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Mistakes and what they teach us about God’s Grace – 2) Alfred and the Cakes

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, February 21st, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 21 March 2016 © Scott McAndless

Matthew 11:25-30, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, Psalm 6

ing Alfred, the ancestor (35 generations ago) of our present monarch Elizabeth II, is famous for many things. He is the only ruler of England ever to be called “the Great.” Indeed, most would say, if it weren’t for Alfred, there would never have been an England at all. But for all the “great” things that Alfred ever did, he is probably most famous for one little mistake.

Alfred became the king of Wessex, one of the seven ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, at the young age of 22. It was not a good time to become a king. These were the days when the Vikings were invading England and things were not going well. When Alfred came to power all of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had already fallen under Viking rule. Only Wessex, in what is now southwestern England, was left as an independent English kingdom. And the Vikings were coming for Wessex.

Alfred and his lords held them off for a while, but eventually the Vikings just got too strong and the king and his lords had to flee abandoning most of the kingdom into the hands of the invaders. They hid out in some low, marshy land in the region of Somerset where they were relatively safe because the land was almost impassable unless you were very familiar with the marshes.

At one point, during those dark times, the king was taking shelter in a house on the Island of Athelney in the m arshes. He was staying with an old woman who, I suspect, didn’t even know who she was sheltering. One day when she was alone with the king, she made some cakes and put them on the fire to bake. She told Alfred that she was going out and asked him to watch the cakes and take them off the fire before they burned. He agreed and she left.

But Alfred, as you can imagine, had a lot on his mind. He was thinking about his problems and his challenges. He was wondering, perhaps, whether he had completely failed as a king. He was also desperately trying to come up with a strategy to get out of his dead-end. So, for all kinds of reasons, Alfred was rather preoccupied with his troubles. Can you guess what happened? That’s right, Alfred let the cakes burn and, when the old woman returned, boy, did she let him have it! And Alfred, according to the account, accepted her criticism with grace and humility, though I suppose he could have had her put to death.

It is a famous story because, of course, it is the only time in all the history of the world that a leader ever made a mistake, right? No? You don’t think that is why people remembered it? Then why?

I think this story stuck because it is a reminder that, no matter who you are – no matter how “great” you are – we all have our weaknesses. Alfred actually had a lot of them. For one thing, he was often very sick. A lot of historians think that he suffered from Crohn’s disease – a particularly nasty chronic condition. Put that together with his Viking troubles, it is maybe not too surprising that he was rather distracted from his duty to watch cakes.

There are, I think, two ways of dealing with our weaknesses. Most often, we tried to hide them and pretend like they are not there. In fact, a lot of people assume that that is what leadership is: not showing weakness. That is why people in leadership positions are often so obsessed with avoiding mistakes and with covering them up when they do happen. “Sure, I can watch the cakes. I’m totally in control here. I don’t have any problems.” But that often doesn’t work. We end up in the same mess that Alfred did. We pretend that we’ve got it all under control when we really don’t and that is when cakes get burned.

But there is another way to think about our weaknesses. The Apostle Paul tells us about something that was clearly a weakness for him. He doesn’t say exactly what it was. He simply refers to it as a thorn in his flesh, but it was clearly distressing to him – so much so that he says, “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me.”

So, like any of us would, Paul didn’t like his weakness and he wanted to get rid of it. If his weakness caused him to make any mistakes, I’m sure he would have liked to cover them up. But Paul received a surprising and powerful answer that made him think about his weaknesses and his mistakes in a whole new way. “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” And that answer, that he obviously received from Christ in some unmistakable way, led him to a stunning new way to think of his own weaknesses and to say, “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

I know that such a statement doesn’t really make any sense in the way that our world understands such things. How could somebody’s weaknesses actually become a foundation of strength for them? The short answer is that it is only possible because of God’s grace.

This was obviously a lesson that Paul only learned through hard experience and by earnestly seeking God in prayer. But other wise people have also found certain echoes of this same truth down through history. One person who comes to mind is Carl Jung, one of the great fathers of modern Psychology. Jung was a man who felt a real vocation to be a healer in the life of people by developing his methods and approaches to psychotherapy.

One of the key insights that Jung had had to do with his own weaknesses and woundedness. He had had a very difficult early life particularly because his mother had suffered from mental illness and it left deep scars in him. As a result Carl’s natural impulse may have been to hide or ignore his weaknesses and his scars but, as he began to help other people, he discovered something amazing. The more he ignored or downplayed his faults, the less help he was to his patients. But the more he got in touch with his own weaknesses and woundedness – the more he understood these things about himself – he was able to help his patients in ways that he could never have thought possible.

I happen to believe that, even if Jung was only using a scientific approach, his vulnerability and courage in dealing with his own woundedness was actually opening the door to God’s grace and healing power.

Thus it was that Carl Jung introduced to the world the idea of the wounded healer, which he based on a number of ancient myths that featured a figure who was a powerful healer and yet also carried a grievous wound. But, while this figure of the wounded healer was indeed to be found in many ancient belief systems, the main reason for that, I think, is that there is a universal truth behind it. And that truth that is to be found in the Bible as well – like in this morning’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

The truth of the matter is, my friends, that we are all like King Alfred. We all make mistakes. We all get things wrong. Even worse, we are all like Carl Jung. We have all been wounded and shaped by the bad things that have happened to us. We may not have suffered, like he did because of a parent who is mentally ill, but we have all had to deal with disappointment or insult or loss. And how often have I had people tell me that they are not eligible for any kind of leadership role because of their faults or wounds or their fear of making mistakes?

I am not saying that God intentionally gives us flaws or that God wants bad things to happen to us. To tell the truth, I don’t really have a great explanation for why the bad things happen in this world. Maybe it’s something that we will understand someday; I don’t pretend to know now. But I do know this: God has this incredible way of taking all of the bad, all of the flaws and all of the weaknesses that we carry around with us and of turning them into blessing. That power is called grace.

We see that in the story of Alfred and his cakes. Yes, Alfred had his faults and one of those faults was apparently that he had some trouble focussing on minor details like how long the cakes had been in the oven. But that weakness of Alfred was actually one of the things that made him great. His mind was always focusing on the big picture, and that focus on the big picture was actually the thing that got him out of the marshes and on the offensive against the Vikings. It was what allowed him to come up with an overall strategy to build his kingdom in such a way that it could weather the storm that was created by the Vikings. As a result, we have Alfred to thank for the fact that England survived at all. We have Alfred to thank for the fact that we speak English and not a Scandinavian language today.

Alfred’s weaknesses and his strengths were unbreakably tied to each other. And I think that is probably true of all of us. When we flee from our weaknesses or hide from our mistakes, we may be cutting ourselves off from our greatest strengths as well.

But even more important than that, when we’re not afraid to face our weaknesses and mistakes, when we can acknowledge them and even embrace them, God is able to take them and use them to bring about extraordinary healing and blessing. That is what Paul was saying to the church in Corinth. One of the reasons for that is that when we are weak or when we fall short, it is like we’re getting out of the way. And when we get out of the way – especially when we get our egos out of the way – that allows God the opening that he needs to let his grace shine through.

But here is the really amazing part. We assume that God will use us and bring blessing to us in spite of our weaknesses and our mistakes. But that is not how God likes to do it at all. No, God loves to use us and bless through us because of our weaknesses and errors. That was what Carl Jung discovered in his therapeutic work and theories – though, of course, he would not have spoken about it as something that God did.

That is why, for example, people who struggle with alcoholism or other addictions can often only find a way to break free of the cycles of using with the help of people who struggle with the same issues. The real secret of the success of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous is that they create a community of people who understand each other’s struggles because they are part of their own weakness and brokenness. They are able to come to terms with their own addiction by getting to know others who share the weakness. They are able to bring about healing for themselves and others by directly helping other people who share their brokenness. That’s not just how it works with addiction, that is how it works with almost every form of healing and renewal.

Many of us have been called to be leaders in this church in various capacities. The temptation, when you are put into that kind of position in the church or anywhere is to run away from your weaknesses, to hide from them. I mean, we think of all the great leaders that were there in the past – gigantic figures who seemed to have no flaws – and we think that we have to be like them. But you know what? Those famous leaders of the past had their flaws too. It is just that we have largely forgotten them over time as we forget the things that went wrong and just recall the things that we loved about them.

And consider this: God is calling you to be a leader in his kingdom – wherever and however that might be – God is calling you to be a leader and he’s not doing it in spite of your weaknesses, your faults or your mistakes. He is doing it becauseof them – because of everything that makes you who you are. Think about what that does to your excuses.

I think that our challenge as leaders is to be who we are – to be strong enough to be vulnerable about our weaknesses and our failures – to share those things in the appropriate situations. God promises that, when we do that, it allows his grace to shine through. Alfred was a flawed person who made mistakes. None of that prevented him from being hailed by all as “the great.” Your greatness – and many of you have much greatness – will only be enhanced by you coming to terms with your own faults and weaknesses. Stop running away from them. Stop hiding them. Let God’s power be made perfect in your weakness.

