Suddenly a man came up to Jesus. Keeping a safe two meter social distance he asked, “Teacher what good thing must I do in order to be safe in this time of corona virus?”
“Why come to me with the questions about what to do?” Jesus
retorted, “You know what the authorities are saying, do that.”
“What are they saying?” he asked.
"Christ and the Rich Young Ruler" by Heinrich Hofmann. Public domain.
“You know,” Jesus answered, “wash your hands for twenty seconds, cancel all gatherings, keep a safe social distance of two meters. Self isolate if there’s any chance you have been exposed. Do these things and you will live.”
“But I’m doing all of these things,” the man answered. “I
have even stored up a great supply of surgical masks and gloves and essentials
in my basement, but still I do not feel safe.”
“There is one thing more,” Jesus answered, “you must give
away all of those masks and gloves and essentials to the people who actually
need them. Even more important you need to let go of the notion that the things
that you have are what will keep you safe. It is only by making sure that
everyone has what they need that we can all be safe.”
“When the young man heard him say that, he went away very
sad. He had a lot of stuff stored in his basement.”
Jesus said to his disciples, “I’m telling you the truth: it’s very hard for a rich person to get into the kingdom of heaven. Let me say it again: it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s Kingdom.”
This paraphrase was inspired by N.T. Wright's translation of Matthew 19:16-26 in Lent for Everyone Matthew, Year A (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013). A few of the phrases are lifted verbatim.
For commentary on this paraphrase, see the video devotional at the top of this page.
The Prophet Samuel was just feeling so depressed. He wasn’t sleeping, he hardly ate and he could hardly even work up the passion to punish any sinners or slaughter any foreigners. He had it in a bad way. And what was it that was depressing Samuel so much? Well, it was Saul. He just felt let down. He had invested so much in Saul. When Saul was just a young man, Samuel had found him and anointed him and made him king over Israel – the first king the nation had ever had. Saul had been so tall and so handsome – a good head taller than any other man in his tribe. He just really stood out from the crowd.
And what
a king he had made! Saul had rescued the city of Jabesh and attacked the
outpost of Geba. He had won at Gibeah and beaten the Moabites and the Amonites
and the Edomites and the kings of Zobah and the Amalakites. There had been so much
blood, so much death and mayhem. Ah, good times… good times.
But, all
good things must come to an end sooner or later. Saul had messed up big-time.
Samuel had told him that he had to do it – that he must kill all of the Amalekites
and not leave one alive, but had Saul listened? No. He had gone and left one of
them alive. So, Samuel really had no choice. He had to tell Saul that he was
finished, that God had rejected him as king over Israel.
But
Samuel just couldn’t get over it. If he couldn’t have Saul – could never enjoy
the thrill of battle and the smell of blood at the side of that beautiful, tall
man again – well then, what was the point of anything? What was the point of
living!?
Those are
the kind of dark thoughts that Samuel is dealing with in the opening of our
reading this morning from the book that bears his name. That can be the only
reason why God would come to him and say,“How long will you grieve
over Saul?” Samuel was stuck. He couldn’t get over what he had lost in
Saul, something that had given meaning to his whole life. And he didn’t know
how to get past it.
And I’ve got to say that I’ve got all the sympathy in the world for Samuel
here because we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Every single one of us has lost
something that mattered to us. I realize that there are some who have lost
loved ones who have passed away and that loss can be tremendous. But even if
you haven’t suffered that, you no doubt know the meaning of losing, in some
sense, someone or something that meant the world to you. We’re probably also
all struggling today with the loss of things like social contact and even just
good old-fashioned physical contact. It is really hard to get over any loss
and, honestly, often the last thing you need to hear is someone saying to you, “How long will you grieve?”
There is an important place for grief – we should always allow the space and
the time for the processing of it – but it can become a problem if we are
failing to work through our grief and allow it cut off our own health and
growth. I suspect that was what was happening to Samuel. And God called him on
it. God called him on it because, as much as God does respect your grief, God
is always interested in helping you to embrace a larger vision for your life.
God’s intervention with Samuel in this moment has a great deal to say to us
as we deal with the challenges of life these days. I see a lot of grief in our
world today – not just with people who have lost loved ones but also those who
have lost in other ways. People are grieving the many changes in our world. Every
time you hear somebody say, “Remember when…” or “Back in my day…” they are
probably about to express their grief over a loss. It is especially something
that we do in the church a lot. We love to talk about the church that used to
be – the good old days when there were hundreds of kids in Sunday schools and
the pews were packed. We have come to believe that that was the real church
(even though, in many cases it was only a blip that lasted for a few decades)
and that what we have in the church today just doesn’t measure up in
comparison.
But what if God is saying to us in the church today, and sometimes in
society today, “How long will you grieve?” How long will you grieve the loss of
the church that used to be? How long will you grieve the changes of the modern
world? How long will you grieve the loss of the power and influence that you
once enjoyed? This is not because grief in itself is bad, but because God has
some things for us to do: “Fill your horn with oil and set out.” God
wants us to set out for new horizons and new beginnings but, so long as all we
can do is grieve the loss of the way things used to be, it will prevent us from
doing that.
Samuel was stuck. That much is clear, not only from what God says to him
but also from what he does. Samuel does, perhaps reluctantly, do as God says. He
takes a hollowed-out ram’s horn and he fills it up with oil and sets out. The
meaning of this act is clear. They didn’t crown kings back then, what they did
was anoint them with oil and the oil is to go on the head of a new king.
