Category: Minister

Minister’s blog

Undercover Minister

Posted by on Saturday, September 15th, 2018 in Minister

I am very grateful for the opportunity that was given to me this past spring to take a ten-week intermission from my duties at St. Andrew’s.
I have been a full-time minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, now for 26 years. That means that for over a quarter century (and a very large portion of my life) all of my work and all of my professional efforts have been directed toward the maintenance and promotion of that particular institution. All I have done, most everything I have engaged in, has all been done with one underlying assumption: this has to be good for and helpful to the church.
I don’t complain about that – it is what I signed up for after all – but I do note that, when you look at the world from that one point of view for such a long time, it begins to limit your perspective. I believe that I needed a new perspective on the work that I do and that was not going to be possible without taking an extended period of time away from the church to get the church out of my head.
And so, for example, I felt that it was important that I take the first several weeks of my intermission to completely avoid any thought of the Christian church. I did not attend any worship services. I did not read any the news from the church or anything else related to the work of the church. I simply avoided it entirely.
I know, I realize that this is something that many Christians do all the time without even thinking about it, but it is literally something that I had not been able to do for years and I do believe that it helped me to gain new perspective on the church and its life.
In fact, I was kind of amazed at how easy it was to put the church completely out of my mind and out of my life. That is exactly how the vast majority of people in our society today live – without sparing a moment’s thought for the church and its needs.
And the first thing I realized is that I don’t think that they are missing it. Oh, I am quite sure that there are many people who are suffering, needlessly, because they lack the knowledge of the good news of God’s grace, forgiveness, power and strength. Even more important, they are missing out on the opportunity of living out that grace and truth in an active community, whether they realize it or not.
But I didn’t miss, and I expect that most people don’t miss, the things that we tend to spend so much of our energy on in the life of the church. They don’t miss the pressure to conform to other people’s ideas of what it means to be a Christian. They don’t miss the worrying about the loss of traditions or the resistance to change. They don’t miss all of the worries about institutional maintenance. It makes me wonder whether sometimes we are just spending too much of ourselves in the church on the things that matter least.
But, even as I spent time away from the church, I felt the importance of my faith. I continue to love and to cherish the Bible which, for me, is the source of so much that is good. I think that one of our problems is that the church has tried to keep the Bible to itself – to use the Bible only to serve its own needs and its own purposes. I felt the need to free the Bible from the church to bring it closer to those people who do not feel as if they belong in the church. That is one big reason why, during my intermission, I spent a fair bit of time working on a project trying to bring the Bible (in particular the stories of the Bible) to people outside of the church. I created a podcast called “Retelling the Bible,” in which I retold some of the great stories of the Bible without worrying about whether or not the way I was telling the story would be completely acceptable to the church. I just enjoyed the stories of the Bible as I saw them without worrying about whether my interpretation might be judged wrong by some Christian institution somewhere. I greatly enjoyed being able to approach the Bible with such freedom and I think it brought something valuable to me, something that I have been able to share with others and I will continue to do that as I continue to publish, now on a monthly basis, my podcast. You can find out more about the podcast and find out how to subscribe at retellingthebible.wordpress.com.
Having spent several weeks away from the life of the church, I finally felt that it was time for me to re-approach the church, but this time as an outsider. I spent the next several weeks of my intermission visiting churches. This is something that I have almost never been able to do in my life. I have never come to a church as an outsider. And I wanted to share with you some of the things that I learned by doing so.
First and most importantly of all, I very quickly realized how difficult it is to do such a thing. I did not find it easy at all to approach a church where I didn’t really know anyone and didn’t really, at least initially, want to know anyone. I just wanted to go and see what it was like and it was extremely hard even to walk through the door each time. Some of this was for some very practical reasons. I wasn’t used to how things are done there or even where to go. In one case, I walked in a door and immediately got lost, took a wrong turn, and then ended up walking out a back door by the river and almost too embarrassed to try to go in again. These kinds of experiences underlined to me just how hard it is for people who haven’t been to church in a long time (or maybe not ever) to actually show up when the church is open.
I observe that churches often seem to operate under one big assumption. We assume that, if we can put on a good program – if we have an excellent worship service or music program or children’s program or whatever it may be – that people will just come. I call it the “Field of Dreams” assumption: “If you build it, they will come.” That may have once worked, but my experiences have shown me that it doesn’t anymore. When new people show up among us on their own, I hope you recognize that it was probably not easy for them to do so at all. And I hope that you realize that there are many more people who simply will not come on their own. Many studies show that the only way that most people will come to a new church is if they are not only personally invited but also actually accompanied through the door. This is something that we all need to be thinking about as we work on church life and growth.
There was another thing that I noted in my visits. I noted that when congregations were at their most formal – when they were sticklers for their own forms and traditions – was when I usually felt most uncomfortable and out of place. It was when (either intentionally or unintentionally) that formality broke down that I felt most welcome and started to enjoy myself. This made me realize that formality in churches is something that we mostly do to please those who have been there the longest. Longtime members are most comfortable when everything happens formally but a strong and growing church cannot exist only for insiders. Informality (whether planned or not) often gives visitors the message that we are not hung up with ourselves and that we are comfortable enough with who we are to laugh, make mistakes and forgive each other with love. Just something to think about.


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The Sparrow in the Mead Hall

