Author: Scott McAndless

https://youtu.be/ECI818ZQnJc

Hespeler, October 13, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Thanksgiving Sunday
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15, Psalm 90:12-17, Hebrews 4:12-16, Mark 10:17-31

There is a question that Jesus wants to ask us all this morning. It is a simple question, but it really gets to the heart of the matter. The question is, “Why do you call me good?”

I have noticed that people don’t often take the trouble to ask that question. Instead, they start with it as an assumption. Of course, Jesus is good! Even people who have trouble with the church or with Christian teachings know that. They may not admire Jesus’ people, or at least some of them, but they don’t question for a moment the essential goodness of Jesus!

Jesus’ First Response

But did you notice that that was the very first thing that Jesus felt he had to challenge somebody on when “a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” He didn’t engage with the man as a potential disciple despite the extreme devotion that he had displayed. He didn’t even attempt to tackle the thorny question that the man was asking. Or at least he didn’t attempt it until he had first cleared the air on the assumption that the man was making – an assumption he may not have even been aware of: that Jesus was good.

The full response of Jesus is this: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” And I realize that people often get hung up on the second part of that. When you pull those two sentences out of their context, it makes it seem as if Jesus is here denying any sense of his own divinity by speaking of a sharp divide between himself and God.

A Shift to the Law

But that is not actually the concern behind Jesus’ response as he makes clear by immediately shifting the conversation to the law: “You know the commandments:” he says, “‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud. Honour your father and mother.’”

This makes it clear what he meant by his response. He is saying that God has already told this man what is good in the commandments, so why is he looking for Jesus to tell him? If he is not going to listen to God, why would he listen to Jesus?

Ah, but the man insists, he has listened to God. He has lived according to the commandments. “Teacher,” he insists, “I have kept all these since my youth.” And I know that this might sound a bit boastful to us, but this fits with the common understanding of the Old Testament law at the time.

The Goodness of the Law

The law was not generally seen as a list of obligations that you had to follow down to the letter and if you slipped up on some minor requirement you were doomed. They understood the law as a set of guidelines that you could follow and that were meant to guide you in a good life. The issue was not perfection in your observation of the details, the goal was to live a good life according to God’s guidance.

And so, this man is insisting that he has found and lived according to the goodness that God has offered him. He has come to Jesus because he believes that this teacher is good and can lead him to a deeper and richer goodness. He is, in fact, doubling down on his assertion that Jesus is good.

Jesus Loved Him

And did you note Jesus’ response to that? “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” He honours what this man is aspiring to – this greater goodness and deeper understanding of God’s kingdom. And, for one brief moment, the two of them are completely on the same wavelength both searching for what is truly good.

And then what happens? Everything absolutely falls apart. Just moments later this young man leaves Jesus in a state of shock and grief. It seems as if something has suddenly gone very wrong. It turns out that Jesus’ question was very apt because the man has decided that Jesus is, in fact, not very good.

One Thing More

So, what has gone wrong here? What has Jesus said to change this man’s opinion so drastically? He has told him that there is one thing more that he can do to expand on the goodness that God asks for in the law. “You lack one thing;” Jesus says, “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

Now, on one level this advice is not at odds with the teaching of the law. The law of Moses clearly teaches that one should not covet, should not be overly attached to earthly wealth. The law also strongly encourages and even requires giving to those who are poor. But there is one thing in what Jesus demands that exceeds the requirements of the law.

Why the Law did not Require This

Jesus asks the man to sell everything he has, to completely divest himself of all earthly possessions in order to support the poor. And that was something that the law never demanded. It did not do so for a particular reason.

It was not because there was some inherent goodness in wealth and possessions. It was only because it was generally understood that you had to think beyond your own needs. Since you had people depending on you, your family and household in particular, you couldn’t divest yourself of everything, not even for the good reason of supporting those who are poor.

So, it is actually no wonder that this man is shocked by what Jesus says. The good that Jesus demands, the good that exceeds the requirements of God’s law, is actually something that appears to destroy the very basis of morality of his society, his obligation to family. If he gave away all of those possessions, he could no longer fulfill that obligation. The goodness that Jesus asks for, is clearly at odds with the ethical requirements of that society.

What the Disciples have Given up

That is something that is made crystal clear at the end of the passage. When Peter talks about how the disciples left everything to follow him, Jesus confirms that they have left behind house and brothers and sisters and mother and father and children and fields.

They have abandoned all of the things that created the kinds of obligations that required them to keep possessions. They can therefore do what the young man cannot. But we should not miss the fact that that means that they have abandoned the very foundation of what it usually meant to be good people in that society.

So, you see what I mean when I say that the fundamental question in this story is “Why do you call me good?” Jesus goes out of his way to demonstrate that he is in fact not good according to the standard ways of judging goodness in that society. No wonder he is so surprised that someone assumes his goodness.

Jesus’ Question for Us

And that brings me to the question that Jesus is asking you and me and all Christians today. It is unsurprisingly the same question: “Why do you call me good?”

The world is full of people who identify themselves as followers of Christ – who call Jesus good – and yet are completely caught up in the systems of this world, systems that Jesus’ very existence calls into question.

The Capitalist System

For example, we all live within an economic system called capitalism. It is a system, there is no question, that has the potential of doing a lot of good. It creates wealth and wealth can do good things. It encourages and rewards creativity and innovation. It creates employment which allows people to live.

We are also aware of some of the shortcomings of this system. It tends to create abundantly more wealth for some than others. It has a tendency to create entities that become so powerful that they dominate markets in ways that prevent anyone else from profiting from their innovation and creativity.

But, with all the good and all the bad, that is the system that we live with. And we are all aware that, should the system fall apart, the results would likely be catastrophic for everybody. So, we all exist in this system.

As believers who live within such a system, what do we do each Sunday and in our prayers and devotions? We come to Jesus in a spirit of thankfulness for all that we have and we say, “Good teacher, what shall we do in this world?”

Jesus’ Disruption

And do you know what Jesus replies: He says, “Why do you call me good? Don’t you know that I have come to disrupt this very system that you live in? Don’t you know that I have come so that “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first”?

Didn’t you hear it when my mother proclaimed that my birth meant that, “he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:53) And remember when I said, “Blessed are you who are poor,” but “But woe to you who are rich,” and “Blessed are you who are hungry now,” but “Woe to you who are full now.” (Luke 6:20-25)

If we are so invested in the economic system that we live in that we are not willing to see it disrupted, all I am saying is that maybe we had better think twice before we call Jesus good.

Supremacist Views

We seem to be encountering more and more people these days who call Jesus a good teacher and yet are totally committed to racist or supremacist views. Christian nationalism is on the rise. We see it most openly in the United States. But we ought not to pretend that it is not growing here in Canada too.

And I know that Christian nationalism can take many forms. Perhaps some are simply trying to do their best to be patriotic while they hold onto their faith. But in some of the more toxic forms, it has been expressing itself in extreme racism – demonizing immigrants and enforcing a social order in which straight white Christian men dominate every part of society. And such people do invoke Jesus and say, “Good teacher, what must we do to protect our White culture?”

Teachings About Strangers

And Jesus asks, “Why do you call me good? You know the law, it is clear. It says “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9) And you know that I have said, “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35)

“If you are a Christian nationalist, you need to understand that if you call me good, you will have to accept that I am going to make you question all of the things that make you feel superior to others and maybe the things that make you feel safe. Know that, if you call me good, you may leave our interview shocked and grieving.”

The Real Question

So, you see, “Why do you call me good?” is the real question, the most important one. If we are going to follow Jesus, we can’t just follow him on our own terms. Jesus will always insist that we must follow him on his terms. And those terms will necessarily call into question the moral systems that we have accepted uncritically. They will challenge our assumptions about the systems by which our world works. They will definitely challenge our prejudices and racial pride.

If we are not careful, Jesus will absolutely shock us and send us away grieving. But here is the secret that I want you to hold onto. Jesus is good. And if he challenges us and shocks us, it is because he cares for us and wants us to grow. That is the good news about Jesus.

https://youtu.be/Yv5Q8VOiorE

Hespeler, October 06, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 2:18-24, Psalm 8, Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12, Mark 10:2-16

If there is one verse that everybody seems to think that they understand completely in the Bible, it has got to be the verse that ends our reading this morning from Genesis. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife,” it says, “and they become one flesh.” Everybody I talk to tells me that they know exactly what that verse means. They say that it means that the Bible is laying out for us the prescriptive model for one of the most fundamental relationships of society, the marriage. It is saying that it is God’s will that marriage take a very particular form of one man, one woman committed for life.

Now there is no question in my mind that this verse affirms such a marriage. And that is significant. But I do have all kinds of questions about what sort of instruction we are supposed to take from it.

Polygynous Marriage

For example, if this verse was so clear that a marriage was supposed to be between one man and one woman, why is it that almost nobody in the Old Testament seems to have understood that? The dominant model for marriage throughout most of the Old Testament is not monogamy but rather polygyny – that is, marriage between one man and several women. Many of the key characters of the Bible including most of the patriarchs and all of the kings had several wives.

If God had clearly told humanity that they were only allowed one, these Bible characters certainly didn’t get the memo! And none of them are ever criticized in the scriptures for their marriages.

Troubled Marriages

Yes, you might say to me, but doesn’t the Bible also tell us that many of these marriages were full of strife and trouble? Yes, it does. But nobody ever takes that as a reason not to have such a marriage. Generation after generation, men continued to take multiple wives. And that doesn’t surprise me in the least. We do the same thing when it comes to monogamous marriage.

I have seen many monogamous marriages that have been full of strife and argument. I have been a first-hand witness to a number that have outright failed. And yet I still believe in monogamous marriage. I was very pleased and honoured to be able to celebrate one here just yesterday. No, there’s really nothing that the Bible says for or against the polygynous marriages of many of its heroes.