Sermon Video:

The Problem with Substitutionary Attonement or How the Vikings Muddled us up

Posted by Scott McAndless on Thursday, February 18th, 2016 in Minister

hy did Jesus have to die? That is, you might say, one of the most central questions of the Christian faith. And if you ask that question of most practicing Christians you will likely get an answer along the lines of this: “Jesus had to die for my sins,” or “Jesus had to die to save us” or “so that we could go to heaven.”

And some people will be happy enough with that answer. But every so often you’re going to come across a really annoying person like me who isn’t satisfied with that simple answer and starts to ask really some tough questions. “Well,” the annoying person says, “I thought that you said that this God of yours was all powerful – that he could do whatever he wanted. And I also thought you said that God was full of mercy and lovingkindness. If God wanted to forgive you and let you go to heaven, couldn’t he just do that? I mean, sure, you may have sinned but God doesn’t have to let something like that stand in his way if he wants to forgive you, does he? Why would the bloody and painful death of Jesus be needed for that?”

And if you ask questions like that long enough, you’ll eventually find someone who’ll give you a fuller explanation. And the standard Christian explanation these days goes like this: Yes, God is loving and merciful and wants very much to be forgiving to us but there is just one thing: God is also just. In fact, God is so just that he cannot simply let any injustice or sin slide without there being some sort of payment made. God’s justice has to be satisfied with due punishment.

And that’s where Jesus comes in. God looked around to find someone who could pay the price and take the punishment in our place so that he could forgive us and it turned out that only one person would do. Only someone who was perfectly innocent (and so didn’t need be punished for their own sins) would be able to play that role. So God turned to his only begotten son, Jesus, and chose to send him down, live a perfect life and die as an innocent man. Jesus’ suffering and death would be enough to satisfy God’s need for justice and therefore allow God to forgive us for our sins.

That, as I say, is the standard explanation these days. The name for it, in case you want to know, is the substitutionary theory of atonement. It is called that because the key element is that Jesus substitutes for us – takes our place and suffers the penalty that we deserve. It is a good theory, really. It makes good logical sense and is a compelling story. It is so compelling that many now think that it is the only way to understand the meaning of the death of Jesus and that it has always been how Christians thought. But that is not true.

The substitutionary theory of atonement has only been around for about 1000 years – only half the length of time that Christian faith has been around. Where did the theory come from a thousand years ago? Well, it happened like this:

The year 1066 ad is the only date that all English school girls and boys know off by heart – the most significant date in their country’s history. That was the year that England was invaded and conquered by the Normans who took over the entire government and local administration of the country. The Normans came from France and they spoke a unique dialect of French but they weren’t actually French. They were Norsemen – Viking raiders who had merely settled in France for a little while. And as Vikings, they had their own unique ideas about good government. Every Norman lord was master and judge of all within his domain. He settled all disputes, judged all crimes and punished every offender.

And it was not an easy thing to appear as someone accused before a Viking lord because they were particularly prickly when it came to judging people. Vikings were famous for many things, but I am afraid that mercy was not one of them. And so mercy was not something that was easily found in a Norman court. Viking lords were very protective of what they saw as justice. They felt that no offence – not even the smallest – could be pardoned without due payment being made in some form or another. Their judicial motto was, “justice must be satisfied.”

Now what, you might ask, could the Norman conquest of England possibly have to do with the Substitutionary Theory of Atonement? As it turns out, everything. About thirty years after the conquest, the second Norman king of England appointed a man named Anselm to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. And, a few years after that, Anselm of Canterbury wrote a book. He wrote it, he said, to defend the Christian faith against all those who would scoff at it – in particular the Jews and the Muslims. He called his book Cur Deus Homo in Latin. In English that translates as “Why did God become a human being.” In other words, he was trying to answer the question why did Jesus have to live as a man and why did he have to die.

The book is important because in that book Anselm gave for the very first time in history the answer that we’ve been talking about – that Jesus had to die in our place to satisfy God’s unyielding justice so that God could forgive us. Anselm invented the substitutionary theory of atonement. It is very interesting to note that, although Christianity had been around for about 1000 years before that, nobody had managed to come up with that theory until Anselm came along.

And there is a reason why only Anselm could have come up with that theory. As I said, the theory requires a very particular image of God – a God whose sense of justice is so inflexible that he can only forgive when he has been completely satisfied (even if he has to will the death of his only son to be satisfied). How is it that for the first thousand years of Christianity it never occurred to anybody that God would be that inflexible? And then Anselm came along and (as Archbishop of Canterbury) spent a lot of time in the courts of Viking lords watching them make their judgements. It’s not that hard to guess where his strange new view of God came from.

That’s why it seems to me that the Vikings have muddled up our understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ death. If we buy into Anselm’s explanation of why Jesus had to come, we end up with a God who resembles a Viking lord. And I realize that almost all of the images that we use to talk about God are based on one human model or another and that we can’t really even talk about God without saying, “Well, he’s kind of like this” or “kind of like that.” But I just think that there are some better models for talking about God without imagining him as a Viking lord. The Bible uses many images when it talks about God: a father, a near eastern king, a kind master, a loving mother (yes, that image is used of God in the Bible) and all of those sorts of people were much more ready to exercise mercy in their relationships than your average Viking lord. And it goes without saying that the Bible never describes God as a Viking lord. But somehow, with the substitutionary theory of atonement, that is the idea of God we end up with.

And so I suggest to you that it is time for us to get past our obsession with Anselm’s substitutionary theory of atonement. There are other ways of understanding what Jesus has truly accomplished for us without starting to imagine God as a Norman lord. The Bible does indeed talk about Jesus dying for us and about him dealing with the problem of sin for us but such talk has little to do with satisfying some Norman sense of justice.

Instead, the Bible most often talks about the death of Christ as a sacrifice. And sacrifice had nothing to do with substitution in the ancient world. When a family in the ancient world took its year-old calf up to the altar for a sacrifice, there was no sense in which they understood that that calf was somehow taking the place of a family member. Nor did they see the death of the animal as some sort of punishment taken in their place. That is why I wanted to take the time during this season of Lent to understand how sacrifice functioned in the ancient world.

On a practical level, it was all about providing a means for the people to safely eat meat once in a while. The sacrificial system provided a humane means of slaughtering animals and a professional, well-trained guild for safely butchering them. These people were called priests. And, most important, the system also provided a safe means of disposing of those parts of the animal that they would not or could not eat by burning them up on the altar.

But sacrifice was not just about meeting those practical needs. It also had a very important spiritual function. The sacrifice brought the worshippers together with one another and with their God. The shared sacrificial meal where the family ate the good cuts of the meat while God shared in the meal by means of the fat, bones, blood and other inedible parts that burned up on the altar was the basis of their relationship with their God. In the sacrifice they came to know their God in ways that would not have been possible otherwise.

And that is how I have come to see the death of Jesus – as a sacrifice. In his death Jesus does tackle the problem of our sin which is, at its foundation, a problem of separation between us and God. We had wandered far from God and didn’t know how to find our way back but Jesus’ death brought us back into relationship with God just like an ancient sacrifice renewed the ancient worshipper’s relationship with their God.

We shouldn’t think of Jesus’ death as a mere substitution – Jesus taking our place and suffering our punishment – because Jesus didn’t speak of it as substitution. He spoke of it as participation: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” That is not Jesus’ responsibility in your place that is your responsibility in imitation of Jesus. If you want to be a follower of Jesus, you have to realize that that means following in the path that he has led. That is where the real transformation begins.

And, to attempt to answer Anselm’s question, “Why the God-Man,” why did Jesus have to become flesh and dwell among us, I think that the key answer is this: Jesus came to show us the grace and compassion and love of God. He knew that words weren’t going to be enough and so he had to show us what those things looked like. But the world cannot tolerate such love. The world cannot stand to be shown how wrong it is about everything. And so the response to Jesus was predictable. He was bound to end up on a cross sooner or later.

But Jesus took that terrible and tragic death and, with God’s help, transformed his death into something much more meaningful – a sacrifice – the kind of sacrifice that can renew any and all relationships. In particular, he transformed his terrible death into a sacrifice that is able to renew our relationship with the living God – a sacrifice that is effective for all times and for any person who participates in it by taking up their cross and following him.

Response to the Study, Body, Mind and Soul, from St. Andrew’s Hespeler Presbyterian Church (Presbytery of Waterloo-Wellington

Posted by Scott McAndless on Wednesday, February 17th, 2016 in Minister

After leading a Study of "Body, Mind and Soul" within my congregation, I asked the participants what sort of feedback they wanted to give to the Justice and Church Doctrine Committees They asked me to send a summary of our discussions and observations into those committees. I have done that. Since we did not hold an additional meeting to share the report together, I just want to post it here so that the members of the group can read it.

A group of members of St. Andrew’s Hespeler Presbyterian Church met together in five sessions from January 13^th to February 3^rd to discuss the study produced by the Justice and Church Doctrines committees. The committee has authorized me to summarize our reflections and thoughts and send them back to the committees to include in their deliberations.