Posted by on Monday, September 10th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 9 September, 2018 © Scott McAndless
John 3:1-17, 1 John 2:21-25, Psalm 27
T
here was once a king in Northumbria (in the northern part of England) – an Anglo-Saxon king named Edwin. And Edwin was a pagan – a worshipper of the old Germanic gods like Thor and Wodin. But Edwin married a half Frankish princess who just happened to be a Christian and that is where all the trouble started.
      His new queen brought some Christian priests with her and they insisted on constantly preaching the Christian message. But the king resisted that message. What need had he for a God like Jesus Christ – a defeated God, a weak God – and not a strong warrior god like the ones that his ancestors had worshipped?
      But the priests persisted. They were very insistent. And so eventually the king convened a meeting of his closest advisors. They gathered in the king’s mead-hall in the dead of winter. They drank the king’s potent mead (which, in case you don’t know, is brewed from fermented honey – yum!) and they talked about whether or not it was prudent to do what the priests were urging them to do. The discussion went on and on with very few viable reasons being offered to take the step of conversion and baptism. But eventually they decided that they would do it. They would convert – they and all Northumbria with them – creating the first beachhead for Christianity in Northern England.
      And do you know what it was that tipped the scales for Christianity – why they decided that that was the way to go? Was it because they thought that Jesus was more powerful than the old gods? No, in all honesty I suspect that they saw Jesus as laughably weak compared to Thor. (I mean, Jesus never made it into The Avengers.) Was it the benefits that might come from Christian learning and literacy? No, they had little time for such things. What convinced them was something that an unnamed courtier said. A sparrow flew through the mead-hall. It flew in out of the cold and snow through one door, swooped over the bemused royal gathering a few times and then out another door and back into the ice and darkness.
      That was when the courtier spoke up. He said that it seemed to him that life in this world is like what happened to that sparrow. According to the Venerable Bede, these are the very words of that courtier: “So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. If, therefore, this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to be followed in our kingdom.”
      What was he saying? He was saying that, as important as this world may seem, it is totally outweighed by the reality that came before it and that will exist after it. Why is that other reality more important? Apparently because of sheer quantity. There is just more of it – an infinite amount, in fact. Infinite time is what we call eternity. That’s just math – eternity is always going to add up to more than even the longest human lifespan. He was saying that the strength of Christianity – the only thing that really recommended it – was that it could claim to know something about eternity and could maybe even give you a leg up in it.
      Of course, he was kind of implying that Christianity was no benefit, or very limited benefit, in this present life. In fact, he may even have been saying that Christianity was a negative thing or caused problems in the present life. I mean, the ancient Anglo-Saxons seem to have had little patience with things like church services and monks and vows. But, he was saying, maybe that was something that they could just put up with for the brief time that they were swooping around the mead-hall for the sake of that enormous amount of time that would come when they were out in the unknown of eternity.
      Now, apparently, that courtier was very persuasive in this observation. He convinced King Edwin, he convinced the theigns and even the pagan priests. Northumbria became Christian and England was changed forever. But I wonder, what do you think of his argument? Is he right? Are we just sparrows who happen to fly through mead-halls? Does the interior of the mead-hall not really matter because the reality that actually matters is to be found beyond the confines of this world? And is the Christian church the only source of reliable information on what that other life is really all about?
      I’ll tell you something: that sparrow might have convinced the old Anglo-Saxons that Christianity was the only way to go – the way of the future – but I am not sure that it is still working its magic on their modern descendants and other western people.
      For one thing, Christians seem to have gotten a bit of a reputation in recent years for being so caught up with their concern for what’s outside the mead-hall that they are only too happy to neglect the inside. Christians, the criticism goes, are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. There are many, for example, who would blame so much of our present ecological crisis on Christians because some people have used the Christian idea of eternity to justify not taking care of the earth. While we are here on earth, they suggest, we can feel free to take whatever we want from the earth, to profit from its resources, pollute its skies and its seas because we don’t have to worry about the future of this world; our future is elsewhere.
      Now, I would be quick to say that that has definitely not been the attitude of all Christians down through the ages, nor even of the majority. But there has been a small and very vocal and well-funded minority who have been only too happy to preach that message very loudly. They have been so successful that many people do think that is what all Christians believe. So, no, the focus on eternity has not necessarily been a big selling point for Christianity over the last few decades.
      Even more damaging, however is the fact that Christianity seems to have lost the key thing that made it so attractive to the Anglo-Saxons. It has lost the monopoly over knowledge about eternity. The Anglo-Saxons simply accepted that, since they spoke with such certainty, the Christian priests knew exactly what eternity was like and how you got to be part of it.
      How many people today would just accept the notion that only Christians could possibly have anything meaningful to say about the afterlife? What about Hindus and their teaching regarding reincarnation? What about the atheists and their confident assertion that they know exactly what will happen to you after you die? And what about the statistics that indicate that huge numbers of people in our society, who have absolutely no connection to any established religion whatsoever, still profess to believe in an afterlife. So, if we are counting on the idea that we are going to attract people to the church simply by saying that we are the only ones who know anything about what’s outside the mead-hall, we may have another think coming.
      Jesus did talk about eternal life. We are told in the Gospel of John that he gave Nicodemus, that nocturnal Pharisee, what is perhaps the most memorable promise in all of Scripture: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And if we, by believing in Jesus, may have eternal life, doesn’t that mean that that old Anglo-Saxon warrior is right? If we can have an infinite amount of life outside of the mead-hall, then what is the point of worrying about the brief time that we spend flying around inside the mead-hall? Are we not just here in order to do one thing and that is to make sure that we reserve our place in eternity?
      Well, maybe that would be true if that was what Jesus meant when he made that promise of eternity, but I don’t believe that when Jesus said that, he had the image of a sparrow flying through a mead-hall in his mind.
      What did Jesus mean when he spoke of eternal life? He was speaking of an infinite expanse of time, but here is what is different about his approach to the approach of that Anglo-Saxon retainer: the expanse of time that Jesus was talking about was not merely outside of the mead-hall.
      First of all, Jesus says that eternal life is something that may originate from elsewhere, but it begins in the here and now. Jesus says, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” and then he says again “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” you see, we tend to think, like that Anglo-Saxon retainer, of eternal life as this thing that is just outside of the mead-hall – outside of our present knowledge and experience. But Jesus speaks of it differently. He is telling Nicodemus that he can enter the kingdom of God (which he later connects to eternal life) and that he can enter it right now. You, Nicodemus, can have it now by being born from above – being born again from God, but it is a new birth that takes place on earth – inside the mead-hall.
      In other words, for Jesus eternal life is not some mysterious thing that happens completely outside of our knowledge. You can know it now. And when I think about it that way, that is a much bigger selling point for the Christian faith than a sparrow flying through a mead-hall because this is how Jesus is thinking of his followers: they are a group of people who, in the here and now, are actively living out life eternal. There is another place where Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” (John 10:10) and I think that he means much the same thing as when he was talking to Nicodemus. Eternal life, for Jesus is not just an infinite length of time, it is an abundance of life itself – life that overflows in joy, love and service. Now imagine that that was what people knew about Christians, not that they had supposed secret knowledge of some other life outside the mead-hall but that they knew that Christians lived a life so full, so abundant, that it overflowed like that?
      That is why I believe that it is time for the Christianity to stop thinking that we can attract people by saying that we can give them a special mysterious new life someday outside of the mead-hall. Yes, it is good to know that the eternal life that we begin to live here will continue even after we die, but that is not our selling point. The thing that will be truly attractive to people is if we begin to live that abundant life right now. And Jesus teaches us how we may do that. All that is required, he says, is belief – faith. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
      Now he doesn’t mean by that belief in various dogma or teachings. It is not by believing the right things that you can start to live that eternal life. In fact, I personally find that worrying about whether you are believing all the right things can easily get in the way of living an abundant life. No, what Jesus is talking about is faith that is trust. “Believe in me – trust in me,” he is saying. “Learn to depend upon me for the small and the large things of life. That won’t just get you the life of a sparrow somewhere outside of the mead-hall, it can transform the way that you live every minute of every day of your life.
      I know that that does not come easily to any of us, but will you commit yourself to do one thing this week: trust Jesus for one thing that you’ve never trusted him for before. Just start with one thing. Trust him for something that has been worrying you. Just let go of the worry and leave it in his hand. Or maybe trust him enough that you can do something that you have been afraid of doing because you know he is with you. Trust him enough to give what you can’t afford to give. Trust him enough to take a risk. Just pick one thing, but do it and do it this week. See if you don’t find a new abundance enters your life because of it. 
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I believe in… the resurrection of the body