Who Says This?

So, let’s go back to that verse in Genesis chapter 2 and ask what it is really trying to teach us about marriage. Let me ask you a question about it that has baffled me for a long time. Who says it? In whose voice are we supposed to hear, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife…”?

Up until this point in the story, there have only been two speaking parts: the Creator and the man. And this verse comes at the very end of the first thing that the man says, his jubilant celebration of the woman. But the man doesn’t seem to say this bit about marriage. Nor does this saying come to us in the voice of God. Everything that God has said in this story has been introduced by the words, “and the Lord God said.” So, if it’s not God who says this and it’s not the man who says it, then who does? It seems to be a commentary inserted into the story by the narrators.

An Abnormal Marriage

But, if it is a commentary, it is a bit of an odd one. Because what it describes is actually not what would have been considered a normal marriage at the time when the Bible was written. The pattern of marriage throughout the entire biblical period was actually pretty clear. The normal cultural practice was for a woman to leave her mother and father’s house to be joined with her husband. People lived, not as nuclear families as we know them, but as extended families. And a wife was always expected to move in and live with her husband’s household.

But this verse describes the opposite, doesn’t it? It speaks of a man leaving his family to be joined to his wife. This was not considered normal in the world of the Bible. In fact, when we find such marriages in the Bible, they are usually condemned! For example, in the Book of Numbers, an Israelite man named Zimri deserts his tribe and family in order to marry a Midianite woman named Cozbi. (Numbers 25: 14, 15) This marriage is seen as so unacceptable that a priest runs the two of them through with a spear killing them both.

In the Book of Ezra, a similar thing happens when many Israelite men marry foreign women and Ezra forces them all to abandon both their wives and children. (Ezra 9-10) So, apparently this kind of marriage was not only unusual, it was actually seen as something that undermined the normal order of society.  And yet, here in Genesis, it seems to be saying that, because of how God created humanity, this kind of marriage could happen and could result with the unusually married people becoming “one flesh,” forming a unique bond and connection.

It Can’t be the One True Pattern

So what is this final verse really saying? It can’t be merely laying out the one true pattern for all marriages for all time because it actually describes a kind of marriage that was considered unusual and perhaps even threatening to the ancient Israelites.

I think that, in order to answer that question, we need to go back and ask what this entire story is really here to do. What is the author trying to say to us. I can’t really accept that this passage is meant to be a simple and straightforward explanation of how human beings came to be. There are numerous problems with reading the story that way.

More than Historical

All of the evidence we have found on the origin of the human species absolutely contradicts the notion that we can somehow be traced back to two people in a garden in northern Mesopotamia. What’s more, this story also contradicts the creation story in Genesis chapter one when it says that the order of creation was first a man, then all of the animals and then a woman. These things among others make me think that this was never intended to be taken as a literal account of historical events.

Rather than a simple historical account, this is meant to be a story that is told to teach us about what it means to be human, what our relationship is to the world around us, to animals and to our God. And it is especially about what it means to be in relationship with other humans, especially in marriage relationships.

The Creation of the Woman

And that makes the story of the creation of the woman particularly meaningful because it is, above all, a story about the human need for companionship and partnership. This need cannot be fulfilled by the animals, no matter how wonderful they may be. We need someone who can be a partner and helper.

And clearly the reason why the man in this story rejoices in the woman is because they are made of the same stuff. “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” the man cries. And this makes a lot of sense because the story depicts God creating the woman from something God takes from the side of the man.

What Came from the Side?

The Hebrew word, by the way, is not very specific on that point. The thing that God takes from the side of the man is usually translated as “rib” because that kind of makes sense. I mean, what else would you take from the side? But the Hebrew word is not that precise. We cannot know if that is what is intended.

But whatever exactly God takes, the meaning of the surgery is clear. Somehow the human that existed before it contained the fullness of humanity in one being. Both what would become the male and what would become the female were present in the original creation and God separates that into two distinct beings.

God’s creation, when first placed in the garden is simply called adam, which is the generic Hebrew word for a human. Only after the separation surgery do the Hebrew words for man and woman (which are ish and ishah) appear.

God Creates the Distinctions

What that seems to be saying is that the things that divide us – the differences that often set us apart from one another – including the distinction of gender but also the distinctions between race and tribe and ethnicity – have been created for us by God because of our need. We need one another and we need the differences that sometimes separate us because we complete one another. That is what allows us to be helpers who are partners to one another.

So that is what this story is all about – about how God made us in all of our diversity for each other. That is a lesson not just about marriage but also about friendship and teamwork and all kinds of other human relationships as well. And it is perhaps also a warning that, when we stop respecting the differences that we encounter in the other person, we will miss out on the meaning and richness that God has intended for us.

And, if that is what this story is about, then what is the meaning of the enigmatic statement at the end of the story: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

An Application of the Story

Well, I have come to understand it much like I suggested – as the narrators dropping in a commentary for the audience. They are speaking directly to the people listening to this story and giving them a direct application to their situation.

In particular, I would suggest that they are speaking to parents, for example, who are upset with their son because he didn’t want to go through with the perfectly sensible marriage that they had set up for him. You know, the parents had done what good parents did and arranged a marriage with a couple of nice girls from good families from the next village over.

But then, did that son want to go through with that perfectly normal and acceptable marriage? No, he did not! Instead, he decided to leave his mother and father and go and cling to a woman that his parents had never even met from an entirely different tribe! Can you imagine!

Yes, the narrators are speaking to all manner of parents who are upset because their children have opted for marriages that do not conform to their norms and expectations. And they are basically saying, “Eh, what are you going to do? That’s just how God created humans to be. For this reason they have the tendency to want to cling to who their parents think are all the wrong people. And if God created us that way, I guess maybe it will probably all work out.

A Lesson for Today

I once thought that I understood exactly what this verse in the Book of Genesis meant, but the closer I look at it the less obvious that meaning seems. I no longer think that it is intended to tell people what sort of relationship they are allowed to have. Instead, I have come to believe that it recognizes that people enter into all kinds of relationships.

I would take away this lesson from it. If anyone has ever looked at your marriage or some other key relationship in your life and judged it because it didn’t fit their idea of what was normal or acceptable, this is talking to you. It is encouraging you to remember that love does find a way even in relationships that don’t fit somebody else’s ideal.

Relationships of Love and Respect

It is saying that, if your relationship is based on clinging together through the good and the bad, if you love and respect each other for who God created you to be, then you are living up to what God created you to bẹ.

And if, on the other hand, you are ever tempted to judge someone else’s relationship because it doesn’t fit your predetermined idea of what shape it is supposed to take – if that is all you can see and you can’t see the depth of love and commitment that is there because of it, maybe it is speaking to you as well and encouraging you to look again.

https://youtu.be/NqbeSC7OZw0

Hespeler, September 29, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Esther 9:1-17 (Compare Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22), Psalm 124, James 5:13-20, Mark 9:38-50

The Book of Esther tells a story that is set during a time when some Jewish people are living in exile in the Persian Empire. It seems they have many enemies there, people who want to destroy them. But their greatest enemy is a powerful man in the king’s court named Haman. Haman goes to the king and persuades him to make a decree calling for the extermination of the Jews as enemies of the state.

But the book tells the story of how a young woman named Esther and her older cousin, Mordecai, foil Haman’s plot. Esther won a beauty contest and became, as a result, the principal wife and queen to the Persian king. So, the book tells the story of how she, guided by her wise cousin, uses her power and influence to save her people from destruction.

The Happy Ending

It is a great story full of palace intrigue, tension and strategy – a wonderful read. But it is a story that comes up only once in the lectionary, the three-year cycle of readings that usually guides what we read in church each Sunday. The solitary reading from Esther comes on this Sunday and the reading that has been assigned is basically the happy ending of the story. Thanks to Esther’s wisdom and bravery, the Jewish people are saved, their enemy, Haman, is impaled on the pole that he himself built in order to impale Mordecai in what appears to be perfectly balanced justice. The people rejoice in their salvation. Just a wonderful happy ending.

But I have a bit of a problem with the specific text that is assigned by the Revised Common Lectionary. According to it, we are supposed to read Esther 7:1-6, and then we are supposed to skip several verses and pick up the passage at verses 9-10. Then we are supposed to skip over an entire chapter and a half to continue to read at chapter 9, verses 20-22.

Why Skip So Much?

But surely that is not a big deal, right? I mean, we must skip those verses because they don’t have anything important in them and because otherwise the reading would just be too long, not to mention filled with all manner of weird names like: “Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai, and Vaizatha.” But there can’t any other reason to skip over all those verses, can there? Can there?

Well, it turns out that maybe there is another reason. I chose this morning not to read the assigned text from Esther and instead to read some of the verses that we are supposed to skip. And you may have noticed something in what we read. It turns out that the salvation of the Jews from the persecution of their enemies did not end with the equally measured retributive justice of Haman being hanged on the scaffold he built for Mordecai.

The Massacre

It turns out that their salvation required them to go on a two-day murderous rampage during which they killed five hundred people in the capital and seventy-five thousand in the provinces! We are also told that their salvation required that Mordecai become so powerful that he inspired terror in his enemies throughout the land. It was not enough for the evil Haman to be eliminated, he had to be replaced by someone just as powerful and feared by the enemies of the Jews.

Now, I think I understand, to a certain extent, why the folks on the Lectionary committee don’t want us to read that part of the story. The Jews are supposed to be the heroes of this book, and we hardly want good Christians to take them as examples by setting out to engage in wholesale slaughter of their enemies! There are unfortunately already too many examples of that kind of thing in the history of the church. So, we don’t want to encourage that, but is the only alternative just to pretend that that part of the story isn’t there at all? That doesn’t seem right to me. Surely, we need to come to terms with this very objectionable part of the book.

