Category: News

Watch sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/nI6l5LmE3Lc

Hespeler, June 14, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Third Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7, Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 Romans 5:1-8, Matthew 9:35-10:8

One day, back at the very beginning, God turned to the first man and said, “Adam, I want you to do something for me…”

Adam said, “Gladly, Lord, what do you want me to do?”

God said, “Go down into that valley.”

Adam said, “What’s a valley?”

God explained it to him. Then God said, “Cross the river.”

Adam said, “What’s a river?”

God explained that to him, and then said, “Go over to the hill…”

Adam said, “What is a hill?”

So, God explained to Adam what a hill was and said, “On the other side of the hill you will find a cave.”

Adam said, ‘What’s a cave?’

After God explained, God said, “In the cave you will find a woman.”

Adam said, “What’s a woman?’

So God explained that to him, too. Then, God said, I want you to reproduce.

“Well, how do I do that?” Adam asked.

God’s eyes rolled, and then, just like everything else, God explained that to Adam, as well.

So, Adam goes down into the valley, across the river, and over the hill, into the cave, and finds the woman. Then, in five minutes, he was back.

God’s patience was wearing thin. “What is it now?” God wanted to know.

And Adam said… “What is a headache?!”

Laughter in the Church

What is that I hear? Is that laughter in the church? And did you know that there was a time, not all that long ago, when it would have been considered quite unseemly for there to be laughter in a church? Worship was considered to be very serious business! It was all about judgement and repentance.

This was especially true for Presbyterians. They were kind of famous for it. Their ministers wore black, and they never smiled. And if you went to church and smiled or, heaven forbid, you laughed, they would definitely let you know that you were out of line.

Things have changed, and they have certainly changed for the better. I am glad to be part of a church that doesn’t merely tolerate smiles and laughter, but that celebrates them. I am sure that God loves nothing more than a church regularly filled with laughter.

Abraham and Sarah’s Struggle

In fact, God loves laughter so much that God took some extraordinary steps to bring it into the life of two people. And I think that their story has a great deal to say to us, and maybe especially to the church, today.

Abraham and Sarah were struggling, you see. They had a good life. They had found a good place to live and had even built a great deal of wealth and security for themselves, but something was missing for them.

They had no children. And, because they had no children, it was often as if everything they had built for themselves had lost meaning. What did it matter if they had wealth and prosperity if they had no one that they could pass it down to? What did it matter if they tried to do good now, if it would all be forgotten once they had passed away?

Congregations Worrying about Future?

It is kind of like the situation that many churches find themselves in these days. They know they have received a rich heritage from their ancestors. They have valuable assets, such as properties and buildings, that they have inherited from those who have gone before.

But the church, even as it enjoys all these things and may even do its best to use those resources to do a lot of good in the community and in the world, is dealing with deep anxiety about the future. We worry that we are not connecting with a younger generation as we did in the past. This is seen in a lack of children and young people.

It is not that there are no youth at all (though some congregations are certainly grappling with that issue). It is more that we don’t see the huge numbers of them in full programs as we did in previous generations. We worry that, when the generations that have so strongly supported the church are gone, there will be no one to take over.

God Sends Them Laughter

Well, we are told that God came down and addressed Abraham and Sarah directly as they dealt with their struggles. And I believe that God will do the same for us if we allow it. So, what did God offer them? Here is the funny thing: God offered them laughter.

There they were, camping out by the oaks of Mamre, wanderers still with no home and no children to pass a home down to. And God just kind of dropped in one day.

Actually, three strangers dropped by – strangers to whom Abraham and Sarah offered exceptional hospitality – but it turned out that those strangers somehow represented the presence of God.

Setup and Punchline

And then at the end of the excellent meal, God told a joke. That is what happened. Now there are various kinds of jokes and various ways to get people to laugh. But one tried-and-true method employs what is called a setup followed by a punchline. Basically, you set your audience up with a certain expectation, and then you violate that expectation.

That is the basic structure of many jokes. Take this joke for example: “My dog used to chase people on a bike all the time. It got so bad, I finally had to take his bike away.” And I know that you’re not supposed to explain how jokes work, but let me do it for that one anyway.

