Category: Minister

Minister’s blog

In the fading afterglow

Posted by on Sunday, March 3rd, 2019 in Minister

Readings, March 3, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Exodus 34:29-35, Psalm 99:1-9, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-36
I
 have been there. There have been moments in my life when I can truly say that I went where Moses went – into the very presence of God. Oh, not literally the same place that Moses went and maybe not in the presence of God in exactly the same way but, yes, there are moments that I can point to when I had absolutely no doubt and no other way to explain it than to say that I had just experienced God. Sometimes it has happened in subtle ways that nobody would have even noticed who was around me. Sometimes it has come while interpreting scripture and when I saw a special connection or deeper understanding that I knew I could not have found by myself – the spirit of God must have been operating within me.
      Other moments have been more dramatic. I will never forget the time, for example, when I was literally out of money. I didn’t tell anyone but I didn’t know how I was going to get my next meal. And yet, in that moment, I impulsively chose to make a donation of my last five dollars to a worthy offering that was being taken. It was an act of faith and trust that was perhaps foolish, but I did it. I still do not know to this day how a twenty dollar bill ended up in my mailbox the following morning. Surely God had given someone a little nudge.
      And yes, of course, there have also been those moments of greatest drama when, in the midst of worship or in the midst of a crisis I just knew. Every fibre of my being just reoriented to the certainty that I was in the presence of someone far beyond my understanding.
      I have experienced the presence of God. I imagine that many of you have had such moments as well. Now, since such things are personal experiences, they are usually not shared. For that reason, I cannot really use my personal experiences to prove to you that God exists. Spiritual experience is not about proof. It does, however, play an important part in the formation and forms of human religion.
      The model for how that works is demonstrated in how the Book of Exodus tells us that Moses gave spiritual leadership to the people of Israel. He would go into the tabernacle – a portable sanctuary that the Israelites would carry with them – and there he would have an experience of the presence of God. What that experience was – how exactly God was there for Moses in the tent – we do not know. We cannot know because it was Moses’ own personal experience. Nobody else could share in it and you could not prove that God was there in the tent to anybody but Moses.
      Nevertheless, on the basis of his own personal experience, while the afterglow of that experience was still on him and slowly fading, Moses would speak to his people and give insights and commandments to them based on what he had experienced. But, after a time, that afterglow faded, the experience became less potent in his mind, and so the time of sharing based on it would come to an end. Moses would cover his face with a veil and for a time, they would only have the wisdom given in the afterglow to fall back on until it was time for Moses to have another personal experience of God in the tabernacle.
      Now, in Exodus, this is all told in quite literal fashion. Moses’ face glows with a real and frightening light which slowly fades away. He then literally covers his face with a veil during the interim time. But I would say that this is how spiritual experience always works if you set aside the literal details. Whenever a spiritual leader has a powerful experience, there is a time when he or she is able to give great wisdom and insight in the fading afterglow of that experience. But then that afterglow wisdom gets codified and even turned into law to guide the community through the period of the veil – the time when no particular guidance comes through spiritual experience.
      That is how it has always worked in many faiths, not just our own. It is a fairly natural way for human beings to respond to experiences of the divine. We see the very same pattern, for example, in our gospel reading this morning. Peter, James and John go up a high mountain where they have an experience of God in Jesus Christ – a powerful experience marked, once again, by glowing white light. Peter’s response, in the fading afterglow of that powerful experience, is to want to codify it. Let us make three dwellings,” he says, “one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He wants to set up religious buildings where they can process the experience and turn it into commandments and regulations, just like Moses did when he came out of the tabernacle. He wants to do this so that the experience might sustain them through the long period of the veil when there is no dramatic God experience.
      So that is the pattern. And it is a good pattern that human beings have developed to deal with the fact that people do sometimes have incredible spiritual experiences of God, the power of that experience fades and then we tend to go through long periods of veil time when there is no revelation. In many ways, you might say that that’s what religion is. It is the institutional structures that we build in the fading afterglow of experiences of the divine – structures that are designed to get us through the veil time.
      But, while that is a natural human thing and while it is what Moses did, you probably picked up a little note in our reading from the gospel this morning – a note that seemed to indicate that Simon Peter didn’t actually respond in the right way. Jesus doesn’t say anything, but what happens immediately afterwards – the encompassing cloud, the mindless terror and the words, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” booming from heaven, all seem to indicate that Peter didn’t quite get his response right. But what did he do wrong? What is inappropriate in what he says?
      That brings us, finally, to our reading this morning from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. In this letter, Paul is talking specifically about the very passage we’ve been discussing – about the whole description of Moses having these face-to-face experiences with God, giving laws and rules and commandments in the fading afterglow, and then putting on the veil to signify the time when that direct experience of God is completely absent. Paul understands where this comes from, but he also explains what is wrong with this model of relating to God.
      Paul writes this: “Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.” The problem, Paul says, is the veil. And what does the veil represent? It represents that long period of time when the direct experience of God is absent. In fact, it represents the fear of God’s continued absence. We are afraid, having had these extraordinary experiences of God at some point, that it will never happen again. And so we set ourselves up to try and make it through that long period of the veil. That is what the fading afterglow time is all about. We try to codify, to reduce the experience down to laws and rules, so that they may continue to guide us when the experience of God is absent.
      The problem with all of that, from Paul’s point of view, is that it’s all motivated by fear. Having had an experience of God’s presence, we are afraid of the absence of that experience. In many ways that is the history of religion. It is the story of people who had extraordinary experiences of God and then created a religion to guide people in the absence of that experience. Now, Paul does not deny the power of those kinds of experiences. He had some of his own. They were very important and formative to him. But Paul actually resists using the fading afterglow of his experiences of the risen Christ, to give laws and rules. For him, laws and rules are the problem, not the solution.
      For him, the point of whatever experience of Christ you have is not to give you rules to live by. It is to transform you. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
      What, then, does all this mean? How should we apply it to the way that we live out our faith in Jesus Christ? The fact of the matter is that we are only here, we are only the church, because, at some point there were people who experienced the presence of God. It started, of course, with the apostles who, a matter of days after the death of their Lord Jesus, experienced his presence with them alive again. But they are not the only ones. The Presbyterian Church and Reformed tradition came into being because of the experiences of reformers like John Knox and John Calvin. The people who built this church did so because, in small ways and large, they had experienced God at work in their lives. The people who, down through the years, preached in this pulpit and who led in the session and in other ways in this church had their own experiences of the presence of God. None of this would have happened without such experiences.
      But the temptation, Paul is saying, is to leave it at that. To take those experiences, those extraordinary experiences, and say that that is it. That the gospels were written, the church was given its structure and doctrines, this church building was erected in the fading afterglow of those extraordinary experiences. The temptation is to live out our Christian life and faith under the veil – living under the legacy left behind by those experiences. “Let’s build three dwellings,” we say with Peter, “one for the reformers, one for the people who built this beautiful church, one for the leaders who went before and that will be enough.”
      To that, Paul says no. To that, Paul says, it is not enough. We must not be merely conformed to the rules and expectations of those who have gone before. We ourselves are to be transformed daily into the image of Christ Jesus – brought to a place where we don’t need those rules and expectations because we are already becoming new beings in Christ.
      These spiritual experiences – our own and those of people who have gone before us – are wonderful and beautiful – but when they become the basis of religion – when we put them under the veil – they become sterile and lifeless. Paul wants us to live under a different pattern. As a daily discipline – through prayer, scripture reading, meditation and contemplation – we are to continually reflect on the very presence of Jesus among us. Our purpose is not to build dwellings, or create rules and commandments and expectations for others to follow. Our purpose is to become what we contemplate, the living Christ, moving and acting through us in the world.
      Paul is calling us to something higher here – higher than religion, higher than ethics and commandments, higher than building sacred memorials to our experiences. He is calling us to become the very embodiment of Jesus in this world.
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On the other cheek…

Posted by on Sunday, February 24th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 24 February 2019 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 45:3-11, Ps 37:1-11, 39, 40; 1 Cor 15:35-38, 42-50, Luke 6:27-38
A
 little while ago I had a conversation with a woman who had been in an abusive marriage. We were talking about how you know when to intervene, what the signs are that somebody might be being abused and that you might need, at the very least, to ask them some questions. Of course, one of the signs that the literature often suggests that you should look for is bruises and scars. A black eye or a bruised cheek, they say, should be taken as a significant warning sign.
      And I suppose that is true enough, but I will not soon forget what my friend said to me. “You know,” she said, “I never had a black eye or a mark on my face. My husband was calculating enough to know not to hit me where anyone would see it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hit me in other places.”
      And that conversation came back very powerfully to me when I first turned to our gospel reading this morning. To think of that cold, cruel and calculating violence being inflicted on a weaker victim is all that more disturbing when you hold it up against this advice of Jesus: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”