The first thing that I would note is that our discussions were very interesting and engaging. The discussions were held in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

We did not agree about what course the church ought to take in regards to the place of LGBT people among us. There were people who strongly felt that we should not change our present positions in any significant way. There were people who strongly felt that it was time to make a change. Those positions did not change in the course of our discussions; that was not what this process was about as we understood it. Nevertheless I think most of us would say that we’ve learned things through the process and came to appreciate a great deal more about the positions that people take and what they are based on.

We want to let the committee’s know that we will be praying for them as they attend to prepare reports for the coming General Assembly and continue to guide the church in other ways. We recognize that they have a very difficult task in front of them.

As we can hardly say that we agree on what the best course of action might be, it is hard for us to give the committees any concrete advice or direction, but we would say the following:

We hope that the church can find a way to continue moving forward together despite the diversity of opinion on this and some other issues. There is a richness in such diversity and we would hate to lose that.
We would encourage the committees to take their time and do the best job that they can in this process. We recognize that there is a sense of urgency for many people to settle this one way or the other and get on with things, but we, in our little group anyways, felt okay for now living in a dialog.
Despite having some strong disagreements on what course the church ought to take, here are a few things that we, perhaps surprisingly, found ourselves agreeing on:

o The present positions of the Presbyterian Church in Canada are not necessarily coherent. The various decisions that the church has made don’t necessarily follow a consistent logic. This is certainly not very helpful.

o We agree that none of us has any desire to simply conform to what society and culture around us believe. We all agree that the church needs to take important stands and not simply fall into line with what the culture is saying. The fact that we all agree about this, however, certainly doesn’t mean that we agree about what the place of LGBT people should be in the church.

o We agree that leaders in the church should be excellent examples morally and ethically. For some that is the main reason why they would exclude practicing LGBT people from such positions. Others don’t have a problem with that. It is a little bit difficult for some of us to understand the positions that the others take on this one.

o We all agree that sexual morality is very important and that the church has very important things to say to society on the subject.

o We all agree that we would like to channel of the energy of the church and helping people to develop and maintain mutually helpful and nourishing relationships that are marked by respect.

Mistakes and what they teach us about God’s Grace. 1) Cecilia and the Art Restoration

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, February 14th, 2016 in Minister

St. Andrew's Stars Video:

Hespeler, 14 February, 2016 © Scott McAndless

1 Corinthians 1:18-31, James 3:1-12, Matthew 7:1-11

n the summer and fall of 2012, the attention of the whole world was suddenly captivated by the events that had taken place in a small town in Spain with a population of less than 5000. In this town of Borja, it seemed, somebody had made a mistake. It wasn’t just your everyday, run of the mill kind of mistake either. It was a mistake that was so big that it was like nobody could look away.

In that town there was an ancient Roman Catholic Church and in that church there were various pieces of artwork such as you might find in such churches. One of them was a fresco that had been painted in the early 1930’s by a visiting artist.

The painting was a traditional piece of very common Roman Catholic art called the “Ecce Homo,”which is Latin for “Behold the Man.”It is a depiction of Jesus, crowned with thorns as he appeared before Pontius Pilate just before being sent off to be crucified.

The fresco was quite beautiful (in the traditional manner of such pieces) when it was first painted, but by 2012 it was not in good shape at all. Due to dampness in the walls the paint was fading and flaking away and it no longer looked at all as it once did. The poor state of the painting particularly saddened one of the members of the parish – a very devoted woman over the age of eighty named Cecilia Giménez. She knew that the parish did not have a lot of money to take on an expensive restoration and she was an amateur artist. She decided that she would take on a restoration of the artwork all by herself.

It was the results of Cecilia’s work that got everyone so interested. Armed only with her faith, her best intentions and limited talent, she pretty much botched the job. People criticised her and blamed her for what was clearly a terrible mistake. Cecilia took the criticism that was leveled at her so hard that she went and hid herself in her house – cutting herself off from community and church alike. She was deeply hurt, though, some would say, not without some good reason because, well, look at what she had done.

I think, therefore, that the story of Cecilia Giménez is an excellent place to start our journey during the season of Lent thi

s year because I want to focus on the idea of mistakes. Cecilia made a mistake. All evidence seems to indicate that it was a well-intentioned mistake and that it wasn’t malicious in any way. But none of that prevented all kinds of wrath and recriminations from raining down upon her.

I find the contrast between the work of the original artist and the work of Cecilia to be interesting. Both of them described the work that they did as an act of devotion. The original artist, in his own words, said that Ecce Homo was “the result of two hours of devotion to the Virgin of Mercy.” I take that to mean that the man was visiting the church – a church that was devoted to the mother of Jesus and to her mercy – and decided to donate a couple of hours of his time for the creation of a piece of art.

Cecilia, for her part actually made a very similar devotion. She saw a piece of art in a very bad state of repair and, in an act of devotion that she saw as dedicated to the Virgin Mary, she set out to repair it. And she put in the time in the effort – actually more time and effort that the original artist had done. There was no fault in her effort or in her desire – only in its execution. She simply did not have the level of training and experience that the original artist had had. But which one’s devotion was more acceptable in the eyes of the Lord? Did the artist’s devotion have more value because of his skill and training? Or did Cecilia’s pure heart count in the eyes of the Lord?

So this story gives us an excellent example of the problems that are created by our focus on mistakes. Mistakes cause a lot of damage, but I’m not talking about the damage caused by those well-intentioned souls who sometimes make mistakes. I’m talking about the damage that comes out of our reaction to them. Think of Cecilia. She was absolutely devastated by the reaction. She withdrew from the church. She hid in her home refusing to come out of it. She became a virtual hermit in her own town. It was personally devastating to her.

She said that she did not understand. She had only been well-intentioned. She had acted openly and not hidden her work in any way. She felt targeted and deeply hurt. I’m not saying, of course, that the people who were criticizing her didn’t have any justification. She had effectively destroyed an irreplaceable piece of art. What’s more, it would be almost impossible to calculate the monetary value of what could be called her act of vandalism.

So I’m hardly trying to suggest that her critics were wrong to say what they did. But, just because you can justifiably say something, does not always mean that you should say it? And does it mean that you need to say it in a way that hurts a person? That is an important question in any context, but I would suggest it is extremely important in the context of the church. The church is supposed to be, after all, a place of grace.

I’m not sure how grace-filled the people in that church were. But I do know one person whose grace never fails. And that is the most interesting part of Cecilia’s story. Cecilia’s mistake and the reaction that her neighbours had is not the end of the story. Today there are very few people in Borja who are angry at Cecilia. You see, there’s a reason why we know the story of Cecilia even though it just happened in a small town in Spain. We are living, after all, in the age of the internet and, thanks to the internet, a small event that takes place in a small town can sometimes come to the attention of the entire world. And that is what happened with Cecilia’s painting. Suddenly her picture was everywhere. At first, it is true, everyone was just laughing at her and her story. What a fool they all said.

But then something else started to happen. I’m sure that, at first, it was just a lark. People said, “Why don’t we go to Borja and see Cecilia’s artwork for ourselves? Why don’t we go and have a laugh and take selfies there and post them on the internet?” But then, before you knew it, it became a thing. Everyone started doing it.

And soon, this minor town that had been teetering on the brink of economic collapse had an amazing tourist industry on its hands. The town’s economy was saved and it wasn’t the only thing to revive. The little church also started to charge a little fee for people to see it and take their selfies. It seemed as if Cecilia had saved both her town and her church from possible extinction.

And then there was the work of art itself. No, the art critics never learn to love it or anything like that. But at least some of the observers noted that the piece of art made them think and feel in ways that the traditional art of the Catholic Church had never done. Some noted, for example, that, while the original artwork depicted Jesus lifting his eyes towards heaven, in Cecilia’s work, the Saviour turns his eyes towards you. Perhaps Cecilia had managed to make at least some people think a little bit differently about their Saviour and hers. Art, after all, doesn’t always have to be beautiful in order to help us to see something meaningful that we never saw before.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul explains what I think is the great principle that is at work in the story of Cecilia and her art restoration: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”

You see, we all think we are so smart. We have our plans and our strategies and they can often be very successful. Someone could have come up with a plan, for example, to revive the economy of the town of Borja. In fact, there actually were some such plans in place. And some highly paid consultant also could have been brought in to revitalize Cecilia’s parish church. Such well laid plans could have brought about many good things. And, of course, God does sometimes bless such plans because God wants towns and churches and people to do well.

But if the town was saved by some plan that was brought forward like that, who would get the glory? I’ll tell you who: the planners, the designers and maybe the politicians who paid for the project. That is, according to the letter to the Corinthians, why God likes to step in and shower with blessings the Cecilias of this world – the people who may try to get it right but often get it wrong. That way, not only is the blessing bigger and better than what anyone else could have planned for, it is also abundantly clear who the glory really belongs to.