The first line, “My dog used to chase people on a bike all the time,” sets up a certain expectation. That’s why it is called a setup. It puts a picture in your mind of a bad dog running after people who are riding bikes. But the punchline, “It got so bad, finally I had to take his bike away,” defies that expectation. Now you are picturing a dog riding a bike and that picture is all the funnier for being utterly ridiculous.

Sarah’s Setup

So, what was the joke that God told Abraham and Sarah? “I will surely return to you in due season,” God says, “and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And yes, I know that doesn’t quite have the classic setup-and-punchline structure, but trust me, it was hilarious. It was so funny that it made Sarah laugh so hard in the tent that God could hear her.

The setup wasn’t the first line of the joke but rather the entire story up until that point. It was years upon years of disappointment as Sarah struggled with infertility and with not living up to the expectations that society put upon her. The setup was the unrelenting cycle of hope giving way to despair every single month. It was her giving into the realization her chances were finally gone and “it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.”

And, with all that set up, what God was promising Sarah was ridiculous. Not only was it biologically impossible for her to have a child, but it also challenged and overturned all of her feelings of disappointment and despair. It forced her to challenge the hard reality to which she had already reconciled herself.

Given such an unexpected and ridiculous punchline, Sarah reacted in the only way she could; she laughed.

God’s Punchlines

And I am convinced that God loves to make us laugh in that way. I know that you have all lived through that setup at some point in your life. You have been discouraged. You have felt as if you lost your way. All of us have those kinds of experiences. Maybe some of you are there right now in your life.

Well, just know that you have a God who loves to deliver you a punchline so full of ridiculous hope that it will make you laugh with joy. Remember some of those times in your life when you were fearing the worst, imagining that everything was about to fall apart? How often did the worst happen? It generally doesn’t. And even when bad things do happen, when the dark clouds gather, there is almost always a silver lining somewhere nearby. So, we really ought to learn to laugh more at the worst things that we can imagine.

I wouldn’t want to leave you with the impression that terrible things never happen. Of course they do, and when they do, we also have a God who is ready to meet us in our sorrow, who weeps with us and for us. But don’t forget that God also looks forward to the next opportunity to laugh with you.

Nine Months Later

So, God told Sarah a joke. But there was also another punchline waiting for her – an even better one. It came about nine months later when her son was born. And she knew it was part of the same joke because she said, “‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’And she said, ‘Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’”

There is another dimension to this joke that we miss because we don’t speak Hebrew. She named her son Isaac and, in Hebrew, Isaac means laughter. She was essentially saying, in a really good way, that her son was the punchline.

People and Their Challenges

And I think that is exactly the kind of laughter that God loves to introduce into our lives – the laughter that comes in the form of people. Because remember this, people always come with their challenges.

Sarah, according to the chronology of Genesis, was about eighty years old at this point of the story. And I know that her great age is meant to highlight the miraculous nature of her pregnancy, but it also introduces an element of enormous challenge, doesn’t it?

I am nowhere near approaching the age of eighty. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself every time I look in the mirror. But do you think that at my “young” age I would feel ready to take on the challenge of having a new baby? I don’t think so! The time for that seems long past!

If Isaac came into Sarah’s life at that point, think of all the change, disruption and inconvenience he would have brought – not to mention the dirty diapers, sleepless nights and anxieties. It would have changed everything about her life, and it would not have been easy. In many ways, that was the biggest joke that God played on her. And she seems to have taken it with good humour.

God’s Greatest Joke on the Church

What is the greatest joke that God is playing on the church today? I think it is children. Wherever I go talking to churches these days, what do I hear? Above all I hear an impassioned plea for children and young people. Oh, if only God would give us children and young families, our congregation would be saved.

And I do believe that God is hearing that plea and that God is answering. God is sending children to our congregations. They are showing up in new and unexpected ways and from unexpected places. And those children are bringing us the gift of laughter.

God’s Punchline

But I think God also has a punchline in there. I think that God is watching us closely when children show up or even when they visit. God knows very well that when new people, and especially young people, join us, they bring us many challenges.