God is Not Named

So, I want to come to terms with it. But, before we do that, I need to bring up one other important thing about this Book. Of all the books in the Bible, Esther is the only one in which the name of God does not appear. The Jews in the story, including Esther, do various religious things like fasting and holding festivals, but God and God’s action never really come into the story.

The closest we get to God doing something, is when Mordecai says, while trying to persuade Esther to speak up, “if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish.” That is often taken as meaning that, if Esther doesn’t save the people, God will. But, of course, since Esther does speak up in the end, apparently that means that God doesn’t need to step in to save the people.

So, God is curiously absent from this story. Does that mean that God is not involved? No, many have taken this as a story of how God sometimes works behind the scenes and through the actions of people to bring about salvation even when nobody asks God to do it. And I tend to agree. But it does make me wonder how that lack of an acknowledgement of God in the story may have contributed to the massacre that they came to see as necessary to their salvation.

Esther is Not Satisfied

Esther was pleased. She and her cousin had successfully navigated the intricate power structure of the court. They had managed to bring down the second most powerful man in the entire kingdom by skillfully maneuvering him into a compromising position. He and his plot to destroy her people had come to nothing and he himself had been impaled in a gruesome public execution.

She should have felt happy. She should have felt as if she and her people were safe. Her enemies had been thwarted. Surely, with Haman gone and Mordecai officially taking his place, no one would dare to follow through on his plan to slaughter the Jewish communities. They had won; their enemies had lost. That should have been enough.

But it wasn’t. For her side to win, the other side didn’t just have to lose. Everything that they had even dreamed of doing and everything that Esther could imagine them wanting to do to be done to them. And so, Esther and Mordecai went into the king one more time.

Esther’s Request

“Ah my dear,” said Ahasuerus extending his scepter to her, “Your enemy is dead. Now what shall we do, celebrate? Mordecai can write to all of the people in all of the provinces and tell them that it is my will that no one follow through on Haman’s plans to kill the Jews and all will be well.”

But Esther did not agree. “No, my king, it is not enough. We as a people have been threatened with extermination. Sure, we have been saved today, but so long as we know that our enemies are alive, how can we possibly ever feel safe again. In order for us to win, they have to all die!

The king was taken aback, as well he should be! He might not agree with some of the racist attitudes of some of his people, but they were his people. Surely the king owed a duty to protect them as much as he did to protect the Jews under his jurisdiction. “Surely there has to be some other way,” he insisted. “Surely the protection of the law is better than wholesale slaughter and retaliation!”

The Law of the Medes and Persians

Mordecai and Esther had expected this objection. And they had their response ready. “Ah, but you see, my lord, the law is precisely the problem. Haman passed a decree – using your signet I might add – that permitted the slaughter of the Jews. And everybody knows that, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, no royal decree can ever be changed or repealed.”

“What?” cried the king, “That’s not the law. Why does everyone keep telling me that is the law? How could a kingdom possibly last – much less manage to rule the known world – if it was never able to amend its own policies? And what king could ever be considered a great ruler if his own power was so limited that he couldn’t even change his own mind? No, that’s just crazy.”

“Well, guess what, Ahasuerus,” smiled Esther, “there may be no reference to any such law in all the libraries of ancient Persia or even in all the writings of the Greeks and the Egyptians, but we Jews are the ones who get to tell this story. And the way that we’re going to tell it, that is the law. Therefore the only way to prevent what was planned against us is to do it to our enemies before they ever have the chance to do it to us. So, get out your signet ring and start decreeing.

Ahasuerus felt that he owed it to his beautiful young wife to do as she demanded.

A Persecuted Minority

The Book of Esther tells the story of a persecuted minority living in Persia. That, to me, sounds quite credible. Given what we know of human nature, the persecution of minorities is something that has a way of rearing its ugly head again and again throughout history. We also know that the Jews, in particular, have suffered through a long history of such persecution up to and including the Holocaust and beyond. So, I really do not doubt that the Jews in Persia lived in fear of their many enemies.

And whenever we see such terrible things unfolding throughout history, the question we are often inclined to ask is, where is God in the midst of this tragedy? Why does God permit this kind of thing to go on?

When God Doesn’t Show Up

That is a good question, of course, and one worth delving into. But that’s not where I want to go today. Instead, I would like to note that something curious often happens to those caught up in such persecution. At some point, it seems, you may decide that whatever God is up to, you are not going to wait around for it. You decide to move on as if God wasn’t there, at least until God decides to show up.

That is, for example, what a great many Jews did during and after the Holocaust. When God didn’t stop it, they decided to take matters into their own hands. In fact, the Zionist movement was, in its origins, a rejection of the idea that God might save God’s chosen people. They couldn’t wait for that and so decided to go ahead and protect themselves in the country that they built for themselves.

When You Don’t See God at Work

And I can’t help but think that the Book of Esther – with its total lack of even a mention of the name of God – might be a similar reaction to persecution. God may have saved them – I’m pretty sure that that is what is going on behind the scenes – but when they didn’t see God at work, they decided that they must have saved themselves. I can see Esther coming to that conclusion.

And, as we see in the Book of Esther, when you start thinking like that, there seems to be a danger that you won’t be satisfied just with stopping your enemies. You will decide that you will only be safe once you have had your vengeance and you have found a way to kill them all.

The explanation that is given in the story – that a decree of the king could not be changed – does not make any sense historically speaking or from a practical political point of view. But it functions as an excellent pretext for what the persecuted Jews want to do. It illustrates how we will use any excuse we can come up with to justify our extreme vengeance against those we perceive to be our enemies.

We Need to Leave Vengeance to God

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul says this quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19, cf. Deuteronomy 32:35) This seems to promise that we don’t need to take revenge when we are oppressed, that God, who takes care of the forgotten of this world, will set things right and so we don’t have to.

That is a very encouraging and comforting idea. But what if that message is not just meant to comfort us? What if there is a deep problem with humans taking vengeance. And what if the problem is that when we start taking vengeance, we just don’t know when to stop and before you know it, there are seventy-five thousand dead in the provinces of the Persian Empire. Maybe we have a deep need for God to take on that vengeance because we can’t handle it because we don’t know when to quit.

It is just a thought. That is where my refection on the disturbing end of the Book of Esther leads me today. Maybe as you struggle with this part of the story, your reflections will lead to you to another conclusion.

I think that is the point of a passage like this one. It is meant to disturb us, to force us to think critically about what seems to be a serious flaw in our human nature. That is why, though most churches will simply gloss over this part of the story today, it is important that it is there, and it is important that we don’t ignore it. We need to be thinking about this part of our human nature because it definitely continues to shape human war and destiny to this very day.

https://youtu.be/dO4BTW_6xrU

Hespeler, September 22, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a, Mark 9:30-37

Her name was Leah. She was almost four years old. She lived in Capernaum in the house with her extended family. Hers was a life that, as short as it was, had already been marked by sorrow. She had gone to bed hungry far too many times in her brief span. She had also experienced her share of grief and death, even if she didn’t quite understand what it was yet. Many of her young siblings and cousins had not managed to live as long as her. Some had not even survived a few hours after their birth.

But despite the sorrow that surrounded her, Leah was a bright child. Sometimes the adults in the family found it hard to become too attached to the children who came along, knowing that many of them would not survive until adulthood. But Leah had a way about her. When she smiled and placed her little hand in the large palm of an uncle or a cousin, it just made their hearts melt. They couldn’t help but love her even though they knew the risk of experiencing loss that came with such love.

Her Parents and Family

Leah was especially close to her parents, of course, particularly to her mother who still nursed her daily. But both of her parents were working today – her father out in the boats and her mother working at the fish drying racks – so she was here with her aunt and her grandmother in the house.

While they worked in the outdoor kitchen, she played happily in a corner with a few of the treasured possessions she had amassed during her life: a stone that was shaped as an almost perfect sphere, a piece of wood that her uncle had crudely carved in the shape of a donkey and a scrap of cloth that had come from her mother’s tunic.

She heard the group approaching well before they appeared at the door. There were about a dozen of them, and they often stayed in this house when they were in Capernaum. They were arguing loudly with one another as they approached, which was not unusual. The argument seemed to have been going on for a while but at least they seemed to be arguing good naturedly.

The Argument

As usual, the loudest voice among them was one that was very familiar to her. It was the voice of her uncle Simon. She looked up as her aunt turned away from her work and ran to the door to greet the husband who was often away for long periods of time.

Uncle Simon – the others in his group called him “Rock” for some reason – was very loudly proclaiming that he was absolutely the greatest among them all. “Of course I’m the most important disciple of all,” he proclaimed. “Surely that is why the teacher started calling me Rock. I am solid, dependable and the kind of person who is foundational to what he is trying to build.”

“Oh really?” laughed another in response. “And what makes you think that he doesn’t call you that because he thinks that you’ve got rocks in your head?”

They all laughed at that, even Uncle Simon. So, it was a merry company that entered the house. They moved quickly towards the inner courtyard, calling out to the cooks and asking if there was any food to share.

The Teacher

One last straggler entered a moment behind the main pack. He was quieter, clearly caught up in some deep thought. But his eyes flashed around the room as he came through the door. He gave a wide smile as he saw Leah looking up at him. She smiled right back because he had always been one of her favourite visitors.

Once the newcomers had greeted everyone, they settled down in the courtyard of the house while Leah’s aunt and grandma served them a bit of bread and oil. Leah wandered in too looking for a snack as well. She sat down at the edge of the group, just a little behind the teacher. She watched his every move with wide eyes. For some reason he just fascinated her.