      These are, of course some of the most familiar words of Jesus. But they are words that we often treat in rather vague and symbolic terms. “Turning the other cheek,” has become a proverb, sometimes even a joke. We don’t usually talk about it in cases of actual physical violence. We don’t usually talk about it in practical terms at all. But I think it’s important to realize that when Jesus said it, he meant it practically. When he said it, there were people, both men and women, in the crowd listening who knew what it felt like to be struck and struck hard on the cheek and in many other places. If we cannot understand these words in very practical terms, I’m not sure how useful they are to us.
      And there is, indeed, something in me that very strongly wants to reject these words of Jesus for use in practical terms because, let me tell you, if I ever had a woman who came to me and confessed to me that she was being physically abused, my advice to her would never be that she should respond to that abuse by inviting further abuse in any way. In fact, I would feel it to be my duty to do what I could to get her out of her situation if there was any chance of ongoing abuse.
      I also know that passages like this one have been used by abusers to protect themselves and to keep their victims trapped in endless cycles of violence – to make the victims feel like they are obliged to accept it and not protest. And that is just not right.
      But despite all of that, I do believe these words of Jesus are powerful and true and that they can apply in cases of abuse and, indeed, in the face of many other injustices. You do need to understand who Jesus was speaking to, though, and what he was really saying.
      The people in the crowd that Jesus was preaching to that day – and indeed on most days – were mostly the lowest of the low. They were the people that, as we said last week, Jesus addressed directly as poor, hungry, weeping and oppressed. If they were abused, and they were regularly abused, they had no recourse and no one who would help them. For a slave, or a peasant, or a woman to be struck in that world was not considered to be illegal. It was just considered to be normal. And, while Jesus knew that what was happening to them was wrong, he could not promise that any human authority would help them. So this is what he did: he told them to respond to their abuse in such a way as to shame their abusers.
      Ancient Mediterranean society was a culture that had shame and pride at its foundation. In every encounter, everything that happened, people in that society were continually judged as either honourable or ashamed. If they were judged as honorable their standing in society would be raised. But if they were judged shamefully, that could be a disaster for them and their families. Jesus told the poor and abused folks who were listening to him that, while they might not have any power to challenge the people who abused them, there were ways they could shame them.
      That is whole point of Jesus’ teaching about turning the other cheek. Poor people, slaves and women were regularly struck on the face in that society, but they were struck in a particular way. The way you hit a slave was with the back of your hand, your right hand, because it would be considered shameful to touch anyone with your left hand because the left hand was considered to be unclean – something that I, as a left handed person find personally rather offensive. But that was how it was. That meant that abused people were regularly struck on the right cheek with the back of the right hand. (And, by the way, in the version of this saying that you will find in the gospel of Matthew Jesus actually specifies to the people “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek” because that was how they were always struck.) Everyone in the crowd would have known that. Just about everyone in the crowd would have been struck many times in their lives on the right cheek with the back of a hand.
      So then, what is Jesus saying when he tells the people that if they are struck on the one cheek they should offer the other? They are actually putting their oppressor in a very difficult spot if they do that. Their oppressor might be only too happy to strike them one more time, but not on the other cheek. To do so, would mean either to strike them with the back of the left hand which, as I said would be shameful, or to give a front handed blow with the right hand, either a slap or a fist. To put someone in that kind of position in that society was to say there were equal to a slave or a woman and thus to bring shame upon them. I know that doesn’t make much sense to us but that was how things worked in that society.
      Jesus next piece of advice essentially accomplishes the same thing. From anyone who takes away your coat,” Jesus says, “do not withhold even your shirt.” There are also cultural considerations at work in that piece of advice. In that world, everybody basically only wore two pieces of clothing. There was a tunic worn against the body and a cloak worn over top. To make that something more that we could relate to, it was translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “shirt” and “coat.” The only problem with that translation is that if you or I were to take off our shirts and our coats, We would still be wearing pants or skirts at least and probably a bit more. Well, they didn’t wear pants. Pants hadn’t been invented yet. And everybody in the crowd would have immediately understood what it meant to take off your tunic and cloak in public. It would have meant that you were entirely exposed and naked.
      Now, for you and for I to strip down in public, would be seen, probably by most of us as putting ourselves in a very shameful position. But here is another way in which their shame and honour society was different from ours. For them, when somebody appeared naked in public, it might be a very embarrassing situation, but it wasn’t necessarily seen as a shameful situation for the person who is stripped. It was seen as shameful for the person who caused them to become so. I could explain to you why this was so, there were certain legal realities and customs that came into play, but the bottom line is that this was just a very different culture that looked on these things in a very different way.
      So really, a lot of the advice that Jesus was giving in these two pieces of wisdom was very much conditioned on the customs of his time and place. To simply take what he says and apply it directly to a very different culture doesn’t really make much sense. So what we need to do is extract from what Jesus says the underlying principles and then figure out how to apply them in our very different culture. So, what are the principles?
      One thing that Jesus is saying is very clearly: do not answer violence or oppression with more violence. I know that not everyone will buy that nonviolent approach, but it was truly fundamental to Jesus’ approach to finding justice. He believed, and I personally agree, that more violence is not the solution to an injustice, and generally only makes things worse. In his case, he knew that the peasants and slaves who surrounded him would have only been slaughtered if they had dared to lift their hands against their oppressors. But Jesus seems to have been willing to extend that to just about any situation. Maybe there are some exceptions. Maybe there are some circumstances where violence can be part of the answer, but if he thought there were, Jesus never mentioned them.
      But, though he rejects violence as a means of making things better, that does not necessarily mean that Jesus intends to leave his listeners simply at the mercy of powerful and evil people. He is asking them to rely (as he did in all things) upon God as their helper. And the actions that he suggests would have used the mechanisms of that society and culture – particularly the mechanism of shame – to take power away from abusers. Shaming their oppressors was one of the only ways that oppressed people could actually damage and expose the people who were harming them.
      So what am I saying? Am I saying that when people are being abused, they should find ways to shame their abusers? No, not exactly. There are cases where that can still work. In many ways, the non-violent campaigns of Gandhi in India or the Civil Rights campaigns led by Martin Luther King Jr. did seek to expose the sins of their oppressors by bringing them public shame. But those were very similar situations where you had completely powerless people and shame was about the only tool that they had.
      But generally speaking, I think, our goal is not to use shame to expose injustice. Our society is not structured around honour and shame like the society of Jesus was. (And I actually believe that that is a very good thing – such a structure had some horrible effects.) What I am saying is that a proper application of Jesus’ teaching to our modern society would be to say that if, say, a woman is being abused in her relationship, she must not simply seek to endure that abuse by continually turning another cheek and hoping that will change something. It will not. What she must do is follow the spirit of Jesus’ teaching and use whatever non-violent avenues are available to her to expose the evil in her abuser. And fortunately, our society has provided many very excellent avenues to do so including talking to friends, officials, police, seeking shelter and more. What Jesus was suggesting had, at its bottom line, the exposing of the evil that was in the oppressors and abusers as a part of the path to God’s salvation.
      If you have suffered abuse in your life, the good news that Jesus has for you today is that you were not meant to suffer such a thing and Jesus wants to set you free from any remains of that abuse that continue to weigh you down. Do not be afraid to talk to somebody you trust if any of that is true of you. If you have someone in your life that you worry may be suffering abuse, the good news that Jesus has for you today is that God has put you there to support your friend and to give you the strength and wisdom to act should your friend choose to confide in you.

      My friend who I spoke of at the beginning, she is strong today – amazingly strong. Her act of turning the other cheek was not that literal act – not just because her husband was too calculating to hit her in a visible place, but also because that is not an effective application of Jesus’ true teaching in such a situation today. She followed Jesus’ teaching by seeking help, by getting out and getting safe. She did it by finding healing in the power of God. Her journey is not over – such journeys rarely go quickly – but it is amazing to see God at work in such a life.
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Jesus on the mountain; Jesus on the level place