Posted by on Tuesday, September 4th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 2 September, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 11:1-9, 1 Corinthians 15:12-26, Psalm 7:1-11
I
can’t be the only one to notice, am I? The world is kind of a mess. I mean, all kinds of things are just falling apart. Political alliances like NATO and the United Nations – organizations that maintained an unprecedented ( if imperfect) global peace for decades have fallen on hard times. Russia, in particular, seems to be hard at work destroying some of our most cherished institutions like democracy. North Korea is clearly working as hard as ever at creating weapons of mass destruction and putting them in missiles that go ever further.
      And that is just the global political situation. Look at the environmental situation. Even if we somehow manage to avoid blowing up the planet with some weapon or other, that hardly seems to matter because our collective action seems to be destroying the environment and even changing global climate patterns.
      I could go on but you get the point. We seem to have all kinds of reasons to despair for the future these days. It is honestly getting to the point where I am actively avoiding certain kinds of news stories. I don’t remember ever doing that before.
      But that is okay, right? I mean, we’re Christians, aren’t we? And I have been told often enough that Christians don’t really have to worry about the long-term future of this world because it is not our destiny. We ultimately belong to another world because someday, when we die, our bodies will decay and remain in this world but our souls will live on in another, better place. So why would we worry about this world? In fact, would it not be a good and very Christian approach to life to totally forget this world, its needs and its future? “The world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” So why not just take whatever you can from the earth – plunder the forests, the seas, the depths of the earth – because our future is not here.
      I will admit that that is exactly how some Christians do approach life and often how outsiders assume that all Christians think. But I think that most of us would say that it doesn’t sound quite right and indeed it isn’t. But why not?
      The Bible does promise us that we have the hope and promise of an afterlife. Because of Jesus – because of what Jesus has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection – we can look forward to a life beyond this present existence. I believe that and I know that many of you do too, but how are we supposed to reconcile that with a commitment to this present world. We have two questions from the catechism this morning. The first focuses on our hope for a life beyond the present life by talking of our belief in the resurrection of the dead. But the next question asks about hope and the hope that it talks about is very clearly talking about hope for this present world. “We hope for a transformed world in which justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” So which is it? Are we supposed to have hope for this world or just for the next?
      Well, we are not the first Christians to wonder that. The Christians in Corinth were dealing with very similar questions shortly after that church was founded by the Apostle Paul. It was not easy to be a Christian living in Corinth in those days. It usually meant cutting yourself off from your family and from just about everything else. So things were tough for those Christians and they started to give up on this world and many began to think that their only hope was to be found in the next.
      How do we know this? Because of how Paul wrote to them in order to correct them. He asks them an odd question in our reading this morning: “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” Now how can that be? How can a group of Christians, who have heard and clearly believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, possibly not believe in a life after death? It doesn’t make any sense.
      But here is what is going on. It seems clear that those Corinthian Christians did believe in the afterlife. Everything that Paul writes to them in this letter takes that for granted. Paul is not correcting them for failing to believe in life after death but rather for the way in which they are conceiving of that life. Rather than believing in the resurrection of the body, they believe in the immortality of the soul.
      This is not all that surprising, really, because most of the Christians in Corinth were Greeks and the immortality of the soul was a very Greek way of thinking about life after death. It was the Greek Philosophers, especially the great teacher Plato, who first proposed the idea that there was, within the human person, some spark of the divine – a soul – that was, in its very nature, immortal. The body could die and it would decay away, but the soul would live forever.
      Now that is an idea that probably makes sense to many of us, because that is how we generally think about the afterlife as well. I don’t know how many times I have been there at a funeral and seen people look down at the body of their loved one and say, “They are not here anymore, but their soul will live on in another, better place.” The immortality of the soul is our go-to way of talking about life after death.
      But what Paul is pointing out to the Christians in Corinth is that that is not exactly what he taught them when he preached the gospel to them. He didn’t promise the immortality of the soul, he promised the resurrection of the body. He preached that their hope for life after death was found in the fact the God had raised Jesus’ body from the dead. The promise was that since God had done this for Jesus, he would surely do it for them as well.
      So, in this letter, Paul is correcting them for falling back into the Greek way of thinking about the afterlife and so denying the gospel that he had preached to them which was based on God’s power to raise the dead.
      Now I will admit that there is a part of me that wonders why Paul is so concerned about this distinction. We are talking about the afterlife here and, while the New Testament promises of a life after death are clear, I do not believe that the Bible gives us anything like a clear description of what that life will be like. I do not believe that human language has words that could possibly describe what such an existence shall be like. I mean, consider the descriptions that are offered. One passage speaks of streets paved with gold. A lovely image, of course, but it hardly seems like a very good practical or literal description. Do you think that driving on ice is bad? Imagine driving on a street paved with gold?
      No, instead of literal descriptions of the afterlife, what we have in the Bible are images and metaphors. No one can tell us that it is this or that, we can only say that it is kind of like this or kind of like that. And concepts of the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body are the same thing – they are simply images that are meant to give us some idea of what that existence will be like.
      So why is Paul so insistent that they must speak of the afterlife in one particular way? It is not that they are wrong. The immortality of the soul is a helpful way to conceive of life after death. But he was commending to them a better way to think about it. But why? What is so much better if you think in terms of the resurrection of the body?
      One part of the answer, as far as Paul is concerned, is that talking in terms of the resurrection of the dead reminds us how we have access to that other life. It is a reminder that we have gained access to the life beyond because of Jesus and especially because of what he has accomplished for us in his life and death and resurrection. It is a reminder that we will be raised because Jesus was raised. And that part of the answer is what Paul particularly focuses on in our reading this morning from his Letter to the Corinthians.
      But there is also another reason why Paul stresses the idea of the resurrection of the dead and it takes us to the heart of the issue that we have been talking about. If you only think of the afterlife in terms of the immortality of the soul, you will naturally tend to devalue the things of this world. After all, your body and all of the physical things that it depends on will pass away. They will turn to dust while your soul lives on through eternity. This makes it easy to assume that the eternal thing is the only thing about you that is important and that the passing things of this world matter not at all. I would say that the idea of the immorality of the soul is one of the key reasons why Christians have developed a bit of a bad reputation for being quite willing to let this world be destroyed because it is all only so much dust.
      But if you learn to think of the afterlife in terms of the resurrection of the body, you cannot think in such terms. Quite simply, such an idea of the afterlife means that the body and the things that sustain the body matter. They matter because God made them in the first place. And precisely because God made them in the first place, God can make them again even after death.
      Now I realize that thinking of the afterlife in terms of the resurrection of the body creates problems and quandaries for us. If our hope is for a resurrected body, well then what will that body be like? Which body will I get after I die? The strong and healthy one that I had when I was eighteen years old or the old and broken down one that I had when I died in my eighties? And what about those whose bodies are destroyed or cremated or eaten by sharks in the sea? Does that mean that they have lost all hope of the afterlife?
      But these questions all miss the point of the idea and the point that Paul is trying to get across. As I said, no one can really say what the life beyond the grave is like. We have not the language to describe it. The resurrection of the dead is not a literal description of what that life is like, it is a helpful metaphor to help us wrap our heads around the meaning of that existence.
      But Paul encourages you to think of it that way for some very good reasons. It is to remind you that your hope for life after death is found in God (and not in some inherent nature of your soul). The God who created you and the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is quite capable of raising you as well as giving you a body that you cannot understand now but that fulfills all of your hopes. It is a reminder that, when you die, you will be in the hands of a loving and benevolent God and that is a good and comforting thing.
      But secondly, and I think more importantly, it is there to teach us that our hope is not merely for another world beyond this one. We need not and must not wait to find hope. To work for justice, for what is right and good in this world is not only possible, it is an essential part of being a follower of Christ Jesus, the resurrected one. 
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Who is welcome at the table?