“Listen guys…” he eventually interrupted the small talk. Leah noted how quickly they all fell silent and turned to him as if they were afraid that they might miss something that he said. “Before we left to come here to Capernaum,” he continued, “I said something to you. I said, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’

An Awkward Question

“But you guys didn’t say anything at the time. You sort of just stared at me like a deer might do if someone were able to shine a bright light on it. But I heard you talking together on the way here, so I assume that you talked through what I said and you maybe have something to share about it now. So, what were you talking about on the road?

Leah was just a little girl, but even she could pick up just how extremely uncomfortable the entire group became. The others stared awkwardly at the floor or suddenly became completely absorbed with some strange thing they had discovered on their fingernails.

The teacher rolled his eyes. “Right, don’t tell me. You were probably arguing with each other about which one of you is the greatest, weren’t you?” He sighed. “It’s like you don’t listen to a word that I say! You certainly didn’t listen to what I was saying about where this movement is going because, if you had, you probably wouldn’t be so keen to be seen as great within it.”

The Lesson

With that, he sat down before them. In that culture, teachers always took a seated position to give their instructions. Even at her age Leah understood that. If an adult sat down in front of her, she would be expected to pay close attention to the lesson they were going to give her. And so, all of the others in the group leaned forward with anticipation.

“Don’t you understand what it meant when I told you that?” he asked them. “It means that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. It means that if you are arguing with one another over who is the greatest, then you do not have the first clue as to what I am trying to do here.  How can I make you guys understand?”

He glanced around and his eye fell on Leah, who was looking up at him with rapt attention. “Leah,” he said holding his hand out to her, “come here for a moment girl, will you?”

Leah’s Response

Without a moment’s hesitation, she got right up and went straight to him. When he went to hold her hand she walked straight past his outstretched fingers and climbed up onto his lap. Knowing what she wanted, he wrapped his arms around her tightly.

As she sat on his lap, she looked at the men spread through the courtyard. Then she leaned back her head onto his neck. She breathed in the smell of him – his sweat and the dust of the road. She could even smell a hint of the dried fish he had had for his last meal.

She felt completely safe and comfortable. And I know you might think that it is an easy thing to make a child feel safe and comfortable, but Leah had actually known little of either of those things in her short life. But here, in this moment, everyone could see it in the expression on her face.

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,” declared the teacher. “And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

“Let the Children Come”

On a few occasions, Jesus had some pretty surprising things to say about children and the kingdom of God. The most famous incident, of course, comes in the very next chapter of this same gospel we read from today when “people were bringing children to him in order that he might touch them, and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” (10:13-14)

Passages like that one and this one that we read from today, certainly convince me that Jesus really did believe that children had a better understanding of this thing that he had come to announce, this kingdom of God, than anybody else. But haven’t you always wondered what we are supposed to do with that? How are we supposed to become like children in order to enter the kingdom? What does it mean to welcome children? I mean, we are adults. How are we supposed to just put aside everything that we have spent our lives building ourselves up to be in order to be part of God’s kingdom?

Putting Ourselves in Their Positions

And I do not think that we can really answer those questions without trying to put ourselves into the position of children, and specifically of the children who would have been there listening to Jesus say such things.

I know that we have all been children at some point in our life. You may sometimes look at some of the people in your life and have a hard time believing that, but we’ve all been there. But it can be an experience that we have a hard time putting ourselves back into, maybe especially if it was a long time ago.

But it is also true that there were some things different about children in Jesus’ time. We do know, for example, that the infant and newborn mortality rate in those times was so high that, if we saw it today, we would be completely outraged and demand government action. So, what does it mean to be a child living in a world where many of your siblings do not make it out of infancy and where people have their doubts about whether you are going to make it to adulthood. That’s a very different kind of situation than children have to live with today.

Parents Love Their Children

I have heard some people argue that, because of that infant mortality rate, parents hesitated to invest much love or attachment in their children, based on the idea that, if you’re not attached, you’re not going to feel grief when you lose them.

But I do not believe that for a moment. Parents have always loved their children and the reality that your child might not survive actually only has the effect of making you more attached and more loving, committed to make the most of whatever time you are given. So, it is definitely not that children were not loved or valued.

Coming to Jesus Like a Child

So, whatever Jesus was saying, he was not saying that you need to come to see yourself as insignificant, unloved or unworthy in order to come into the kingdom of God. It is true that children had very little in the way of status in that society, but they definitely had a place, and they were valued for who they were.

No, what I think Jesus was saying was that he was looking for those who would come to him much like a child like Leah would have come to him. She brought no pretensions. She did not feel the need to pretend to be something that she was not. She was not afraid to open herself up to him, to throw herself into his arms or to climb up on his lap.

That is what we forget how to do as we grow up. We learn suspicion and mistrust. We learn to guard ourselves against loving too much or trusting too much for fear that we will be disappointed yet again. A child knows nothing of that. That’s what Jesus recognized in the children that he encountered. And he celebrated it because he saw in that something of the nature of this kingdom that he had come to announce.

https://youtu.be/9yalwzRnGLY

Hespeler, September 15, 2024 © Scott McAndless
Proverbs 1:20-33, Psalm 19, James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38

I

n the Second Letter of Timothy, you will find this famous passage: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”(2 Timothy 3:16-17) And we could probably talk for a long time about what, exactly, those verses mean. But one thing I have always understood is that they mean that I can take any passage in the Bible and that I should be able to take from it some useful lessons around which I can construct a sermon.

Do Not be a Teacher

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I open up our passage this morning from the Letter of James to see that it begins like this: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will face stricter judgment. For all of us make many mistakes.”

So, apparently all scripture is useful for teaching but, maybe I shouldn’t be teaching at all? Or is it perhaps that all scripture is useful, but maybe I shouldn’t teach this scripture? Is this passage particularly full of pitfalls? I believe that is the warning that James is trying to give us. Because it is a passage about the dangers of the human tongue. So, another way to see it is to say, you can use any scripture to write a sermon, but you would be crazy to use this one.

Risks in Preaching

And there is a lot of truth in that. James is absolutely right that what you say – even sometimes one word out of place – can have a devastating impact on somebody’s life. And this is especially true if you speak as someone with authority in the church. Any preacher who doesn’t realize that and doesn’t recognize that she or he has probably hurt someone with something that they said is just not paying attention.

I’ll make a confession. I was once praying and included a petition for people who struggle with or have struggled with mental health issues. A good thing to pray for, I think. Then I shifted to prayers about people with other kinds of ailments. But when I made that shift, I said something like, “And we pray for those who deal with real health issues too…” and went on to pray for some people with bodily ailments. But I put one very problematic word in that transition, didn’t I?

“Real” Illness

Do you know how many people a word like “real” can harm in that context? People who have mental health issues are often made to feel by others as if their illness is illusionary, that they are imagining it or making themselves sick. This is often said to them in a way that strongly implies that it is all their own fault if they are clinically depressed or bipolar or suffer from any number of mental illnesses.

Now, I know that that is not true. I know that mental illness is real illness and that it is not something that can simply be fixed with a change of attitude. But do you know what? When I use a phrase like “real illness” in a way that contrasts with mental illness, it actually doesn’t matter what I know or what I believe. It doesn’t matter what I intend to mean.

Anyone who has been told all their life that what they struggle with is fake, is only going to hear that word “real” and all of the negative messages that they have heard all of their lives will just start playing out in their minds all over again. One ill-chosen word might well set them back and leave them to conclude that the church is no better than all of those people in their lives who have failed to appreciate what they struggle with.

James is Right

When I did choose that wrong word many years ago, one person did challenge me and correct me, something for which I am immensely grateful. It gave me the opportunity to apologize for my words and the harm that they caused and thankfully that person did understand. But I honestly don’t know how many other people I could have hurt with that word or with some other ill-chosen word spoken at some other time. So, I absolutely agree with James that this is a perilous thing that I dare to do when I seek to teach people about the word of God.

And surely, as James prefaces this particular passage with that warning, I would be a great fool to choose to take it as the text for my sermon. It might just reflect badly back on me. But what this passage is saying is so important, not only for me but for all of us that, as perilous as it may be, I believe it is extremely import that we pay it some close attention. The truth that this letter proclaims, that words matter and that they can do more harm than many other things, is one that we ignore to our peril.

The Housing Crisis

Let me give you one example of a word that I have come to see in a very different light just in the past year. One of the huge crises that we have been facing in our society for a while now is a lack of affordable housing. It is, in fact, the crisis that is fueling many of the other problems we are dealing with including inflation, the overdose crisis and problems with immigration. So, it is obviously very important that we talk about it.

But you may have noticed that many advocates and agencies addressing the problem have changed one of their ways of talking about it. We used to talk about the problem of homelessness. But now you are more likely to hear officials talking about people living without shelter, houselessness or even people “living rough.”

Why Change the Language?

Now, if you noticed that shift, you may well have thought it as just an example of wokeness or of weird language policing. What does it matter what we call it, after all? What matters is what we do about the problem, right?

Now, it is true that sometimes we do have this habit of thinking that if we just change the ways we talk about our problems we can make them go away. That is foolish. Adjustments to language on their own do not change reality.

The Problem with Talking about “the Homeless”

But that shift in language regarding the housing crisis did not come from language police. It didn’t even come from advocates or agencies. The people caught up in housing crisis spoke up about the need for change.

For one thing, the habit of referring to “the homeless” as a problem, a habit that has become very ingrained over the past few years, has a very dehumanizing effect. It makes it too easy to gloss over individuals and families who are just trying to do their best in trying circumstances – to treat them as some nameless mass problem.

Who Makes a Home?

