Awaken Bowness Podcast

Illuminated Dark/Illuminating Light: Hope

This Advent we will contemplate the way light interacts with darkness in personal, collective, and astronomical ways. When the nights are long and the days are filled with gloom; when the frozen air slows our bodies down, we join the ancient tradition of gathering around the light of community to honour each other’s longing to see what the light illuminates and to be released from what holds us, that we ourselves might radiate the illuminating light that shines in the night. 
For this first week in Advent Kara Boda-Harvey leads us through biblical history, as we contemplate what it means to wait for the light that is coming. 
"The light is a world where nobody shows up for war. The light is a world where the weak lead the strong and the children teach the parents and the poor are no more and neither are the rich because all is abundantly shared. All are safe. All are loved. And this Advent we are an Advent people who confidently hope in the light that is coming. And we can wait with confidence because we serve an Advent God. A God who from the very moment that we turned away from Him began to plan and wait for the day when he would restore us to Himself."

How to be Human: Shine Like the Stars

The final wrap up of our Daniel series, Glendon Frank leads us through the conclusion of the book of Daniel, and sets us up for the coming season of Advent.
“Is God the king on the throne whose days are numbered by the hand writing on the wall whose powers only one by the blood of the innocent? Or of God the child in a stable in an occupied land you know nothing about? Is God building a tower with bricks forged by the oppressed hoping in vain that it will make his name known forever? Or is God waiting, even now in the womb of a refugee mother? Is God a devouring beast with wings and fangs and horns? Or is God one like a Son of Man, seeking not to dehumanize people but to look them in the eye so that they may see him? His eyes, his face. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, and remember what it actually is to be human.”

How to Be Human: Do Not Fear Beloved

Daniel Chapter 10 opens where we left off, with Daniel in a place of great lamentation and confession. But in this chapter, Daniel is not alone in his lament, but the Holy One comes to meet him and his grief on the banks of the Tigris.
 
'There's this God speaking: “You’re not wrong. Your tears are not wrong, your sorrow is not illegitimate, your anger is justified. Since the first day you set your mind to be human your words have been heard and I have come because of your words.”
'And in the last verse there in that chapter he says again: One in human form touched me and strengthened me he said “Do not fear greatly beloved.”
He says it again “You are safe”'

How to Be Human: Facing the Times

Daniel chapter 9 moves us out of the realm of the apocalyptic, and into the realm of confession. In the tradition of Jeremiah and the weeping prophets, Daniel recognizes with a deep grief that all is not okay. And this allows us to learn that we must first move through that grief at the way the world is, to hope and dream of how the world ought to be.
 
"We can grieve only when something like scales falls from our eyes, and we can begin to look around us, and we begin to allow ourselves to really notice what we're seeing until we are finally able to slow down and say something isn't working you guys. We are not okay. I don't know what to do about it but we’ve got to something. I don't have any ideas, but we ought to at least stop and notice the things are not as they ought to be.
In that kind of headspace where I think a lot of us live, Daniel whispers “there's a God whose love whose compassion is limitless. Who holds rest as the ultimate vision of flourishing for all creatures here below and all you heavenly hosts. And perhaps if we say that over one another over and over we will start to find our bodies again, and we will find our hearts again, and we will begin to join with the weeping prophets and feel grief."

How to Be Human: Unnatural/Supernatural

Daniel Chapter 7 takes a turn for the supernatural and apocalyptic. In this sermon we unpack what we can make of these dreams of beast and monsters, and what deep wisdom is held in apocalyptic story for our lives.
"The apocalyptic way of telling story allows us space to consider that perhaps the monster isn't the person or even the event. Perhaps the monster, the real monster that terrorizes us all is that feeling of being completely unsafe, of knowing that you are utterly alone. The feeling of knowing that you must go into hiding as a matter of survival, that you must become something else and because you will never fully understand why or exactly or when you encounter this feeling and went into hiding you might end up ruminating consciously and subconsciously and sliding and losing your ability to feel what's real.
 This apocalyptic way of telling story actually allows us to sit back and see ourselves seeing ourselves; as both a young child being terrorized by a monster and as the monster who if let found out and unleashed would terrorize the innocent. And so, we exist in that tension. It's hard to hear your neighbour’s cries for love when you yourself struggle to believe that you are worthy of love."