Posted by on Sunday, July 29th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 29 July 2018 © Scott McAndless
Luke 7:31-35, Ephesians 2:11-22, Proverbs 9:1-6
O
n February 1, 1960, at 4:30 in the afternoon, four young men sat down at the lunch counter inside a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. They had been shopping at the store, had purchased a few necessary items like soap and toothpaste, and their plan was to sit down at the lunch counter for a cup of coffee before they went on their way.
      Except that wasn’t their plan, not really. Oh, they would have been only too happy to pay for their coffee and sit and drink it in peace and leave, but they knew that the staff at Woolworth’s was not going to serve them. You see the young men were black and the store had a clear and well-stated policy that only whites could be served at the counter. And so they were refused and in response the men simply remained where they were, sitting peacefully.
      They might have been peaceful, of course, but that doesn’t mean that everyone saw them that way. People were freaking out. They shouted at the men, insulted them. They accused them of being unruly, disruptive and especially of creating racial strife. Yes, people said that they were the ones who were making racial strife happen. The “troublemakers” just calmly remained where they were until the store closed for the night and they left as peacefully as they had come.
      The next morning, when the store opened, the men were back and they had brought 16 equally black friends with them. All twenty men went to the counter, ordered something and were refused service. I mean, what did they expect, the policy was clear. Well, of course, they knew exactly what to expect and when they were refused they simply sat there all day.
      The next day there were sixty. The day after that, three hundred showed up, so many that the decision was made to divide the protest and groups were sent to other stores and shops with segregated lunch counters. Within a few days, the whole thing had blown up and people all over Greensboro (mostly blacks, of course, but some others too) were not buying anything at all from stores with segregated counters. There was backlash as well with people shouting insults and racial epithets at the protesters. There was some violence directed towards them in one incident as well.
      But the protestors hung tough. So did the stores at arguably greater cost. During that time, they saw their revenues drop by a third and there is no retail operation that can sustain those kinds of losses for very long. By the time the protests ended, Woolworth’s had lost millions of dollars – and that is millions of 1960’s dollars. I’m sure it would be billions in today’s terms. The protests ended with Woolworths finally caving in. They tried to do it in as quiet a way as possible. They called in some of their own black employees (for they had no issue with employing such people), had them take off their work clothes and, dressed as customers, go to the counter and order. They were served with no ceremony or fuss and the battle of the lunch counter just ended.
      But my question is why. Oh, I don’t wonder why there were protests of racial inequality or why there was resistance against those protests. I understand that racial tension had plagued that part of the world for a very long time by then. But my question is why was that the particular flash point. Why did it have to be about food and especially about who was allowed to eat it with whom? Why did everybody involved put everything on the line for that particular issue? You will note that the Woolworth’s store had already desegregated everything else at that point. They had a diverse staff that included black people. The men had no trouble at all accessing the sales counter, only the lunch counter.
      I suggest to you that both the protesters and the owners of the Woolworth’s knew very well what they were doing. They both independently decided that the lunch counter was a hill worth dying on because they had an instinctive understanding of just how dangerous the idea of people eating food together can be.
      To see that, you only have to look to the scriptures. If you have ever tried to read all the way through the Bible, one of the first things you probably noticed is that the book is obsessed with food. I mean, there are pages and pages of rules about what you can and cannot eat. You can’t eat this animal but you can eat that one. You can eat fish but not ones without scales. You can’t eat veal if it is cooked in a certain way and you can’t eat anything made with yeast at all at certain times of the year. You can’t get too far through the Bible without asking yourself what all of this is about. Why were the Jews supposed to abide by so many rules about food?
      It is true that the kosher diet is generally a healthy diet, but that is also true of the way that most ancient people ate. These rules were not primarily about health and safety. No, the more you read, the more you see that the rules were actually about setting the people of Israel apart from all of the other people who lived around them. They were to be holy and that meant separate. But how could food rules achieve that? For this simple reason, because the rules were so strict and so complicated that even sharing a table with someone who didn’t follow them was impossible. It meant that you could never eat with someone who didn’t follow exactly the same rules.
      In other words, the Bible understood the principle that the people of Greensboro North Carolina were fighting over in 1960. You can do all kinds of things with people of other races and nations; you can work together, trade together, even fight the same enemies, but so long as you never eat together you will remain forever a people apart.
      Jesus understood that principle too. And as much as he respected the laws that were a part of his own religious heritage, he was determined that he would never allow food laws and customs of who you could share a table with get in the way of getting his message of the kingdom of God out. And people noticed it and criticised him sharply for it. Jesus himself admits as much in our reading this morning from the gospel: “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking,” he laments, “and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”
      Note that this is Jesus himself saying this – acknowledging that this is the reputation that he has. And it is indeed a terrible thing to have people say of you. That particular charge, the accusation of being a glutton and a drunkard is actually listed as a capital crime in the Book of Deuteronomy. According to that ancient law, if your parents publically declared that you were, “A glutton and a drunkard” – those are the very words – the entire town was required to gather together and stone you to death. So this is no idle charge being leveled at Jesus. This is a very serious thing for Jesus to be acknowledging in public.
      But what does it mean? Well, that is also clear enough when you look at the passage in Deuteronomy. The charge, in Deuteronomy, is about generally unruly and destructive behaviour and not specifically about how much food or alcohol a person ate or drank. The particular “unruly behaviour” that people seem to be concerned with in Jesus’ case has to do more with who he shared his food and drink with than how much of it he consumed. The most damning thing about Jesus was that he was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”
      In this story, therefore, you should think of it like you would think of the people criticizing the sit-in protestors at the Woolworth’s store. They are all up in arms at the very idea that all different sorts of people – people of different races, different economic status, different morality – should eat together at the same lunch counter. But they were especially freaked out at Jesus because he was the one who was enabling all of this. He had not only pulled his own stool up to the counter but was actively inviting all sorts of unsavory characters to join him on their stools.
      That was what Jesus did and people hated him for it – just like they hated the Greensboro lunch counter sitters. In fact, they hated him so much that they killed him for it. Oh, it may not have been the only reason why, but it was certainly on the list! There were, by the way, lots of people 1960’s who would have been only too happy to put the men who sat at the lunch counter to death too.
      Our reading this morning from the Catechism for Today asks the question, “Who may participate in the Lord’s Supper?” It is a question that the church has historically answered with a great deal of caution. We have been careful to exclude all sorts of people – children, people who were declared guilty of certain sins (but curiously not of others), and often people who were outsiders – from the communion table. We excluded them because we understood what the good people at Woolworth’s understood and what the Old Testament food laws understood – that it is dangerous to eat with the “wrong kinds” of people, that allowing it to happen changes things in ways that make people uncomfortable.
      If you leave churches alone – if you allow them to default to whatever is most comfortable and what is familiar – they will naturally become communities of homogeneity. They will become places where everyone looks alike, speaks alike and acts alike. Oh, we may not post it on the door. In fact, we tend to want to put the very opposite on the door – “Everyone welcome,” we put on our signs. But the normal tendency is, when someone arrives who breaks the conformity, to find subtle and even overt ways to let them know that they’re not really welcome. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we are doing it.
      I don’t condemn churches for having this tendency. It is only human. But it is not what the church is supposed to be. That is why I am glad to see that our readings from the catechism and from the scriptures today remind us that we, in the church, are nothing if we are not the heirs of Jesus of Nazareth. And when we gather at the communion table we are not just sharing a simple meal and we are not just doing some churchy ritual.
      There is a reason why the church, right from the very beginning, made a shared communal meal the very heart of their common life. It wasn’t just to remember the last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples (though it was certainly that). It was also meant to be a reminder of all those times that Jesus broke the rules of his society by sharing his table with outcasts and strangers, with tax collectors and sinners.
      This is not a communion service – at least not a communion service as it is traditionally practiced in Presbyterian churches. But I have brought some bread today. I have brought it for you. Take a piece all of you. If, for some reason, you cannot eat bread with glutton, take a rice cracker. Take it and hold it for a moment.
      Now, before you eat it, will you take a moment to imagine something for me? Imagine you are not sitting in a church right now. No, you are sitting at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. Not only that, but imagine that you have been told all your life that you better not be seen eating here. That you are not welcome and that if you refuse to respect the traditions of this lunch counter, then you are a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser, a drunkard and a glutton and a friend of all the wrong sorts of people. You will be accused of inciting racial hatred and it will be your fault if people get hurt. Do you want that on your head? Wouldn’t it just be better to meekly and mildly move on to eat with your own kind?
      If you can just imagine such a situation (and I know that that is pretty difficult for most of us who have not experienced that kind of discrimination) but if you can do it, you will have found a better sense of what it actually means to celebrate communion. Now eat this bread at that lunch counter.
      Communion is a radical meal, an earth-shattering meal, or at least it is meant to be. And maybe we can all reclaim that power by choosing to truly welcome strangers and outcasts to the feast.

      
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#AnabaptismEnvy

Posted by on Sunday, July 22nd, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 22 July, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 17:1-8, Acts 2:37-42, Psalm 100:1-5
I
 was raised in a Presbyterian Church as a part of a fairly typical Presbyterian family at that time which meant that I was baptized as an infant when I was only a few months old. Since I was born near the end of the famous Baby Boom and at a time when the vast majority of the children born in Canada were baptized, my parents stood at the front of the church with a large group of parents and we were all baptized one after the other in a kind of an assembly line.
      And that wa s fine. I mean, I didn’t remember it, of course, but my parents told me that it had been done and I had no reason to be concerned that it hadn’t. But then I grew up and, in time, I came into contact with another group of Christians who didn’t do baptism in quite the way that it was practiced in my church. These Christians are collectively called Anabaptists – a group that includes denominations such as the Baptists and various kinds of Mennonites. These churches do not generally see a baptism that is performed on an infant as a valid baptism and will argue that, to be truly valid, baptismal candidates should be of an age where they can actually choose for themselves whether or not they want to be baptized.
      And when I first came to know Christians who believed this way about baptism, I will admit that I found their position to be very interesting and even persuasive. It kind of made sense to me, this idea that baptism should be something that you enter into willingly of your own accord. In fact, I will even admit that I started to wonder whether maybe there was something invalid or even illegitimate about my own baptism.
      So, yes, I went through a period of time when I questioned my baptism. And you know how it is when you are going through adolescence. Who doesn’t remember those days? You struggle with everything. If you are a person of faith, you almost inevitably question that faith at some point. You certainly struggle over your own moral choices and decisions and can be very hard on yourself when you (also inevitably) fall short. So I went through all of that too but, in some ways, it was complicated by the whole baptism question. I couldn’t help but wonder if my baptism was at the root of all my problems. Maybe if I had been baptized later, as a believer professing my own faith, it would have taken, it would have sunk in deeper and would have had a more lasting effect on my moral behaviour and my doubts. I suffered (and I am going to go ahead and hashtag this one because I think that it’s time) I suffered from #AnabaptismEnvy.
      I suspect that I am not the only one. So I do think that the question that is raised in this morning’s reading from the Catechism is a very important one: “Who may be baptized?” Finding the answer to that question did not only put my own mind at ease regarding my own baptism, it also helped me to understand the real meaning and purpose of the sacrament.
      First, let me clearly affirm what I learned as I matured as a Christian. Any struggles I had as I grew up and matured in my faith all stemmed from my own basic humanity and absolutely not from any deficiency in my baptism. I have known, and continue to call my friends, many Anabaptists. They are very fine people and highly committed to their faith and to doing what they see as right in the world. But the fact that they were baptized at a time and a place of their own choosing did not mean that they had been spared the struggles and the doubts that are common to all of us.
      I have observed one thing in a number of cases: when a person comes to that point in their life when they decide to make their public commitment to Christ by being baptized, they will often go through a kind of a honeymoon period shortly afterwards. There will be a time when all is beautiful and wonderful and clear for them and their Christian lives are so easy. Such a time is a great thing and a wonderful gift for a person to experience. But the reality is that a baptism does not solve all your problems and unless you actually address the negative patterns and triggers in your life, sooner or later that honeymoon period will end and you will find yourself returning to old ways and old problems.
      So, no, a baptism is not going to fix you. That is actually not what it is for. But what is it for? That is the question that really matters here, isn’t it? And to answer that question we really have to dig into the scriptures a bit. In our reading this morning from the Book of Acts, we find the Christian church at a very pivotal moment. It is several weeks after the resurrection of Jesus and the church is having its big coming out moment on the Day of Pentecost. Up until then there had been a discipleship group around Jesus – a group that is said, at one point, to have included at least 72 people. In other words, it wasn’t exactly huge. It was a somewhat limited group and its focus was not really on growth in numbers. But all of that changes as the church makes its big debut on Pentecost.
      So after a bit of a fire and light show in which flames descend upon the heads of individual believers followed by a pretty impressive display of the disciples’ ability to speak a huge number of strange languages, the big moment arrives. Simon Peter gets up and preaches the first sermon of the Christian Church – a sermon that he begins, by the way, by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, I know that we might look like it, but these people are actually not drunk.” That is personally my favourite first line of a sermon in all of Christian history.
      But, however it begins, it is obviously a very persuasive first sermon because, at the end of it, a huge number of people – Luke says that there were three thousand of them – want to become a part of whatever this new thing is. “Brothers,” they say, “what should we do?”
      This is an incredibly important moment. A movement is defined by its membership and so there is a real need to know who belongs. If you are organizing a new club, for example, you might set up bylaws or standards of dress or behavior. Only those who agree to abide by these things can belong. When you are starting is also the best time, of course, to establish membership fees. This is because, above all else, a movement is defined by who is in and who is out. So what Peter says next here is going to define the church for the next two millennia.
      And what does Peter say? Are there any rules of behavior? Are there any dress codes, any fees? No. This is what Peter says, “Repent, and be baptized.” That is it. If you read the entire sermon, it is clear what Peter means when he says, “repent.” He has just spent several minutes describing the corrupt system of this world – the system that put Jesus to death. Based on everything that he has just said, to repent clearly means to give up and turn your back on the corrupt system of this world and seek a new basis for life. That is the only requirement and it is basically an exasperation with this world and its delinquent ways. It is about a desire to see change and to be a part of that change.
      And, it is with that understanding that Peter offers the next step which is baptism: “be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” What then is baptism? It is an outward sign that you belong to a different system.
      The most important explanation of the meaning of baptism in the scriptures sees it as an image of dying and being raised up to new life. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Paul writes to the church in Rome. “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Dying to something old in order to be raised up to something new is about the clearest image you could find of turning your back on one system in order to embrace another. That is exactly the same kind of transition that Peter is talking about in the Book of Acts.
      So, more than anything else, baptism is a declaration of what system you belong to, of where your allegiances now lie. It is not a statement that you understand everything, that you have all of your beliefs worked out or that you have all of the answers. This Peter makes quite clear when he continues to speak to the Pentecost crowd, “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”
      To the all important question of who may access this incredible power of baptism, Peter gives the clear answer, there are no real limits. It is for you, yes, but also for your children and note that no age limits are given. Even more surprisingly, he says, it is for those who are near – those who are already sympathetic to the message – but also for all who are far away and may have no understanding of these things. And he leaves the reason for this until the last when he declares that ultimately the grace that is received in baptism does not depend on the person who is being baptized themselves but only on the calling of the Lord our God.
      So how is this any kind of answer to the question of Anabaptism envy? The Anabaptists are indeed correct that it is good to come to God and, as a competent adult, choose for yourself to be baptized as an act of personal commitment. And, of course, many people do exactly that in many different churches including our own. But Peter makes it clear in this passage from the Acts that this is not the only way, nor is it necessarily a superior way. This is because the grace of the baptism is not dependent on us but on God. And God can and does make a place for everyone. Can the person who has such a reduced mental capacity that he will never understand the meaning of baptism be baptized? By the grace of God yes. Can an infant who may or may not someday choose for herself to be a follower of Christ be baptized? By the grace of God, yes.