Even more important, though, it is just not accurate. The problem that we have as a society is not actually a lack of homes because developers and landlords and governments don’t sell or rent people homes. I know they may sometimes market them that way because the word “home” carries such positive associations, but all they can provide is housing or shelter. You may buy a house, but only you can make it a home. And you make it into a home with community and family and all your own personal touches.

Turning the place where you are living into a home is something that all humans do, even if they do not have adequate shelter. Somebody these days who is living with their family in a tent may not have a house, but they will make whatever they have, as much as they are able to do so, into a home. That’s why these days you see people living not in isolated tents but in encampments. The shelters may be rudimentary, but by creating some sort of community by pitching tents together, people are doing their best to create a sense of home.

Changing Our Approach

So, a shift in how we talk about the housing crisis is not going to solve the problem. But failing to make that shift may harm some people. Shifting our language may also affect how we approach the problem. It may help us to think about the real individuals and the homes they are doing their best to create. It help us to understand better why people make some of the choices around housing that they do. And it may make us think twice before we come in and tear apart whatever home they have been able to create for themselves.

So how we talk about our problems is not going to fix everything. But it still matters how we talk about them. It affects our approach and can make a real difference in how we think about people and what they are dealing with.

A Powerful Image

The Letter of James uses an image to talk about the power of words that has very much been on my mind as I prepared for this Sunday. “Look at ships:” he writes, “though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.”

So, the tongue is like a rudder. I couldn’t get that image out of my head. Not being an artist, I couldn’t draw a ship with a tongue as a rudder, so I asked an AI program to draw one for me. And then I couldn’t get this picture out of my mind! But maybe I need to keep it in my mind, because I think that what James is saying is very true. In fact, I would like to invite you to imagine your tongue as a rudder that has that kind of power.

The Power of Your Tongue

You have people in your life – your friends, your families and your significant others. You also have people who cross your paths from time to time. And you also have this church and other organizations in your life.

Each one of those people or groups are like ships. They are on a course. They are being pushed forward by the winds of change that affect their lives. And everyone is on a course to build up their own self-esteem, to create a home for themselves and their loved ones or to find a new future. That voyage is not easy for anybody, but we are all working at it.

Setting People Off Course

But did you realize that you, by saying something hurtful, can very easily set that voyage off course. You, with your tongue, can say something that in a moment can undo all of the progress that somebody has made. You don’t need to do it intentionally or even knowingly. Perhaps you are just having a bad day and your let your own feelings of bitterness or disappointment overflow onto them. Perhaps you are not at all upset with them, but just failed to give thought to your choice of words. It doesn’t matter; your tongue can change the course of their voyage.

So, let me give a little bit of practical advice. Before you speak, ask yourself a few questions. Does this need to be said? If it is a criticism, and criticisms do sometimes need to be spoken, is it constructive, or is it something you are saying to make yourself feel superior to someone else? And, if you can, try and take a moment to put yourself in the place of the person you are speaking to and ask yourself how they might hear what you are saying.

The Other Possibility

James is quite right. It is unfortunately very easy to hurt someone with just a word or two. But I would also remind you that the metaphor that he uses, the idea that a tongue is like a rudder, can also work in the other direction. Yes, with a few words, you can set somebody off their course. But do not forget that, with a few words of encouragement and support you can do the opposite.

You can build somebody up. You can encourage someone on their voyage to take charge of their own life. You can let them know that you’re willing to listen and to understand what it is that they are dealing with. Rudders swing both ways. And please do keep that in mind whenever you have the opportunity to speak to someone who might be struggling.

Listen to the Letter of James. We should all think twice when given an opportunity to speak or to teach. But I think it is pretty clear that the upside of being able to say something that encourages and blesses someone on their voyage does make it worthwhile to open your mouth and use your tongue once you have given some careful consideration to what it is that God is calling you to say.

https://youtu.be/v7BgOpcFFLA

Hespeler, September 8, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146, James 2:1-17, Mark 7:24-37

We have all been greatly blessed and privileged today to take part in a very significant event. A young woman has made the choice to declare her faith in Jesus and willingness to be part of his church, a commitment that has been sealed by her baptism. I am continually amazed at how we as a church are given the opportunity to be a part of some of the most meaningful moments in an individual’s or a family’s life.

A Question

And I would like to take this opportunity to reflect for a bit on the confession of faith that has been made and what it means. I asked this question of Danielle today: “Do you turn to Jesus Christ, accepting him as Lord and Saviour, trusting in his grace and love?” All of you, if you have become a member of this or any congregation have been asked that question or a question very much like it. You are a member of Christ’s Church because of how you answered. But I would like to reflect for a little while on what that question means when it is asked of you in a church.

If someone on the street were to ask you, “Do you believe in Jesus?” what might they mean by that? If a random person asks you that, they are usually enquiring about the things you may believe about Jesus. They may be asking, “Do you believe that Jesus really existed?” Or, “Do you believe that he was born of a virgin?” Or that he rose from the dead, or maybe they are asking if you believe that Jesus is, in any sense, God.

Believe About Jesus

But when I ask that question before a baptism, am I asking you what you believe about Jesus? No, I am not. That is not to suggest for a moment that you shouldn’t seek, by studying and growing, to believe correct things about Jesus. Of course we should do that, but that is not the kind of belief that I am asking that question about.

There are, in fact, all kinds of people who believe all kinds of things about Jesus. They often believe these things passionately whether they are correct beliefs or not.

I have met people who believe that Jesus travelled to India in his youth, that he was white, that he was a supporter of supply-side economics and that he thought that the poor ought to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. These things are all demonstrably false (or at least have no good evidence to support them) but people believe them.

What You Believe Matters

What you believe about Jesus – true or false – matters, of course. I hope we promote the right beliefs about Jesus. But what you believe about him is not fundamentally what makes you a part of his church. The Letter of James, which we read from this morning says this about correct belief: “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.” (James 2:19) Faith has to mean something more than just believing a bunch of correct things.

And I hope that this is something that can give you some comfort. I have met many Christians over the years who get hung up on the whole question of believing the right things. “I have a really hard time believing in a virgin birth,” one might say, “does that mean that I can’t be a Christian?” Or another might say, “I just can’t get my logical mind to come to terms with that whole notion of the Trinity.” (To which I respond, by the way, “Welcome to the club!”) “Does that mean I can’t be a Christian?”

Don’t be Anxious

Do your best to study and believe the right things about Jesus, but do not have any anxiety about getting something wrong or incomplete. God, who knows and holds all of the deepest truths of the universe, whose knowledge of all things vastly outstrips what any human knowledge will ever achieve, cannot look at any of us and fail to see that we all believe things that aren’t quite true. Why would God judge us for that? And so maybe it is past time for us to stop judging one another over differences in belief!

Free of All Doubt?

Another thing that the question, “Do you believe in Jesus?” might mean if someone asked it of you on the street has to do with doubt. For many people, believing in Jesus, in God or in anything to do with the church means that you never, not even for a moment, struggle with any doubt.

Indeed, I have often heard people boast of that – that they never feel even a moment’s doubt when it comes to believing even some of the wildest things in the Bible.

“Do you ever wonder if perhaps, when the Bible says that the world was created in six days, that the entire face of the earth was covered by Noah’s flood or that Jonah survived after being swallowed by a big fish that maybe, just maybe, it might mean something other than that those things literally happened exactly like that?” you might ask them. And they respond by saying, “Yes, I never doubted any of that for even a moment! The Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it.

I don’t personally see such a complete lack of doubt to be a sign of strong faith. It might be a sign of a lack of curiosity or perhaps even of critical thinking, but it is more blind acceptance of whatever you’ve been told than it is faith.

Trust in Jesus

So what is the question, “Do you turn to Jesus Christ, accepting him as Lord and Saviour, trusting in his grace and love?” really asking? It is not asking about intellectual belief or about a lack of doubt. It is simply asking about your willingness to trust in Jesus. The faith that Jesus is looking for from all believers is simply that. Jesus wants to know, “Are you willing to trust me?”

An Old Chair

Allow me to put it in terms that I think we can all relate to. Imagine that I had a chair here. And let’s say that this chair is really old. It has survived two world wars. The varnish is chipped and faded. It probably spent many years sitting in Sunday School classes where people carved their initials into the seat. If you dared to run your fingers underneath the seat, you would likely find many well-chewed pieces of gum.

In short, the chair doesn’t look great. But it does have four solid looking feet extending to the floor, even if one seems a bit shorter than the others and it might wobble a bit. The back appears to be firmly attached to the seat which doesn’t have any holes in it. So, I ask you one simple question: do you have faith in this chair?

Do you Have Faith in the Chair?

Now, if you were to answer my question by giving me a detailed description of the composition, manufacture and the history of this chair, would that prove to me that you have faith in this chair? Of course not. It would only indicate that you know a number of things about it.

If you were to provide me with a scientific study that proved to me that such a chair of such an age would collapse only 0.00001% of the times that somebody sat on it, I might be impressed with the thoroughness of your investigations, but I would not conclude that you had faith in this chair.

Most of all, if you insisted that you believed in this chair with all of your heart and that you had no doubt whatsoever that it could adequately support the weight of a human being, but you absolutely refused to sit on it anyway, I would have no real reason to conclude that you had faith in this chair.

Trusting the Chair

But if, on the other hand, somebody walked up here without knowing any of the history or construction of this chair, had no understanding of the engineering that makes chairs stable or the load-baring ratings of such furniture, could they have faith in this chair? Could they have faith even if they were plagued with all kinds of doubts about whether a chair could support someone such as them? Yes, they could.

And I would immediately know they did if, without hesitation, they just sat in it. Faith is what happens when you take what you know and believe, and you are actually willing to do something with it.