Posted by on Sunday, February 17th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 17 February 2019 © Scott McAndless
Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1:1-6, 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, Luke 6:17-26
(From the high pulpit)
T
he blessed evangelist, Saint Matthew, has to us written that on a particular occasion, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ did go up into a high mountain and, when he was set, his disciples came even unto him and he looked upon them and opened his mouth and he spoke some of the most enduring words of all history:
      “How blessed are those who are poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. How blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted and the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. How blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
      And you know those words; they are justly famous. What’s more, how perfectly apt it is that they should have been spoken from a mountaintop – you might even call it a Sermon on the Mount. After all, have mountaintops not always been seen as unique places – as places where heaven is both literally and figuratively near. Almost all ancient peoples, including the people of Israel, imagined the dwelling places of their gods on top of mountains: Olympus, Machu Picchu or Mount Sinai.
      Even more important, mountains are places that are separated from the mundane of this world, literally raised above our everyday concerns. How fitting, then, to have such a soaring sermon preached from a mountaintop, for these words of Jesus also seem to take us out of everyday concerns and encourage us to think only of heavenly things. The poor in spirit inheriting the kingdom of God; those hungering and thirsting after righteousness being filled! I don’t know about you, but, for me, when I meditate on those words, I’m not always sure what exactly they mean but they do give me a shiver and they lift me up and place me above all of the troubles and struggles that so often weigh me down in this world.
      So it really matters that those words were spoken on the top of a mountain. But how did the gospel writer know that that was where Jesus said all of those incredible words? Was he there? Was he listening and did he remember the setting? Well, probably not. Remember that we don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Matthew; it was written anonymously, and it was only church tradition that later decided that it must have been written by the Apostle Matthew. But most scholars who have looked at it have concluded that it wasn’t written by an eyewitness. It was written by somebody who had taken sources, likely written sources that had been circulating in the church, and compiled them into his own account of the life of Jesus.
      And those written sources had the words that Jesus had spoken, but they did not have the setting. The author of this gospel decided that Jesus must have said them on the mountain, probably because he saw Jesus as a new Moses bringing down a new law from God on a mountaintop. But that mountaintop setting influenced the way the gospel writer heard those words.
            (From the congregation)
      How do I know that? Because there was somebody else who imagined those words being spoken in a rather different setting and, in that other setting, they sounded a bit different. The Gospel of Luke had those same words of Jesus, but when Luke (whoever he was because, of course, that gospel was also written anonymously) tells us (and tells us accurately) what Jesus said, he says they were spoken on a level place. And here is where we can see the wonderous power of Jesus’ teachings because those words that were so soaring and uplifting on the mountaintop are still just as powerful down on the level place, but their power definitely strikes you in a very different way.
      What did Jesus say down on that level place? He turned his eyes, not heavenward, but clearly towards the eyes of the people who stood around him and he said,Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” It is no longer, “those who are poor,” because Jesus is obviously very aware that the poor ones that he is concerned with are the poor ones who are standing right there in front of him as he looks them in the eyes with compassion and love.
      Nor, on the level place, does Jesus say, “poor in spirit.” Sure, I think that what he says is meant to include those who have embraced poverty of spirit – who have are not merely financially poor but have given thought to the deeper spiritual meaning of the poverty that exists in this world. But down here on the level place, poverty isn’t just a spiritual concept or idea. It is a hard reality. In fact, the word that Jesus uses there, the word that is translated as poor, goes a little bit farther than what we would normally consider to be poverty. A more accurate translation would probably be something like, blessed are you who are destitute, you who are totally without resource. Down here on the level place, you cannot escape the worst realities of human existence.
      And so it goes with all of the other sayings of Jesus down on the level place. Up on top of the mountain, it was blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And blessed indeed are such people – where would we be if we didn’t have those who pursued what is right at all cost. But down on the level place, Jesus simply looks into people’s eyes and he says blessed are you who are hungry, just plain hungry, because that is what people are struggling with down on the level place of our world right now. And again, I want to state clearly that I don’t think that one of these gospel writers got Jesus’ words right and the other one got it wrong. What Jesus said encompassed both of these meanings. It’s just that the different meanings come out based on whether you’re up on the mountaintop or down on the level place.
      There is something else that is significantly different about Luke’s account of what Jesus said on the level place. Jesus started with the blessings, just as we hear up on the mountaintop, but on the level place he doesn’t stop there. On the level place, after Jesus blesses and congratulates and tells how fortunate are those people that everyone else has long concluded are the most miserable people on the face of the Earth – the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the persecuted – Jesus goes on from there. And he turns to those people that everyone else considers to be fortunate and blessed. I don’t imagine there were too many of them, but Jesus turned and he looked straight into the eyes of the fat and well-dressed people in the crowd and he said, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you.”
      And I have no doubt, by the way, that Jesus did exactly that. That he had the audacity to look the prosperous people right in the eye and tell them that they were cursed. It fits perfectly well with everything that he has said up until that point. Even with the version of what he said on the mountaintop, it makes sense that he would have gone on in the same way. This was exactly how the ancient prophets spoke. We have the pattern laid out for us in our reading from the Old Testament this morning. First you give the blessings, but you are not done until you have also given the curses. People would have expected Jesus to do as much.
      But, you see, when you’re up on the mountaintop and when you’re detached from the realities of this world, I guess it’s just easier to forget about the curses and to focus only on the blessings. It seems right to do so, and I think that Matthew is right to do so. But down on the level place, you simply cannot ignore the reality that inequality and poverty are not just the problems of the poor – they belong to all of us and we all have our part to play in solving them. So, yes, Jesus did speak boldly to the rich and well fed – far more boldly and harshly than I know I would ever dare to. But maybe that is why he is Jesus and I am not.
      So it is a wonderful and beautiful thing that we have here in these two gospels, Matthew and Luke: two very different accounts of the same sermon that Jesus gave. They are remarkable in how the two versions are similar, but also quite remarkable in how they are different. And down through the centuries, the church has had to deal with the fact that we have two different versions of this same sermon that Jesus gave. Usually the way that we have dealt with that is by choosing one version and putting it over the other. We have chosen one of the two sermons and decided that it was the correct one, the superior version. And usually, by the way, it is the one that was preached on the mountaintop that wins out. There’s a reason why everyone has heard of The Sermon on the Mount but no one has heard of the sermon on the level place. And I get why The Sermon on the Mount wins. It is beautiful and it is true and absolutely it is what Jesus meant to say. But I think it is important to recognize that it is not all that Jesus meant to say.
      Sometimes, by the way, you will hear people put it the other way around. They will say that what Jesus actually said was basically what you will find in the sermon on the level place in the Gospel of Luke and that Matthew got a hold of it and spiritualized the sermon by adding words like “poor in spirit” and “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” to make the actual words of Jesus a little bit less offensive to rich people who might read his gospel. There is something to that, but I don’t think that is quite right either. The fact of the matter is that we have been given both versions in both of the gospels and we have to assume that we were given them both for a reason. It is only by struggling with both versions of what Jesus said that we will come to terms with what Jesus’ message was all about.
      The temptation throughout Christian history, however, has been to want to safely confine those radical words of Jesus to the mountaintop. They seem safer up there. They are more at a distance from the real struggles that people sometimes go through in this life. But, while I will always defend the words heard on the mountaintop as the true message of Jesus, I don’t think they are ever going to be complete on their own. For how can we understand what it means to be poor in spirit if we do not grapple with the real problems of poverty that real people struggle with down in the level place. A Christianity and a Christian message that is only confined to the mountaintop, that is only concerned with heavenly things without getting messed up with the real misery of people’s lives, is never going to be enough.
      And I believe that the real mission of the church today is in fact to bring the message of Jesus down from the mountaintop and into the level place. It is wonderful to have a message that lifts us up to mountaintops – that makes our spirits soar above the mundane concerns of this world. We need that. But there is also a great need for a gospel that addresses people where they are. If you do not have a gospel that is good news for the actual poor, the truly hungry, the deeply oppressed and sorrowful – and even better, that offers criticism to the oppressive rich and the people who are consuming the best that this world has to the detriment of others – then is that gospel truly a gospel? The gospel we need must speak to both and challenge us to aspire to both. We need to hear Jesus on the mountaintop but also on the level place.
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But look how clean our nets are!

Posted by on Sunday, February 10th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 10 February, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 138:1-8, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11
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f there is one thing that these fishers knew, it was that you have got to wash your nets. It doesn’t matter how tired you are, how hard you have been working, your shift isn’t over until those nets are completely clean. A net is designed to fall swiftly through the water and to fall invisibly over the fish so that they are not frightened away. And after you have been fishing for a few hours (even if you haven’t caught a thing, as they hadn’t) the net will have scraped the bottom countless times and picked up enough sand and seaweed and shells and bits of dead things that it no longer glides invisibly to the bottom.
      Also, they knew from long experience, that a dirty net will not only stink up the whole boat and anyplace you dock it, the filth and gunk will also make the ropes rot and then, before long, you have a tear and a much bigger repair job in front of you. No, they knew that they had to keep their heads down and get the job done. Sure their fingernails hurt from picking the seaweed out of the knots. Yes, they could hardly keep their eyes open, but they had no choice.
      When they heard the noise of a large crowd just a little bit up the shoreline – something that just never gathered around these parts – they barely even looked up from their work. But, of course, when somebody began to call out to them, they had to take note. They recognized who it was, of course. It was the man who had been gathering crowds and performing miracles and wonders all over Galilee in recent weeks. They had heard the stories and descriptions more than a few times. But when the man approached, Simon only looked up from his work for a few moments. The man apparently wanted to borrow one of their boats – just for a little while. He wanted Simon to take him out just a little bit from the shore so that he could address the crowd and they could all hear him. Simon shrugged, grunted and quickly did as he had been asked before wading back to shore to crouch again to his work.
      And thus we find ourselves in the rather absurd picture that is painted for us in the opening scene of our gospel reading this morning. Jesus of Nazareth, who we know as the Christ and the Son of the living God, is standing in the bow of a boat and speaking words that I think any one of us would give just about anything to be able to hear firsthand. These are words of life and hope, the very words that will launch a movement that will transform the entire world. Perhaps he is saying things and telling parables that were not ever recorded and passed down (after all, none of his disciples are listening) and so they are words that have been lost to all history. This is a momentous event. And where are Simon Peter, James and John – the three people who we all know will form the innermost nucleus of this thing that will come to be called the Christian church? They are a little bit down the shore, not really listening; washing their nets.
      “Yes, Scott, that is what they are doing,” you will say to me, “but didn’t you just explain to us how important it is to keep your nets clean? Good net hygiene is really important, and you simply cannot stay in business as a fisher without it. You just have to take care of your equipment. They were doing a good thing.” Ah yes, they were doing a good thing. But were they doing the best thing?
      I don’t ask that question this morning for the sake of Simon Peter, James and John alone. This story isn’t about them, not really. The symbolism of this story in the Gospel of Luke is quite clear; they are meant to represent the church. And, in many ways, they are an excellent representation of what we often see in the church. I believe that we do spend a lot of time and energy in the church today – and I’m talking about all the churches here, not just this one – we spend a lot of time cleaning and maintaining our nets.
      In the church we are called to be fishers of people. That is the original call that Jesus gives to his disciples in this passage and it is still his call to the church today. But I often get the impression that we put more effort into cleaning our nets – into maintaining our buildings, our programs and our administration. Oh, we are good at holding meetings and forming committees to keep things in place. But I sometimes wonder if while we are so busy cleaning our nets, we might just be missing the very important things that Jesus is saying to the world just a little bit up the beach…
      “Hey, how’s it going Simon.” The big fisherman looked up to see a figure looking down upon him – the westering sun behind his head. Simon had been staring so closely at the knots of his net that it took a while for his tired eyes to focus and see that it was the preacher from Nazareth speaking to him again. He looked around to notice that the impromptu lecture by the lake was over and that the crowd had started to move on. Simon assumed that the man had just come back to offer his thanks for the use of the boat so he just muttered a quick “you’re welcome,” and turned immediately back to the piece of seaweed that he just couldn’t get out.
      But the man didn’t take the hint. “Hey,” he said, “what do you say we put out into the deeps and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Great, another landlubber who thinks he knows more about fishing than the professionals. He’s going to want to go out and cast the nets a few times and get them all dirty while we catch nothing and then we’ll have to clean them all over again before we can go home. “Master,” he said, “we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” But then he caught the strange look in the man’s eye. He clearly didn’t fully understand what this fellow had in mind, but he was filled with a strange desire to find out. “Yet if you say so,” Simon said, “I will let down the nets.”
      But once again, this isn’t just a story about a little fishing expedition that happened with a few men and Jesus one day a long time ago. This is a story about the church. The main characters are the people who will form the core of the early church. The activity of fishing is a common metaphor for the chief work of the church in sharing the gospel. And Jesus even specifically invites Simon to cast his net into “the deep” (that is what the original Greek text literally says) and the deep is a mythological term for the primordial chaos that God is constantly trying to save this world from. This is intended to be a story about our work as the church.
      What Jesus is saying to us in the story is, don’t you think it’s time that you got around to doing the work that I called you to do? And what is our response? “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” Haven’t you heard, Jesus? We’ve been going about the work of the church for a very long time. We have been here on Queen Street down through the generations. And we have preached the word of God and we have shared God’s love in practical ways, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sending missionaries out into the world. We have worked hard, Lord, and now we’re tired. In fact, our old fishing methods don’t seem to work so well anymore. It feels like we’ve been working hard all night long with no results. Can’t you just let us wash up our nets and go home? Yes, there’s a pretty good picture of how we often feel in the church in this story.
      But there’s something else going on here – something that I think we really need to pay attention to. What have Peter, James and John been doing all of this time? They have been cleaning and maintaining their nets. They have been taking care of the tools that fishermen use. Jesus wants them to use their nets; they are really only interested in maintaining them. In fact, they recognize that what Jesus is asking them to do represents a risk to their beautiful nets – and so it proves. Do you think that it is just a coincidence that by the end of this story their precious nets are all ripped and torn and their beautiful boats are swamped and just about ready to sink? It is no coincidence; it is kind of the point.
      In the church, we not only spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning and maintaining our nets; we also spend a whole lot of time worrying about them getting dirty or damaged. “Yes, Scott,” you will say to me, “but didn’t you just explain to us how important it was to keep your nets clean? Good net hygiene is really important and you simply cannot stay in business as a fisher without it. You just have to take care of your equipment.” Yes, that is true, but I think that Jesus would say that if maintaining your nets has become more important than fishing for people, you have a problem. I think he would say, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch,” even if your nets might tear and get dirty again.”
      You know that an enormous amount of ministry to our community happens in and through this building. The hungry are fed and given food to take home to their families. Literally hundreds of pounds of clothing are brought in, sorted and then given out to people who need them. The distressed are counselled. Children are taught about the love of Jesus and given tools for growing in Christ. All of it – all of it creates mess and clutter. All of it, sooner or later, will lead to something being broken or chipped or stained. And every so often somebody will say to me (or maybe to you), don’t you think it is terrible that there is so much ministry going on here that our nets are beginning to break and our boat is beginning to swamp? Well, they don’t put it exactly like that. They say, “isn’t it terrible that this church isn’t always tidy and clean?” But it actually means the same thing. And I get that keeping your nets clean is really important, but Jesus didn’t say, “Simon, let’s keep those nets squeaky clean.” Jesus said, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
      By all means, let us take care of our nets. We have inherited them from the people who have gone before us and they are a wonderful gift. But we’ve received them for a reason, and that reason is not merely so that they might be clean and tidy. We have been given them so that they might be risked in the deep water of this world. We have been given them so that they might be used to pull people out of those deeps and so that they might have the chance to truly experience the love of Christ in word and in deed. We have been given them to fish for people. Simon, get up off of your knees, stop worrying so much about your nets and let’s go!