Yes, they will bring laughter, but sometimes we will feel as if that laughter doesn’t come at the most appropriate moments. They will certainly bring with them much disruption. There will be noise when we are not used to noise. Children arrive and bring with them the inevitable challenge that they don’t know what it is like to be in church, and that it takes them time to learn how to handle it all appropriately. And God is watching us with anticipation and ready to laugh at any discomfort we might show.

You see, God’s greatest joke is to give us what we pray and ask for. God loves to see how we actually deal with the answers to our prayers. And so, God will send those answers wrapped up in all kinds of curveballs and tests of our faith.

God gives us the gift of laughter, and thanks be to God who loves us enough to do so!

Join us on Sunday

From the Gospel of Matthew

Watch sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/xOsV1Ur7usU

Hespeler, June 7, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Communion, Second Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

The promise that God gave to Abram was amazing: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” It was a high calling – an exalted and holy mission not only to find the potential in himself but also to have a fantastic and positive impact on the whole world.

But apparently, this promise could only be activated in one way. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” And, as Abram looked around him, that seemed a little bit easier said than done.

Reasons to Stay

He had lived here in Haran for a very long time. He had put down deep roots, had developed a circle of friends. He had business contacts and connections throughout the area.

And then there was his father’s house. His father, Terah, had recently passed away at the ripe old age of 205. You think that King Charles had to wait a long time for his mother to die and to get the job he’d been waiting for all his life? Well, Abram had had to wait several lifetimes to inherit this house. How could he just leave it behind now?

More than just the house, though, he had his country, his national identity, his gods and his kin to think of. These were all the things that he would lose contact with, maybe forever.

Vague Promise

He also had a family that depended on him. He and Sarai did not have any children (something that had always been a sore point), but they did have an entire household of slaves, freedmen and clients. They all looked to him to provide for them. Was he really supposed to disrupt all of their lives for the sake of a promise?

But worst of all, the promise wasn’t specific. God wasn’t even telling him where he was going or what to expect when he got there. He was supposed to give up everything he knew for something he knew nothing about.

All these thoughts ran through Abram’s mind in the moment he received the call from God to go. He had every excuse in the world to stay exactly where he was. But what did Abram do? Did he let any of those considerations get in the way of the adventure that his God was placing before him? No, he did not.

“So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.” And the world, my friends, has never been the same since.

Matthew’s Enterprise

Matthew had built up quite a business for himself over the years. He had been able to bid for the tax-collecting franchise around Capernaum. Basically, he had promised the Roman agents that he would extract a certain amount of wealth from tolls, tariffs and taxes. And so long as he delivered, they really didn’t care about anything else.

Anything he was able to raise above what he had bid for the franchise was his to keep. And he could use whatever methods he desired. Extortion, theft, threats to break people’s legs or to send them to sleep with the fishes at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee – the Romans didn’t care so long as they got their cut.

So, Matthew had done well. It was true that everyone hated him for it. They knew that he was part of a corrupt system that was designed to squeeze every last coin out of their pockets. But he had made peace with that. Let them hate him; he knew that he and his family would remain secure. And that was what mattered, wasn’t it?

Follow Me

At least, he thought he had made peace with it until one day Jesus passed by his collection station. Now, we’re told that when Jesus called the fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James and John, he had a quip that he used to refer to their jobs. “Follow me,” he said, “and I will make you fishers of people.”

But apparently the only thing he said to Matthew was, “Follow me,” which seems to me to be a great lost opportunity. Why not at least say, “You can count on me”? Why not say, “Follow me and even in the most off-balance-sheet activities, your deferred impact liabilities will be fully amortized into equity of change, ensuring a positive net present value on humanity’s statement of affairs.”

That’s how you talk to an accountant, am I right, Vern?!

A Response

But amazingly, all Matthew needed to hear was two words: follow me. Maybe he was less reconciled to being a mere leech sucking the life out of his countrymen than he had thought. Maybe he hadn’t quite given up on himself.

He had no idea where Jesus was calling him to go or what he would do. There were no long-term actuarial forecasts or business plans. He was just supposed to follow.

And did Matthew hesitate? He immediately dropped everything that had given purpose and meaning to his life up until that point. He left his tax records and lists of people who owed him money. He abandoned all of the people who relied on him to get them rich, and he followed Jesus. And the world would never be the same again.