You see, that is what Jesus requires of you – not intellectual assent, not correct understanding or belief as important as those things may be. He doesn’t mind if you have doubts. All he needs to know is if you will trust him.

The Letter of James

The great reformer, Martin Luther, kind of famously didn’t much like the Letter of James that we read from this morning. He called it an epistle of straw and probably would have been happier if it wasn’t part of the New Testament at all. The reason why Luther didn’t much like this letter was because he insisted, and rightly so, that salvation is based only on grace through faith.

In other words, God will save us in whatever ways we need to be saved, but we cannot gain that salvation by doing good things or by earning it in any way whatsoever. The only way to gain it is to receive it as a gift by faith.

The problem that Luther and many others have with the Letter of James is that it goes on and on about the things that we do and the importance of doing the right things. That might certainly leave the unwary reader with the impression that James is teaching that we can earn favour with God by doing the right things.

Faith and Works

Now, it is true that the Letter of James seems to be in conversation with the teachings of the Apostle Paul regarding salvation. He does seem to take exception with some of the ways that people have interpreted Paul’s teaching about the importance of faith. But I ultimately do not think that James and Paul are disagreeing with each other.

James writes, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it?” But he is not really disagreeing with Paul by saying that. He is not saying that faith doesn’t save, he is just insisting that his readers remember what faith truly is. So long as you remember that the kind of faith that God is looking for is trust – the kind of trust that allows you to sit on a chair whether or not you have seen all of the engineering reports on its manufacture.

In other words, if you have faith in Jesus, if you really trust him, then you will not just stand around proclaiming that you believe. You will actually take that trust and act according to it.

Faith Without Works is Dead

James sums it all up by saying, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” Standing around and saying that you believe – even if you believe all the right things – is not what God is looking for. God is looking for trust, and trust naturally leads to action.

What James is absolutely not saying is that you can earn your way into God’s good graces by doing good deeds. He is saying that, if you truly learn to place your faith in Jesus – the kind of faith that saves – it is going to change the way that you see everything.

As you live by forming the habit of placing your trust in Jesus, you will come to see how he is always there for you. And as you come to see as a result that God loves you just as you are, forgiving you when you need forgiving and liberating you when you need liberation, the kinds of actions that will naturally result are actions that demonstrate love and acceptance for the weak and the forgotten, the poor and the oppressed. That is where faith in Jesus will naturally lead us if we allow it to prompt us forward.

So, you see that that question, “Do you turn to Jesus Christ, accepting him as Lord and Saviour, trusting in his grace and love?” is a question that contains so much. I would ask us all to consider yet again how we answer that question and how it has transformed our approach to the ways that we live.

https://youtu.be/eMLrGnmxY6g

Preston, 1 September 2024 © Scott McAndless
Acts 20:1-12, Psalm 16, Luke 7:11-17

Everyone loves to read a good travelogue. You are familiar, I hope with this very popular form of literature in which somebody writes about their experiences while travelling to and from exotic locales. Some of the more popular travelogues you may be have read include Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.” People love to read them because they allow them to experience danger, discovery and adventure, all from the comfort and safety of their own armchair.

But did you know that travelogues are not just a modern publishing trend? They have been extremely popular since the beginning of writing. Ancient travelogues like the Histories of Herodotus and the Odyssey of Homer were widely popular throughout ancient times and there were many imitators that were on Athens Times Bestseller lists. The really fun thing about ancient travelogues is that they always bring with them the possibilities of supernatural and divine encounters. Gods and demigods seem to be hiding around every corner.

Luke’s Travelogue

The reason I bring up travelogue literature is that many scholars today believe that, when Luke wrote parts of his book that we call The Acts of the Apostles, particularly the parts that recount the missionary journeys of Paul, he did so in a way that consciously imitated the popular travelogue literature of his day. He uses the same vocabulary, tropes and pacing as you would have found in those popular books.

And I don’t think that the biblical author did that by accident. He wanted his readers to approach this book with the same kinds of expectations as a travelogue – as a kind of metaphor for how they might encounter God and Christ and the Holy Spirit on their journey through life.

I think that that makes our reading this morning from the Book of Acts very fitting. We have been on a journey this summer, haven’t we? In fact, if Luke (the traditional author of the Book of Acts) were to write the story of our summer experiment, I suspect that it would go something like this:

Our Journey

“And lo, they travelled even unto Doon where they discovered truths about God among the trees. From there they set out to Crieff where a lesson was learned when the preacher failed to properly apply sunscreen. They set sail for Hespeler where the people just wouldn’t stop passing the peace and then onto Duff’s where a totally unplanned organ and piano concert broke out.” Yeah, I think that Luke could probably do justice to our summer journey.

Today we come to the end of our summer journey here in Preston. We, who have made some great friends and connections, are together for the last time. I certainly hope that we will be together again, but right now, we do not know how or when that might happen.

And so, it seemed fitting to focus on the story of what happened when the Apostle Paul gathered with the church in Troas. It was a significant meeting because, after many adventures and many lessons learned among many churches, Paul was leaving that part of the world to go to Jerusalem. Nobody knew when or if he might return. Does that feel a little bit like where we are today? So, my question is how might Luke describe our meeting as the church of Crieff, Doon, Duff’s, Hespeler and Preston today?

Our Meeting Today

On the first day of the week, when we met to worship and enjoy fellowship, the preacher was holding a discussion with them; since it was the last time that they would be together and they would all return to their own congregations the next week, he continued speaking until noon. It was a hot summer day on a long weekend and churches didn’t have air conditioning in those days and the air was scarcely moving.

A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the window, began to sink off into a deep sleep while the preacher droned on and on and on. Overcome by sleep, he fell to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead.

The First Day of the Week

Is that how it is going to go today? Well, no. I (perhaps unlike the Apostle Paul) do have a sense of when I have said enough. But, I do think that this is the perfect passage for us to reflect on where we are today.

If you look through the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, you will notice that the author of those books keeps returning to a particularly powerful image. He describes people gathering on the first day of the week – that is on Sunday.

It comes up often, for example, in his description of the appearances of the resurrected Jesus at the end of his gospel – in his story of Easter and of the walk to Emmaus – Luke makes a point of repeating that these things happened when people gathered to eat on the first day of the week.

The point of this seems clear. One of the things that made the Christian movement distinct from almost the very beginning was their strange practice of gathering on Sunday. This set them apart from the Jews, of course, who had their Sabbath on Saturday, and from every other religious and cultural group in their society. Gathering on Sunday was one of those things that made the church a church.

Luke’s Symbolic Use of Sunday Gatherings

And despite the fact that this habit had not yet been formed in the weeks immediately after the resurrection and possibly not even in the time of the Apostle Paul, when Luke wrote his books, mentioning that a group of people gathered on the first day was a quick and easy way to let his readers know that he wanted them to understand that he was saying something important about the church.

So, when Luke tells us that the people in Troas met and broke bread with Paul on the first day of the week, our alarm bells should all be going off. “Warning, warning! This story is here to teach us something about what it means to be the church!”

The Tired Church

And so, let’s look at Eutychus and ask what he might have to teach us about being the church. And the first lesson certainly seems to be a caution, doesn’t it? He seems to be a warning that the church can fall too easily into slumber. And slumbering and sleeping can apparently have some dangerous consequences.

You know, one of the loudest complaints that I hear from all of our churches these days seems to be exactly that: “We’re tired.”

And I know that it is not coming from nowhere. People are feeling that there is more and more work to do and there are fewer and fewer people to do it. And it is not just a feeling mind you – studies have shown that that is exactly what has been happening in all churches across all denominations and the theological spectrum. Even churches that are growing at high rates are not escaping this trend.  Fewer are doing more of the work. When people in churches tell me they are tired, I believe them!

But what is our response to this Eutychian problem of the church these days? Often it is just to shout at the church to wake up, drink more coffee and work through your fatigue because otherwise your church is going to fall out of the proverbial third-floor window and die! That is our frantic and fear-filled reaction. Does that sound like a compassionate response to you?

The Power of Resurrection

It is not the response to the sense of fatigue that Luke would like us to make. I know that because he does not end his account as a warning. He does not end it with Eutychus lying dead on the sidewalk outside the house. Death is part of the story, but it is not the end of it.

He ends it like this: “But Paul went down and bending over [Eutychus] took him in his arms and said, ‘Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.’ Then Paul went upstairs, and after he had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left. Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted.”

What does that mean? It means that the church is a place where we experience the power of resurrection. It is the place where we are “not a little comforted” because we know that Jesus has triumphed over death for us, that he is risen and that because he is risen, we have hope of life and renewal and new beginnings. It is when we stop experiencing the power of the resurrection as the church that we cease to be the church of Jesus Christ.

What We Must Pass Through First

But the difficult question is what do we need to go through to get to that experience. The church in Troas had to go through a pretty harrowing experience of death, after all, before they were given the opportunity to experience that power. There was grief and anxiety and fear and loss. As they stared at poor Eutychus lying on the ground, how could they feel anything else?

So, I guess the question we may need to ask is what sort of grief or loss are we going to have to live through to experience the power of the resurrection that they experienced?

Here is the problem that I see the church facing. If we – if the people who are doing the work – are weary, then the solution cannot just be a question of more coffee, working harder and exhausting ourselves more. That only leads to a harder crash (possibly from a third story window) further down the road. We need resurrection, not stimulus. We need new life, not just something to keep us awake a little while longer. The only model that we have in the Bible for the renewal of the church is death and resurrection.

We May Need to Die to Something

And I know we may not want to hear it, but this means that in order to become the church that God is calling us to be, our congregations may need to die to something. I know in many of our churches, what we need to die to first is the model of the church that used to be. We are constantly trying to live up to our idealized image of what the church was in the past and we are burning our best people out in this attempt to keep up appearances. That is something that we all may need to die to to a certain extent.