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A still more excellent way

Posted by on Monday, February 4th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 3 February, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
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f all the passages in the entire Bible, the one we read this morning has got to be one of the most famous. Almost all of the time when I meet with a couple who are planning their wedding, it is their very first choice of a passage that they want to have read. And you can certainly understand why. It offers a description of the kind of love you are going to need to support and sustain a marriage through good times and bad times. It is so perfect. It so beautifully describes what it was that brought these two people together and to the place where they are willing to commit to each other to such depths that it is almost a shame to have to explain that that is not actually what it is about.
      Oh, the description of love applies to marriage and if we really did all love each other in our marriages in the way that it describes, it would certainly help a lot to make marriages better and stronger, but that was not why the passage was written; Paul had something quite different in mind.
      In fact, what we read is not actually what Paul wrote. I mean, all of the words are his and what we read is a good translation. It is just that our lectionary reading this morning left out a few words – words that kind of change the entire meaning. You see, Paul’s great reflection on the nature of love in 1st Corinthians 13 doesn’t begin with the first verse of chapter 13. It begins with the last few words of chapter 12 which are, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

      That means that you cannot truly understand what Paul is describing in chapter 13 until you understand what it is better than. And when you understand that, you realize that the love he is talking about has a very particular purpose. Basically, what Paul is saying that love is better than is just about everything he has talked about in his letter up until this point.
      1 Corinthians is a letter written to a particular church in a particular situation. Unlike every other church in the history of the world, the church in Corinth had problems, big problems. Specifically, it had people who didn’t get along with each other because they thought that they were better or more important than others. I know it’s hard for us to imagine that sort of thing happening in a church, but it actually kind of makes sense.
      You see, in the church we deal with ultimate concerns – ideas and concepts that are more important than anything else. Let me point you at our reading this morning from the Book of Jeremiah to give you a sense of what I’m talking about. In this passage, God is calling Jeremiah to be his prophet, to announce his word to the nation of Judah and to the world. And initially Jeremiah is a little bit hesitant. He doesn’t think that he can do the job. “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy,” he says.
      But God doesn’t accept that excuse. God says, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done because I have chosen you: “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.” What is important is that Jeremiah live up to the awesome task and responsibility that he has been given. “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
      The thing that really strikes me about this passage is the awesome power and responsibility that God gives to Jeremiah despite his youth and lack of knowledge. Because God has chosen him, he can claim extraordinary authority and power. But the even more amazing thing is that Jeremiah is not the only one. I believe that every follower of Christ can claim the same authority and power. We also have been chosen by God.
      According to traditional Presbyterian teaching we were also predestined from before birth, maybe even before the beginning of time, to take our place in the kingdom of Christ even though we did not know it. I don’t think we often realize this, but it means that we are God’s special agents and, like Jeremiah, we are set apart to bring hope, goodness and justice to this world.
      I know that you might react to that idea by saying, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to do that, for I am only a kid, spiritually speaking,” but that is how God sees us and what God has called us to be. And, as such, God offers us a lot of authority and power, even if we choose not to use it. We have a lot in common with Jeremiah because we are called, in the church, to deal with matters of ultimate importance.
      But that was exactly the root of all the problems in Corinth and often in our churches too. You see, when people recognize that the matters that they are dealing with are of ultimate importance – when we are talking about what is true, what is just and what is good – that sense of awesome responsibility can have the effect of destroying our community.
      We recognize that the stakes are high, and so our natural inclination is not to back down, to be insistent on our own interpretations and understanding. It has the natural effect of making us intolerant of other understandings and approaches. This is just a natural way that we as human beings react to an understanding that we are dealing in things of ultimate importance. It is actually a reflection of the importance of the work and the proclamation of the Christian church.
      So that was what was going on in the church in Corinth that Paul was writing to. Different people had different ideas of what it meant to be a good Christian and they were putting others down who didn’t approach it in the same way. And, yes, it is something that we also do at times.
      So that is what Paul is talking about when he points the Corinthians and us towards a more excellent way. He is not denying, indeed he is strongly affirming, the importance of the things that we deal with in the life of the church. He is affirming that your understanding of ethics and morality really matters and that mine matters too, even if it’s not exactly the same as yours. He’s affirming that your experience of God is of vital importance even if your experience doesn’t jive with mine. It is all important; it is all meaningful. But it is only going to work, and we will only find the true excellence that we are called to in Christ, when we allow love to reign over all.
      What Paul is saying in this passage is that we must apply 1st Corinthians 13 to our every interaction in the life of the church. Are there two people in the church who disagree about how a certain program in the life of the church should be run? That is good. The things that we do matter a great deal and if you have a different opinion that ought to be shared. What Paul is saying is, while we have that discussion, it must always be made more excellent through love.
      Just think how excellent we could be together if, in every discussion and interaction, before you spoke or acted you were to hold up the next thing you were about to do and compare it to 1st Corinthians 13. In every interaction you would be forced to ask yourself, does what I’m about to do show patience and kindness? Is there anything behind it that comes from envy or boastfulness or arrogance? Am I being rude? Is this just about me getting own way and am I being irritable or resentful? Above all, am I finding my joy in the right things, not in wrongdoing but in what is true? Will I bear, believe, hope and endure all things?
      Now those are not easy questions for anybody to ask of themselves; they are the kinds of question that demand that you examine yourself and understand what is really driving your actions. But if every one of us asked those kinds of questions before we acted in the life of the church, I really do think that we would begin to grasp the excellence that we are called to live out.
      But often we get this all backwards. When there is a difference of opinion, when one person’s sense of what is vital to the church is different from somebody else’s, we don’t respond with love. Sometimes, of course, we just fight it out because we think that we have to win and, therefore that the other person has to lose. But the more excellent way knows that it cannot be just about winning and getting your own way. Love sees beyond winning and losing.
      Of course, we don’t always fight it out openly in the church. In fact, I often find that we are more likely to just try to avoid the subject we disagree about and not talk about it. Sometimes we pretend that it isn’t there at all. I know that that might feel like the loving thing to do because we are avoiding the conflict, but actually it is not. That is a reaction based on fear, which is the opposite of love. “Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:8) When we seek that more excellent way, we will not hesitate to engage the other person even when we are in conflict, even when we have differences, and love shows us how we can really listen to one another and find that way through.
      You see, because we deal in ultimate concerns, because the things that we talk about and work towards are the most important concerns of all for this world, the church can very easily become a pretty miserable place where everyone becomes convinced that their ways of doing the most important things and engaging in the faith and pursuing Christ are the only ways to think about such things and the only we to do them. The stakes are so high in what we do in the church that people can very easily fall into those kinds of patterns of behaviour. Basically the work of the church is so important that we can tear each other apart in our pursuit of it. That was what was going on in the church in Corinth and it can too easily happen in most any church. That is why Paul explains the more excellent way to us, why he urges us to follow in that way.
      And the good news is that we are capable of following in that way because the love that Paul describes in his letter to the Corinthians is not merely human love. It is the perfect love of God, the love that we can only grasp because it has been so powerfully demonstrated to us in the person of Jesus Christ – in his life and in his death. Because the church is the body of Christ (an idea that Paul has just finished laying out in his letter), such love is available to the church – we can love in that way because we are empowered to do so by Christ himself. God has given us the ability to walk in the more excellent way. Now, let us choose to do so.
      And I would like to leave with you and me and all of us a reminder that that is what we are called to do in all of our interactions in the church. I want each one of you to take one of these cards and refer to it often – especially when you are doing anything connected to the life of this congregation.