It just seems to be God’s favourite way of acting. That is probably why no matter what we plan for in the life of the church, it never quite goes exactly as planned. At least, I’ve never seen it. We may make our plans and bring in our consultants and get to work and yet you can be sure that, at some point, some little thing will just go wrong and threaten to blow the whole thing out of the water. But here’s the crazy part: later, when you look back on it, you will realize that it was that moment when it all went wrong that led to some of the most helpful outcomes. It is another case of the foolishness of this world being more effective than all the wisdom and the planning of the wise.

We have a kind of a mistake-o-phobia in the church, it seems to me. We are too afraid of making mistakes and so sometimes avoid even trying something that might be a little bit different. Recognizing that God does bless and even prosper the mistake-makers is something that can set you free to try new things without any fear of what you might get wrong because that is how God wants you to live.

The other way our fear of mistakes comes out is in the criticism we heap upon those who do make mistakes – the Cecilias of the world. And you know how devastating that was to Cecilia. It almost destroyed the woman. And, since we all do make mistakes, that leaves us all vulnerable to such criticism. It can do so much harm. And it can so easily change the environment of the church from a place where we build each other up to a place where we tear each other to pieces. That, I know, God doesn’t bless.

So God sends mistakes into our lives and into our churches and into our towns and he loves to use them to challenge our assumptions about what really matters. Next time you make a mistake – or the next time you see someone else making a mistake – take it as a challenge. God is asking you to imagine what great thing he might have in store for you, or for the church or for some other worthwhile project, in what you or somebody else just got plain wrong.

Sermon Video:

It’s like these Christians have a different word for everything 6) Justice

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, February 7th, 2016 in Minister

St. Andrew's Stars Video:

Hespeler, 7 February, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Amos 5:21-24, Matthew 5:1-10, Psalm 82

oday we are going to finish our series where we’ve been looking at the words that we use in the church that may be the same words that are used in the world outside the church but that often have a very different meaning here. So far we have looked at words like sin and faith and repentance and I hope you have discovered something about what those words mean and what they can mean for us as we work out our Christian lives.

Today, as the climax of this series, I have a very special word for you. It is so special, in fact, that it is two words for the price of one. The two English words that I offer to you today are justice and righteousness.

Now, I imagine that those are two very different words in the minds of most of you. Righteousness is a word that we most often apply to people or to their actions. A righteous person is a person who always does the right thing, who makes correct and moral decisions.

We usually talk about such righteousness as a good and positive thing in the church because, of course, we do try to encourage people to live in the right ways and to make good moral decisions, but righteousness is not always seen as a good thing outside these walls.

For most people outside of the church (and, let’s face it, a good number of people inside the church) – righteous is a synonym for stuck up, prudish, hypocrite, wet blanket and spoilsport. It means somebody who is too good to be of much use to anybody. If you describe somebody as righteous, the most common reaction will be for people to not really want to have anything to do with that person. The notion of righteousness has, in our modern society, definitely fallen on hard times.

The other word I want to look at today is justice. Justice is a much more positive word in our modern society. It is most often defined in terms of crime and punishment. When a crime has been committed, that is when you most often hear people making calls for justice to be done. And, of course, there is a great deal of satisfaction to be found when something terrible has happened and the persons who are responsible receive what seems to be fair punishment.

Such justice is not always completely satisfying, of course. If a terrible crime, such as a murder, is committed, we may be glad to see the perpetrator punished but we also recognize that even the sternest of sentences – even the death penalty where it still exists – cannot entirely satisfy. After all, no punishment, no matter how severe, can ever bring back a murder victim. For most of us, justice may be a good thing, but it is really only a way to make the evil of the world a bit better. It doesn’t make the evil go away.

So there you have two words, righteousness and justice, about which we may have some mixed feelings. We would see them, however as two very different words with quite different meanings. Now, what if I were to tell you that the Bible only has one word? There is a word in the Bible that is sometimes translated into English as righteousness and sometimes as justice, but is just one word in the original languages. This is true both in the Hebrew of the Old Testament where the word is tsedeq and in the Greek of the New Testament where it is dikaiosunē.

Think about that for a few moments. Every time you are reading in the Bible, and you come across the word righteousness, the people who translated that verse made a choice and could have used the word justice. And every time you see justice, it could have been righteousness. How might that change how we read some of our most well-loved passages?

But an even more important question is what did that word – the original Hebrew or Greek word – really mean to the people for whom the Bible was written? And I think that that question can best be answered by taking a look at our Psalm reading this morning. Psalm 82 is, in many ways, one of the strangest chapters in the entire Bible. It presents what appears to be a meeting of what is called the divine council. God – the God of Israel – is there and is clearly presiding over the meeting. But there are other figures at this meeting and the strange thing is that they are all identified as gods. This is something that marks this Psalm as very strange in the biblical tradition which is generally quite insistent that there is only one God and that any other gods that people identify are merely false gods or idols.

There are, however, a few biblical texts like this one that speak of the relationship between the God of Israel and the gods of other nations in the way that we see in this psalm. It is perhaps a throwback to older ways of thinking before that strong strain of Jewish monotheism fully developed. Or perhaps it was never really intended to be taken literally. After all, remember that a psalm is poetry.

The message of the psalm is very serious, whether you take it literally or not, because in it we see God judging the gods of these other nations of the earth and condemning them – even threatening them with death. Why? There is really only one reason: justice, that very special word that is, in Hebrew, tsedeq. God condemns the gods of the other nations for their failure to act in justice. So, when God tells them what they have done wrong, we have a perfect description of what, in God’s eyes, justice is really all about. “How long will you judge unjustly, God asks, “and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

So here we see what tsedeq – justice and righteousness – really means to God. It is not primarily about individuals being upright and pure and moral, though it does include that. And it is not primarily about criminals being fairly punished for crimes either, though it does include that as well. The justice that God is particularly talking about is mostly about how certain groups in society are treated – specifically the weak, the orphans, the lowly, the destitute and the needy. That is what God is criticising the gods of these other nations about, their failure to protect and provide for those sorts of people.

So tsedeq (justice and righteousness), as defined by the Bible, is first and foremost about how people are treated in society. It is about treating people fairly and as equally as possible. And since there are some people in society (such as the rich and the powerful) who have certain advantages and often prosper at the expense of the less powerful, justice often looks like someone going out of their way to protect or support the weakest, poorest and most marginalized members of society.

This kind of justice also has its basis in the very nature of God. The reason why, in the psalm, the God of Israel is able to criticize the gods of these other nations is not because his nation is stronger than theirs. On the contrary, Israel was a rather insignificant nation in world affairs at that point in history. Nevertheless, God may judge and condemn the gods of these other nations because God knows what real justice is. In fact, the very definition of justice is found in the nature of God.

The Prophet Amos understood that that was what God really wanted. He looked around at the people of his own day and this is what he saw. He saw people who were trying to look righteous. They were doing the kinds of things that made them feel like they were better, more religious and more pious than other people. They were doing the things that, they thought, would make God approve of them – things like observing holy festivals and solemn assemblies to talk about righteous things. They were offering burnt offerings to demonstrate how good and righteous they were. But they were not doing justice. In fact, Amos observed that they were doing the very opposite of justice as God saw it because they were profiting and enriching themselves at the expense of some of the poorest and most marginalized people in their society.

That is why Amos knew that he could speak to them and rebuke them in the name of God. He told them what God thought of their so-called righteousness: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.” God clearly doesn’t care for what this world often thinks of as righteousness – at least, not for the outward showiness of it all. What God does desire, Amos says, is clear, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Just realizing that there is only one word in the Bible that is translated sometimes as justice and sometimes as righteousness is something that can actually revolutionize the way that you read your Bible. For example, take this well-known and well-loved verse that we read this morning from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. We read it in a translation that is probably quite familiar to most of us. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

You know, I always thought that I knew what that verse meant. It meant that if you sought to be righteous – if you did your best to always do the right thing, to be pure and spotless and maybe better than other people, you would be rewarded. You would get the righteousness you were looking for and you would receive a reward from God for your dedication to what was right. And yes, it does mean that. But is that what Jesus (and the gospel writer) primarily meant for us to understand?

Remember that that word that is translated as righteousness is the word dikaiosunē– the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word tsedeq. That means that the verse could have equally well been translated as, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.” That is to say that those whose greatest desire is the kind of justice that God was demanding from the gods of the other nations in Psalm 82 – the kind of justice that particularly consisted of protecting the weak and helping the poor and saving those who had no one to help them – that these are the ones who are blessed. Somehow I think that Jesus may have had more of that side of the idea of justice in mind when he said this.

I mean look at what Jesus went on to say from there. Jesus ends this whole part of his sermon by saying, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” And, once again, the word that is translated as righteousness there is the Greek word, dikaiosunē. Now what, exactly, did Jesus think that people might be persecuted for? Was he predicting that you would be persecuted for doing the right thing, for being pure and better than everybody else? Well, sure, perhaps. That might happen sometimes.