      For baptism is nothing and has no power if it is not a celebration of the grace of God and no one can put limits on the limitless grace of God. The promise of baptism is a new start, freedom from this world’s madness and its corrupt systems. That promise is for you, wherever you are in your life, whatever you struggle with and whatever your level of understanding. You may have had it claimed for you when you were an infant but you can and should continue to claim that promise daily. That is how the promises of God always work.
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Hocus Pocus

Posted by on Sunday, July 15th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 15 July, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Galatians 3:23-29, Romans 6:1-11, Matthew 3:13-17
I
 have here a perfectly ordinary box of pencil crayons. It is something so completely ordinary that you could find in most any household (or at least any household where there are small children hanging around). But what if I were to tell you that I can make these pencil crayons disappear? Yes, you heard me right, I can make them disappear in the wink of an eye.
      Now you’re looking at me skeptically right now and I do not blame you! I mean, who could have to power to do such an amazing thing! But I tell you that all of your skepticism will disappear as fast as, well, as fast as these pencil crayons will in just a few moments.
      So, without further ado, let’s just do it. Are you ready to be amazed? In a moment you will be when these pencil crayons disappear. 1, 2, 3 and gone! Oh, it didn’t work. That’s funny, it worked perfectly when I was practicing… box full… 1, 2, 3… woosh… What could I be missing?
      Let’s try again. Prepare to be amazed. 1, 2, 3 and nope. What am I doing wrong? Does anybody know if there is one more crucial step you need when you are doing magic? I’ve got the banter, the slight of hand, what is missing? The magic word? Well, I guess that I could give that a try. What is a good magic word to use? Ok, let’s try hocus pocus. 1, 2, 3 and “Hocus Pocus!” And the pencil crayons are gone!

      Here is a demonstration of the trick that I did:



      And that is, is it not, the essence of magic. You take a perfectly ordinary, everyday thing – like a bunch of pencil crayons in a box – and you make them do something that those ordinary things are not supposed to do. But that alone does not make it magic because magic has got to be a performance. It doesn’t work if it doesn’t come with a good magician’s patter, exaggerated gestures and, above all, you have got to have some magic words.
      But where does that idea come from? Would you be surprised if I told you that it comes from religion? Probably not. Various ancient and even modern religions have made use of what is sometimes explicitly called magic. The idea of witchcraft, for example comes out of various ancient pagan religions and there are even modern “witches” who claim to continue in those ancient belief systems.
      But what if I were to tell you that that particular kind of show magic where an entertainer uses special gestures and magic words and everyone is supposed to know that it is not real magic but an act, that specifically comes from Christianity and was actually created as a parody of it.
      How do I know that? I only have to look at the so-called magic words that I used this morning. “Hocus Pocus,” what do those words mean. Are they simply nonsense words? No, they are not. The “us” endings of the two words mark them, first of all, as imitation Latin words. And when those words “hocus pocus” first appeared way back in the seventeenth century, everyone knew exactly what Latin words they were imitating.
      In the Roman Catholic Church at that time, and for many centuries after, priests always led the services in Latin, the language of the church. This was especially true when it came to performing sacraments – the most important of which was the mass, or what we would call communion. At the key moment in the mass, the priest would make a grand gesture – would lift up a piece of bread on high and break it while saying, in Latin, “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” which means, “This is my body.”
      Now those English words, “This is my body,” are words that I have used many times myself – that most every Christian leader uses when leading a Communion service. They are, the gospels tell us, the very words that Jesus said when he broke the bread at the last supper, but that Latin formulation had a very different sense to it in the 17th Century. Roman Catholics at that time (and to a certain extent still today) believe that when the priest makes that move and says those words, it is at that that moment that the miracle of transubstantiation occurs.
      Now I’m not going to try and fully explain the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation here. I’ll just say that that church teaches that, in communion, the bread and the wine actually change in substance and become the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ (even while they still look and taste like ordinary food and drink). Protestants generally don’t agree with that idea, at least not completely. Presbyterians say that, while Jesus Christ is truly present when we have communion, that presence is spiritual in the community and not literally in the bread and wine.
      Anyways, a few hundred years ago, everyone knew that those words, “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” were the words that many believed triggered a miracle. Of course, most laypeople couldn’t speak Latin so they tended to shorten the formula to a simpler, “Hoc est corpus,” or “This is body.”
      Now, just try saying those words a few times fast: “Hoc est corpus, hoc est corpus, hoc est corpus,” and maybe you can tell me where those famous magic words, “Hocus Pocus,” came from. That’s right, early magicians, when they first created the magic show, chose to use magic words that were parodies of the key words from the Roman Catholic mass. In fact, the whole act, the waving of the hands, the very idea of magic words, were all a popular parody of what happens in every church where people gather to celebrate communion and other sacraments like baptism.
      And here is my problem – here is why I bring up the whole thing: a few centuries later, I feel like people understand magic shows. They know that they are all make-believe. They know that it is all a trick and that nothing really changes – just like these pencil crayons have all been cut and glued together so that they drop when I stop squeezing the box. They also recognize that the whole patter and gesturing and even the magic words are really just gimmicks that are supposed to distract you while the musician puts one over on you. But that’s okay, of course, because it is not real. It’s just entertainment.
      So we get how magic shows work, but do we understand the thing that they are parodying? Do we understand how sacraments work? I mean, do we even think that they work at all?
      We recognize two sacraments in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. They are Baptism and Holy Communion. And there is no question that those two sacraments point to the two most important truths about what it means to be a Christian. Baptism speaks to us about how we all, each one of us believers, belong to Christ, that he has cleansed us and forgiven us and done it by grace and not by our works. Communion speaks to us of the truth that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, that he is alive and among us and we can know the power of his resurrection.
      But I think that it is worth asking why we need sacraments to do that. I mean, aren’t we supposed to know that we belong to Jesus because we have chosen to trust him? Aren’t we supposed to believe that Jesus is risen from the dead because of the witnesses and their testimony? We know these things by faith; what do we need sacraments for?
      I mean, what are sacraments but ordinary everyday things – a bit of water splashed on the head, a little morsel of food and a sip to drink – ordinary things that are dressed up with fancy costumes, a few fancy gestures and, yes, words that sound suspiciously like magic words. They kind of remind me of a magic show and does that mean that they really are just so much hocus pocus? Is it just a trick?
      Well, it is true that we belong to Christ by faith alone. All that is really required of you to be a true follower of Jesus is that you trust him. But you do need to understand that faith is not just a matter of intellectual assent. That is what we usually assume, of course, that having faith simply means screwing yourself up to believe that certain things are true. If you can give that intellectual agreement then you have faith. But it doesn’t quite work like that.
      This is partly because of how we operate as human beings. As much as we might like to think otherwise, human beings do not operate merely on an intellectual level. Just because you think something is true doesn’t mean that you have faith in it. You need to do something.
      For example, you might think that another person is absolutely the perfect person for you. She or he (I mean, whichever one is appropriate for you) is beautiful, smart, interested in all the same things that you are interested in. They are perfect. But would you marry him or her without spending time together, without talking, without actually doing things together first? Of course not. But why not? Your intellect says that they are perfect for you and you for them.
      The reason why you wouldn’t do that is because human beings don’t work that way. We don’t operate merely on an intellectual level and we certainly don’t make commitments only based on what we think is true. We need to do something that engages us, that makes our commitment concrete to us.
      Well, sacraments operate something like that as we live in and grow in our faith in Christ. They don’t make us believe. They don’t really have anything to do with convincing our intellect of anything, but that does not make them useless or hocus pocus or trickery.
      This is what the catechism says about the role of sacraments is in our faith: “The grace effective in the sacraments comes not from any power in them but from the work of the Holy Spirit. Rightly received, in faith and repentance, the sacraments convey that which they symbolize.”
      So what does that mean? It means that the power of the sacrament is not found in the concrete and visible thing that is a necessary part of it. There is nothing special about the water that is used, nothing special about the bread or the wine. Nor is the power found in the gestures or in the words that might seem to operate like magic words to an uninformed spectator. The power is in none of these things. The power of them is to be found in the Holy Spirit working in the gathered people, not in the things.
      Nevertheless, the things – the water, the bread, the wine – are needed because they give an anchor to our experience, they allow us to ground God’s power in things that we can touch and taste and feel because we need that. It allows our faith to progress beyond a mere intellectual agreement to something that can become a part of our identity and our very being – just like the time you spend with someone who is perfect for you allows mere intellectual knowledge to become this thing that we call love.                                                                                                         
      Now generally, when I preach about sacraments and their meaning it is during a service when we are observing a sacrament – either baptism or communion – but that is not the case today. I took up the topic today because it is in our reading from the church’s catechism. So normally I would leave you at this point to contemplate on how you can use the particular sacrament that we celebrate to deepen your faith.
      But I am not going to direct you towards one of the two church sacraments today. They are the model for another kind of sacrament that God offers you in the world. If you approach it with faith, yes, you can find Christ in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of communion. But God also puts before you many other objects where you can discover Christ’s presence: something shared with someone in need, that can be a sacrament. A well-tended plant that grows and produces, that can be a sacrament. There are sacraments waiting for you in the forests, on the beaches, most everywhere you go if you have the eyes to see them. It’s not magic; it is the work of God’s Spirit upon you. So go from this place today and find the sacramental presence of God in a needy world. 
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Keeping Jesus Out