    
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That’ll get you pushed off a ledge

Posted by on Monday, January 28th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 27 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 44:1-26; Luke 4:14-21
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n the Gospel of Mark, there is a story of Jesus’ visit to his own hometown of Nazareth. Jesus, who has already established himself in other places throughout Galilee, goes home and he speaks in the local village gathering or synagogue. But the people in Nazareth reject him saying, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3) Their reaction seems to indicate that they think they know Jesus too well and so are not willing to accept the authority that he is claiming for himself.
      What we don’t get in Mark, however, is an actual account of what Jesus said to inspire such offense. For that you need to turn to this morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke. And what you find there is a little bit surprising. You see, I know, having read the Gospel of Mark, that the people in Nazareth are going to be upset with Jesus. So, as I read through Luke’s account, I keep expecting the outrage to occur, but it just doesn’t happen when I think it’s going to happen.
      It goes down like this: Jesus comes to the gathering and participates in it by reading from the scriptures. This mig ht seem a little bit presumptuous for a hometown boy who has developed a bit of a reputation to be reading to his town elders, but you can hardly expect anyone to object to someone sharing the revered scriptures and of course nobody does.
      Next Jesus sits down, which was the traditional position of a teacher in that culture and that signals that the next thing that he will say will be his own teaching or interpretation of what he has just read. So this is it, right? Surely the people are going to be offended that this Jesus, this boy that they have known from childhood, is going to presume to teach them something about the scriptures. That is what the account from the Gospel of Mark has set us up to think. And yet, it would seem, according to the Gospel of Luke, the people do not have a negative reaction and they seem to receive it well. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him,” Luke says.
      So what then is the offence? Well, perhaps it is what Jesus actually has to teach them. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus says. Okay, now he is going to get it. Surely the good people of Nazareth are not going to accept hearing such a thing from Jesus! Basically, he seems to have just announced that, because he is on the scene, the ancient scriptures have been fulfilled – in effect that he himself is the fulfillment of scripture. You could even understand Jesus to be announcing to the people of his hometown that he is the long-awaited Messiah. This, surely, they are not going to accept; they will be outraged at his presumption. Come on, they knew this guy when he was still in diapers!
      But no, amazingly that is not their reaction at all. In fact, they seem to be quite astounded, but in a good way. All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’” So clearly (and despite what Mark implied) the issue that the people have with Jesus is not merely that they think that he is too big for his britches.
      So, what is it? What sets them off? What gets them so mad, in fact, that by the end of our reading they are ready to throw him off the nearest cliff? It is one thing alone. Jesus just happens to mention that God’s grace and salvation might be made available to other people – people who are different from the people in Nazareth – Gentiles. He talks about a widow who was saved by the Prophet Elijah and an army commander who was saved by the Prophet Elisha, both of whom just happened to be Gentiles. He dares to point out to them that there were times when God loved and saved people who weren’t like them – people that they despised. That was what was enough to send the people of Nazareth into a murderous rage.
      Today’s sermon is a little bit different. As you know, since the beginning of the year I have been using the lectionary to guide me in my preaching. The lectionary, by the way, would have directed me to read only the first half of that passage from the Gospel of Luke. But last fall I put up today’s sermon in the auction – the winning bidder would be able to dictate the topic of today’s sermon and Joanne Waugh had the winning bid. She has asked me to answer the question, “why is it that we have so much trouble dealing with change in the church.”
      I’m sure that you’ve all heard the old riddle, “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a lightbulb?” The answer, of course, is that the old light bulb worked just fine back in the 1960s, why would you even think about changing it?
      It is true that change in general is difficult for the church, but I think that Joanne in her question recognizes that there are certain kinds of change that are a little bit easier than others. And it is kind of surprising the kinds of change we can tolerate.
      The people in Nazareth don’t seem to have too many problems with many of the radical things that Jesus says to them. They seem to take the suggestion that “the year of the Lord’s favour” has arrived and the notion that the scriptures have been fulfilled without surprise. Even the idea that this Jesus, this man they have known since childhood, could be God’s Messiah doesn’t really seem to faze them. But the change they find to be particularly troubling and that they really can’t handle – so much so that they try to shove Jesus off a cliff – is the idea that God might choose to show grace and salvation to the wrong sorts of people in their estimation.
      And I think it works the same way with us. We may disagree on certain matters of theology. You may not, for example, conceive of the Holy Trinity in exactly the same way that I do. We seem to be able to tolerate those kinds of differences without too much trouble. The disagreements that really tear us apart tend to be those disagreements about who is in and who is out. The things that get us all worked up are the questions about extending God’s grace to people who don’t seem to belong as far as we are concerned. Clearly the big question in the early years of the church had to do with whether the Gentiles were in or out. The particular in and out groups have changed over the centuries. Today our fights tend to be over how to include very different groups and how God’s grace extends to them – the biggest one today being the LGBTQ question. But whatever particular group you are talking about, it remains a question that we battle over with the greatest intensity.
      Now, Joanne is not really asking me to tell you who should be the in group and who should be excluded from the church in our present time. What she is asking is simply why these kinds of questions are so difficult for us, why they make us want to throw people off a cliff. And she wants to know how we can approach those kinds of questions in a better way – a way that is perhaps based less on emotion and fear than on thought and a spirit willing to listen to God. The good news is that I think there is a way.
      You probably noticed that we haven’t yet done our responsive reading this morning. That is because I was saving it until this time because I think it is a part of the answer to Joanne’s question. Our reading is taken from Psalm 44 this morning and so let’s pause now for a moment and read it together.

Responsive Reading: Psalm 44:1-26
   L: We have heard with our ears, O God, our ancestors have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old:
   P: you with your own hand drove out the nations,
   L: but them you planted;
   P: you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free; for not by their own sword did they win the land,
   L: nor did their own arm give them victory;
   P: but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance, for you delighted in them.
   L: You are my King and my God; you command victories for Jacob.
   P: Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down our assailants.
   L: For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.
   P: But you have saved us from our foes, and have put to confusion those who hate us. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
   L: Yet you have rejected us and abased us, and have not gone out with our armies. You made us turn back from the foe, and our enemies have gotten spoil.
   P: You have made us like sheep for slaughter, and have scattered us among the nations. You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.
   L: You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us. You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples.
   P: All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face at the words of the taunters and revilers, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.
   L: All this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten you, or been false to your covenant.
   P: Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way, 19 yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness.
   L: If we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands to a strange god, would not God discover this?
   For he knows the secrets of the heart. Because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
   L: Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
   P: Awake, do not cast us off forever!
   L: Why do you hide your face?
   P: Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
   L: For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground.
   P: Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.
     
      Now, please take a moment to consider that psalm. It is a collective prayer – the whole people have come together to pray to God – something that we still do when we gather. But it is a prayer unlike anything I have heard in a church. What do the people say to God? I would summarize the prayer basically like this: “God,” the people say, “do you remember the good old days? Things used to be so good. You used to do such great things back then.” Actually, that does sound a lot like what I hear in lots of churches – I just don’t hear people say it in prayer. “But there is a problem,” the prayer goes on. “Things aren’t so good anymore.” And it goes on from there to blame God and complain about how God is generally not doing a very job at being the God of Israel. And that is about it. It is nothing more and nothing less than a prayer of complaint against God.
      This is a kind of prayer that shows up quite frequently in the Bible. It is called a psalm of communal lament and it is essentially that: a prayer for a community that is angry with God and is not afraid to say so. It is actually rather shocking for many Christians to realize that this kind of prayer is found in the Bible. We are usually taught that you should never complain – never say anything negative about God – but the people in the Bible did it all the time.
      And I think that were wiser than us in that. Sometimes lament and complaint is exactly what you need to do. Sometimes you just cannot get over a loss, a disappointment or a grief without finding some concrete way of expressing your anger. And when you do it in prayer, it can be the most helpful and healing way to do it. You don’t hurt anybody’s feelings but God’s and, believe me, God can handle it.
      And I think that there is a helpful answer to Joanne’s difficult question in that: Why do we struggle to see God’s grace extended to new people – people who are not like us? The reason is that, when other people experience God’s grace, it feels like we are losing out, like we are not so special anymore. It feels like a loss of privilege. We were comfortable with the idea that God could love and save good Presbyterians who thought exactly like us. But it feels like a betrayal when we learn that God might love people who approach faith in a completely different way from us.
      We’re mad – mad at God – that God might choose to love and save such people. But, as good modern Western Christians, we would never think to say it. That would be wrong – maybe sinful. My feeling is that we ought to learn something from the Biblical writers and really let God have it – tell God how we really feel. Maybe it could be the beginning of us opening up to something new.
      I actually do believe that God is calling new people to salvation and hope in Christ. He must be, because it was always a part of God’s plan to draw multitudes into the great work of the church. And there just aren’t so many people who are just like us anymore. If there is going to be growth, it’s going to have to come from the outsiders – people not like us. That means change – change that will likely feel like it hurts and that feels like a loss to us. We cannot afford to get stuck in that grief and loss though. So I believe that the first thing we’re going to have to do is tell God how it really feels to lose what we thought was our special status and favour.

      So let God know how you feel. God, I’m mad that the methods of building up the church in the past don’t work anymore. I’m mad that, if we are going to attract new people into the church, we’re going to have to let them make changes. It’s not fair, God. This is my church, how can you let them define it! Don’t be afraid to let God know – it is one of the gracious ways in which God will allow you to embrace newness and change.
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Six Stone Jars