A Rich History

The people of Knox Preston Presbyterian Church had invested so much into their common identity, their building and their sense of mission and purpose for generations.

They had so many reasons to hold onto what they had built. Their congregation had given them a sense of identity and a purpose. For many of them, the most significant events of their lives had happened in that place and among those people: their weddings, the baptisms of their children, their mourning for loved ones.

And then what happened a couple of years ago? God came along and said, “Go, go from your congregation and your church family and your ancestors’ building to the place that I will show you.”

Did God Call?

Now, I know that there are some who might dispute that and say that it wasn’t God who said that. It was the Presbytery who said that. Or it was certain individuals who were given a position of authority who said that. And of course there is some truth in that.

But you see, it is rarely immediately obvious when a message is coming from God. There are always other ways that you could explain it away. Perhaps, Abram might have explained to himself, he was just depressed following the death of his father. Maybe it was just his own wanderlust that he was hearing, not the voice of God.

And when Jesus came up to Matthew’s tax office, for all Matthew knew, he was a nobody. How could he know for sure that this Jesus was speaking for God? No, when God is calling, that is something that you have to figure out. And the people of Knox Preston, despite a great deal of grief and loss and a few other difficult emotions, did discern that God was calling.

And what did they do? They went. And they went above all with good will, accepting that this was part of God’s plan for them. They went not knowing what on earth they were getting into. I mean, they’d met some people who had made some promises, but that was it.

But still, like Abram and like Matthew, they got up and went. And they became a part of this new thing that God was creating – a new amalgamated congregation. And the world would never be the same again.

How God Does It

You see? That is how God does it. We may have our personal plans and visions. We certainly have things that make us feel comfortable and secure. And God, it seems, has a habit of calling people out of that comfort and security and into radical trust.

So I ask you all today where that call is coming into your life. And let me ask you first of all as a congregation. As I just said, there are several people here who recently went through that process of leaving behind what was familiar and comfortable to become a part of this congregation. They have demonstrated their courage and their faith to us all.

Call to St. Andrew’s

But, if they were called to become a part of this new thing, weren’t we all? Let’s ask what God came along and said to the people who were part of St. Andrew’s Hespeler before all of these conversations started. What did God ask us to leave behind?

“Go from your concept of a congregation that is totally based on things happening in this one place in the village of Hespeler. Leave behind your comfortable cliques and familiar ways of getting things done. Abandon the familiarity of a church that used to be to fully embrace this new congregation with the same courage and faith that those who have given up so much have shown.”

And do note that God is asking us all to do this even though we still don’t know all that this new congregation will be. All we have is a promise from God that God will let us know when we get there. It’s only the same promise that he gave to Abram and to Matthew, and look how those promises turned out.

It is a question that all of us have to ponder, and not just those who came from a particular place. It is a call that God places on congregations from time to time, and we definitely seem to be in a season when many congregations are pondering such calls.

Call to Individuals

But I would be remiss if I didn’t put the question to you as individuals as well. I think all of us have to pause from time to time and ask what new and courageous thing God may be calling us to do.

How might God be speaking to you and calling you to some new adventure of faith? Do not expect to hear some divine voice booming from heaven with instructions for what you are to do. I don’t think that happened for Abram, and I’m sure that it didn’t for Matthew.

Expect God to speak in various ways. Sometimes it is when we learn to quiet our busy minds through the practice of meditation that the voice of God (that has been speaking to us all along) can finally break through. With quiet whispers, God may direct you in a new course.

But God may also speak through the passions and concerns that drive us. Have you found in your heart a new concern for some disadvantaged group? Has your creativity been stirred with some crazy idea for how a problem could be addressed?

These are experiences of inspiration, and they can absolutely come directly from God. We do also have to practice discernment about them. We need to pray and meditate over them, and we need to talk to the trusted voices of the people that God has placed into our lives. God speaks through them too.

Stepping Into the Unknown

But do not dismiss the thought that God may be calling you to step out by faith into the unknown. God has done it before; why wouldn’t God dream of doing something amazing through someone like you – especially someone like you.

Abram was a nobody. God could have called many similar men wandering around Mesopotamia at the time. For all we know, God did. Perhaps the only thing that was unique about Abram was that he listened and that he went.