I suspect that if this summer experiment has taught us anything, it is that maybe it’s time for us, in some ways at least, to die to the notion that our congregations can make it all on their own. I don’t know about you, but I have been amazed by the energy that we have found in working and worshiping together.

In my experience working in the church, summer time was always a time that you just had to survive. You kept the lights on. You ran the operation with a skeleton crew. But hasn’t it been so much fun to not merely survive this summer as congregations but to thrive in our worship together? I really believe we’re going to have to find ways to keep some of that energy together going moving forward.

Hard Choices

But if I have discovered one thing in the church, it is that nothing really changes unless we make some hard decisions and give certain things up. And that can feel awful. It can feel as if you are falling from a third story window and the sidewalk is coming at you so very fast.

But if the story of Eutychus can teach us anything, it is that such moments are not the end of the story. We are churches that believe in resurrection. We are churches that trust in Jesus’ ability to raise us up even from the dead. There have been so many times in the past when the church has felt as if it was on the edge of death and Jesus has raised us up and challenged us to live in new and exciting ways. I do feel as if we are in such a moment right now.

If Luke were to write the story of our churches and the challenges that they face today, I have no doubt that it would be an exciting story of adventure and that his imagination would be caught by our journeys this summer. Above all, he would teach us to trust in the power of the resurrection which is and always has been the only hope of the church.

Fortunate

Oh, and there is one more thing that I would like you to take away from this story. Did you ever wonder what the name Eutychus’ means? It means fortunate. So if God has put us where we are right now, remember it is because God loves us enough to bless us with good fortune. I hope that we can get to the place were we aren’t falling asleep, but not because we’re overcaffeinated. Let it be that we…

Don’t wanna close our eyes
Don’t wanna fall asleep
‘Cause we miss all this
And we don’t wanna miss a thing
Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff to do
Eutychus was a righteous dude
And we’ll rise again
Cause we don’t wanna miss a thing.

Here is the Zoom link if you need it: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83374180457?pwd=toe8C4iGVfFgL8SFaWt6amw8tYiIVY.1

https://youtu.be/WR90X7kKhXU

Duff’s Presbyterian, August 4, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:13a, Psalm 51:1-12, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:24-35

Nathan was no fool; at least he could do some simple math. How long, exactly, had Bathsheba been married to David when she had her baby? Let’s see… it all started with the incident in which David used his power and position first to spy on Bathsheba inside her house while she was taking a bath and then to send her a summons that she had no power to refuse. Then afterwards, she sent word to him that she was expecting a child.

How long would it have taken for her to come to that realization? They did not have the kinds of sophisticated tests that we have today, so it likely would not have been until she was maybe in her sixth week.

The Cover-Up

Then David spent a considerable amount of time trying to hide the fact that this would be his child. He used his power as king to call Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, back from the battlefields. They had no telephones; that would have likely taken at least a week before Uriah could answer the summons. Then there were several days of David trying to get Uriah just to go home and sleep with his wife so that people might plausibly think that the child would be his. But Uriah was just too virtuous and noble – far more noble than the king – and he wouldn’t do it, not even when David got him good and drunk.

The Murder

David’s next plan – his plan B– was much more diabolical. He sent Uriah back to his unit with instructions to his commander that he was to be sent into the thickest part of the fighting and, at the key moment, everyone else was to withdraw. This plan did finally work and Uriah was killed. But once again it must have taken a couple of weeks or more to implement. A week or so after that, the news was brought back to Jerusalem that Uriah was dead.

And then there was the funeral to be organized and following the funeral, Bathsheba had to observe a decent period of mourning before David could finally send for her and bring her into his harem.

Of course, Nathan knew none of this. He only observed David’s strange behaviour during Uriah’s visit. What he couldn’t help but notice, however, was the undeniable fact that Bathsheba was barely in the harem for six months before she presented David with a newborn son. Surely Nathan wasn’t the only one to wonder at that!

Betrayed Soldiers

Nathan sought out the other soldiers from Uriah’s unit. These were men who were hardened by years of experience in battle. But when he asked them about the day when Uriah died, he saw them shake with fear as they told the story.

“It was crazy,” one of them said. “Our commander ordered us to attack the strongest place in the enemy’s defences and we were practically surrounded by some of their mightiest warriors. And then, all of a sudden, we looked around and discovered that we were all alone. Everyone else had withdrawn.”

“Uriah fought like a madman that day,” another continued. “He was completely reckless about his own safety as if he knew that he was destined to die anyway. Maybe he knew something we didn’t? But thanks to his bravery, a few of us managed to get out alive.

“But we never should have been put in that position to begin with. I just don’t know what our commanders were thinking!”

Nathan left the interview pondering deeply.

The Lord Sent Nathan

All that the Bible tells us about why the Prophet Nathan went into confront David about what he had done is this: “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David.” And I know how many people understand that. They imagine it all as some grand supernatural event. The prophet had a vision or perhaps awoke from a dream suddenly possessed of disturbing but previously hidden information. We assume that God revealed this secret information directly to the prophet.

And then, when he actually goes and confronts David by telling his little parable, I guess the idea is that David is so shocked by this sudden revelation of his deepest and darkest secret by God that it causes him to make his sudden and sincere confession.

Was This Really Hidden Knowledge?

But my question is this: did Nathan really require some form of supernatural knowledge to discover what the monkey business was between David and Bathsheba? Do people not know how to count months? And can you imagine a squad of soldiers who felt as if their commanders did something that was really dumb and they didn’t tell everyone who would listen all about it?

Come on! I don’t believe for a moment that Nathan needed a divine message to know what was going on. All he needed was a sharp mind, a bit of curiosity and the ability to count to nine. I do not think that Nathan needed God to reveal anything to him about what the king had done. And so, the question is, what does it mean when it says that God sent Nathan to the king?

What If Everyone Knew?

Here is the truth of the matter. The entire palace and most of the city of Jerusalem had been buzzing for weeks about the birth of David’s newest son. For anyone whose eyes were open to simple reality, it was something far beyond the levels of gossip or rumour. Any reasonable person could see that something must have happened before Bathsheba’s husband had been so tragically killed.

Now, that is not exactly the same thing as saying that everyone knew what had happened. We have all seen this, haven’t we? How some people have a hard time accepting evidence that is right in front of their eyes. Were there people in Jerusalem who were going on about how it was all “fake news”? Were there conspiracy theories about how the whole scandal was manufactured by a cabal of globalist Philistines who were intent on destroying the Israelite nation? I have no doubt.

There were also likely people who were arguing that since David was the king, he had absolute immunity anyway so anyone who even raised the question of what he had done was engaging in malicious prosecution and weaponizing the judicial system against political opponents because they were trying to steal the next election for… well, maybe not exactly that, but you know what I mean.

What God Gave Nathan?

So, what did God do for Nathan? Did God reveal to him something that he didn’t already know or at least strongly suspect? I don’t think so. But that doesn’t mean that God didn’t “send” Nathan to David. I suspect that Nathan woke up one day to the conviction that, if he had an understanding about what had happened with David and Bathsheba, maybe God had allowed him to figure that out. And maybe he realized that, if God had given him the brains to figure that much out, maybe that meant that God wanted him to do something with that knowledge.

But most of all, I believe that God gave to Nathan the courage to do what I have no doubt that many others in the court and in the family of David did not have the courage to do. God gave Nathan the strength of character to go and challenge David directly.

A Creative Approach

One more thing, I would also credit God with giving to Nathan is the creativity of his unique approach to the king. That was absolutely brilliant.

Nathan could have gone in there levelling a direct accusation, and do you know what would have happened? David would have immediately put his defences up.

But Nathan went in with a story. And a good story always has a way of breaking down your defences and helping you to see something from a whole different angle. Watch out for the storytellers; they will get you every time.

That is why God loves the storytellers, just like God loves the artists and the composers and all those who use their creativity to make people see the world from a whole different angle. I honestly believe such creativity has always been one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity. So yes, God granted to Nathan creativity in his approach to the king.

But did God need to tell Nathan something he didn’t already know? I don’t think so. And I believe that is something that all of us need to understand. Because many of us have the potential of being a Nathan in our world today.

We Need Nathans

We need people who are going to use their God-given intellect to interpret events and see what is really going on in our world today. And a lot of what is going on in our world today is very disturbing.

Do you need to wait for some vision from God to recognize that powerful people are using their power and wealth to fix the system so that it works only in their own favour?  Do you require a supernatural messenger to come to you in order to see how marginalized people are abused and how their work is not paid what it is worth? Are you waiting for divine revelation to come to you before you see how various minority groups like immigrants and international students are being unfairly scapegoated – pinned with the blame for all the woes of our society? I hope not. You are smart enough to employ your intellect to see these things. You are smart enough to be a Nathan.

Using Creativity

What’s more, I am certain that you are creative enough to be a Nathan. Nathan used a God-given talent that allowed him to spin a tale about a cute little lamb and its devoted owner that was somehow able to get past the defences of a man who was so powerful, who was so convinced that he had absolute immunity, that he could do whatever he wanted.

And I would absolutely challenge you to think about the creative talents that God has given to you and how you can use them to break down the defences of a system in this world that perpetuates evil and harm.

My Calling

I believe that God has given me that kind of calling. Apart from my work as a preacher, I also put out a podcast on a regular basis. I do this because I believe God has given me certain gifts as a storyteller. And so, on my podcast, I retell Bible stories in a way that is not targeted at preaching to the church. I do that on Sundays and in my regular job of sermon preparation.