Posted by on Sunday, January 20th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 20 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
T
here were six stone water jars, I mean really large water jars that each held twenty or thirty gallons. And they were just sitting there by the entrance when the mother of Jesus brought a crisis to his attention.
      They were at a wedding – a wedding that was the most important event that would take place in Cana that year. Life in Cana – life in most any Galilean village – could be pretty bleak. It was nothing but a hardscrabble existence working from dawn to dusk just to survive. By some estimates, about 90% of what they were able to produce was siphoned off in taxes, rents and fees to support the temple and religion of Judea.
      Opportunities to celebrate anything were few and far between. So when those opportunities came, they were of vital importance to everybody. A wedding feast in ancient Galilee was as close as many of these people would get to feeling that life was good. So when the wine ran out on only the third day of a wedding party that was supposed to last a week, you can bet that it was a crisis. The morale of the entire region was on the line.
      But even more than that was at stake. Jesus had come into the world as the bridegroom. Everywhere he went it was supposed to be a celebration. Once some of the religious people even came up to Jesus and asked him why it was that his disciples didn’t fast and didn’t go around with miserable faces all the time. Jesus’ answer was that it wasn’t fitting. If they were at a funeral, sure, that would make sense. But Jesus was among them as the bridegroom and when the bridegroom was present you had to celebrate.
      The presence of Jesus in the world was a sign, as it says in our Old Testament reading this morning, that “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” So can you imagine what it would be like for Jesus to show up at a wedding party at the very moment when the entire celebration fell apart because there was no wine? This was serious; the entire ministry of Jesus was at stake.
      So, as much as Jesus wanted to protest that his time had not yet arrived, as much as he did protest to his mother that for him to take action was a bit premature, there really was no question: Jesus had to do something about the wine running out. And Jesus had the power to do something; there seems to be no question about that. Why, I suppose that he could have created wine in vessels out of nothing had he chosen to do so. But he did not choose to do so. He chose to respond to the crisis in a very particular way. And there was the problem.
      You see there were six stone jars by the entrance – very large jars each holding twenty or thirty gallons. They were there for a very good reason, and that reason did not include the making of wine. They were there for the Jewish rites of purification. And you need to understand what that was and how important it was. You know how your mother always taught you that you should wash your hands before a meal because if you eat with dirty hands you might get sick and make others sick? Well, it didn’t have anything to do with that.
      They were not there for hygienic purposes but for religious purposes. They were there so that these poor provincial Galilean folks of Cana could live up to the expectations of the Judeans (who figured that they knew what God really wanted from people). They had taught the Galileans to do these water rituals in order to be acceptable to the Judeans and to God.
      And Jesus seems to have gone out of his way to use those six stone jars to supply the missing wine to keep the party going. In doing so, however, he compromised them. Wine was a drink that was created with yeast. Yeast was considered to be ritually impure. So those six stone jars were at least temporarily rendered completely useless for their only purpose. They were compromised.
      And Jesus did this without asking permission and without even telling anyone what he was doing. When the water was turned to wine and the wine taken to the steward, even he didn’t know where it came from – that it came from the six stone jars. Nobody knew.
      Oh, wait, that’s not quite right, is it? The servants who had drawn the water, it says that they knew. In fact, I’ll bet they were sniggering the whole time. What did they care about the rituals of their masters and “betters”? I’ll bet that while they passed the wine to the steward, they were thinking to themselves, “This guy doesn’t even know that this Jesus just contaminated all of his precious purification jars. Wait’ll he finds out!”
      So think of what Jesus has just done. He has defiled an essential part of a solemn and important ritual, just to keep a party going. What is more, the Gospel of John tells us that what Jesus did was a sign. There are seven signs that Jesus performs in this gospel and when you look at each one of them you see that they are not merely miracles (though they are all miraculous in their own way). Each one is clearly a way of announcing something important about who Jesus is and what he has come to do. So we are meant to read deep meaning into all of Jesus’ actions at this wedding.
      This sign means that, because Jesus has come, the party has started and that nothing should get in the way of that spirit of celebration. In particular, we should not let something like the intended use of six stone jars to get in the way.
      Of course, the real question we need to ask is how do we apply all of this to the life of the church today. If we are to take seriously this story as a sign of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I think that we need to expect that the overwhelming nature of the church should be joy. That doesn’t mean that we don’t deal with serious matters in the life of the church, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have to deal with trouble or strife but at the end of the day the keynote of our song should be joy because the church is the bride of Christ and “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
      So the question is what stands in the way of the church truly embracing its destiny in joy? I’ll tell you what stands in the way: six stone jars. I suggest to you that there are at least six things – things that we have decided are more important than the church embracing its true nature in joy – that keep us from being all that we are called to be. And like Jesus did at Cana, we may need to take some dramatic action – not to destroy those stone jars (Jesus didn’t do that) but to show that we are willing to compromise them for the sake of the greater vision.
      The first stone jar that we need to get rid of is the spirit of scarcity. Just like what happened in Cana, sometimes that keynote of joy goes missing in the church when the wine runs out – when we enter into a season of scarcity in the church. Scarcity arises in many ways in the life of the church. It tends to happen when money is short of course, but the power of scarcity to kill our joy is greater than even the actual lack of money available.
      Even when, to give a wild example, God has proven God’s faithfulness yet again by providing to a congregation a balanced budget with all expenses paid, that congregation can still often be infected by a spirit of scarcity that constrains the work it does for the kingdom of God even as it constrains its joy. The spirit of scarcity is a stone jar that needs to be compromised for the sake of the life of the church. We cannot be ruled by the fear of scarcity. That doesn’t mean that we throw away such things as financial prudence and careful planning, but if we let the spirit of scarcity rule over us we will not know the joy that God has for us.
      The second stone jar that I think that Jesus would have us compromise is formality. Formality is the habit of strongly holding onto certain forms and traditions in the life of the church. It is not that formality and tradition are completely useless, of course. A formal attitude helps to convey the seriousness and the importance of what we do. Following the rules in how we do things certainly can help us to avoid particularly bad mistakes. But when formality becomes elevated as an ideal in itself, it can become very deadly and it immediately alienates any newcomers that arrive among us and are not familiar with our forms.
      The third stone jar is our buildings. Now, again, our church buildings are good things. Many of them are beautiful (case in point) and they certainly can be useful in ministry. But what we see again and again in our Presbyterian churches these days is a tendency to elevate the importance of the building above everything else. Maintaining the building becomes more important than the mission, more important than the joy that we are called to live out. We allow our buildings to define and constrain what we do. Many congregations have become frozen in time because they cannot adapt without bringing radical change to their building, they cannot embrace some new ministry that God is calling them to because their building holds them back. When the building becomes more important than the joy of being the church, we have a problem – we have a stone jar to compromise.
      Let’s see, what is jar number four? I’m going to label that jar, “We’ve never done it that way before.” And the one beside it that looks rather like it is, “We tried that once and it didn’t work.” These stone jars represent anything in the church (and there are often many things in the church) that discourage innovation and creativity. Trying something new, branching out, taking risks is not easy and we are often frightened of it. When you try new things, you are not guaranteed success, but there is so much joy to be found in the attempt and when we quash the people who have that creative spirit we so easily destroy their joy.
      Which brings us to the sixth stone jar that needs to be compromised to find our joy in being the church today. I’m going to call that one, “The church that used to be.” Oh, how much energy do we spend on trying to create the church that we used to know – a church that can no longer exist in the present world? How much joy do we suck out of the successes and achievements of today because they just don’t seem to measure up to what happened in the past? Yes, we loved that church that used to be. Yes, great works were done in Christ name! But when our ideal of the past overshadows everything about our present and future, that stone jar has become far too important.

      Those are my six jars anyways. Perhaps you might label some of them differently, but I have no doubt that they have meaning for us today. John says that Jesus did in Cana he did as a sign – a sign that continues to speak down through the ages. If we lack in joy in our churches – if the wine has run out at our wedding feast to any extent – we need to ask what is preventing what should be part of the essential nature of the church. Jesus had to compromise some items that were strongly associated with ritual, religion and tradition in order to bring joy back to the wedding feast; we may need to do the same to restore joy in the church.

Sermon Video:

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WARNING: Flood and Fire Ahead!

Posted by on Sunday, January 13th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 13 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 43:1-7, Psalm 29:1-11, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-22
I
t is kind of amazing the difference that one little word can make. Our reading this morning from the Book of Isaiah begins with a pretty amazing promise. Do not fear,” God says through the prophet, “for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Can you even imagine what is being said here? The eternal creator, the ruler of the cosmos and the King of all kings reaches out to a people who are lost, confused and distressed and God chooses them.
Warning: Fire and Flood Ahead
      And it is not just in that passage; it is a theme that runs through all of our lectionary readings this morning. Why are the people flocking to John the Baptist out in the wilderness? They are there because they are filled with expectation. God is doing something and they are being baptised because they want to be part of it. In that baptism, they are experiencing the same thing – God’s redemption, calling them by name and claiming them. This is made even more explicit in the case of Jesus who is claimed by God in spectacular fashion after his baptism with the words, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
      This is good news, right? This is a wonderful promise. Think of all the benefits of having the creator of the universe choose you specially and call you by name. No more worries, no more fears. With a patron as big as the Creator, it’s bound to be smooth sailing from here, right? Surely if there is any trouble, God will get me out of it right away.
      But there’s that little word” if. That should be the next thing that the prophet talks about, right? If anything goes wrong. If I have to pass through a difficult thing, then God will bail me out. But is that what the prophet says? Oh, he goes on to talk about trouble, but he doesn’t use that little word: if. Here is what the prophet says, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
Looking for that little word, if
      Hold on a minute here God, I thought you redeemed me, I thought you called me by name and were even willing to pay a hefty ransom for me, what do you mean when? It’s like you’re threatening me with dangerous river crossings and passing through fiery infernos. What exactly are you planning for me to do?
      And here is where we actually get to the point that is being made in these passages. Does God call people, redeem them and make them his own? Yes, absolutely. But that calling and redeeming, though it always comes out of the gracious and giving spirit of God, also always has a purpose. God has something for his chosen ones to do. In this specific passage in the Book of Isaiah, the thing that God is calling his people to do is the very difficult task of bringing a nation together out of exile, of carrying out a dangerous journey through a deserted place. So clearly the issue is not that they might face dangerous situations on that journey. It is a certainty that they will. So the prophet doesn’t talk about if; he talks about when.
      It is the same thing in our New Testament readings as well. These words resounding from heaven after Jesus’ baptism, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” are a high point in the recognition of Jesus as God’s anointed one, but we all know where that is heading, don’t we? It is heading to the cross and a long and difficult journey to get there. Whatever the benefits of being God’s chosen one, a trouble-free journey is not one of them. And that is not just true of Jesus; it is also true of all those who follow Jesus through baptism.
      I often think that this is the main thing that we miss in the church today. The Christian Church has an important message – a message of redemption and hope and love that has the potential to transform the world. It is a fantastic message that the world definitely needs. So if people aren’t coming and choosing to be part of sharing in such a message, it is certainly not the fault of the message.
      And if people aren’t coming in droves, like they did when John the Baptist proclaimed the message, it is clearly not the fault of God. God is committed, it says, I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth.’”
      So, if the message is still valid and God is that committed to gathering God’s people in, why don’t we always see that happening? What did John the Baptist (who apparently attracted “all the people”) have that we don’t?
      Well, I think that one of the problems is that we have become “if” Christians instead of “when” Christians. We appreciate our Christian faith and the message of the gospel that we have received and we especially appreciate it if we face hard times. If we have to pass through fire or flood, it is good to know that we have a God who is committed to us, a Christian community that will support us and love us and a message of good news that will comfort our hearts.
      And, in a sense, there is nothing wrong with that. It is a very good thing to be able to draw on that support if tragedy should befall us and it is a blessing to have that assurance. But if Christians are not necessarily the Christians who are going to change the world. For that you need when Christians.
      When Christians are the ones who understand that the gospel message is not just there to support us in those difficult times that may happen. They understand that following Christ and being faithful to his gospel will, sooner or later, lead us into situations that are not exactly comfortable. Following the example of Christ with integrity will sometimes mean standing up for the forgotten, the despised and the oppressed. And when you do that, you will find that it is not possible without displeasing many people. It means that sometimes people won’t like you and that can feel like you are passing through fire and flood.
      When Christians understand that the gospel message is a message of salvation by grace through faith. God’s love and forgiveness and hope come to us as gifts that we can only receive with thanks – that we cannot earn. But we do receive those gifts through faith and faith means trust. It means that we need to learn to trust God for our most important needs. And, guess what, that doesn’t come easily to us. We would rather be in control of our own lives and not to have to rely on somebody else (even if it be the Creator of the universe). Giving up that control is hard – for some of us it can feel as hard as passing through fire or flood.
      When Christians know that the Christian life is not intended to be lived out alone – that we are actually called to live it out in a community – to love and support one another. And that is a blessing in so many ways – it makes life that much richer. But, guess what, other people (even when they are Christians – maybe especially when they are Christians) are not perfect. We sometimes don’t agree or see things in the same way. That diversity, when we work through it, is meant to enrich us, but sometimes working through it can be hard and we may hurt one another and tear each other down. We may need to forgive each other to make it work. And that is hard. In other words, there will be times when living together as the church will be like passing through fire or flood.
      When Christians also understand that this message of the gospel is not just good news for you, it is not just something to hold onto and cherish for the benefits that it gives you. It is a message that demands that it be shared. And I don’t necessarily mean by that that you need to be constantly going up to people and asking them questions like, “Have you been saved?” “Have you been born again?” Actually, I think that kind of in-your-face approach tends to have quite the opposite effect – it gets in the way of effective sharing of the gospel. No I am talking about a real mutual kind of sharing, where you are actually interested in what other people think and feel and believe and are also willing to share your own faith when the opportunities arise.
      Many of us don’t do that – would never even tell someone else what you did on a Sunday morning or what God is doing in your life. I understand the hesitation, of course I do. Such genuine sharing can make you feel very vulnerable. It can feel as scary as having to pass through fire or flood, but taking those kinds of risks are also what it means to follow in the way of Christ.
      When Christians understand that trouble is an inevitable part of the Christian life. They don’t seek out conflict or trouble, of course. They don’t stir it up for fun. But they expect that their walk with Christ will lead them through fire or flood at some point. They don’t complain when it comes because they expect it. Neither do they worry or fear when it happens because they remember God’s promise: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” They know that fire and flood are not things to avoid at all costs; they are not an if, they are a when.
      And I think that this is what we often miss and it gets in the way of the church being all that it is meant to be. We think of fire and flood as things that might happen. They are ifs for us. And if they are ifs, well, then they can be avoided and so we spend so much of our energy avoiding conflict, avoiding anything that might make somebody not like us, avoiding anything makes us feel vulnerable. If we understood that fire and flood are things that will happen, sooner or later, in the Christian walk, maybe we could draw on God’s promises and pass through them to new strengths and new beginnings.
John the Baptist made it hard for people
  I certainly see that as one of the foundations of the success of John the Baptist. He didn’t sugar-coat anything. In fact, he seems to have intentionally made it hard for people. He set up shop way out in the wilderness. It was a difficult and dangerous journey just to get there and once you got there, there was nothing to sustain you. He also threw them into the flood of the Jordan and promised them that a baptism of fire was coming. Whatever he was calling them to, it was not going to be easy. And yet they came – they came in droves, “all the people” it says.
      It doesn’t seem to make sense. We assume that if you tell people the road is going to be difficult, they will stay away, but John found the opposite. We, on the other hand, try to make the Christian life as easy as possible and often find that people aren’t particularly attracted to that.