Matthew wasn’t unique either. The land was full of tax collectors. And, for all we know, Jesus stopped by the tax offices of dozens of them before Matthew dared to do what Jesus said and get up and follow.

God isn’t looking for people who have got it all together. God certainly isn’t looking for people who know how it’s all going to turn out. God is looking for people who are faithful. God is looking for people who can hear the words leave, go and follow as calls to adventure.

And, yes, God may be looking for you.

A Trinity Sunday Service

Watch Sermon Video Here:

https://youtu.be/3m1Fc3RRv5Y

Hespeler, May 31, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Trinity Sunday
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

Today is known in Christian tradition as Trinity Sunday. And I would like us to realize for a moment how unique that is among the festivals of the Christian church. All of the other major festivals celebrate events in the life of Jesus or of the early church. Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birth. Easter, his death and resurrection. Pentecost, as I hope you picked up last week, the birthday of the church.

But today, we don’t celebrate an event, but rather a doctrine – a teaching of the church. It is not even a doctrine you can find in the Bible itself, but rather something that the church only figured out some 300 years after the time of Jesus.

A Logic Puzzle

 So, I’m at a bit of a loss here today. I want to talk about the Trinity. I do think it is an important doctrine. But I’m not exactly sure how to do that. I know that a lot of the time, when we talk about the Trinity in the church, we approach it as a kind of logic puzzle. We figure that our task, when we talk or teach about the Trinity, is to help people make sense of it.

And that is, of course, a huge challenge because, at its core, the Trinity doesn’t make logical sense. The idea of the Trinity is that there is one God, and that God is known in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We further say that the three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are all God. But we also affirm that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit and that the Spirit is not the Father.

And that, my friends, does not make much sense. And maybe it shouldn’t, because the nature of God is supposed to be beyond our human understanding.

Trying to Make it Make Sense

But what do we do when we talk about the Trinity? We try to make it make sense. We use various images to explain it. St. Patrick famously used a Shamrock with its three leaves as a picture of the Trinity. Sometimes people talk about how water can exist in three different states: solid, liquid and gas. These images may be nice to contemplate, but they certainly don't present a complete or accurate picture of the Trinity which is far beyond all physical objects.

These attempts to picture the Trinity leave us with the impression that that is what we’re supposed to do with the doctrine – that we are supposed to understand it. It makes us think that if we can just get our minds bent enough out of shape to get them around this idea of God, even for an instant of time, we will have mastered this thing called the Christian faith.

Problems With This Approach

It also creates a problem for many honest Christians who can’t get their minds around this concept. Many will often conclude that, since they cannot make sense of it, they are incapable of having faith. Such people may give up on Christianity altogether.

But the Christian faith is not a logic problem. It is not an exercise in screwing yourself up to believe impossible things. The Christian faith is a journey of trust in connection with a God that we cannot fully understand.

So, my question today is what am I supposed to say to you about the Trinity, other than that it is okay if it doesn’t make logical sense to you?

Trinity Is Not in the Bible

Well, let me go back to something that I said a moment ago but that I did not dwell on. I said that the Trinity is not in the Bible. That may have been a surprise to you, but virtually all churches agree that it is true.

Now, the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are all in the Bible. It references all of them and their activities, and it even says some important things about how they relate to one another. But you will not find in the Scriptures any clear statement of their unity or triplicity. But there is a connection between what is in the Bible and the later doctrine.

So, how did we get from what the Bible said in the first century to the doctrine that the church finally agreed to over three centuries later?

How the Christians Experienced God

Well, the Bible is, above all, a record of human beings who experienced God and passed those experiences down until someone eventually wrote about them.

And those early Christians experienced God in many and various ways. They experienced God in Jesus of Nazareth. They experienced God in him during his life, and then even more powerfully in encounters with the risen Christ. They didn’t necessarily understand how they had experienced God in this person. They didn’t know how such a thing could be. But that failure to understand how didn’t really bother them. All they knew was that Jesus had presented God to them in a unique way.

And, in the same way, the early church absolutely experienced the presence of God through the Holy Spirit. This was particularly true when they gathered and worshipped together and supported one another.

