Category: News

We're back worshipping at St. Andrew's Hespeler regularly!

https://youtu.be/eMLrGnmxY6g

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

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

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

Luke’s Travelogue

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

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

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

Our Journey

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

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

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

Our Meeting Today

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

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

The First Day of the Week

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

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

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

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

Luke’s Symbolic Use of Sunday Gatherings

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

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

The Tired Church

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

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

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

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

The Power of Resurrection

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

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

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

What We Must Pass Through First

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

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

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

We May Need to Die to Something

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

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

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

Hard Choices

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

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

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

Fortunate

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

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

Join us as we worship together for the last Sunday of our Summer Experiment.

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

https://youtu.be/WR90X7kKhXU

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

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

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

The Cover-Up

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

The Murder

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

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

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

Betrayed Soldiers

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

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

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

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

Nathan left the interview pondering deeply.

The Lord Sent Nathan

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

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

Was This Really Hidden Knowledge?

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

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

What If Everyone Knew?

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

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

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

What God Gave Nathan?

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

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

A Creative Approach

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

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

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

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

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

We Need Nathans

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

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

Using Creativity

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

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

My Calling

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

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

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

Various Ways of Using Creativity

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

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

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

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Sunday, July 21 worship service

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This week our Summer Worship Experiment brings us to St. Andrew's Hespeler.