But even as, in outer form, Samuel obeys, it is clear enough that he is
still mourning for the past. How do I know that? I know that because when he
arrives at the home of Jesse, the family to which he has been directed, his eye
immediately falls on Jesse’s eldest son, Eliab. And what is it that attracts
Samuel’s attention to Eliab? Well, this is what God says when he notices Samuel
looking at the boy, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his
stature.”
Clearly, Samuel had noticed two things about the boy: he was really, really
good looking and he was tall. That’s what made him think that Eliab would make
a good king. Hmm, can you remember anybody else who’s most distinguishing
feature that he was really tall and good-looking? Oh yeah, that was Saul, wasn’t
it? Clearly, Samuel maybe looking for another king, but he’s looking for a king
just like the one that just got away. He might say he’s over Saul, but
he’s not over Saul because clearly the only new king that he can imagine looks
a whole lot like the old king.
That is the danger when we do not process our grief or loss in the ways
that we ought to. It is alright to feel the ache of loss, it is alright to miss
what you miss and it is alright to remember with sadness, but if you can only
manage to imagine a successful future as basically a rerun of the past, then
you have a problem.
I know that this is a problem that we run into in the life of the church
all the time. I don’t know how many times I have walked into a different church
and had somebody tell me, almost within the first minute, everything about how
things used to be in that church. “Well you know,” they’ll say, “fifty years
ago, they used to have to bring in extra chairs and have people sit in the
aisle because there were so many people here for some services!” “Forty years
ago, our youth group was so big that we had twenty weddings in the space of two
years.” “And thirty years ago, there were so many kids in that Sunday school
that we used to have to hold a class in the Men’s room!”
Oh, you give me ten minutes with most church people and I’ll be able to
tell you everything about their church several decades ago, but almost nothing
about how it is now. (And, by the way, I have learned that, if you say to them,
“Wow, you had that many kids in Sunday school thirty years ago you must have so
many people in their thirty and forties now, they tend to get really quiet.)
They just aren’t as excited about talking about what is going on now.
And it is not even because there aren’t exciting things about their church
now. There are often some pretty wonderful things going on now but, because
they still define success in terms of that past and the exciting things that
are happening there now don’t really fit with that definition of success, they
don’t quite know how to talk about that. “Oh church, how long will you grieve
over Saul? Fill your horn with oil and set out.” God has a new adventure for
you.
Samuel doesn’t anoint Eliab, the new Saul; he ends up anointing David who
is kind of the opposite of Saul. Where Saul was the tallest, David is the
smallest of Jesse’s children. Where Saul had a noble bearing that immediately
made the people hail him as kinglike, David was ruddy which probably meant that
he looked kind of rustic and common. The future was going to look very
different from the past but that didn’t mean that there would not be success in
that future, it just might look very different from the success that they had
known in the past. So it will be for the church. God is giving the church
success and will give it, I believe, even more abundantly in the future. But if
we don’t stop grieving for Saul, for the church that used to be, we will probably
miss it.
All of this seems very relevant today, doesn’t it? There is a lot of change
in the air. This virus has so disrupted everything that, not only is it going
to take a long time for things to go back to normal, I’m beginning to suspect
that “back to normal” is not really going to be possible. At the very least, today
I am probably as far as I ever have been from being able to say that I have the
faintest idea of what the future might look like. That is a scary thought. It
is a scary thought for the church, and it is a scary thought in a lot of other
ways. But should we be scared? No, the future is in the best place that it
could possibly be – in the hands of God. Just because the future is different,
doesn’t mean that God can’t be in it. In fact, as many of the illusions of this
world and how it worked fall away, it might even be possible that the kingdom
of God is closer now than it has ever been before.
But do you know what might make us miss out on whatever new thing God is
doing among us? We might miss it if all we can do is imagine the future in
terms of the past. We might miss it if we define the success of the future in
terms of what seemed like success in the past and we will especially miss it if
we are looking for a new Saul and God is putting a David in front of us.
Grief has its place and you may well find yourself in the coming times
looking back and missing things that you loved and that you liked and that made
your life easier. That is fine and don’t be afraid to express that grief. But
when God comes to you and says “fill your horn with oil and set out,”
you had better get ready to believe that the future success that he wants you
to anoint will be something different from what it might have looked in the
past – not Saul but David – and that is a good thing.
My second "Devotion for People at a Social Distance." This one is inspired by the famous words written 400 years ago by John Donne, a British priest desperately ill in epidemic stricken London.
What can Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions," say to us today? Lots!
I have committed to do what I'm calling a series of "Devotions for People at a Social Distance." Every day, I will be speaking to and praying with people who are isolated and maybe afraid and worried about the future. Where is the hope and comfort. This devotion is based on the story of the disciples afraid in a boat on the lake.
First of all, here are four videos of the morning worship:
Part 1: Prelude to Life and Work of the Church
https://youtu.be/nFuZsZWNFMg
Part 2: Scripture Readings and Hymn
https://youtu.be/TXOYtPDIOdM
The Readings of the day were Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95:1-11, Romans 5:1-11 and John 4:5-40
Part 3: Sermon -- When there is no water on the journey
https://youtu.be/YD0TWaaXvKc
You may read the full text of the sermon below.
Part 4: Offering, a lovely offertory by Margaret MacKenzie-Leighton, and the end of the service.
https://youtu.be/eME08q6_X1k
As I say in the invitation to the offering, this is something very important for everyone to be involved in now. Here are some links that you can use to give.