Somehow, it was plain to them that when they gathered like that, there was a presence among them that they could not explain. Somehow, the whole of the group was bigger than just the sum of its parts. Even more important, they knew that this presence was divine. But again, they didn’t particularly concern themselves with how this could be. They just knew what they had experienced.

Encounter with Greek Philosophy

So, it all started with their experience of God. And as it spread throughout the Roman Empire, the church took the stories of those experiences with it. But the church was now spreading through a very different culture than the one it had started in, a culture that had been shaped by Greek Philosophy.

And Greek Philosophy was not happy with just experiencing things. It had to analyze and categorize. It had to explain everything. And so there was a great clash of ideas that went on for centuries as the Greek philosophical mind tried to make logical sense of the church’s experience of God. It did not succeed because the human mind cannot truly comprehend the nature of God. But it did eventually manage to grapple with it enough to agree to the doctrine of the Trinity.

It was a remarkable achievement. The Trinity, with its internal contradictions and paradoxes, can almost take us to a state of mind where we feel like we just might be able to grasp the nature of God. But it has also left us with the impression that our job as believers is to understand and explain God and it is not. Our job is what it has always been: to encounter the unknowable God.

Setting That Aside

So, on this Trinity Sunday, I would propose that we set aside logic and reason. Put away the shamrocks, the liquid, the solid and the gas and whatever other ways that people have tried to explain it and let us go back to where it all started.

Our reading this morning from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians is the oldest written text that refers to what would come to be called the Trinity. This letter was written, after all, before any of the gospels. Paul was just writing a letter to one of the churches that he had founded, trying to help them sort through their many problems.

As he came to the end of the letter, he was looking for a way to sign off that would be meaningful to them. And so, he wrote, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

Those are almost certainly the first words referring to the three persons of the Trinity ever written. But Paul isn’t trying to explain the Trinity, is he? He isn’t offering a doctrine. He is giving a blessing to the people of the church – a blessing based on their experience of God.

Living Out the Blessing

That is where it all started. And that blessing, I would suggest, is what really matters. I don’t really care if someone can explain the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. That is not what proves to me that you are a faithful Christian. What matters is that you are living out “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.”

So here is my question for you on this Trinity Sunday. Have you experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus is himself the personification of this essential nature of God.

The Grace of Our Lord Jesus

If you have experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, then you know that you are forgiven and that you do not need to torture yourself over your regrets, your failures or your shortcomings. You can accept that you are enough.

If you have experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, then grace will also become a part of the way that you look at the world. When you are wronged by someone, you may certainly speak up and demand that justice be done for the sake of all, but you will also not carry around resentment that weighs you down. You will not contribute to creating future pain by demanding vengeance.

If you have experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, then you will not be scandalized by the thought that someone you disagree with or that you struggle with, or who has a lifestyle that you do not understand, can still be accepted by God. You will learn to appreciate even such people in the name of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Love of God

And what about the love of God? The love that is in view in this verse is the kind of love of a father at its best that existed in that ancient world. This is a father who knows how to take care of his children. This is a father who can love them for who they are and yet also can love the potential of who they could be.

 If you have experienced the love of God, then you know that you are accepted for who you are. You know that you have a God who is committed to love you and to keep all of the promises that have been made to you. If you have experienced the love of God, you know that you have worth because of the God who loves you.

The Communion of the Spirit

And that brings us, finally, to the communion of the Holy Spirit. The word that is translated here as communion is a very important word in the New Testament. It can be translated in various ways. It means fellowship. It means sharing, participation and partnership. So, what does it mean to experience the communion of the Holy Spirit? It actually has less to do with feeling some kind of mystical presence and more about living in community with your fellow believers.

So, how do you experience the communion of the Holy Spirit? You experience it by learning to trust the people in your church in practical ways. We experience it by supporting one another when we face challenges or problems. We experience it when we can courageously share our own struggles, needs and fears with one another. Experiencing the communion of the Holy Spirit is what makes us a church community. It is what empowers us to work together as a team to share God’s love with the world.

It is Christians who know these things who are faithful believers. They don’t have to be able to explain using Greek philosophy or logic what the Trinity is because they are living it. That is the true foundation of being a trinitarian Christian.