Posted by on Monday, July 9th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 8 July, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Psalm 41:1-13, Matthew 25:31-46, Isaiah 58:6-10
A
ll my life I have heard Christian people explain the world’s problems. They know, you see, what has gone wrong. They know why it is that the churches are in decline, why gun violence and mass shootings are on the rise. They know the reason why people aren’t as kind and respectful as they used to be and why they do not engage in public service. They know the root cause of all of the woes of the modern world and they will not hesitate to tell you what it is. We struggle with all of these things and more, they’ll say, because we have kicked Jesus out. We have excluded Jesus from our schools, banished him from Main Street and thrown him out of our businesses. That is where our problems all began, they will tell you, and nothing will start to get better until we let Jesus in again.
      And you know what, I would say that they are quite right. The problem really is a distinct lack of Jesus. But I’m not sure that I mean exactly the same thing that everyone means when they say that.
      Think of it this way: You see a person by the side of the road, someone in some distress. Someone who is lost, confused, whatever it may be but they have troubles. But they are still a stranger – and not just any stranger but someone who clearly moves in a world very different from your own. It is someone, you are quite sure, that you would have nothing in common with. And it doesn’t even matter what it is that sets that person apart from you. It could be race or economic status. It could be gender or maybe even a lack of clarity when it comes to gender. They seem to have needs but there is just something that sets them apart from you. My question is this: how do you react?
      One possible response is this: You don’t see them. I mean, yes, your eyes might record their existence there on your path but it is like your brain doesn’t quite make the identification of a human being. You notice little more than just so much empty space.
      But sometimes you can’t help but notice that a person is there and so you do feel an entirely human impulse to respond and do something helpful. And then, naturally, you fight it. You begin to find all sorts of excuses for why you can’t do anything to help them. You know the rat­ion­al­iza­tions because we’ve all made them: “If I gave him some money, it’d probably get wasted on smokes or on booze.” “I’m not qualified to help and I’d probably make things worse.” Or “I’ll just let somebody else take care of the situation.” It is a great way to let yourself off the hook and I will certainly admit that that is how I sometimes react.
      But sometimes you cannot talk yourself out of it and you feel you must respond in some way. What happens then? The tendency, is it not, is to minimize your contact with that strange person who is in need as much as possible. The easiest thing, of course, is to throw a bit of money at the problem and be done with it. You can get along with your day and nothing needs to penetrate your life – nothing needs to change.
      That, I believe, is how we tend to react and that is what we stumble over: the contact with the person in need. We may say that our problems is that we are worried about the cost – that we cannot possibly afford to help every poor soul that crosses our path and that it would ruin us if we did. But I don’t think that it is about the economic cost. We certainly spend a whole lot of money on other, largely useless things without even thinking about it. No, the cost that bothers us is the emotional cost, the psychological cost of letting someone into the bubble that is our safe and secure feeling lives.
      But what if, by doing that, you are missing out on the most important parts of that encounter? What if the thing that matters in your interaction with a person in need is not the specific help you offer, the money that you give, the food that you feed them? What if the point is actually the degree to which you actually get to know that person?
      That is the frightening possibility that is raised by Jesus’ parable from the Gospel of Matthew this morning. In it Jesus talks to his followers, those who have called him their Lord throughout their lives, at the end of the age. And he separates them into two groups: sheep and goats. Their division is specifically based on how they deal with people in need: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, sick and in prison. The good sheep helped and the bad goats failed to help.
      But Jesus, in this parable, doesn’t do what we would do. He doesn’t dwell on the help that was given, how much there was and whether or not it was effective. That is often exactly where we get bogged down. We worry about wasting money by using it in the wrong ways, we agonize over setting up effective projects. But Jesus doesn’t evaluate any of that because he focusses on a much more important outcome of the incidents. There was an encounter, he says, and in that encounter, you met me.
      The biggest end goal of our response to those in need is not the alleviation of need or suffering. Yes, of course, we hope that the things that we do will make things better for people and we ought to do our best to make sure that our efforts have the best effect possible, but the harsh reality is that if that is the only reason why you do it you will discourage yourself and sooner or later and you will burn yourself out or give up because even your best efforts will fail and fall short at some point. Even worse, the deepest problems that plague this world – poverty, despair, hatred, sickness – they will never entirely go away despite what any of us does. If you enter into a caring ministry motivated only by the idea that you are going to fix everybody, chances are that you are only going to make everything worse.
      But the good news is that that is not the only reason why we do anything that is directed towards those who are in need. We do it because, according to this parable, it is the only way that we will discover and know for sure that Jesus is alive and among us. If we respond to people in need in a way that allows us to get to know them, their fears, their hopes and their dreams, we will discover the living presence of Jesus, working with power, among us.
      I certainly believe that this is true, not just because Jesus said it but also because I have experienced it and I’m pretty sure that I am not alone. I know that many people who have been involved in our ministries towards those in need here at St. Andrew’s have experienced it. I’m not saying that if you come out and volunteer for one night at the Thursday Night Supper and Social or do a shift at Hope Clothing that you will come away with the assurance that you just saw Jesus. It doesn’t happen like that. It is usually something that happens only in small glimpses and insights and not in some big dramatic event. It also usually happens after you have put in enough time to get to know people and they get to the place where they can trust you a little bit. But I have certainly come away with an encounter with Jesus and I know that others have as well. I can’t argue you into accepting that it is true, though; it is something that you have to experience for yourself.
      The clear promise is that you can encounter Jesus when you get involved with people who are in need. I believe that that is the truth, or at least a part of the truth, that Jesus was trying to get across with this parable. And that creates a problem for the church and for society. If the greatest need that we have right now, as I said at the top, is for more Jesus, then, to the degree that we limit our interaction with people who are in need, we are cutting ourselves off from Jesus. We are cutting ourselves off from what we need most.
      And it is not just that particular scenario that I have painted for you when you happen to walk by a person in need at the side of the road. The bigger problem is that we intentionally design our lives and our societies in such a way as to make sure that we do not encounter those who are in need. For example, one of the biggest domestic crises of our time is the opioid epidemic. People are dying and being permanently injured because of their addictions to opioids in unprecedented numbers. And I know that the causes of this epidemic are complicated and that there is blame to go around to a lot of people including some doctors, drug companies and, in some cases, the victims themselves, but I am not talking about blame. I’m talking about the enormous need and suffering and it is all around us. Do you realize that the fire department and paramedics have responded to opiate overdose calls in every neighbourhood in every part of Cambridge, Waterloo and Kitchener in the last year – every neighbourhood. There are no exceptions! It has happened within a few blocks of your house!
      And people acknowledge the need and realize that, if we don’t do something to respond, the slaughter will only grow. And one of the few things that can actually help in the short term is supervised injections sites. There really isn’t much debate about that anymore among people who are informed. But I’ll tell you what there is debate about. There is debate about where you set that up. And where do people want you to set up safe injection sites? “Not near me.” That is where people want them. “Anywhere but near me.”
      This is not really because of safety concerns although, of course, certain safety precautions need to be taken. There is no place that is really safe in the present opioid crises. As I said, it is all around us wherever we might live. This is about where the victims of the opioid crisis – the people in need – become visible. This is about people not wanting to encounter the people who are in need. But what if, by cutting ourselves off from them, we are cutting ourselves off from Jesus. And the world needs more Jesus.
      Nowhere is this problem more evident than when you come to the question of immigration and asylum. For the past five years or so, the world has been passing through the largest refugee crisis that it has seen perhaps ever in terms of sheer numbers. There are more displaced people in the world today than there have ever been. This crisis has not been caused by the refugees themselves but by a variety of international crises like the Syrian Civil war and the Central American drug wars. If you want to talk about overwhelming need, the world’s refugees today are the poster children for need.
      But, at a moment when the need is at an all-time peak what do we see – a huge, almost unprecedented global reaction against migration and the refugees themselves. The victims of this disaster are being turned into enemies and dangerous purveyors of violence despite all the evidence that is out there that migrants are actually less likely to commit crimes and, over the long-term, contribute more to the economy of a country than do native-born citizens.
      All of this causes untold misery and crushes hope for so many, but the worst part of it is that, if what Jesus said was true, by doing this what we are really doing is cutting ourselves off from Jesus who has promised that he is present in the strangers. And what the world needs – what we need – is more Jesus.
      So those Christians are right. What we need more than anything in the church today is to reconnect with Jesus. Many here, I know, are seeking to do exactly that in their work at the church and in the community. I appreciate and honour that. I fear that far too many Christians, however, set themselves up to do the very opposite and cut themselves off from the very people through whom Jesus is manifesting himself to the world today.
      All I’m saying is this: we need more Jesus. And at a time when Jesus is more available than ever (in the form of strangers in need), we need to think carefully about how we can get to know them.