The children of Israel were tired of their journey and, you know what, I don’t blame them. It is a hard thing to pass through a desolate territory. Resources are scarce. You don’t know where your next meal is coming from, where you are going to be able to set up your tent or whether some wild animals might decide to invade the camp. I’ve gone camping before – been out in the wild and away from all of the conveniences of modern life. I’ve really enjoyed it – for about four days. At least for me, that was when a real weariness kicked in.
So, when the people arrived at a place called Rephidim – a
green oasis in the midst of the desert – it would have immediately raised their
expectations. This was just the kind of place where they could finally relax a
bit – where water would be plentiful for a change and they might not have to
worry for a few days. So, you can imagine how they reacted when they discovered
that the spring in that place had ceased to flow. The promise of the oasis
turned out to be nothing but a great boulder that loomed in the place where the
spring ought to be. Now, that’s got to be frustrating – to have water so near
and yet so out of reach!
Now, make no mistake, that was a big problem. Access to water
supplies when you are travelling in the desert is not a matter of luxury; it is
a matter of survival. They had a legitimate reason to be concerned. So why did
Moses get so upset with them? I think it might have something to do with how
they phrased their complaint: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us
and our children and livestock with thirst?” they asked. The problem with
that is that it is what we always do. Whenever God is leading us though some
new and unfamiliar situation, and the going gets rough, we always default to
what is old and familiar. It doesn’t even matter whether the old thing was a
good thing. In this case, they are pining for a situation where they were
literal slaves!
God calls us to move forward. God calls us to take risks
for the sake of the kingdom of God. Obviously, when that is the kind of thing
that you are involved in, there are going to be problems. There are going to be
bumps along the road and difficulties to deal with. The problem comes when our
response to those difficulties is merely to look back and complain about the
loss of what we were once used to. The real problem comes when our attachment
to the past traps us and keeps us from embracing the opportunities that God
places before us and that was what the children of Israel seem to have been
doing. So I cannot help but feel that, if the church is going to find its way
through whatever challenges God may be placing in front of us today, we’re
going to need a better example and model than the children of Israel passing
through the desert place. Fortunately, we have one.
Jesus was tired of his journey and, you know what, I don’t
blame him. For one thing, he was heading for Jerusalem which was the place that
was so dangerous and so stressful to him that it would actually be the death of
him eventually. He was also passing through a very stressful region if you
happened to be a good Jew like he was. You might even say it was a cultural
desert to him. He was in Samaria and Jews hated Samaritans; the feeling was mutual.
So, though he was surrounded by people, he really had nothing in common with
them. They might as well have spoken in a different language. But that was not
the worst part. The worst part was when Jesus arrived at a place called Jacob’s
well, a place famous for its pure, clear water, and he couldn’t drink any. The
problem was not that a great boulder was blocking access to the well, but it
was almost as hard to overcome: Jesus had nothing to draw water with. Now, that’s
got to be frustrating – to have water so near and yet so out of reach!
Now, if Jesus had just followed the example of his
ancient ancestors in the wilderness at this point, what would he do? He would whine
and complain about how God had brought him to this cultural wasteland so that
he might die of thirst. He would talk about how this kind of thing never
happened when he was back in Galilee among “civilized” people. But Jesus marked
a sharp departure from that whole way of thinking. Instead, he looked around
and asked himself the question, what possibilities has God placed in front of
me in this place?
And that is why, when a woman came along carrying a water
jar, Jesus didn’t react as his ancestors would have done. He didn’t say, “Well
I can’t talk to her because that would give her the impression that she’s a
human being instead of a filthy Samaritan. And I certainly mustn’t give her the
impression, as a woman, that she’s worthy of being addressed in public by a man!”
He should not have even acknowledged her existence. Is that what Jesus did? Did
he define his actions in the moment by what had worked for him in the past or
by the traditions that he had received? If he had done so, he would have
remained thirsty and frustrated.
Now, what Jesus did say: “Give me a drink,” makes
it sound as if Jesus is only concerned with his own needs in the moment. But
think, for a moment, about how extraordinary that is. He genuinely has a need
that only she can meet in that moment. How should we interpret that? Here we
have the only begotten Son of the heavenly Father, the living Word of God who
was a participant in the creation of the universe vulnerably acknowledging his
need to this foreign woman.
That is an important part of the example Jesus gives us
here because, out of his vulnerability and need, arises a whole new way of
relating to a group of people who had been, up until that point, cut off from the
good news that Jesus had brought. Out of that begins an entire ministry among
the people of Samaria.
When the children of Israel were in the desert place and
had no water, all they could think of to do was grumble and complain about how
things used to be. They did, in the end, get some water, but that was it. They
merely survived. When Jesus was in a cultural desert without water he took a
different course and ended up not only with the water he needed to survive but
some pretty amazing new opportunities for the gospel.
Which brings us, of course, to the particular desert
where we find ourselves today. We are not in a literal desert, nor are we in
the kind of cultural desert that Jesus found himself in that afternoon in
Samaria, but we are in a desert, my friends. Let’s call it a church desert.
There was a time when churches like ours – I’m talking
about Presbyterian, Anglican, United, Lutheran, Catholic churches and the like –
were known as mainline churches. It is a word that is still sometimes
used to talk about such churches, but the word no longer means what it once
did. What that used to mean was that those churches were plugged into the main
line of the culture and society. The church had power and influence.