In my podcast, I try to find a way to tell these stories for the world outside of the church, using these amazing stories to suggest to people that they might just try out a different perspective, not just on the Bible, but on how things work in the world.

Have I persuaded anyone to take on a different perspective? I don’t know for sure, but I do believe this is one of my callings. It is simply to use my creativity in a way similar to what Nathan did.

Various Ways of Using Creativity

Now, I know we’re not all storytellers. But there are lots of different ways of being creative. Some may paint or colour or draw. Some have a gift for describing the world in ways that fire somebody’s imagination. Others are really good at using humour or organizing people or even the presentation of numbers and accounting. These are all ways of presenting truths to the world that can change somebody’s perspective.

I do believe that God has gifted each one of us in unique ways to be creative and to use our skills to connect with and influence people. God has gifted us with the ability to persuade people to open their eyes and see truths about how the world is working. I would strongly encourage you to prayerfully meditate on how you can use your creativity to have an impact on the world.

In any case, I hope the story of Nathan might blow up your understanding of what it means to be a prophet. You don’t have to be in receipt of divine hidden information in order to proclaim the word of the Lord. You just have to pay attention to what is really happening and use the brain that God has given you. You just have to use the creativity that God has put into you. I truly believe that anyone can be a Nathan and that we definitely need more of them.

https://youtu.be/pVoZk6le60k

Knox Crieff, July 7, 2024 © Scott McAndless Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Psalm 48, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13

Jesus said, “Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown and among their own kin and in their own house.” And have you noticed that that is not really one of his most famous sayings? It is not up there with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” or “Turn the other cheek,” but I suspect it might be one of the most important things that he ever said.

It is, on the surface, just his reflection on a bad experience he had when he took his disciples with him and visited his hometown of Nazareth. Apparently, even though they had heard great things about what he had been doing, about how he had been spreading his wisdom and doing great deeds of power in other towns and villages of Galilee, they were not inclined to give him any respect.

They Knew him too well

And it is at least suggested that this was because they knew him too well – that they knew his brothers and sisters and mother because he had grown up among them. They knew that he had made a living as a carpenter which they clearly saw as a rather lowly profession. Maybe we can also read into that that they remembered what he was like as an annoying little kid who, like any other child, must have gotten into trouble and gotten on other people’s nerves.

Hometown Heroes

But that can’t quite be the whole story, can it? Because that is not how people usually behave. When somebody from your hometown makes it big on a larger stage, is your first reaction to disrespect them? Of course not! In a couple of weeks, the whole world will focus on Paris, France and the Olympic Games. Now, as far as I know, there will be no athletes from Puslinch at the games this year. Though, if there is, I’m sure that someone will let me know at the end of the service.

But, if there were, and if they did really well and won some medals, can you imagine people from around here saying, “Oh, that’s no big deal. I don’t respect them because I once saw them in diapers”? Of course, not! We celebrate our hometown heroes. We vicariously take their victories as our own. So, what is up with this reaction in Nazareth?

Jesus as a Prophet

I think that it is not just that they think they know him too well. I think that Jesus is saying something very specific and that we need to pay attention to it. It is because he is a prophet. This incident is the only place in the gospels where Jesus claims to be a prophet, so I think it is very important that we understand what he means by that.

I know that “prophet,” in the popular imagination means somebody who is able to predict the future, but that is not the primary job of a biblical prophet and that is not what Jesus is talking about here.

Biblical Prophets

A biblical prophet was someone who spoke the word of God for the people of his or her own moment in time. They said, “This is what the Lord is saying to God’s people at this moment.” Now, sometimes that included warnings about the future in the sense of, “If you don’t do what God says, this will be the consequence,” but it is actually a misunderstanding of the role of a prophet to think that they went around saying things that wouldn’t make any sense to their audience until years, maybe centuries, in the future when their predictions eventually came to pass.

So, when Jesus says that he is a prophet, what he means is that he is proclaiming what God is saying to the people of his own time and that that is what the people of Nazareth are unable to accept.

Preacher Prophetic Role

Think of it this way. A Christian preacher is supposed to have a similar prophetic role. Are we put in place, to tell people what they want to hear and make them feel good? Not really, though comforting people can be part of the job, it is not what it’s all about. The prophetic job of the preacher is to push and challenge and correct when that is what God is calling for.

And honestly, being prophetic like that is often not a very easy thing in your home church because you know what are the things that are really important to the people in that church. You understand the habits and ways of doing things that they don’t want to let go of. You know what they expect you to be. And I have found that God often challenges us about those very things. And so, the more you know your congregation, the harder it is to be truly prophetic. In some ways, I think that’s what Jesus was saying to the folks at Nazareth.

What was the Prophetic Message?

And so, what was the prophetic message of Jesus that they were having a hard time accepting? Well, I think it may have had something to do with those observations that they were making about Jesus. They had noticed the incredible ministry that he was having elsewhere, the extraordinary teaching and healing that he was doing. But, you see, the very fact that he was doing it elsewhere would have been a sore point for them because they would have had expectations of him.

We often don’t realize this, but there actually were many examples at that time of people doing the kind of thing that Jesus did. There were famous teachers and storytellers. Healers and wonderworkers are also well attested in the historical record. I know we would insist that Jesus did both of those things better than anyone else, but it was not as if other people weren’t engaged in the same kinds of activities.

How You were Supposed to Do It

But there was an expectation about how you were supposed to do it. You were supposed to settle down in one place, usually, of course, in the town that you came from. You were supposed to make the people come to you for what you could offer.

And now can you see why the people in Nazareth might have been a bit upset with Jesus? They were wondering why he hadn’t stayed in Nazareth. If he had, he would be attracting all kinds of people to their little town and they would be selling souvenirs and reaping the economic benefits of having multitudes pass through their village. Jesus wasn’t doing it right! And they felt as if they were missing out on the benefits of his fame.

The prophetic message that he was giving to them was not what he said so much as it was about how he was operating in a way that defied their expectations.

How We Planned this Experiment

As I read this story of Jesus and thought about what I would preach on this, my first opportunity to preach during our grand summer experiment, I’ve got to tell you that these particular words of Jesus really jumped out at me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but we did our best to set this experiment up so that we preachers spent the summer not preaching in our own churches.

The prophets, in other words, are spending the summer away from their home pulpits. And I think there is a challenge in that for me. I think that God might be calling me, might be calling all of us, to be bold in our preaching and to maybe say those things that it might not be safe to say in our home congregations.

What We don’t Want to Hear

So, what is God saying to our churches? What is God saying that maybe we do not want to hear? In particular, what might we be holding onto that is preventing us from seeing the kinds of deeds of power that were associated with the ministry of Jesus? Well, I think it may be the same message that was implicit in the simple fact that Jesus was just paying a visit to Nazareth and not opening up shop there. He was saying that the kingdom of God, this thing that he had come to announce and proclaim, was not tied to your place.

They Loved Nazareth

They loved Nazareth; of course they did. They had probably lived there all of their lives. Every significant spiritual experience in their lives had taken place there. They had encountered God in meaningful ways in the meetings of the synagogue. They loved the buildings and the people that they had shared both good times and bad times there with. But here was Jesus showing them that the kingdom of God was not tied to their place. Is it any wonder that they took offence to him?

And I don’t think that it is any coincidence that that is the very same message that many of our modern-day congregations don’t want to hear from their own prophet or preacher. But, as I said, I am not in my own home pulpit today. So, will I dare to preach the word of the Lord?

That message for today is not, as far as I’m concerned that we’re going to have to all give up our church buildings and sacred spaces. Yes, there may be some major shake-ups coming in terms of how we relate to those spaces. Some of the models that we’ve had that have been so centred on those buildings will probably need to change, but I do believe that God sees the beauty and value of our cherished church buildings as much as we do.

A Shift in Understanding

I think that the shift that Jesus is calling us to is in our understanding of where our ministry takes place. We have fallen into the habit of assuming that these lovely spaces are where ministry occurs. The church has focused its strategy around bringing people in here so that they may minister and be ministered to. But that model hasn’t been working very well for a while now. We need a new understanding of the work that God is calling us to do.

How Jesus Organized His Ministry

I do not think that it is a coincidence that immediately after this whole incident in Nazareth, the Gospel of Mark jumps immediately into an account of the way that Jesus organized his ministry. Far from settling down in one place and expecting that people would come to him to be ministered to, what did Jesus do? He organized his disciples to go out to the various towns and villages of Galilee. They were to go to where the people were. This is the ultimate refutation of the expectations of the people from his hometown of Nazareth. And it may be the key message that prophets should speak to their home churches today.

We rightly cherish these sacred spaces of ours. The wonderful spiritual experiences we have had and continue to have in them are valid. But I do believe that Jesus is calling us to step out of these comfortable and familiar spaces to explore what it means to live out the good news of the kingdom of God in the community and in the wider world. Jesus is sending us out to make the good news of hope and new beginnings real in the lives of the people that we encounter.

Away from the Familiar

That is indeed one of the reasons why I am so excited about what we’ve chosen to do in our summer experiment. We are stepping out of what is familiar and predictable. We’ve chosen to be the church in innovative ways outside of our usual buildings. The very idea of such an approach was what shook up the people in Nazareth. And Jesus seems to have been saying that such a shaking up was prophetic. It may be just what we need.

Now, I’m not trying to suggest that our little summer experiment is the ultimate solution to what is ailing the church today. But I do think that it is symbolic of what Jesus is calling his church to. We need to be willing to conceive of new ways of being the church. We need to be willing to live our faith out in new ways as we meet people where they are with the good news about Jesus, his compassion, care and healing.

If this little experiment helps us to take even a few steps in those directions, then I do believe we will be heeding a prophetic voice. And that is what we need to be doing in these days above all.