But isn’t it a little bit more likely that you will run into persecution because you are working for justice? Think, for example, of Martin Luther King Jr. thrown in the Birmingham City jail. Why was he put in there? For his excessive righteousness – for being too pure. No, not him. He actually had some problems along that line. But he sure was thrown in jail for standing up for and demanding change for a certain group that were systematically disempowered in American society. He was persecuted for justice – biblically understood justice – and not really for righteous.

And I think that this is exactly the kind of situation that Jesus had in mind when he spoke about persecution. That’s why I think that he had the same thing in mind when he spoke of those who hunger and thirst for justice and promised them satisfaction.

I think that the practical applications of this one are pretty clear and straightforward. We have spent too much of our corporate Christian lives in the pursuit of righteousness. And I don’t mean righteousness in the sense of being the best people that we can be and doing the right things as much as is humanely possible. There is nothing wrong and everything right about pursuing that kind of righteousness. No, the kind of righteousness that gets us in trouble is the kind that makes us go through motions of religiosity and then makes us feel like we must be better than other people because of it. I have it on good authority from Amos that God hatesthat kind of righteousness.

We need to let go of that and pour our hearts into the pursuit of justice for the sake of the displaced, the homeless, the weak and the forgotten. That is what will bring us closest to the heart of God. This week, your assignment is simply to do that. Find someone who, for whatever reason, is marginalized or disempowered in our society. Look around, I don’t think that such people are too hard to find. Do one thing, however small, to demonstrate God’s love to them and do it without judging them in any way. That is what God is looking for. It is what God calls justice.

Sermon Video:

It’s like those Christians have a different word for everything! 5) Trinity

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, January 31st, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 31 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless

2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20, John 14:1-17, Psalm 8

ne Tuesday morning several years ago, I was busy, working in my office, crafting a sermon, when I was interrupted by a phone call. The woman on the other end of the line only introduced herself as Sister Eunice. She wouldn’t say who she was calling for or what her goals were, but she wanted to ask me some questions. I, perhaps somewhat foolishly, agreed to try and answer them.

She started asking her questions and it quickly became clear to me that, in her mind at least, I was on trial and that if I did not give what she saw as the right answers, she would judge me a heretic or worse. Then she asked this question: “Is Jesus Christ God?” She wanted a yes or no answer.

Actually, I guess she wanted a yes answer. But let me tell you something: the Christian church spent a few hundred years trying to figure out how to give anything but a yes or no answer to that very question. The answer it did come up with is something called the Trinity.

I’m going to confess something to you here. I have never really wanted to preach a sermon about the Trinity. This is not because it isn’t an important topic in itself, but because I have just found that it isn’t all that important to people.

Oh there was a time when it was considered to be vitally important. Did you know, for example, that there was a time when there were regularly riots in the streets of the City of Alexandria over the question of what was the precise relationship between the Father and the Son? Did you know, that, in the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa complained that he couldn’t go anywhere in the City of Constantinople without someone wanting to argue with you over the Trinity. He said, if you asked someone for change, they’d try to start and argument over whether the Son was begotten or not, is you asked the price of a loaf of bread, somebody would tell you that Father was greater than the Son; if you asked whether your bath was ready, the attendant would go on and on about how the Son was created.

Now those are people who are really engaged in the question of the Trinity. People today, by contrast, have almost no interest in the issue whatsoever. They want, like Sister Eunice, to declare that Jesus is God and get onto other much more important things. The Trinity has just become this completely theoretical concept that you’re supposed to agree with but that has absolutely no practical application. Yes, you can find places where people earnestly discuss Trinitarian theology, where people disagree, but you are not going to find anyone taking it as seriously as people once did on the streets of Alexandria or Constantinople.

Now, on one level, I do find that to be a really good thing. I am glad that people don’t feel the need to attack and hurt one another over or cause riots over slight disagreements about the relationship between the Father and the Son. But, at the same time, isn’t this stuff supposed to matter? And yet we behave like it doesn’t.

The Trinity is not really a Biblical concept. Yes, there are a couple of references to the formula, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the New Testament. We read both of those texts this morning. But those are not statements of fully formed Trinitarian theology. What we do find in the New Testament are reflections on the experience of the people in the early church. These earliest followers of Jesus had experienced something very powerful. Somehow, in this person of Jesus of Nazareth, they had experienced the presence of God in a way that they had never experienced it before. They also knew that Jesus had said a number of things that, at least when they remembered those statements afterwards, seemed to indicate that he also understood himself to be the revelation of God – statements like the one in the Gospel of John where Jesus says, “If you know me, you will know my Father also.”They also knew that they continued to experience the presence of God in the life of the church through the action of the Holy Spirit among them.

I am convinced that that is about as far as those earliest Christians went with their thinking about the nature of Jesus. They didn’t seek to precisely define the relationship between the Father and the Son or the Son and the Spirit. They just knew what they had experienced. And besides, they were kind of busy doing other things: preaching the gospel, acting with compassion, dealing with some persecution of their faith here and there. Who had time for a philosophical discussion of the internal relationship of the God that they had experienced in three ways?

And then something happened. A guy named Constantine happened. Constantine was fighting to take over the Roman Empire and, on the night before his greatest battle, the story goes, Constantine received a vision that told him that, if he fought under the sign of a Christian cross, he would prevail. He did, he won, he became Roman Emperor and before you knew it, Christianity had gone from being an outlaw religion to the most important religion of all.

We have no way of knowing how genuine Constantine’s conversion was but some have noted that it may have been a politically smart move for him to make. For one thing, his army was full of Christians and fighting under a Christian banner was a great way to win them over to his cause.

Constantine also had another problem. The imperial administration was in a mess. And, as he looked around, the Christian Church was about the only institution that was organized enough to unite and hold together an empire that was falling apart. He was looking to use the unity of the church to build up the unity of his empire.

But there was a problem: the church wasn’t united. As soon as the persecutions ended and the church found some breathing space, guess what happened. People started to find the time to have philosophical discussions about the internal relationship of the God that they experienced in three ways. And, lo and behold, when it came down to defining it and putting it into words, they didn’t quite agree.

In particular they disagreed over what was the precise relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Did the Father create the Son? Had the son always existed? Were they equals or was one greater than the other? Those kinds of questions.

Well, Constantine wasn’t going to have that kind of disunity in a church that was supposed to reunite his empire. So this is what he did: he brought all the church leaders from all of the different parts of the empire together to a place called Nicaea, put them in a big room and said, “I don’t care what you decide, just agree on something. You’re staying here until you do.” And that is when the church basically came up with the doctrine of the Trinity and in particular the statement of it that we find in Nicene Creed that we read this morning.

So that kind of answers the question of why church came up with the particular doctrine of the Trinity at that time. And it maybe helps you understand why it was important to Constantine that they agree even if he didn’t care what they agreed. What it doesn’t explain is why everyone apart from Constantine was so worked up over the question. Why were they rioting in Alexandria? Why was it the only topic of conversation in Constantinople?

Well the reason why has much more to do with politics than with theology. This is the thing that people miss: Constantine, and the Roman Empire with him, may have embraced Christianity at least as a political tool, but there were some things that did not change. Most importantly, Roman Emperors had, ever since the days of Caesar Augustus, been seen as divine. They were gods. And Constantine, despite his need of the church, did not, give up his divine status. He was still a god and that was one of the foundations of his political power.

And, in that political context, the discussion of the place of Jesus within the Trinity takes on a different meaning. If Constantine is divine and Jesus is divine and both are subordinate to God, than it becomes easy to see the emperor and Jesus as equals. It makes it easier for the emperor to act with divine authority over the church and all Christians – to demand their unquestioning obedience. There were many Christian leaders who went to Nicaea and argued for that position, but they lost of course. The final decision that was made at the Council of Nicaea was to make it absolutely clear that the Son was in no way subordinate to the Father – not in his creation and not in his nature.

Constantine may have professed not to care what the church decided, but he did come to regret it. He and many of his imperial successors ultimately rejected the decisions of the Council and embraced the heretic position that the Son was subordinate to the Father. It was just easier to run the Empire as they wished that way.

So, in that sense, what the church was arguing about at the Council of Nicaea was not just some theoretical question. It was a vital, every day question that was well worthy of being discussed in every bakery, every bath house and every home. The question was, who do we really answer to: Jesus or the emperor.

I am a Trinitarian Christian. I believe in a God who is one and yet I recognize that I have, and the Christian body has, experienced that one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I’ve never really worried about the matter much beyond that. I’ve certainly never got caught up in those ancient arguments over what are the precise relationships between the persons of the Trinity. Those seemed to be theoretical formulations that had little to do with the practical needs of a Christian life.

But recognizing that the people who fought for the decision at Nicaea were fighting for some very practical implications of how God was going to be seen in the empire makes me think that maybe some of those fine distinctions that they made can be useful to us.