When, for example, the government of Canada was looking
around for someone to run Indian residential schools, it was some mainline
churches who stepped up, and took on those contracts in what was seen as a
win-win type situation for both the church and for the government. Of course,
it was anything but a win for Canada’s indigenous people, but obviously that
was not a really big concern at the time. So, for good and for ill, and there was
a lot of ill in some circumstances like the one I just mentioned, churches had
their finger on the pulse of Canadian society. We were in the main line.
But we’re not really in that position anymore. For good
or for ill, we find ourselves pretty much on the sidelines of culture today. And
the thing is this, when you are used to being in the mainline, when you’ve been
used to having a certain voice and a certain position that people automatically
respect, when you start to lose that, it doesn’t just feel like a loss of
privilege. It can feel as if you’re suddenly dumped out in a desert place.
When you are used to being the people who set the tone
for the whole culture and you suddenly find yourself in a place where the
culture doesn’t much seem to care what you think, it can feel like you are in a
cultural desert. And what happens then? Well, when you have depended upon your
position and clout in society to get everything that you need, it can feel like
you have arrived at a freshwater oasis only to discover that there is no water
and you begin to worry that maybe you’re not going to make it.
We all end up in that sort of situation sooner or later.
The question is how will you react? Will you react like the children of Israel?
Will you whine and complain about the loss and talk about how good we used to
have things while we say, “Couldn’t we all just go back to Egypt?” If you do
that, yes, God might give you what you need to survive and muddle through. He might
make the water flow from the rock, but I suspect that you will have missed out
on an incredible opportunity that God is offering you when he brings you to
this desert place.
I would much rather see you do what Jesus did when he
came to that well in Samaria. I think it might be more appropriate where we
find ourselves today as well as more successful. What might that look like?
Well, first of all I think it might mean recognizing that we are, to a certain
extent, on foreign territory here. Yes, maybe at one time we were the ones who
established the cultural norms in this place, that’s no longer the case. We are
like Jews who have wandered into Samaritan territory and it is a strange
country to us. Secondly, and even more importantly, we, like Jesus, need to not
be afraid to be vulnerable and ask for help in this place. When we go around
pretending like we have all the answers and that nobody can tell us anything,
it creates an impossible distance between us and the people who live in this
place.
Jesus knew that a little bit of vulnerability can
actually go a long way to create connection. In the story of Jesus and the
woman by the well, it certainly creates a connection and an opportunity for
deeper conversation and honestly that is what we need to have with the society
around us. And it is in the midst of that conversation, after he has confessed
his own need, that Jesus is able to offer to the woman what he and he alone can
give and that is the living water that will quench a thirst that she maybe
doesn’t even know that she has.
We still have that water to offer. We have it in the
words of the gospel that we can share. We have it in the faith and trust in
Christ that we can model. And we have it in the supportive model of Christian
community that we are called to live out. And you better believe that that
living water can make a difference in people’s lives that is much needed. But
no one will ever get that living water from us if we are unable to have the
kinds of conversations that Jesus has with that woman by the well and never
forget that that conversation begins with Jesus being very tired and weary from
his journey and frustrated that is not able to get the basic thing that he
needs to survive and it begins with him being vulnerable to that woman and
choosing to treat her, contrary to everything that he’s been taught as a good
Galilean Jew, as a person who has value and importance.
Friends, we are tired and thirsty wandering through some
sort of desert these days. Lots of things make us feel that way. And of course
it is frustrating to come to the spring and find that there is no water. But
consider that perhaps God has led us to this place, that God is calling on us
to engage with the strangers who live in this strange land. Will you engage
with those people? Will you let your guard down, even show your vulnerability?
If you do, God has some opportunities for genuine ministry that might blow your
mind.
The service video from this morning is mostly edited but uploading the video files is taking much longer than expect. They will not be available one the web page until (probably) tomorrow morning. We are sorry for the delay, but hope you will watch then.
We at St. Andrew’s, like everyone else, have had
considerable difficulties navigating the ever evolving COVID-19 crisis. If we
were simply to rely on the directives that are being given to us, we would go
on with our service more or less as usual. The Presbyterian Church in Canada
has called on congregations to continue with Sunday services unless the local
health authorities indicate otherwise. And, since the local authorities are
only asking for gatherings of more than 250 to be cancelled, we are clear to
proceed.
Nevertheless, official directives do not seem to be quite sufficient at the moment. Therefore, out of an abundance of caution and care for our people, let me state that there will not be a regular morning worship service tomorrow, March 15th, but here is what will happen.
I will go to the church on Sunday morning for 10 am. I will be there and lead in worship and there will be a few people to assist me. There will be no Sunday School this week.There will be prayers and other elements of worship and I will preach a sermon. All of this will be videotaped and posted here on the webpage by 2:00 pm at the latest. I encourage you all to participate in worship by watching. While our worship and especially our prayers will touch on the present crisis, I will, in the sermon, encourage us to lift our eyes beyond the crisis to look at where God may be calling on us to go as a church in our ministry to the community. The sermon title is: When there is no water on the journey.
During this time on Sunday morning, the church will be open.
If you are not sick and have no symptoms, you may come in and join us in the
sanctuary. However, we will require that
everyone who enters must lovingly practice social distance. We will remain two
meters apart from each other (unless we come from the same household).
Finally, please remember the church in your prayers and in
practical ways. Even if many of our activities are shut down for a while, the
financial needs of the congregation will actually not lessen. We appreciate all
those who have made their commitment to the church through Pre-Authorized
giving. We probably could not weather this without your commitment. If you are
able to help us, please consider online giving. There are links on the web
page.