   
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Being Good Canadians

Posted by on Sunday, July 1st, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 1 July, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Romans 13:1-7, Mark 10:2-12, Psalm 20:1-9
      Before I begin today, I want to say a few things about this sermon that I have written. This is my very first sermon preached after not preaching for ten whole weeks and that is actually something that is quite extraordinary for me because that has not happened to me for over a quarter of a century.
      But there is something else that is rather unique about this sermon. I didn’t want to have it hanging over my head the whole time while I was away so I actually wrote it before I left and put it away and intentionally forgot about it for ten weeks.
      Now think, for a moment, about what that means. I wrote today’s sermon without knowing who would be the Premier of Ontario on July 1st. I did not know who would win the election, although I was pretty sure that, whoever it was, over half of the Province of Ontario would be upset with the results.
      Even more stunningly, I wrote this sermon and chose to use as a text our reading from Romans 13, long before the Attorney General of the United States would use the very same passage to justify separating parents from their children for the so-called crime (actually a misdemeanor) of incorrectly crossing a border.
      So a lot happened since I wrote it but I have decided not to change the substance of the sermon at all. I’ll leave it to you to decide if it is still relevant over ten weeks after it was written.
I
t is July 1st, a good day to be a Canadian – a day to appreciate all of the benefits and blessings that come with being citizens of a wonderful and beautiful country. 
But Canada Day also falls on Sunday this year, which reminds us that being a Christian in Canada means that sometimes you have some difficult judgments to make. And I am not just talking about the choice that every one of you had to make today – will I go to the Canada Day Parade or will I go to church. I mean, obviously, all of you made the right and wise choice on that one today so you don’t need any help on that account. I’m talking about some of the bigger questions related to what it means to be a Christian living in this country.
     “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” In fact, some Christian supporters of Donald Trump in the United States have been making particular use of that passage a lot in that country recently as they try to convince their less supportive Christian brethren that they need to support their president no matter what doubts they may have. Of course, if those Christians had been as quick to apply the same passage to previous Democratic presidential leaders, I would be a little more impressed by their fidelity to the Bible.
For example, how do we deal with and relate to those who have been placed over us in power and authority? It seems to be a good question to ask at a time when we are hearing a lot of dissatisfaction coming from all sides on the federal, provincial and local level. We read a passage from the Letter to the Romans that is often cited whenever Christians struggle with this issue.
      But should the passage be applied like that? I mean, yes, it is a good thing to respect the authorities in your country; clearly, if we all failed to do that, it would lead to chaos and it wouldn’t be good for anyone. But can we make that an unbreakable rule? Must leaders be respected no matter what they do? If they act unlawfully, for example? Or unjustly? Paul may well have counseled the people in his churches to respect the authority of the state – it sure was a good way to avoid getting into trouble with such powers – but I don’t think that even he could have seen this as an absolute requirement. Surely there had to be some things that crossed the line – that meant that you could not support the policies of a leader.
      Jesus ran into one of those thorny political questions one day – though we might not realize just how thorny it was. You see, one of the really hot political questions in Galilee in the time of Jesus had to do with divorce. King Herod Antipas was the king of Galilee (technically his title was tetrarch but king was what he wanted to be). King Herod was an ambitious man. He wanted more and more power and wealth for himself. (I know, shocking, who ever heard of a politician who wanted that?) So Herod employed many strategies to get what he wanted – things like building projects and economic initiatives. But he also used a strategy often employed in the ancient world: strategic marriage.
      Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great so he was in the second generation of a ruling dynasty that had been around for a while, but it was a dynasty that many people looked on with suspicion. The Herods, you see, were not Jews – not really. They were foreigners that the Romans had placed over the Jews. And I don’t think that the Herods ever quite got over that. So Herod came up with a plan to marry someone who had a strong link to a previous line of kings – a very Jewish dynasty.
      Her name was Herodias and, with her genuine Jewish royal blood she would have solved all of Herod’s problems – or so he thought at least. But there was one problem: she was already married and, in fact, she was married to Herod Antipas’ brother.
      The solution was simple. Herodias just had to divorce the brother and marry Herod – something that she was quite willing to do because she recognized the benefits of allying herself to an ambitious man. So that is what happened.
      But some people – can you imagine it – were upset with King Herod. They recognized this marriage as a cold, cynical political move made to benefit no one but Herod. Even worse, it caused a war! Herod also had to divorce someone to marry Herodias and his former father-in-law, an Arab King, was so mad that he invaded the kingdom and the war went very badly for Herod. So it turned out to be a disaster really.
      Nevertheless, few could muster the courage to voice criticism aloud and no wonder. One man did it – a man named John the Baptist. John spoke up publicly and said the king shouldn’t have done it. Perhaps John thought he could get away with it because he lived way out in the wilderness but that didn’t save him. He was arrested and thrown in prison. Shortly afterward John lost his head, and, no, that is not a metaphor. His head was served up on a platter, we are told in a previous passage in the Gospel of Mark, at the instigation of Herodias herself.
      Now that kind of measure has a way of sending a message. I’m pretty sure that anyone who set themselves up as a spiritual leader would have understood that commenting on the king’s marriage was a perilous thing to do.
      Well, in the passage we read this morning from the Gospel of Mark, I believe that Jesus is asked to do exactly that. Now, I realize that the names of Herod and Herodias do not come up at all in our reading this morning. The Pharisees come up with a seemingly generic question: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Are they not asking about the lawfulness of divorce in general?
      Well, think of it this way: if a reporter came up to a religious leader today and asked the question, “Do you think that it is lawful for a man to have sex with a pornstar and then have his lawyer pay her off for $130,000?” would that be a generic question? It might have the form of one and could be applied to anyone who paid off a pornstar, but wouldn’t everyone in the crowd – and it doesn’t even matter whether the story was true or not – wouldn’t everyone know exactly who you were talking about with such a question? Of course they would.
      Well, in that environment at that time, the divorce question was the same thing. Everyone knew exactly who the Pharisees were talking about and everyone knew just how explosive the question was. Did you notice that Jesus couldn’t even answer the question entirely in public? He had to give part of the answer privately to the disciples – that is a good indication that he knew exactly how dangerous the question was.
      And I think that this makes an important point. I don’t particularly think that the church today should be involved in what I would call political activism. I certainly do not think that it is our role, for example, to become involved in party politics or to endorse particular candidates. But we have something to say – and the Christian gospel has something to say – about life in this world and what can make it better for everyone overall. We are required to speak up about these things.
      An example might be the issue of divorce that comes up in this passage. I realize that it is a difficult issue because it is a very personal issue, but, wherever exactly you stand on the issue, I think that we all agree it is an important one. I believe that anyone who enters into a marriage should enter into it with the intention that it be a lifelong commitment. That is the strength of marriage and I believe it is mutually beneficial to the partners in that marriage. But I have also seen enough marriages fall apart to know that there are exceptions to that. There are relationships where the people are just too prone to tearing each other down to be salvaged. There are cases of abuse and worse where a divorce may be sad, but it is still the best way forward. I do believe many such exceptions are covered under God’s amazing grace.
      But some religious folks I know would not allow such exceptions for the average person who finds themselves in a destructive marriage. They would force some people to remain in that relationship no matter what. But, we have learned, they do make exceptions in some cases. They make exceptions in the cases of the Herods, the elites, the Presidents on their third marriage who have affairs with an assortment of porn stars. They make the exceptions for the powerful people, at least the ones that they think will enact the policies that they want.
      That’s what I see the Pharisees doing in this passage. They understand the divine intention regarding marriage, that it should be forever, but they are happy to give King Herod a mulligan. “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her,” they say. In other words, they say that Herod is technically correct – he hasn’t done anything technically illegal. It is weak support for a monarch that they know is corrupt, but that is what some religious folk do all too often when they are really only interested in seeking their own interest as I am sure these Pharisees are doing.
      But Jesus is not going to let that slide. He goes on to affirm what God’s original intention in marriage was – a statement that is memorably summed up in the words, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Again, I do not think that that means that there cannot be any exceptions to that intention, but I think that, clearly in the context, Jesus is not allowing for an exception being offered to an ambitious king who just wants to advance his own career by marrying his brother’s wife.
      The principle is, in other words, that powerful people – people like Herod – don’t get special treatment because they are powerful. They are to be held to the same standards and the same exceptions as the rest of us. And I honestly think that that is a principle that can guide us very helpfully as we seek to work out that thorny question of how we can navigate that question of living, as Christians, while we are also citizens of a country.
      Do we owe respect to those placed in positions of authority within our society, yes we do, for no other reason than that we respect the mechanism by which they were put into that position – in our case, the democratic process that I do believe is a gift of God. But does respect mean that we do not hold them to account, does it mean that we do not require of them the same morality and basic decency that we require of ourselves and others? No, it does not.
      And so, as Christians I do not think we should be afraid to stand up and speak according to our convictions – even when that boldness comes at great cost as it did for John the Baptist and it eventually did for Jesus. This, for me, is essential to what it means to be Christian citizens of such a great country as the one in which we find ourselves.
      I love my country. But true love of country is not blind, must be critical when criticism is called for. True love of country comes with respect for institutions and leaders, but again, that respect must sometimes be bold to speak the truth to the powerful.
      O Canada, because our patriot love is true, we can and must stand on guard for thee.


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A Hymn for Canada Day

Posted by on Thursday, June 28th, 2018 in Minister

At St. Andrew's Hespeler this Sunday (which is Canada Day) we are planning to sing the following as a hymn (not an act of patriotism but an act of prayer within worship). This was not conceived of as an addition to Canada's National Anthem but as a way of lifting up our nation in prayer and being open to acknowledge the contribution of those who went before.

1. O Canada,
our home and native land,
true patriot love
in all of us command.
With glowing hearts, we see thee rise,
the true north, strong and free;
from far and wide, O Canada,
we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free;
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee;
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
2. We, as we stand,
acknowledge those who knew
This place before
and from its waters drew.
They honour the Creator and,
with drum and sacred song,
They find the Divine Presence in
the herbs and winds so strong.
Let us, with them, make hope increase.
Keep Kanata* a place of life and peace.
Keep Kanata a place of life and peace.
3. Almighty Love,
by thy mysterious power,
in wisdom guide,
with faith and freedom dower;
be ours a nation evermore
that no oppression blights,
where justice rules from shore to shore,
from lakes to northern lights.
May love alone for wrong atone;
Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own.
Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own.

*Kanata: “A term meaning sacred land in our language here. The land creator gave us.” – Margaret Mullin
v. 1 based on Robert Stanley Weir’s translation. Public domain
v. 2 © 2018 W. Scott McAndless
v. Albert C. Watson. Public domain.


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I am on an intermission

Posted by on Tuesday, April 17th, 2018 in Minister

I will be on an intermission that has been approved by the Presbytery of Waterloo-Wellington from April 16 to June 24, 2018. I am very grateful to be able to take this opportunity. Here are just a few notes I would like to leave with you.
  • I will not be updating this blog during the intermission period.
  • I will, however, be working on a personal project -- a podcast in which I retell Bible Stories. If you are interested in following this project, you will find all the information and links to each episode at this site: retellingthebible.wordpress.com/
  • I will not be available to offer pastoral care or assistance during this time. Each week I have arranged to have two local Presbyterian ministers available to visit people or otherwise offer care. They will also be available in the event there is need of services (such as funerals and memorials). The names and contact information will change from week to week and will be posted in the bulletin each Sunday. Please call the church office if you need help connecting with someone. I am very thankful to these colleagues who have willingly stepped up to do this and to our team of Deacons who are regularly involved in pastoral care.
  • Rev. Mark Gaskin is my Presbytery Liaison during this time. He will be available to the session and Clerk of Session to offer any assistance.  If you have any questions or concerns to communicate to the session, you may do so through the Clerk of Session as usual. Thank you Mark!
  • I have arranged for an excellent and highly recommended group of people to preach during this time and I am truly grateful to each of them. I hope you support them with your presence and enthusiasm.
  • I appreciate the staff at St. Andrew’s and am thankful for all that they have done to pick up some of my usual tasks during this period. They are wonderful people!
  • We thank Nancy English who is taking on leadership for the prayer chair during the intermission. If you would like a prayer request placed on our prayer chain please email Nancy at Prayerchain AT standrewshespeler DOT ca.  You can also call the office and your message will be passed on.
  • Above all, I am thankful for the extraordinary people of the congregation of St. Andrew’s Hespeler who I know will continue faithfully in the work that we believe our Lord Jesus Christ has given us to do in these days!



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