For example, the question that Sister Eunice asked me all those years ago, “Is Jesus God,” could be one of those fine distinctions that matter to us. I know that simply affirming that Jesus is God is something that a lot of people do today, but the Christian faith decided a long time ago that it cannot just be as simple as that. To say that Jesus is just God does not adequately capture what Jesus has done for us.

Yes, it is true that Christians believe that we have experienced God in this person of Jesus. But we cannot say that Jesus is God without also confessing that he is fully human. We cannot talk about Jesus divinity without talking about his humanity. It would not have been enough for Jesus to simply be God and pretending or appearing to be human. The whole point of having a saviour like Jesus us that he understands what it is to be human with all of the problems, all of the weaknesses and all of the temptations that go with that. If Jesus had not been completely and utterly human, it would not have mattered that he was divine because he would not have connected with us in any way that mattered.

And when we confess that Jesus is totally human, and yet completely divine (as the church confessed at Nicaea), it also does something else. It elevates Jesus above any authority – including church authorities, civic and political authorities – that this world can muster. What Jesus asks of us is more important than what any of those other authorities can ask. That doesn’t mean that we cannot choose to honour and respect such authorities when we deal with them in this world, of course, but there is a remarkable freedom that is given to us as followers of Christ, of the one who is, “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made.” We answer to a higher authority to any found in this world.

My challenge to you this week, therefore, is simply to live as a Trinitarian Christian. What that means, in my mind, is not that you have to wrap your mind around some complex definition of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What it practically means is that, when you come up against very human problems in this world – weakness, temptations, fears – you remember that you have an advocate on your side in Jesus who understands what you are going through. That can make a whole lot of difference.

And when the powers of this world get you down – the gods of this present age (whether they be the market, the power of consumerism, the power of racism or hatred) – it means remembering that there is a higher authority to whom we answer and that you are set free to serve the one God – the God made known to us in Jesus Christ.

Sermon Video:

It’s like those Christians have a different word for everything 4) Repent

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, January 24th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 24 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Mark 1:14-20, Ephesians 4:17-5:2, Psalm 32

ccording to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus really only had one sermon – one message that summed up all of the others. “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” That is how Mark introduced the entire preaching ministry of Jesus – essentially a three point sermon: 1) The kingdom of God is here. 2) repent and 3) accept that this is good news.

And all evidence seems to indicate that his message found an audience. People appreciated it and received it as the good news that he said that it was. Think about that for a moment: the centrepiece of the message is repent. When was the last time you heard somebody telling people to repent and it sounded like good news to you?

If you were walking down the street one day and a little bit ahead of you at the street corner you saw a man preaching and every other word that he shouted was “repent,” how would you react? Would you say to yourself, “Wow, that sounds like he’s got a happy good news message,” and eagerly run forward to hear what he had to say? Or would you cross the street and pass him on the other side, staying as far away from him as possible? I know what I’d do! So I find it actually quite amazing that Jesus expected and received such a positive response. It makes me wonder, are we actually using the word repent in the way that Jesus used it?

What does repentance mean to you? I would imagine that most of us would say that repentance has to do, most of all, with feelings. Repentance, to most of us, means feeling sorry for something that you have done or in some cases that you have failed to do. And feeling sorry is not a very pleasant feeling. It is one that most of us do our very best to avoid feeling. So, ifrepentance is primarily a feeling, Jesus would be telling everyone, “The kingdom of God is here everyone, you should all feel really bad.” That does not sound like very good news. But what if, when Jesus was talking about repentance, he wasn’t talking about a feeling?

The other problem with the notion of repentance that is a bit of a stumbling block is its connection with guilt and forgiveness. The assumption is that repentance is something that comes out of our feelings of guilt and that is a requirement before forgiveness is possible. This leads into all kinds of calculations and insecurities.

For example, say that I have a friend who hurts me in some significant way. Maybe they say something that I perceive as very insulting. But, as hurt as I may be, that person is a friend nevertheless so I want to forgive them be there is this requirement (or at least this expectation) that, in order for there to be forgiveness there must be repentance. So I’m waiting for their repentance.

So my friend comes up to me and says, “Gee, I guess that you totally got all upset at what I said and you think I owe you an apology. Well, I guess, sorry.” And then, you see, I have a problem because what we normally do at that point is that we judge that act of repentance, don’t we? In particular, we ask if it was sincere – did the person really mean it or were they just saying sorry because they were forced to do it. And the assumption is that, if it is not sincere or heartfelt, that it is not real repentance and so I shouldn’t forgive.

This idea can particularly mess us up our relationship with God where we make the same assumptions. In the practice of the church, we are regularly called upon to confess our sins and repent of them and so many of us have fallen into the practice of listing out all of the things that we have done wrong and telling God how sorry we are for them.

But then some of us fall into this cycle where we start to question our confession and repentance. Was it sincere? Did I really feel as sorry as I said I did? And there are Christians who fall into this pattern of being afraid that they are not forgiven and can’t be forgiven because their feelings of remorse just are not strong enough.

So again, if that was what Jesus was actually saying, how eagerly would people have heard that? Basically, he would be inviting people into endless and fruitless speculations about whether they felt bad enough about themselves (or their friends who had wronged them felt bad enough about themselves) for forgiveness to happen. That doesn’t really sound like good news to me. But what if, when Jesus was talking about repentance, he wasn’t talking about it as a necessary prerequisite for forgiveness?

The word repent came into English from Latin and has always had the sense of feeling sorry for or making amends for some mistake or error. But the gospels weren’t written in English or in Latin. They were written in Greek. And the Greek word that is translated as repentis metanoia. And here’s the thing: metanoia never had the sense of feeling sorry.

Metanoia is made up of two Greek roots. Meta means after or beyond and often has the sense of change. We find it in English words like metamorphosis which means a change of form. Noia means mind or way of thinking. We also find that Greek root in words like paranoia. So the Greek word metanoia really doesn’t have any direct connection with feelings. Rather than a feeling of remorse or being sorry, metanoia has to do with a change of mind. It literally means to go beyond the mind or the way of thinking that you had before.

You see, we are all raised into certain ways of thinking about and seeing the world. We are also formed by the things that happen to us (both the good and the bad things) that condition us to think in certain ways about ourselves and about the world and about God. This way of thinking and being is the “mind” that the word metanoia is referring to.

In our reading this morning from the Letter to the Ephesians, we have a really good description of how those early followers of Jesus lived through that experience of going beyond the mind that you have been given: “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,” the apostle writes “and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”That was the kind of experience that Jesus was inviting people into. He was asking them to put aside the falsehoods they had been taught to believe, the delusions that they clung to and the ways of their life that were no longer nourishing them and to embrace renewal in the spirit of their minds. And I can definitely imagine people hearing that as good news – a chance at a pretty exciting new beginning.

Now, does going beyond the mind that you had involve feeling sorry for and having regret for the mind that you had before and what you did with it? Absolutely, it certainly can and often does. But feeling sorry is not central and not always necessary to the experience of metanoia. So you do not have to waste any more energy judging whether your own or somebody else’s feelings of remorse are sufficiently sincere for there to be forgiveness.

And what is the connection between metanoia and forgiveness anyways? Well, there is a connection. An experience of going beyond the mind that they previously had can certainly help to put someone in a position where they can really experience forgiveness. But I would not say that metanoia is a necessary prerequisite for forgiveness. Please listen to this carefully: God doesn’t forgive you because you repent. God forgives you because of Jesus and what he has done for you. God forgives you because he loves you. God rejoices when you go beyond the mind that you had, but he doesn’t wait on that to offer you forgiveness when that is what you need.

Now, one thing that metanoia certainly does include is a change in action. When you change your ways of perceiving and thinking about the world, changes in behaviour will naturally flow from that. But sometimes people do miss that first step and attempt to practice repentance by merely reforming their behaviour. And so we make resolutions. We tell ourselves that we need to try harder to be better and it doesn’t work. You have to change your mind before you can change the behaviour that springs from that mind.

People also have trouble when they go through a metanoia experience and they decide that they need to make some changes in behaviour but then those changes don’t come as easily as you might think. The ways of thinking may have changed but they find that old habits and patterns ofbehaviour are pretty deeply ingrained even though you don’t see those things in the same way anymore. This can be discouraging, but it is no reason to despair. It is a common experience, connected to the very nature of our humanity, but you will find that if you hold fast to your renewed mind and trust in God, the change that you truly desire will come.

I know that we sometimes avoid dwelling on the notion of repentance in the church these days. Of course, it is not all that surprising that we wouldn’t want to talk about repentance if we’ve been assuming that repentance is all about feeling sorry and guilty all the time. But I think it is time that we realize that repentance, at least repentance correctly understood, is exactly what we need most.

But the really big question is, if it’s not going to be us wallowing around in feelings of regret, what does genuine metanoia mean for us today. Do we all have some repentance to do? Absolutely. But what mind do we have to change or go beyond? I would suggest that a true exercise of metanoia really begins with an examination of your thought patterns (and not your actions). Nevertheless, your actions might still be a good indicator of where your mind is leading you astray.