We will be assessing the situation throughout this week and
the next. Please know that St. Andrew’s is still in operation and will respond
to your needs even if we may have to limit face-to-face interactions. For now,
Bible study will continue, and the Food Bank is expected to still take place on
Thursday. I will begin to post daily prayers and meditations for you on the web
page. Please continue to check in.
Be in prayer for the people in the front lines battling the
virus and treating its victims. Respond to the needs of your brothers and
sisters here at St. Andrew’s, as well as those of your family, friends and
neighbourhood. Be loving and full of care as you treat all people with respect
even if (in these strange times) you may need to keep at a physical distance.
Together we will rise above these unprecedented times. (please pass this
message along to people whom you know are not online)
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for
I am your God. I will strengthen you and
help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” -- Isaiah 41:10
I have written a lot of Annual
Reports over many years of ministry. They are not as easy to write as you may
think. How do you sum up an entire year of ministry on one sheet of paper,
after all? You can’t say everything, of course, but what can you do that will
at least give a flavour of what the year was like? I’m always open to finding a
fresh approach.
So, here is what I’m going to
do this year. You know those lists of questions that sometimes circulate on social
media – questions that you are supposed to post on your page and answer while
you challenge your friends to answer as well. Well, I borrowed one of those
lists and adapted it to make it:
20 Questions about Scott’s 2019
(Do
this without fibbing.)
1. Where are you answering these questions?
I am typing this as I sit in the car riding home (I’m not driving!) from a
quick visit and a supper with our daughter at college in London.
2. What is your favourite church picture you took during the year?
Session selfie!
3. Where was that picture taken?
At our Session retreat at Duff’s Presbyterian Church (February 2, 2019)
4. What was the hardest thing you had to do during the year?
Visit one of our church members in hospital. He was in a great deal of
pain, confusion and so weak and there was so little I could do for him.
5. What was the greatest privilege?
Visit that same church member in the hospital and be able to be a part of
that awful and yet meaningful and ultimately hopeful moment.
6. What moment in the year will you always cherish?
It was a moment that I cannot share with you. It was a moment of personal
counselling that I cannot tell, but the grace of God was a powerful and healing
presence. I will never forget it.
7. Best musical memory?
Most every time I got to sing with Joyful Sound!
8. What went terribly wrong and yet God turned it into something
wonderful?
On Sunday, February 3, 2019, I was awakened to the news that the furnaces
in the sanctuary were not working and it was cold in there, really cold! Oh no!
What will we do?! What we did was set up and hold worship downstairs in the Fellowship
Hall and we all had a great time and it gave us the impetus to start thinking
differently about what we really required to be a church together.
9. What was the latest you stayed up on a Saturday night getting
ready for a Sunday?
About 11:30 pm. I’ve gotten to the point that I’m really no good for much
of anything after that. I have also gotten to the point, however, when I just wake
up at 5:30 am Sunday morning and start getting ready.
10. Coolest surprise?
Carol Johnston knit Rudolph mittens for all the kids on the Santa Claus
Parade float. (Somehow, I ended up with a pair, too.)
11. Best New Development?
Our youth grew in number and decided to organize themselves and elect
their own leadership.
12. Best sign of hope?
We have a very meaningful moment when our session came together to create
a covenant with the help of Rev. Greg Smith..
13. People you couldn’t have made it though the year without?
Our amazing staff. Joni is constantly challenging me (in a really good way)
to be my best and bring out the best in others. Paula is so supportive and
uplifting. Corey consistently blows me away with her talent and her leadership
abilities. I feel I can always count on Glen to get it done. Karen is an
amazingly caring presence, pulls people together and makes a meaningful
community ministry possible.
14. Best church meal?
There were so many and they were so good but I’m going to have to go with
the Thursday Night Supper and Social Christmas feast!
15. Your earliest workday?
December 9, I got to work at 5:20 a.m. It was to open up the church and
turn off the alarm for a film crew.
16. Does pineapple belong on pizza?
Umm, maybe, under certain circumstances. Who am I kidding – it’s pizza. Of
course, I’ll eat it!
17. Most fun at a new event?
Open Mic. What an incredible cavalcade of the talents of this
congregation.
18. Who do you think will read this report?
Everyone, of course! They will pour over it like it’s a newly discovered
gospel.
19. Who will comment to you on the silliness of that previous answer?
Joni, Paula, Dominique, Ray and Allison.
20. Who will be upset that you mentioned their name in the previous
answer?
Now the Lord said to Ashurbanipal, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Ashurbanipal went, “What, are you crazy, Lord? You want me to leave behind
everything that is familiar and comfortable, the land that I’m supposed to
inherit from my father and all of the family supports that are supposed to
protect me from all the unpredictability of life. That’s okay, Lord, you can keep your blessing.
But the Lord
was not discouraged and he went and said to Utnapishtim, “Utnapishtim, same
command. Leave your country and everything and you can have all these
blessings.” But Utnapishtim said, “Lord,
I am very flattered and everything, but I am totally swamped this month, can I
get back to you later on your plan.”
So, the Lord
went on to others – to Nahshon, Ammishaddai and Zuriel – but nowhere could he
find someone to take on the challenge of what he commanded them – until he
found Abram. And Abram, to everyone’s surprise, he just got up and went.