A bible reading for Sunday

Our service from this past Sunday.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/mXNGzGue9Xw

Hespeler, May 17, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1:3-14, Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35, 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11, John 17:1-11

The Christian church is one of the most successful organizations in the history of the world. From a handful of people – small enough that they could almost all be listed by name in our reading this morning from the Book of Acts – it grew over the next several centuries to become the dominant institution of the Western world and ultimately to dominate the globe.

And sure, in our own day, some of that dominance has fallen off. Apart from some significant exceptions, the church in North America is not experiencing overall growth these days. But it has been quite a run.

Going Back to Where it Started

And if it has fallen off a bit, maybe it is time to go back to where it all started. In our reading this morning, the author of the Book of Acts is telling us that story. He is describing the events that were foundational for the church, that set it up to become all that it was meant to be.

Next week, on Pentecost, we will celebrate the birthday of the church and how, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it came into being. But today, let’s look at the foundational advice that Jesus and others gave to the church to set them up so that they could hit the ground running.

I see three pieces of advice in this passage – advice that is just as relevant today as when this book was written. I call them the three W’s. And I hope that you will leave with all three of them on your hearts as you meditate on what God is calling our church to do today.

Finding Success

Our world has some very clear ideas about success and how it is supposed to be achieved. Endless books have been written about how to were up your organization for it. And these books focus on things like structure and strategy. It often comes down to having a clear mission and making sure that everything in your organization is built around reaching those goals.

So, I guess that is where we should start. Surely the first thing that Jesus gave to the church had to be an excellent strategy and a clear mission statement.

But is that what we see in our reading this morning? Not exactly. After spending 40 days with his followers and giving them all the proof that they needed that he was alive and had conquered death for them, he finally gathered them together to tell them what the next step in the plan was.

Wait

So, this is it, right, the big strategy session. We’re going to get the inside scoop on how the church is supposed to set itself up to gain power and influence people. That is how you succeed in this life, isn’t it?

So, what does Jesus do? “He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”

Let me ask you, does that seem like the kind of winning strategy that brings you success in our world? Where are the instructions to set up committees and programs? Where are the organizing principles and the grand mission statements and visioning exercises? Most of all, where is the budget? We all know that you can’t get anything done without a budget!

Contrary to Worldly Wisdom

This goes against everything we are taught about how organizations thrive. We want to get ready, to plan and prepare. We assume that the only way to get ahead in this world is to get busy. What kind of plan starts with wait?

But that is exactly what Jesus says to do. And that, for the most part, is what the first Christians do. It says that they “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” Their main activity was wait.

What are we to take away from this as we seek to build a strong church? Should we just disband all of our committees, scrap our mission statements and hold endless prayer meetings?

Well, not exactly. I do believe that there is a place for all these things. Having the right kind of structures in place does help you to be ready when whatever you are waiting for actually shows up.

Maintaining Structures

But it is also true that the church has a long history of pouring so much energy and time into setting up and maintaining our structures that we can miss hearing what God is telling us to do.

Every church has tendencies to do this in their own way. I have often seen how Presbyterians do it. Every year, for example, the Presbyterian Church gathers at a General Assembly with representatives coming from across the country.

The purpose of these assemblies, at its core, is to listen to what God is saying to the church. In the Reformed Church, we believe that when the church gathers in this way and when we pray, the Holy Spirit speaks to the church. And I know that that does happen; I have been there sometimes when the Spirit speaks to the church, and it is quite moving.

But when we do meet like that, there is also always a lot of business to do. There are budgets to be approved, committees to form and policies to put in place. And it is always a temptation to let all of that business absorb our attention. We become totally focused on it. And then, when we leave, we congratulate ourselves on having a good assembly if we have dealt with all the business efficiently.

And that is what we do at all levels in the church. We pour our attention and effort into organization, policies and meetings and congratulate ourselves for setting ourselves up for success. This first instruction of Jesus to wait on God’s Spirit gives us an important corrective to that tendency.

Trust in our Structures

Even more troubling, we tend to put our trust in those organizational efforts. Having proper policies and committee structures makes us feel confident that we are building a secure future. But Jesus doesn’t want us to trust in our efforts, does he? He wants us to trust in God, and so Jesus teaches us to wait.

