our desire to walk the reconciling path together in Christ Jesus.

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Growing up in school, I was taught by older teachers who drilled english grammar into our heads until we could parse and diagram a sentence in our sleep. I have a particular memory of my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Holbrook reminding us over and over again that the word ‘but’ negates everything that precedes it, so we had to be very careful in how we used it.

From the sixth grade perspective, that’s not hard to understand. Imagine a teacher breaking up a fight on the playground. The first defence is always “But he hit me first!” The word ‘but’ is meant to excuse the second punch in light of who threw the first punch. Mrs. Holbrook simply would not, in writing or in life, let us use the word ‘but’ in a way that tried to weasel out of responsibility or dismiss injury or injustice. I can hear her now in my mind saying,  “‘But’ is a word that can cause injury on top of injury because it may dismiss pain while trying to justify it.”

Many that try to defend the church from the injustices or injuries it has inflicted often begin the defense with a ‘but’. To those who are trying to heal from injustice or broken hearts, that ‘but’ that starts the statement is another layer of pain on top of the burden they are already carrying. An ocean of good

works the church has accomplished can dry up in the eyes of someone who has been injured, if the church fails to care properly.

Even on the flip side, when the church reaches out to those who are the guilty parties in our responsibility to care for all – the ‘but’ is often employed again in righteous indignation to suggest that we should cut people off – “But they are responsible for so much pain!”

These are the frail and human uses of the word ‘but’.

But there is another way to use the word. That is – the way it is used in scripture by God. The words ‘but God’ appear repeatedly in scripture to remind us of the true mercy, love and compassion on offer. The sentence structures are often the exact same as Mrs. Holbrook deplored, but the things that are being negated are all the failures we lay down.                                                      

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”               —Psalm 73:26

“When they had carried out all that the scriptures said about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead;”
—Acts 13:29-30

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” 
—Romans 5:6-8

I think Mrs. Holbrook would accept and applaud all these uses of the ‘but’ because they are all instances of how grace interrupts the cycle of death, or pain, or sin. This is the essential message we have to offer people that are deep in their own troubles or pain as they live them out. We can pour out before him all the reasons that we are unworthy, unready, unhappy, unloveable and unreachable. But God tells that inner storm “peace, be still” and we are made one with him again. We can all rejoice that we are living our daily lives after the but God. We can share this message with everyone who feels unworthy, unready, unhappy, unloveable and unreachable and we can become the living, breathing, incarnate but God to them.

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So in fact, the Church doesn’t have a mission, but rather that the Mission of God has a Church. If you think about that for any length of time, you will perhaps want me to take a run at deepening what I have written. As a Church, Anglicans are “Directed by Mission” We use the term Mission quite freely. What it means is complicated, but is summed up this way: God is active. God is moving and calling us to move. Through Jesus Christ, God has made a new heaven, a new earth and a new humanity and that we are part of the new thing God is doing in the world. The Church is the mechanism through which God is doing the new thing. As members of the Church then, we are part of “the new thing” God is doing in Christ. So for faithful Christians, aware of God’s action in Jesus and focused on the “new thing” God has done, the question that follows now is a simple but deep one: What is God up to now? 

I will give a shorter answer. The mission of God is marked always by a consistent theme. In Christ, we do impossible things with improbable people. The story of our Church, the story of every believer when it is told through the lens of God’s mission is a story of things which seemed impossible – and yet were accomplished; by people who were the improbable choice, and yet were called by God to “do 

it anyway!” Consider the place in which our church is planted. Contemplate the unlikely group who join with you in worship and then understand the astonishing idea that God is acting in this world: using this improbable people to do impossible things. 

This shouldn’t surprise us. Scripture is filled with the stories of improbable choices. God has a habit of choosing “the wrong kind of person” for important jobs. They only seem “the wrong kind of person” to us, but God sees things differently and accomplishes impossible things through “the wrong kind of person”. Perhaps it only seems an improbable choice because God chooses the vulnerable, the weak and the broken to accomplish his will. Like St. Paul reminds us, God uses us in our weakness, not our strength and so by using what appear to be foolish candidates for his work in the world, God shows the world how foolish it is. 

This will not mean that we will always get it right. It does not mean we will always understand. Sin still separates us one from another. Pride and envy and jealousy and hard-heartedness still have a foot-hold in all of us. To be directed by mission is to admit that fellow Anglicans, and fellow Christians are all part of the picture. Even how we understand and treat fellow human beings who do not believe in Jesus testify to the truth of God’s mission. Unfailingly we believe Jesus is the way that God is doing “a new thing” and all our relationships must reflect that truth. 

But this is good news for us in another way. God is acting in the Diocese of Brandon and we as Anglicans have accepted the mission which God has given us. We may think ourselves “the wrong sort of people” for God to depend on for success, but that is rather the point! If we depend on ourselves we will naturally fail, but if in our weakness we let God work through us, there is a world of impossible things that can be accomplished through us. The deaf will hear, the lame will walk, the dead will be raised and the poor will have the good news preached to them – not because of who we are, but because of who He is! The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, and he has anointed us to go and preach that good news. 

This is the natural “attitude adjustment” that comes with being Directed by Mission. An understanding that God is active, and using us, improbable candidates though we are, to accomplish the impossible things God wants done as part of the “new thing” that Jesus brings us. In the end, it is not us, but God who accomplishes in us more than we can ask or imagine. We dared not imagine it because we thought it impossible, and we didn’t ask because we were sure we weren’t worthy. The thing is, God figured that it made us perfect for the job. 

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