That is the kind of amazing thing about the story of the
call of Abram in the Bible, isn’t it? There really was nothing special about
Abram before that. He hadn’t done anything, hadn’t proven his value in
any way. When we first meet him in the Book of Genesis, there is only one thing
that sets him apart, one thing that indicates that he is different: when God
says go, he goes. He doesn’t talk back. He doesn’t ask questions or hesitate.
He goes.
That is what made me wonder how we’re supposed to read
this story. Was Abram the only one that God spoke to, or where others given the
same offer? Do we not hear about those others – are they entirely lost to
history – simply because they turned God down?
And if the only thing that Abram did to set himself
apart, at least at first, was respond to this command, what is the significance
of that? What did Abram do right? You might think that it was his instant
obedience that impressed God, which would mean that God is really only
interested in what you might call “yes men” (for lack of a more inclusive
term). What God wants more than anything else is someone who, when God says
jump, only says, “How high sir?”
But no, that cannot be it. If God were looking for
nothing more and nothing less than unquestioning obedience, he could have
chosen to adopt unthinking beasts instead of a human family. No, what set Abram
apart was not the instant obedience itself but the thing that made him react
that way, and that thing was faith.
In our reading this morning from his letter to the
Romans, the Apostle Paul is referring to a later event in Abram’s life when he
writes, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” but what
he says there certainly applies to this earlier event. What set Abram apart
right from the very beginning was his willingness to believe the promises that
God made to him. Paul goes on from there to explain what belief in God means in
that kind of situation, “But to one who without works trusts him who
justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Paul says
that the faith that God is looking for is a willingness to trust God.
As I thought about the season of Lent this year, I
noticed that there was a certain theme that kept coming up in our readings for
Sunday mornings – a theme that is most clear in this Genesis reading this
morning. The readings are full of stories of people who step out and embrace
new things, new concepts and ideas, who leave things behind because they feel called
to something new. We see that theme, for example, in our gospel reading from
this morning. We see it as Nicodemus engages with Jesus of Nazareth who pushes
him to rethink just about every aspect of the Judaism that he has held onto as
a teacher of Israel. If Nicodemus is going to embrace what Jesus is saying to
him (which apparently according to this gospel he eventually does) he is going
to have to let go of many of the ideas and ways of thinking that have told him
who he has been up until this point in his life.
So, looking at that, my question was why are these the
stories that seem to be coming up during Lent? Lent has always been a very
important season in the life of the church. It is a time of reflection, of
repentance and of rededication. In the early church, it was also a time for focusing
on the basics of the faith. Throughout the season new members of the churches
would be taught what it meant to be followers of Jesus in preparation to be
baptized on Easter Sunday. So I think that we should also think of it as a
season when we focus on the absolute essentials of what makes us followers of
Christ.
With all of that in mind, how should we think of this theme
that seems to be introduced by this decision of Abram to just get up and go,
leaving everything that is familiar, just because God says so? I believe that
this is meant to teach us something absolutely essential about faith and what
it means for us as followers of Jesus Christ in the world today.
Let me ask you, how is faith generally perceived in our
society today? I would suggest that a very big stereotype of people of faith is
that they are people who cling to the past. That perception is not always true
about Christians, of course, but it is persistent, and it is not based on
nothing. There are many Christians today, for example, who cling to beliefs and
ways of seeing the world that are outmoded and largely discredited – those who
insist, for example, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the
world was all created about 6,000 years ago, and that it was all created in a
span of six 24-hour days. There are those who would claim that believing that,
in the face of all that contrary evidence, is a perfect example of what faith
is.
But it’s not just in matters of what people believe that
Christians can be particularly stuck to the past. It is also in matters of
practice and ways of doing things. We cling to old songs and old forms of
prayers and old traditions. Have you ever heard that favourite old hymn that
goes, “give me that old time religion, it was good enough for my father; it’s
good enough for me.”
And I am not saying that that is a horrible thing in and
of itself. Just because something is old doesn’t mean that it can’t be good. Old
traditions can obviously still be meaningful and comforting. Old truths can
still be true, and we should never abandon the truth. There is no problem if we
simply value these things and hold on to them appropriately. The problem comes
when we confuse blindly clinging to these things with faith; the problem comes
when we start to see stubbornness in itself as a virtue. And I’m afraid that we
often think in exactly that way.
If faith really were what we often assume it is, then
Abram would not be the ideal example of faith. He would be a negative example.
If faith was just about stubbornly clinging to the familiar and comfortable, then
the example that we would be celebrating today on this second Sunday of Lent
would be Ashurbanipal or Utnapishtim or whoever else turned God down flat
before Abram said yes. But there is a good reason why nobody knows who they
were.
The season of Lent is often compared to a journey. We
talk about how it is the path we have to travel in order to arrive at the sad
but beautiful truth of what happened on Good Friday when God’s love for us was
demonstrated so powerfully. It is a journey towards the incredible victory of
Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. But every journey towards something is
also a journey away from something else; that is the truth that Abram
demonstrates to us so clearly. When he left on God’s orders, what he was
journeying towards was very nebulous. God hadn’t even actually told him where
he was going yet – had only promised to let him know when he got there.
But if Abram destination was unclear, what he was leaving
was anything but. He knew exactly what he was giving up and what it was costing
him. And that is often how it works and that is why change is hard, why it is
so much easier to cling to what you know than to embrace what you have not yet
seen.