      Why did John’s approach work so well? First of all, because he was telling the truth and people could tell. The life of faith will lead through fire and flood sometimes. Secondly, he told them that the promises of God could be trusted: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” But most of all, he showed them that the path, though difficult, was worthwhile – that going through the fire and flood meant something. It led to hope, life and new beginnings. Yes, I think we could learn a lot from John.
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King Herod… was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.

Posted by on Monday, January 7th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 6 January 2019 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12
I
 understand why King Herod is frightened. I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. Here a bunch of foreigners show up in one of his grand palaces. They’ve traveled from a distant country far in the east and they certainly come across as rather wise individuals. They are looking, they say, for one who is born the king of the Jews. Yes, Herod is not going to like that.
      King of the Jews was one of his titles and he was certainly not interested in hearing about another claimant to that throne. In fact, Herod was so self-important that he could hardly even tolerate the idea of his own sons succeeding him on the throne and had a number of them put to death. These strangers arriving with news that a new king has been born, one who is obviously not even related to Herod’s family, is bound to upset him and, given his somewhat fragile ego, to frighten him.
      But I have always wondered about the little detail that Matthew adds to Herod’s reaction. He says that all Jerusalem was frightened with him. Why would that particular piece of news frighten an entire city? We certainly know that they had no great love for Herod.
      I always understood Jerusalem’s fear in the way we often think that politics works today. When a powerful politician, like, say, the president of the United States, gets some bad news, everybody in Washington DC tends to get on edge. But this is not (perhaps especially in the present political context) because everyone in Washington loves the president. This is because they know that a frightened and upset president is an unstable president who can sometimes react in pretty dangerous ways and do things that can throw things into great chaos. (And I’m not particularly making any comments on the present political context here. This has been true of many presidents.)
      So often when powerful people get frightened, the people around them do get frightened too but not necessarily for the same reasons. So I always thought but that was what was going on in this story of the visit of the wise men. The people were nervous about Herod’s reaction.
      But today, we read this all-too-familiar story in a bit of a different way than I have for a w hile. We read it as part of a set of lectionary readings. These are readings that have been designed by some committee somewhere to speak and communicate with each other to help us to look at the stories from a bit of a different angle.
      These lessons have reminded me that today is Epiphany and that Epiphany is not just, as we often assume, the day when we celebrate the arrival of the wise men. It is an important festival and season in the life of the church in its own right and it is a season when we particularly celebrate the revelation of God’s hope and salvation and gospel to the whole world.
      The readings this morning, you may have noticed, tend to focus especially on outsiders, strangers and gentiles being exposed to the good news about the Hebrew God in various forms. This has made me think that there might be a different reason why all Jerusalem – and the particular representatives of Jerusalem who are named, the chief priests and scribes of the people – were particularly frightened and upset by the arrival of some foreigners asking a rather impertinent question…
     
      The scribes and priests had a number of reasons to be upset as they waited in the king’s antechamber. First of all, they had been summoned here on no notice from warm and comfortable beds. Secondly, the king, as usual, was making them wait, his favourite tactic for reminding people that he was the boss. But the third reason was, by far, the most disturbing. It had to do with the reason why they had been summoned. The rumor was that several foreigners, devotées of some strange Persian religion, had come to town. Word was that they thought they knew something important about the Jewish faith – that is, the faith that was presided over by these very scribes and priests. Can you imagine that? These outsiders thought that they knew more about the faith of these people than these leaders themselves did!
      They all understood that that phrase that the magi had used, “the king of the Jews,” was a code that their people used when they wanted to talk about the hope of a messiah. It was the most important hope and expectation that any Jew could hold. And these leaders were not about to be instructed on the coming of the messiah by a bunch of foreigners. Why, if there was going to be a messiah, they would make sure that it was a messiah announced by a good old-fashioned Jew, not some stranger.
      But that was not the worst part. The worst part was that the question asked by these so-called wise men had forced them to go looking in their own scriptures in order to have something to say to the king when he asked them what this was all about. And, much to their consternation, they had found something. It was a passage in the prophets and it seemed to point to the possibility that the messiah could indeed be born and that, if he was, it would probably be in Bethlehem.
      Can you imagine that? Not only had these foreigners forced them to go and read and study their own scriptures, they had prompted them to discover something they had never understood before and it turned out that the foreigners might just be right. This was intolerable! They were not about to be taught how to do their job by a bunch of outsiders! And so they decided that, when they were summoned into the presence of the king, they would present a united front. They would not admit that these magi knew anything about kings or messiahs. They would present themselves as the only experts and they would assure the king that everything was under control – their control. There was no way that they would ever learn anything important about the Jewish messiah from a bunch of foreign magi.
     
      The kings and politicians of this world are frightened by anything that threatens their hold on power. But religious leaders, and by extension the communities that they lead, are frightened by something else. They are frightened that outsiders might know more about the truths that they proclaim than they do. That is the danger that the wise men represent.
      And I sometimes think that we in the church today are foolish to think that we are immune to the error that those learned scribes and priests fell into. We think that we’ve got our messiah – our Jesus Christ – all figured out. I understand why we think that. After all, Christians have been thinking and talking about Jesus for centuries. If some Christian preacher or teacher hasn’t said something important about Jesus in all that time, you would think whatever it is, it is really not worth hearing.
      But actually, knowledge of the messiah doesn’t work like that. Jesus Christ, we believe is still alive and still in the process of revealing himself to his followers. What’s more, if the best resource that we have for learning about Jesus is the Bible, we might think that since we have had it for so long, we have understood everything that it has to teach us. But even the Bible doesn’t work like that. It seems that Jesus is constantly giving us new understandings, new epiphanies, and we really miss out when we don’t accept them.
      For example, back a few years ago, like around the time when I was born, good Presbyterians had decided that they understood exactly what kind of ministers Jesus wanted leading his churches. In particular, they were sure that Jesus wanted those ministers to be men. The scriptures, after all, were clear on that point. Jesus was male and so were all twelve disciples. That had to be the model intended for the church too.
      But then something happened and it didn’t really happen inside the church, not at first anyway. It was an idea that started within society in general – a movement that started without reference to what the church thought – the idea that women are essentially equal to men. And eventually these wise… people came to the church and said, “Where are the women who are called to be ministers in your churches?” And when they heard this the leaders of the churches were frightened and all the churches with them.