So, the first W is wait. Now let’s turn to the next piece of advice that Jesus gives us. Surely the next thing that we need for success is a good marketing strategy. If we want our churches to grow as the early church grew from its humble beginnings, we obviously need to have some kind of plan to get the word out.

Marketing the Message

And of course, our modern world stands ready with all kinds of expertise in that area. So much of the world around us is geared towards getting out exactly those kinds of messages. We are all surrounded every single day with so much advertising and marketing that we often don’t even realize that it is being fed to us.

And we certainly see churches jumping wholeheartedly into this effort, engaging in multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns such as, for example, the “He Gets Us” campaign that placed $20 million ads in four of the most recent Super Bowls.

And even churches that have nowhere near that kind of money to throw around (like Canadian Presbyterian churches) still feel like they need to invest whatever effort and money they can into things like social media campaigns and even hire consultants to get their message out.

Jesus’ Communication Plan

So, what is the advice that Jesus gives us for this essential part of the plan? Well, here is what he says to the disciples: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

This brings us to the second W for a successful church: witness. Witnessing is a communication strategy, but it is not one that we usually associate with big marketing campaigns, is it? It is more associated with trials and law courts.

Based on Our Experiences

But here is the key thing about witnessing that I think that Jesus is pointing to. Witnesses can only speak about what they have experienced themselves. They have to speak authentically because that is the only thing that can give their message meaning.

That is, in many ways, the very opposite of a slick marketing campaign, which depends on form and style, not on people just being themselves.

What does that mean for the church as it spreads its message today? It doesn’t mean that we can have no communication strategies or that we cannot think and plan about how we want to use things like social media.

Honesty and Authenticity

But it is an important reminder that any message we put out to the world has to be honest and authentic. The church can’t just take polls and give people the message that they want to hear. We need to speak from the heart about what we have experienced of Jesus. That is what Jesus calls the church to do, and it remains the foundation of our success to this day.

So, first we are to wait. Secondly, we are to witness. What is the third W? That is not something that Jesus himself says, but something that is said just after he leaves.

Watching Heaven

Jesus ascends into heaven. The immediate presence of Jesus is being transformed into a more spiritual presence. But then something remarkable happens. “While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.”

What were the disciples doing at that moment? They were watching – gazing up toward heaven. And that is an attitude that the Christian church has often adopted throughout the centuries.

We fix all of our attention and energy on heaven and particularly on getting there someday when we die. For many people, that has become the entire point of the Christian faith – that it is only about getting a ticket to heaven.

Why Watch?

Now, the promise of an afterlife is real; I do not mean to suggest in any way that it isn’t. But I would say that when it becomes the sole focus of our faith, we have a problem. And so it is that two angels come to the disciples as they stand there and say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

This is an important warning about the first W. The first W was a command to wait – to wait on God and on the action of the Holy Spirit. But this makes it quite clear that our waiting should not be focused on another world or on a life after death. We are to wait on God for this world – wait on God who will show us where to go and how to bear witness to our experience of Jesus in this world.

In God’s Hands

What comes after this life, we can simply trust that that is in God’s hands. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority,” Jesus says to the disciples. And the two angels agree when they say, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

The message is clear. God will take care of all of that and you can confidently leave that in God’s loving hands. But you are here now and you all have some things to do.

And what have you got to do? If you leave today without knowing that, then I will have failed in my job today.

Wait, Witness

You are called to wait on God. You are to be ready to respond to the opportunities to show God’s love in this world that God places before you. You are to wait, expecting that God’s Spirit will lead.

And you are called to witness. You are to be ready to share from your own heart what you have experienced of your Lord Jesus whenever the opportunity arises. And you are to do that in Jerusalem (that is, where you are). You are to do it in Judea and Samaria (that is, where you have some influence). And you are to do it to the ends of the earth (that is, wherever God might send you).

Why Are You Watching?

And every so often, you need to check yourself and ask why you are wasting your time watching heaven. Your heavenly destiny is in the hands of your heavenly Father, and you can trust God for it.

So, will you remember them? Will you ponder them this week? Wait, witness and why are you watching heaven?

This is one of our bible readings this Sunday.