And so, if we are going to think of our passage through
Lent this year as a journey, I’m going to propose that, instead of focussing
just on where we are going, we think about what God might be calling us to let
go of in order to get there. As you may know, it is a tradition in certain
churches to give up something during the season of Lent. People might make a vow
to stop eating chocolate or desserts or to stop doing some favourite activity
during the forty days of the season. That is may be close to what I’m talking
about here, but I think we may need to look for something a little bit more
serious than that.
I’m not talking about giving up something you like for
just a short period of time. I’m talking about giving up permanently the things
that are keeping you from grasping the full truth of what God did for you on
Easter and on Good Friday.
Let me ask you, what might you be clinging to, not
because it a good thing or a healthy thing, but simply because it is what is familiar
or comfortable. Perhaps it is an old grudge – something that you have been
holding against somebody for so long that you may have even forgotten why it
was that you were mad at them in the first place. Holding on to something like
that might make you feel good – there is a comfort to it – but it is not doing
anyone any good, least of all you. I would suggest to you that part of the
Lenten journey that God is calling you to is a journey away from that grudge.
Or maybe you’ve been resisting something – some change in
your personal life or something that you are involved in – even though you know
deep down inside that the change is inevitable. Change is hard and God
understands why we resist it, but your Lenten journey this year might well
involve you walking away from the resistance. That will mean that you will walk
into something new and unfamiliar and probably disturbing because of it, but
the walk forward is a walk of faith for you as much as it was for Abram.
I just think that you need to be reminded that, if your
faith is merely something that makes you hold onto what you’ve always known,
resist change and complain about any disturbance to what you are used to, it is
not the faith of Abram. It is not the faith that prompted God to bless Abram and
make him a nation that would bring blessing to the whole world. Walking away
from some of that will be hard, of course, but the same promise of blessing
that God gave Abram is the promise he is offering to you this Lenten season. So
let’s embark on the journey together.
When, six days later, Jesus came up to Peter, James and John and quietly said, “Hey, what do you say that the four of us take a hike and climb up to the top of that mountain over there?” did they have certain expectations about what he was saying and what might happen? There are all kinds of reasons to think that they did.
Ever since human beings (or maybe even their primitive
ancestors) first stood up on their hind legs and raised their eyes to the
distant horizon, those eyes were drawn to the hills and mountains that punctuated
that horizon. And from very early times, they seem to have come to see those
mountains as significant mostly because they were places where extraordinary
things happened.
In Southeastern Turkey, not far at all from the place
that the Bible seems to be talking about when it describes the location of Garden
of Eden, there is a mountain called, in the local language, Göbekli Tepe. In
recent years, archeologists have made some amazing discoveries at that
location. They are unearthing structures made of massive stones carefully
arranged in circles with even bigger t-shaped stones standing in the middle of
them.
The site was clearly built up over many centuries, but
the truly surprising thing about it is that there are absolutely no signs of inhabitation
– there are no remains of houses, of fire pits, or of the garbage heaps that
human beings seem to be so good at leaving wherever they go. Nobody actually
lived there, but large numbers of people built it and visited it over many many
generations. Even more astonishing, the site is over 11,000 years old.
Do you have any idea how old that is – 11,000 years? That
is older than the invention of agriculture. So it wasn’t built by farmers but by
people who are sometimes called “hunter-gatherers.” At some point, there were
primitive hunter-gatherer people who lived in that part of the Anatolian
Peninsula, what is today Southeastern Turkey, who one day looked up and saw, in
the distance, that mountain of Göbekli Tepe and said to one another, come, let
us go up that mountain and spend enormous amounts of time and energy
constructing massive circles of stone on that mountain, but let’s not live
there, let’s just visit from time to time.
Now, hunter-gatherers don’t necessarily
have a lot of extra resources to spare. They tend to live at pretty close to
subsistence levels. So, this was no minor decision they were making. It would
have cost them a whole lot. Why, then, did they do it? The only theory that the
archaeologists can come up with that makes sense is that they believed, in some
sense, that if they went to the top of that mountain and built those massive
structures, they would be able to encounter God, or maybe gods, there.
And that speaks to something that I suspect is built into
the human psyche. We seem to think of mountains as places for divine
encounters. This is something that cuts across all people and all cultures. The
ancient Celts spoke about the idea that there are places in this world, they
refer to them as “thin places,” places where the boundaries between this world
and some other reality that we can’t even imagine are easily penetrated. And
mountains seem to be particularly thin places for many peoples. Maybe this was
an idea that first occurred to people because they thought of their gods as
living in the heavens and mountains were as close as you could get to the
heavens while still remaining on earth. But I think that this is about more than
just geography.
The Bible records many divine
encounters on mountaintops. Most significantly, God invited Moses to the top of
a mountain to give him the law. And it just seemed to make sense to everybody
that such an important encounter had to happen in such a place. Such dynamic
revelations could only happen in elevated places. Later, it would make sense to
everyone that the only place to worship God was upon his holy mountain, as we
read in our Psalm this morning: “Extol the Lord
our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.” The impulse to seek to encounter
God on a mountaintop is deeply ingrained into our human souls. Maybe it has
been ever since Göbekli Tepe
So yes, it seems quite likely that, when Jesus invites the
three to go up the mountain with him, they are expecting that they might
experience something divine. And indeed they do! They have an experience that
is very much a parallel to the story of Moses on that other mountain. There is
the same encompassing cloud, the same frightening light and Moses himself even
shows up for the party.