      And some remained there frozen in their fear of change, but others allowed this idea from the outside to send them back to their scriptures. They explored the Bible and discovered that their previous idea hadn’t been quite the obvious slam dunk that they had thought it was. They found passages that spoke of female disciples and even apostles – some of which had been neglected and a couple of which were even intentionally mistranslated for centuries.
      And so a great conversation took place in the church and it was not an easy conversation because change is never easy in venerable institutions. But, in the end, the church did agree: Christ didn’t want us to exclude women from the ministry. We had been mistaken in our understanding of Christ. And so, ever since, our churches have been greatly enriched by the ministry of many talented and gifted women. But I honestly think that that great blessing would never have happened if there had not been for some wise… people outside of the church pushing us to think in new directions.
      Today, as I said earlier, the church celebrates the festival of Epiphany. Sometimes people explain that a bit simplistically by saying that it is when we remember the arrival of the wise men to adore the young baby Jesus. It is that, but traditionally also so much more – it is not about one day when the wise men arrived but that longer period of time – the time that we celebrate as the revelation of the messiah and the message of the gospel to the gentiles.
      But what I’m realizing is that even that is not just a one-time event – not even if you expand it to include that whole period of time when the gospel was first preached to the gentiles. It is something that continues to happen. God is continually interested in revealing Godself to new people. Jesus Christ, the living Word of God is not a closed book but a constantly renewing epiphany. The gospel will continue to touch the lives of new people in new ways.
      And that is a sometimes frightening proposition to those of us who have been in the church for a while. Because when the gospel begins to touch new people in new ways, they are likely not going to be just like us. They will have different ways of thinking and approaching even fundamental ideas. They won’t want to just do things in the ways that they have always been done and so sooner or later they will push us back into our scriptures to discover new things and new ways of looking at things. They might even make us discover that we didn’t understand Jesus as well as we thought we did. And that might lead us to change and frankly we are not very good at change.
      In popular culture today, an epiphany is just a general term for a sudden life-changing realization. “I just had an epiphany,” somebody might say, “I realized that if two people on opposite ends of the earth simultaneously dropped a piece of bread, the entire earth would briefly become a sandwich.” Well, that is maybe not a great example of a life-changing realization but it is one that can really change the way you look at something. An epiphany – a real life-changing realization – sounds pretty exciting and it is. But changing how you look at everything actually is a pretty scary proposition.
      This festival is a reminder that God does, from time to time, like to send his people an epiphany. I’m not sure what new realizations God might be sending our way, but I am pretty sure that if this church (and the church in general) is going to grow, it will only be by attracting people who are significantly different from the people who are already here. And when they come, they will ask us some awkward question that frighten us and send us back to our scriptures. That is as it should be. What we find there, and how we respond to it, may well bring us to the next great epiphany that God has for us.

      
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Amen

Posted by on Sunday, December 30th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 30 December, 2018 © Scott McAndless
2 Corinthians 1:15-20, Revelation 22:17-21, Psalm 41:1-13
T
hroughout 2018 we have printed a weekly selection from “A Catechism for Today” in our bulletin. It is a teaching document that was produced by the Church Doctrine Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Canada several years ago. The reason for doing this was to take an opportunity to focus on some of the essential doctrines and teachings of the church. Throughout the year, therefore, I have often drawn on the readings of the catechism for the sermons I preached (though not so much during the season of Advent, I admit). But today we come to the end of 2018 and the end of our little experiment with the catechism. Starting next week, we will begin a new adventure in another old church tradition: the lectionary.
      But as we leave behind our old friend, the catechism, it is kind of fitting that we take a little bit of time today to ask ourselves the final question. The final question in this catechism is this: “What is the meaning of the little word “amen’?” Not only is amen the last question of the catechism, it is also the last word of the Bible as we saw in one of our readings this morning and it is the last word of all of our prayers. That makes it a pretty fitting word with which to end our year.
      And it is actually a pretty good question because I’m not that sure how well any of us could answer it. And I’m not just talking about you here, I’m talking about myself. I’m not sure I could have given a good answer to that question before taking some time to look at it as I prepared for today’s sermon. Of all the words that we use in the church, amen has to be one of the most frequent, but how much do we know about why we say it and what it really means?
      Amen is a Hebrew word – one of only two ancient Hebrew words that are still in common use in the English language. The other Hebrew word, by the way, is hallelujah which means “praise the Lord.” In ancient times it was likely a word that you would use to accept a curse or a threat. For example, if I said to you, “If you cross this line, I will knock your block off,” you would respond by saying “Amen,” which would signify that you understand and accept that if you step across the line, the consequences will be severe.
      There are several pas­sages in the Bible where the word amen is used exactly in that way. If you ever want some good bedtime reading, for example, try the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuter­onomy which is nothing more than a long list of curses that are read out with the people responding to each one by saying “amen.”
      But if that is where the word started out, how did we get from there to a word that we just use to end our prayers? Well, it kind of grew out of that initial usage. If you could use it to agree that some threat or punishment was due for a transgression, then you could also use it to agree with some good things like a blessing or with words of praise and worship directed towards God. And so it was that the ancient people of Israel developed the tradition of prayer where the leader, the priest or perhaps the king, would address God with praise or requests or complaints, and then the people would call out “amen” at the end or after every phrase as a way of saying that they agreed with what was being prayed. By doing that they could make one person’s prayer the prayer of the entire community. Amen became, “and so say we all.”
      And, of course, we still sometimes use the word amen in that way. In our worship services that is our most common response to the prayers that are led by a worship leader or minister. But that does not explain how we use the word in our private and individual prayers. Why do you say amen when you are praying alone to God? I mean, what would be the point in saying it if all it meant was, “I agree with all the things I just said to God.”
      Well, it does indeed mean much more than that. When you say amen at the end of your prayer, you are actually acknowledging the true nature of prayer. Prayer is not just a monologue – not just a speech where you declare the things that are on your mind and heart. Prayer is not just talking to God, it is talking with God. It is a conversation. Now it is hard for us to remember that sometimes because, unlike in most of the conversations we participate in, we don’t get to hear another voice like ours speaking back to us, but prayer is always meant to go two ways and the amen is an explicit acknowledge­ment of that.
      When you say amen, you are acknowledging that everything that you put forward in prayer is open to the will and response of God. When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and famously asked his heavenly Father to “remove this cup from me,” asked that he be spared from the bitter experience that awaited him upon the cross, he also famously added the words, “yet, not what I want, but what you want.”
      That is what saying amen means – it means that you seek God’s agreement to what you are saying but are also open to another answer. You recognize that the wisdom and will of God exceeds your own. It means that you may not understand why God would give you something different than what you ask but that you are willing to trust God to be that father who knows how to give good gifts to his children.
      This amen is what sets the activity of prayer apart from every other kind of conversation. Yes, prayer is different in that we don’t hear that other voice coming back to us in the same way. But prayer is also different in that it is a conversation based on extreme trust. By saying amen, you are saying to God, “I trust you.” You are saying, “you are trustworthy like no other that I know.”
      That is a truth that Paul brings out in our reading from 2nd Corinthians this morning. He is talking to the Corinthians about some plans that had made to visit them. He was going to stop by for a visit on the way to Macedonia and then again on his way back. But something seems to have gone wrong with his plans. Paul doesn’t say what the problem was. Maybe his luggage went missing in the Macedonia International Airport or there was construction on the E75 Highway between Thessalonica and Thermopylae.
      But we can all understand what he is saying here because we have all experienced it. We have all made plans and then had those plans go awry because of circumstances beyond our control. That is what it is to be human: it means that our plans are subject to circumstances beyond our control. And so, as Paul says in his letter, our intentions may be “Yes and yes,” but the reality is that the best we can say is “Yes and no.” Circumstances may change my intentions.
      Paul is saying that God is different. Are circumstances beyond God’s control. Of course not. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ… was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’ For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’” But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to link that truth about God’s nature to that word we use in prayer. “For this reason,” because God is utterly reliable and doesn’t change God’s mind, “it is through him that we say the ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God.”
      He is saying that, when you say amen, it is not you saying it. You are unreliable because, whatever your best intentions, you are subject to changing circumstances. Amen is a word that you can say through God’s grace. That word is God granting you surety for what you pray because God’s promises are always sure.
      Now, does that mean that you will always receive whatever you ask for when you pray and say amen? No. That amen also still means, “yet, not what I want, but what you want,” and God’s will and response is not something that we will always understand and appreciate. Amen doesn’t mean you always get what you want, but it does place yourself in the hands of a God who understands what you really need and who is committed to you.
      In a day the year 2018 will draw to a close. And, while it has been a good year in many ways, I’ve got to say that there are parts of it that haven’t been all I would have hoped. I have found some political and international relations events to be very disturbing. There have been more than enough disasters from hurricanes to terrifying forest fires to a tsunami. As we come to the end of 2018, can we say amen? Is that a fitting coda to a year that perhaps makes us feel rather conflicted? I can’t say I agree with everything that happened during the year. I can’t say that I accept that everything was exactly as it should have been. But, again, saying amen is not just about agreeing to what I want or need. It is rather about being open to trusting in God for what is past. So let us say amen for 2018. Let us say amen for the joys and the sorrows, for the hopes fulfilled and for the disappointments that may have come.
      And, perhaps even more important, let us think of the year to come. I’ve got to admit that looking forward at 2019, I’ve got more worries than I’ve got certainties, and I have more questions than I have answers.
      2019 will see a federal election for Canada. That is a good thing and I hope we all participate. But the problem is that it seems like it’s going to take place in a political environment that seems to be very negatively charged mostly because of the way that some groups are using the internet. I’m worried about that. I also don’t really know what I think the outcome of that election ought to be for the long-time good of our country. How can I pray for 2019 if I don’t know what’s really needed?
      2019 looks to be a year of great turmoil – I mean political turmoil like we have never seen before – for our closest ally in the United States. Oh boy, do I really not understand what’s happening there and neither do I have any idea what needs to happen for the healing of that country and the world. Those are just two of my anxieties and my questions about the year ahead. Believe me there are many more. How do we pray – how do we say amen as we pray for the year that lies ahead?
      Well, once again that little word seems to be our salvation. When we say amen, we’re not saying that we have all the answers. We are not saying that we understand it all. It is an expression of trust and hope in God. Yes we will ask certain things and try to find an answer that seems to be the best, but our amen says, “You know what, God, in the end we are willing to leave it up to you. You alone can oversee it all. You alone can possibly hold the future in your hand.”
      The year 2018 is in God’s hands. As it comes to a close, we confess we still don’t understand what happened or even what should have happened. But we are here at the end of that year by God’s grace. God has seen us through and we are thankful. Can I hear an amen?
      The year 2019 is in God’s hands. Nothing has happened yet. Nothing is written and we know that many things that will happen will leave us bewildered and confused. We’re not even sure what needs to happen in some cases. But we will get through by God’s grace and for this let us be truly thankful. Can I hear an amen
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