So I am going to suggest an exercise in metanoia that I want you to try this week. I’ll bet that at some point this week, you will do something that you are not entirely happy with. (I mean, it happens to most of us often enough.) You might do something that disappoints you. Say you act in a way that puts down or belittles someone else. Maybe you act in a way that is prejudiced or mean. Or it could be that you fail to do something – fail to speak up for yourself or someone else who really needs it, fail to help someone when you could have.

Just keep your eyes open, I’m sure something (small or large) will come up at some point this week. And, like you have probably done before, you will be inclined to condemn yourself for your failure and perhaps make a resolution to do better next time. Well, this is what I want you to do differently this week: don’t do that. Don’t focus on your actions (apart from making any amends for them if you need to).

Instead, I challenge you to engage in metanoia. Ask yourself, prayerfully and with God’s help, not what you did wrong but what were the thought patterns that led you to act in the way you didn’t like. Did you put someone else down because you struggle with your own self esteem? Is there some event in your past that makes you fearful of a certain group of people? Were you looking for validation? Acting out of fear? Were you afraid to care, to risk, to share?

Prayerfully seek to understand the mind that made you act as you did and then prayerfully seek a new mind that goes beyond the one that you have. Immerse yourself in the truths that will overcome the lies that we all tell ourselves. That is what true metanoia means. If you begin there and your patterns of thinking change, you may find that your actions change too slowly and that you keep disappointing yourself, but don’t give up. When you practice metanoia, real and enduring change is possible. And that is good news for anybody.

Sermon Video:

Book Review: Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, January 18th, 2016 in Minister

I do not make it a habit to review or recommend books, but reading this book by Rachel Held Evans has made me think that it might well be time to think of changing that policy.

Searching for Sunday is the story of one woman's journey from her beginnings in the American Evangelical Church tradition through doubt, crises of faith, rejection, despair and hope. It is a very contemporary story of Christian life that has many parallels in the lives of various people I have known. The subtitle of the book is, "Loving, leaving and finding the church," and I just find that there are so many of us who are living in the very difficult and challenging space between those three verbs.

While Evan's book ventures into a number of areas of doctrine, theology and especially sacramental practice, it is at it's heart the story of a personal journey of disruption of what was once taken for granted, the loss and despair that come with that, and an unrelenting faith that prompts her to hold onto what the church can be and not fall into despair. Evan's very personal journey will definitely find many parallels in the lives of Christians everywhere.

So here is my recommendation: You need to read this book if...

You are someone who is completely committed to the church as it is.

Perhaps you are completely happy with the church as it is. If that is who you are, you need to understand what many people in the church and on the margins of the church are struggling with these days. I'm not sure that there is anyone out there who can show it to you in as compelling and as interesting way as Rachel Held Evans does.

You are someone who is wavering

Maybe you are struggling with the church. Reading Searching for Sunday will reassure you that you are not alone. Evans may even help you to find words for some of the dissatisfaction that you are feeling. It is very helpful to follow in the path of someone who is struggling with the things that you are struggling with.

You are giving up

Maybe you've had it with the church. Maybe you just find that it is easier to stay away than it is to deal with the things that cause you frustration, pain or annoyance. I think that you will find this book especially meaningful. Evans can be brutally honest about the flaws of the church, but here is the amazing thing about her writing: the grace of God just continues to shine through. Even when the church had let her down completely, she just can't stop finding evidence of God's grace and love. She continues the conversation with the church despite disappointment. I find this very inspiring.

She may be brutally honest, but I've got to say that this is one book that gives me more hope for the future of the church than any that I have read in a while. That alone makes it worth the read.

It’s like these Christians have a different word for everything 3) Faith

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, January 17th, 2016 in Minister

Matthew 21:18-22, James 2:14-26, Romans 10:11-17

o you remember the first time you read this morning’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew? I sure do. I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been fairly young when I came across it because I remember finding it pretty darn exciting.

When I read that Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt… if y ou say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done,” I was all ready to go. Jesus’ instructions couldn’t have been more clear. All I had to do was believe – I mean be really certain without even doubting a little tiny bit that I could do it – and I would have fig trees and mountains and pieces of chalk and blackboard erasers flying through the air in no time. Ha, ha! People couldn’t help but notice me then! (I was a bit of a shy and retiring child.)

Did I try? You bet I did! Come on, admit it, you tried it too, didn’t you? I remember sitting there and

staring at some random object and trying to convince myself that if I only really believed that I could do it and especially banished all doubt that I couldn’t, it would happen.

It never did. And, at the time, I just figured that it was because somewhere deep inside I had some little tiny grain of doubt and that is why I never succeeded. It was only in later years that I began to consider that maybe my problem was that I never really understood what Jesus was trying to say at all.

I have done a lot more reflection on what Jesus had to say on the topic of faith since those days and I have learned a few things. What we often don’t realize is that the meanings of the words, “believe” and “faith” have actually changed a great deal over the years.

Our modern English word, believe, comes to us from an Old English word “geleafa” which means to hold something or someone dear. The second syllable, “leafa” actually comes from the same Germanic root as the word love. So, in its origins, belief was much more about giving your heart to something than it was about being certain about it. It didn’t have anything to do with evidence or intellectual choice. It was about your heart’s commitment.

That is a far cry from how people use the word today. In fact, people often use “I believe” to explain the opinions that they hold or the facts that they hold to be true. It is primarily an intellectual activity, not really an action of the heart.

The other word that we use to talk about belief (and especially religious belief) in English is faith. That word didn’t come into English from German but rather from Latin via French. The original Latin word was fides the same Latin root that we find in words like fidelity and fiduciary. So faith, at least the original word for it, doesn’t mean the act of accepting certain opinions or ideas, it refers to the choice to trust in someone or in something like a bank or an institution.

So both the word believe and the word faith came to English with the sense of giving your heart to or placing your trust in someone. And in the language that Jesus spoke and the language of the New Testament, the same concept was in mind. But somehow today both words mean something quite different. Today we mostly use them to talk about intellectual opinions or convictions.

Even when we talk about religious faith, we generally talk about it in terms of the things that we believe about God, about Jesus, the Bible or other spiritual matters. But this kind of intellectual assent or conviction was not really what Jesus was talking about. For him, believing was about giving your heart and not merely your assent or opinion to God.

I have often spoken to people who are concerned that they can’t be Christians or that they aren’t good Christians because they can’t bring themselves to be completely certain about at least some of the things that people in churches believe. I mean, there are lots of reasons to doubt some of these teachings of the church. It is not as if anyone can offer you conclusive proof that Jesus was born to a virgin or rose bodily from the dead or stilled a mighty storm with a few words. So, yes, it is not uncommon for people to struggle with specific beliefs.

But someone who struggles with or even rejects some specific thing that the church has traditionally believed is not necessarily someone who does not or cannot have faith. Faith as Jesus understood it and proclaimed it was not a matter of believing or accepting certain things on an intellectual level. It was about giving your heart to someone – the old sense of believing in Old English. It was about being willing to trust someone as the origin of the word faith means.

So, while it may matter to a certain extent what you believe about God or about Jesus or about various points of doctrine, none of that matters anywhere near so much as the question of where you put your heart and in whom you place your trust. And, you know what? It is possible to love God even though you are not entirely sure of some of the things you believe about God. It is possible to trust Jesus without having everything that you believe about Jesus sorted out in your mind. Thank God it is. Otherwise, I’m convinced, a lot of us wouldn’t be here.

But don’t just take my word for it. Take the word of the Letter of James. James writes this to the church, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.” Do you realize what James is saying here? He is taking what is for us, one of the key tests of faith, the question, “Do you believe that God exists,” or “Do you believe that there is one God,” and he is saying: “Big deal! Who cares if you believe that God exists? I can show you demons who believe that.”

So Jesus isn’t looking for you to hold certain opinions or to accept certain propositions. What is he looking for? He wants you to trust him. But that also implies one more thing. James writes this in his letter, “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” You see, trusting someone, really trusting someone implies that you will do something about your trust.

Let me give a simple example. Say that I have this chair here. It is a good chair, a solid chair. I can tell you all kinds of wonderful things about this chair. But here’s the thing: if I stand here saying wonderful things about this chair, even talking about how sure I am that it is sturdy and able to hold me up, does that mean that I have faith in the chair. Not really. The one thing that would demonstrate that I have faith in the chair would be that I actually do something about what I profess to believe about the chair. I need to actually sit in it.

Well, that is basically what James is saying about having faith in God. It doesn’t really matter what you say you believe about God. Professing to be certain of all kinds of things about God doesn’t prove you have faith. The only thing that would prove that would be if you took what you profess to believe about God and did something with it – if you chose to put the things that you profess to believe about God into practice by putting your trust in God and doing some good in the world. That is what James means when he says that faith without works is dead and amounts to nothing.

In the church we have actually reduced and impoverished the meaning of the word faith. We have made it to mean only that you must accept certain propositions or ideas about God, Jesus and other things. What’s more, you are not really expected to do anything about those propositions – just believe them. That was never what Jesus was looking for when he was looking for faith in the people that he met.