How to Be Human: You Shall Not Pray

In this sermon we arrive at the very famous story in the book of Daniel, where Daniel meets the Lion's Den. Once again we are met with the dynamic of humans, animals, de-humanization, and the question of who acts with true humanity.
"The way of the Living God is one where Lions can lay down with Lambs. Where I don't have to be afraid of you and you don't have to be afraid of me. It’s a reversal of what the Medes and the Persians believe. It’s a reversal of the anxious way of Empire. Anxiety around what happens to me if I make space, if I let go of control and become curious about the unfamiliar.
But the way of the Living God as seen in Daniel is one where the while Earth is filled with the knowledge of the Living God. The Spirit which leads us into shared life. The spirit in the lion is the same as is in the lamb. Those with hard hearts cannot see this way, becoming the very beasts they so fear are waiting for them out in the wild creation."

How to Be Human: The Writing on the Wall

In the next chapter of Daniel, we open with a story of a new King on the Throne of Babylon, who is hosting a feast with the stolen treasures of the lands his empire has conquered. His feast is disrupted by the hand of God writing mysteries on the wall.
"So Jesus is standing here saying… I am not like Belshezzar, or Nebuchadnezzar, or Pharoah. I was born among the animals. I am a human one, no gold, no stony heart. If you become what you trust, Jesus says, I have become soft-hearted and compassionate. Jesus exists in time and place. Jesus can bleed and feel pain. And he says “I have come, not to take your voice. I have come that you may find in again. That you might gain the courage to take your power back. I stand with you.
And Jesus says “If the finger of God has done this, has given this man back his voice, do you know what that means? Mene Mene Tekel Parsin.”

How to Be Human: Inhumane

In Daniel Chapter 4, King Nebuchadnezzar has another dream he needs Daniel to interpret. Once again this dream raises questions for us, what is it to be a God, a human, and a beast.
“And so now we have this king, that was famous for his glory, and for his almost divinity. But he is going to be brought down. He’s going to be brought down so far that he will not become a human like the rest of us – we think – he will be brought down until he’s like an animal. Until the time that he learns that the point of having any authority over creation at all is to have mercy on the poor and the lowly, for this is what it means to be human. To have compassion, and mercy, and a thirst for justice and goodness and beauty upon the land that God loves.”

How to Be Human: The Dreamstate

We continue our series through Daniel the story in which the corrupt King dreams a dream about himself as statue made of precious metals, and so erects a real statue for the whole empire to worship. In this sermon we are led to imagine the differences between the kings of this world, and the kingship of the Son of Man.
 
“Daniel’s God is not like other kings, Daniel’s God is a Human One. Jesus’ favourite name for himself is the Son of Man, as if to say “I’m not made of gold and silver.
"He was not lifted up an unblemished golden statue, he was never crowned with a golden crown. He was stripped and exposed for the sham that he was, for underneath his clothing there was no gold or bronze. A man made of skin and bone, caught within time and place. Able to bleed, and weep, and cry, and feel things deeply. Able to confess and tell the truth about loneliness and despair, he was lifted up on a Roman cross. And in the lifting up, we see the antithesis to the Nebuchadnezzars of the world and the dreams they keep dreaming for us.”

How to Be Human: Forced Assimilation

In chapter one of Daniel, we meet Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. These four boys are are captured from their homeland and brought to the capital city of the Babylonian Empire, where they are to be given new, imperial names and moulded into boys with appropriate minds and bodies in the eyes of the empire. But they do not go alone into exile, their God travels ahead of them and with them into captivity, and they resist the oppressive imperial forces that strive to dictate to them the one true way to be human.