There has been a lot of talk down through the centuries
about what actually happened on that mountain and what it means. The story has
a certain otherworldly quality to it, as if it is not quite real. Jesus himself
refers to what happens on that mountain as a vision, which adds to that impression.
But, whatever it was, what they experienced there seems to have been a powerful
confirmation of what they had only begun to suspect about Jesus: that he was
not just an ordinary person and that God was uniquely present in him.
This was not something that was clear under ordinary
circumstances. Surely, as Jesus moved through the towns and villages of
Galilee, he appeared to be nothing more and nothing less that an average Jewish
male just like anybody else. But the unique setting of the mountaintop was a
place where the inner truth of who Jesus was could literally shine through.
God’s presence in Jesus became undeniable.
I think that we are all offered moments like that in our
lives – moments when God is present in powerful ways. They may not all be quite
as dramatic as this gospel story, but they are real. God does break through
into our reality at certain times and places. There is a universality to such experiences.
Not every individual has them, of course, but every society seems to have
individuals who experience such things. I think our hunter-gatherer ancestors
experienced such things on Göbekli Tepe. Maybe their understanding was limited
and they couldn’t interpret what they saw as clearly as Moses would on his
mountain or Peter, James and John would on theirs, but that doesn’t mean that
God wasn’t there for them on their hill.
I think we do have such experiences, but the real
question in this story is how are we going to respond to them. Peter’s first
impulse is significant. His idea is to make three dwellings, one for Jesus, one for Moses
and one for Elijah. There is something about that that seems very familiar to
me, something that has been there in the human spirit for at least 11,000
years. Just as the ancient hunter-gatherers encountered something divine on top
of Göbekli Tepe and said, “Guys, we have got to build something up here. I
don’t care if it takes us centuries and consumes all of the extra energy of our
primitive hunter-gatherer societies, we are going to build something on top of
this to contain and preserve this experience so that we never lose it.” Peter
is possessed by that very same spirit.
Why do we do that? Why do we build shrines and temples
and churches on those locations where we, or perhaps where our ancestors many
generations before, had those significant experiences with God? I believe it
stems from a desire to tame or control such powerful experiences. We want to
bind the experience within a structure or institution so that we can maybe come
back and visit it from time to time, but it doesn’t escape and begin to change
everything in our lives.
Remember how I said that the ancient people who built Göbekli
Tepe expended all of that time and effort building the shrine but that nobody
actually lived there on the mountain? That was all about keeping the experience
of God at a distance – letting God or the gods know that they don’t have a
place to speak to our daily lives but that we promise to visit them on special
occasions.
Well, things really haven’t changed in the many millennia
since. Peter is still reacting just like the hunter-gatherers who had come to
Göbekli Tepe. Though he calls what he wants to build “dwellings,” (some
translations have “tents” or “tabernacles”) it is clearly not because he wants
to live on the mountain. He wants Jesus and Moses and Elijah to stay on the
mountain so that he can go on with his life without Jesus, Moses and Elijah
interfering too much. He wants to keep the powerful experience of God safe and
remote on the mountaintop.
And again, all of this is quite understandable. It is, as
I say, what people have been doing to their powerful experiences of God for at
least 11,000 years! The really surprising thing about the story of the
transfiguration is not that they had that really extraordinary encounter with
God, the really surprising thing is that they learned that day to deal with the
experience in a new way.
God speaks. God steps into the story in a very powerful
way at this point as the voice of God thunders from the enveloping cloud, “This
is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” That is
a pretty impressive way of making sure that we pay very close attention to what
Jesus says next. Peter is given a warning that, if he ignores the next thing
that Jesus says, he will be doing so at his own peril. And with such a setup,
you might expect that Jesus will have a lot to say. He, like Moses was when he
was covered by the enveloping cloud, is in a perfect position to deliver an
entire law code and Peter, James and John would be bound to receive it as a new
law.
So, our anticipation builds; what is Jesus going to say?
What he does say, of course, doesn’t seem to live up to the hype. All he says
is, “Get up and do not be afraid,” and then he presumably says, “Let’s
go back down the mountain.” That is it: don’t be afraid and let’s go. But what
he says must be loaded with meaning because we have been warned to pay heed to
it.
And indeed it is. It marks a stunning new teaching,
undoing the thing that has been built into humanity since Göbekli Tepe. For
Jesus is announcing to us that, because he has come, the experience of God is
not something that we have to respond to in fear. We don’t have to keep the
presence of God locked up in some safe spot in a temple, dwelling or tabernacle
on some mountaintop. We do not need to live in fear of it because Jesus has
come and brought God near.
But old habits die hard, don’t they? I think that, in
many ways, we are still very much like those hunter-gatherers on the ancient
Anatolian Peninsula. We still want to keep God at a safe distance in some
special place. Sometimes we treat our holy places, like for example, this sanctuary
here, as if they were on some remote mountaintop far removed from our daily
lives. We visit here, but we don’t bring our whole selves here. We leave the
rest of our lives out there and we try not to let the one affect the other.
When Jesus said that he came to announce the arrival of the kingdom of heaven, which
was his way of saying that that separation was over, God’s reality was about to
spill over into the daily world.
This is not a place for you to merely visit from time to
time and reconnect with God, this place is where the revolution that the world
still needs is supposed to begin. God is not safe here, kept apart from the struggles
of the real world. The God you meet here in Jesus Christ is going with you and
before you out into the world and into daily life. If that sounds like
something that might change everything, you’re right it is. Jesus came to
change everything, especially about how we relate to God in our daily lives.