So let’s return to that saying of Jesus that I started with this morning. What did Jesus mean when he said, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt… if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done”? He was saying that you need to have faith. But faith, as we have been saying, is not a matter of being certain about things as I thought in my youth. It is a matter of trust.

And it is not even a matter of how much you trust. This same saying of Jesus comes to us in the Gospel of Luke in a slightly different form. In Luke, Jesus says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” That is kind of the lite version of the saying because it doesn’t just go from moving a mountain to a mulberry tree but also talks about the faith that does the moving as a very small thing – as a little, tiny mustard seed. So clearly the amount of faith that you have doesn’t matter.

So what does matter in faith? Only one thing really: where you choose to place your trust in action. I mean, you can see that in my example with the chair. If I find another chair that is all old and rickety and falling apart, that only has three legs left and I tell you that I have all kinds of faith in that chair – tons of faith – and so I plunk myself down on it, will that chair hold me up? Probably not. I end up sprawled on the floor.

But then I find another good and sturdy chair. I look at it and see that it is well-made but because, you know, last time I trusted a chair it let me down, I don’t have near as much faith in this chair. In fact, I am so lacking in faith that I am unwilling to sit on it. Will it hold me up? No, because I am not sitting on it. But if I have a little tiny bit of faith – faith, say, as small as a mustard seed – but enough trust to persuade me to actually do something and sit on the chair, will the chair hold me up? Of course it will, because it is a good chair! So we see what matters is not how much faith you have but that you actually choose to place your trust in a trustworthy thing.

That is the kind of faith that Jesus talked about all the time. And it is a kind of faith that can move mountains, but not by me being certain and sure and having lots of it. The only way that faith can move mountains is when it persuades you to place your trust in the one who made the mountains in the first place.

So that is faith as we must begin to understand it and as we must practice it. Your assignment this week is to actually use faith. I want you to move a mountain in your life. I’ll bet you’ve got one. I’ll bet you’ve got some great big problem or barrier in your life or in the life of someone that you love that you have been trying to move. Can you picture that mountain? You know what it is.

I’ll bet you have been trying to move it with your own strength or determination. But it hasn’t worked and it won’t move that way. Here’s what I want you to do this week: give up on moving that mountain in your life by your own determination, and chose instead to see it moved by faith.

How do you do that? By telling God that you don’t have it in you to move it but that you will trust God to move it instead. Now that can be a scary thing to say because you are leaving the biggest problem in your life in someone else’s hand. What if he doesn’t move it in the way that you think he should? What if he moves it to a place you don’t want it to go?

Well, that it how you know we’re talking about real faith because it means that you have to trust God for all of that – give up control of it and trust God. It means giving your heart to God not just your understanding. And I’m not saying that God will move your mountain in the way that you think it needs to be moved. You may be surprised at what he does with your mountain.

But I promise you this, if you choose to trust God for one of the biggest mountains in your life, you won’t regret it because you will be choosing to place your confidence in the one who will never let you down.

Sermon Video:

Some reflections on a first session working on “Body, Mind and Soul”

Posted by Scott McAndless on Thursday, January 14th, 2016 in Minister

Last night we held our first session at St. Andrew's Hespeler to start to work through the document, "Body, Mind and Soul: Thinking together about human sexuality and sexual orientation in The Presbyterian Church in Canada." I must say that I found the session a little bit hard to prepare for and that I didn't know what to expect going in.

The discussions that we held together were held in an intentional atmosphere of openness and confidentiality so that people could be able to speak freely and not fear that their words or views would be shared. So I am not at liberty to share any particular words or views expressed. But I know that a lot of people who are leading these discussions are having a hard time figuring out how to do them well. So I would like to at least share a few observations and insights that might be helpful to others who are planning or preparing.

1) Questions of why we are doing this

I thought that I had a pretty good understanding going in of why we were going through this exercise. The General Assembly is going through a process of discerning where the Holy Spirit might be leading us to change (or not change) our approach to issues around human sexuality and needs congregations like our own to participate in that discernment. In order to help we need to go through a process like this. But a discussion of that sense of purpose was important. Perceptions of what we were doing were not necessarily shared.

There was suspicion expressed by some. There were feelings that the study had been written with a bias towards certain conclusions. There were feelings expressed that the decision had already been made and that this process was simply designed to get us to that foregone conclusion. These views did come out of one particular perspective on the issues, but I can well imagine that, in some other context, people coming from the opposite point of view might well feel the same thing.

A discussion of bias and expectations was therefore necessary. I appreciate all of the work that went into this document and how well it is done given the time constraints on it. I also don't think that it is possible to create such a document without some bias seeping through from time to time. Given that there are multiple authors, I expect that different biases will come through at different points. I think we can acknowledge that without getting hung up on it.

As to being able to come up with something coherent to feed back to the national church committees, I must say that I cannot see at this time how we may come up with a consensus response. Pray for us!

2) People prepared and engaged!

I planned to start by dealing with the section on Scripture. I made pages 14 to 37 available to people on the previous Sunday to read in preparation and also directed them to the downloadable document. I also had pages 89 - 97 printed up for our first session as a handout.

I had my doubts and questions about whether people would read that pages in preparation. None of it was necessarily very easy reading, but they all did it. Some acknowledged that they had to read it in small bites but they were all committed enough to do it. Always a good sign.

I started by going through the listening circles group guidelines (pp. 87,88). A very good place to start. In retrospect, I likely should have printed that up too, or put it up in a poster format.

It took some time to get people engaged, but once we got going, engagement was good, respectful, truthful and positive. Some did not speak up. I may need to check in with a few to see if they are looking for someone to help them to find those openings to speak or if they just need us to respect their silence.

3) My role as a leader

I struggled and expect I will continue to struggle in my role as a leader. My issue is that I do have opinions and, even more important, convictions around these issue. I also feel that I have a right and a duty to share those convictions that have come out of thoughtful reflection and scriptural study. But I am also aware that, whenever I speak, there is this danger that it will be received as the authoritative and definitive answer or opinion which may cause others to feel that their opinions or approaches are being squelched. Because of that, I felt that I maintained a light touch on moderation and leadership. I do not regret that and feel that it was the most helpful approach at least this time.

4) Our progress

We specifically discussed Leviticus 18:22 and Genesis 19:4-8. We discussed related issues like the Holiness Code, cultural assumptions around homosexual activity in the ancient Mediterranean world, the dimensions of hospitality and the larger Biblical context of the Sodom story.

We branched off (necessarily, I think) into discussions about the assumptions that people were bringing to the table. There was certainly diversity in the approaches.

I used only one of the supplied discussion questions. Other prompts to continuing discussion were not a big problem.

We ended after about and hour and a half (but before running out of steam) by deciding that next week we would try to deal with the passages from the New Testament Letters and the whole Normal vs. Normative discussion. (p. 92). I feel that I have a bit of a better handle on how to prepare for that.

5) This will not change anyone's mind.

I went into this saying that I don't expect that, ultimately, we will all agree about what to do and that it is okay that we don't agree. This was certainly confirmed. Even more important, I think that this idea was embraced by everyone. There were attempts, of course, to get other people to appreciate someone's point of view. There were critical discussions about where certain approaches would lead us and what the consequences might be. But everyone could respect where people were coming from.

One thing that is clear coming out of this discussion is how very segmented everyone is around these issues. Everyone -- conservatives, traditionalists, progressives or whatever you want to call people -- tends to read and follow only those sources of thought and learning that confirm the point of view that they already have. This can lead to one person stating something that is, in their mind, an established fact while someone also cites a totally contradictory datum as an established fact. This is a big issue in all kinds of ways for the church -- perhaps an inescapable effect of our segmented information age.

Nevertheless, none of that means that this exercise is fruitless. The dialog is important, engaging and worthwhile. It was also uplifting and I am very thankful for that.

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Category: Minister

Minister’s blog

Mistakes and what they teach us about God’s Grace – 2) Alfred and the Cakes

Sermon Video:

The Problem with Substitutionary Attonement or How the Vikings Muddled us up

Response to the Study, Body, Mind and Soul, from St. Andrew’s Hespeler Presbyterian Church (Presbytery of Waterloo-Wellington

Mistakes and what they teach us about God’s Grace. 1) Cecilia and the Art Restoration

St. Andrew's Stars Video:

Sermon Video:

It’s like these Christians have a different word for everything 6) Justice

St. Andrew's Stars Video:

Sermon Video:

It’s like those Christians have a different word for everything! 5) Trinity

Sermon Video:

It’s like those Christians have a different word for everything 4) Repent

Sermon Video:

Book Review: Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans

You are someone who is completely committed to the church as it is.

You are someone who is wavering

You are giving up

It’s like these Christians have a different word for everything 3) Faith

Sermon Video:

Some reflections on a first session working on “Body, Mind and Soul”

1) Questions of why we are doing this

2) People prepared and engaged!

3) My role as a leader

4) Our progress

5) This will not change anyone's mind.