There is a play coming to Ottawa next April that is a must see. It's called Bigger Than Jesus. This one man play by Rick Miller, a comedian, is an antidote to the blood and gore of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I am not sure when or where it will be playing. Michael Valpy, the religion writer in the Globe and Mail reviewed it and says that the "core moment of Bigger Than Jesus occurs at the end of the Last Supper . The bread has been broken, the cup passed around, Jesus is about to head off to be crucified and he is giving his good bye to the disciples. 'Love one another,' he says. 'Any questions?' There is dead silence."

For the past few Sundays we have been reading from the Gospels how the authorities seek to trick Jesus, to put him in a compromised position, to discredit him in the eyes of the people. You may recall that last Sunday Jesus was confronted with the question whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus takes a coin and asks whose image is on it. And then says 'Give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." His questioners were silenced.

Today, it is the turn of the Pharisees , those men who spent all their time studying the law exhaustively , all 613 laws that touch every aspect of life. They confront Jesus with the question , "What is the greatest commandment?" Jesus immediately replies, " The first commandment is 'Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength." Jesus doesn't stop there but adds a second command which he pulls from the book of Leviticus "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." And then adds that all the laws and the prophets are based on these two commandments. He has once more trumped his interrogators and they steal away to plot against him in some other way.

Love God and neighbour seems easy, but that word Love has been overused and misused. In the english language we have only one word while the Greeks have at least three: philia, eros and agape. We use love for that funny feeling in our body when boy meets girl and the used car salesman claims that his products are "pre-loved". Jesus uses "agape" when he refers to love, a love that is altruistic, expects no return, a selfless love.

We who come to this place to worship God, to hear God's word, to sing his praise, to raise our voices in prayer and to participate in the eucharistic feast, we come wanting to know how we can practice this love in our world. How do we practice agape in this ever new age.?

Recall 9/11 , at that time when aircraft were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania the word went out that "everything has changed". I want to amend that: "everything is changing". We find ourselves caught in a whirlwind like the one that is ravaging Florida at this moment.

Some years ago our Queen in giving her year's end message referred to the past months in which she experienced some turmoil in the royal family as an "Annos Horribilis" - a horrible year. I would not be surprised if this year would not be given that same title. Remember it began with the Tsunami that devastated the shores of the Indian Ocean and only in the last few days northern Pakistan was wrecked by a horrendous earthquake causing the loss of more than 50,000 lives. In between these catastrophes there was Hurricane Katrina that flooded New Orleans. Besides these natural disasters there were also man made disasters, the bombing of the London Tube, the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the refugee situation in Darfur, one can go on. Annos Horribilis is quite appropriate title for this year. At the same time the world is worrying about the possibility of a flu pandemic. In a world such as this, how does one practice love? On the one hand there is the urge to look after oneself , number one, but there has also been evidence that these disasters have brought the best out of people.

Fifty years ago I was in my last year of theological studies at Queen's University. It was not going to be an easy year inasmuch as I had chosen to write ten extra exams rather than a thesis. I survived and in the following spring graduated and was ordained a minister. I also was given the opportunity to extend my studies in Germany. A friend, Malcolm Finlay, with whom I lived at university gave me two books as a graduation gift. Knowing that I was going to Germany he gave me books by German theologians. One was Dogmatics in Outline by the famous Karl Barth. I soon found out that if you didn't study Barth you just weren't studying theology. Barth was named theologian of the the century by Time magazine and had his picture on the cover. This book proved to be a great preparation for me. The other book was by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, called The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer was one of the martyrs of the german Church. Coming the St.John's I was thrilled to meet Erika Bosun whose husband, Paul, had studied under Bonhoeffer. He had opposed Hitler nevertheless decided that he must return to Germany from the United States where he had been teaching. He was implicated in an assassination attempt on Hitler and imprisoned. From there he wrote the well know "Letters and Papers From Prison". In the last days of the war, in April 1945, by special decree of Himmler, he was executed. His spirit however was very much alive when I studied in Germany.

The Cost of Discipleship is a book that deeply influenced me. In the summer of 1956 while working with immigration on the St. Lawrence River before leaving for Germany I spent my spare time on the Plains of Abraham reading and rereading this book. I was particularly fascinated by the chapter entitled "Costly Grace" . Does this not sound like an oxymoron, grace by its very definition is free, indeed we cannot merit it, it is the gift of God. Bonhoeffer writers "Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and to follow Him, it is grace because Jesus says: 'My yoke is easy and my burden is light'".

Recall the rich young man who came to Jesus and asked him, "Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" When Jesus replies, "Keep the commandments." the man says that he has been there and done that. Jesus looks at him , sees that he is rich, that his possession possess him and says, "Sell all that you have and give to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven." The young man hung his head, turned and walked away. The price was too high. I have some understanding for this man, I too am rich, indeed, all of us are relatively rich, we who live in this country. To give up what we have is too high a price. No way can we afford God's grace.

Jesus offers us a yoke. I have some experience with a yoke. In 1939 when my parents and I came to Canada we were settled on an abandoned homestead in northern Saskatchewan. Our one room log cabin was without electricity or telephone. We reached it by horse and wagon over extremely rough roads which were virtually impassible at certain times of the year. We had a well but it had collapsed and a tree grew out of it. To get water we had to go a half mile to another farm. Loading the pails on the wagon we soon found out that we had little of that precious commodity left when we got home. My father made a yoke, a bar of wood that fitted across the shoulders from which were suspended two pails. Daily they carried water with this primitive instrument that was well know even in Jesus' time. I was too scrawny to use it myself.

Jesus used the yoke as a symbol of his love, a means of bearing the burden that love for one another puts on us. He says to the people "Come unto me all ye who are burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly of heart and you shall find rest for your soul, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Lea Kasinsky is an 18 year old student in Victoria who recently wrote an article for the Globe and Mail. She explains, " I have recently returned from a youth expedition in the Arctic aimed at investigating climate change and its environmental and social impacts." The experience had a tremendous impact on her. She goes on to say, "My conscience screamed out at the injustice of a world where those who had the largest hand in creating the problems are not those who pay the price for it; where our green lawns rob women of the basic right to breast-feed their children (for fear of transmitting dangerous chemicals to their babies through the milk) where polar bears are threatened with extinction because their hunting grounds are melting away. That vast cold land of sea and sky, whose oceans teem with life, is threatened by being changed forever:" Lea became aware that there was a tremendous burden waiting for her if in the words of Helen Coldicott "if you love this planet", this beautiful blue planet with the swirls of white clouds that the astronauts photographed from out in space.

"Our changes need to start today and not just on an international stage with the Kyoto protocol. It needs to start from within, with each individual recognizing the impact of daily decisions on the world as a whole." I could not help but think about the present controversy over the use of pesticides on Ottawa lawns.

She concludes, "Inactivity, indecisiveness, and ignorance are choices. There is no specific enemy here; we are interconnected as species and a planet and all in this boat together. Today I don't simply want change, I am the change I want to see in this world".

Lea has discovered the burden and the yoke, the love that burdens and the love that helps lift the burden.

I want to close with a story, perhaps you have heard it before, it is an old story. I think that it may have come from the war, from Britain at the time of the bombing. But it makes and important point. After an air attack people were converging on the first aid post. One of the nurses saw a girl carrying a child that wasn't much smaller than her. She rushed to her and said, " Here let me help you, the child must be heavy." The girl looked at her with large eyes and said, "No, he is not heavy, he is my brother".

Costly grace, the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light,