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Hespeler, November 30, 2025 © Scott McAndless – First Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44

The verse we read from the Gospel of Matthew this morning has caused no end of trouble for the church over the years. I’m speaking, of course, about the verse where Jesus says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

I’m not talking about the trouble that that has caused for our Trinitarian Theology. If we confess that the God we worship is one God revealed in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – we can’t help but wonder how one of those “persons,” the Father, can know something the another, “the Son” doesn’t.

That problem has generated endless discussion among Christians over the centuries, but I don’t think that is the biggest problem we have with this verse.

The Return of Christ

It is a reference, of course, to the second coming of Christ, which is the promise that human history is moving towards some great conclusion where God will finally intervene.

Humanity has, collectively speaking, made a bit of a mess of this world. That seems clear enough.

You may speak about spiraling violence made more destructive by ever more powerful weapons. You can talk about environmental devastation and the destruction of animal habitat. Or you can take note of the economic forces that push millions into an existence of unrelenting poverty, while the wealthy few hoard the abundance of this world.

These and other problems have made people of faith long for God to intervene and finally set things right since ancient times.

Positive and Negative

This can definitely be seen as a very positive thing. Just a couple of weeks ago, we read a beautiful image from the Prophet Isaiah of God creating a new world that is a joy and delight for all – a world where people actually get to enjoy the work of their own hands.

But there is no question that there is also a dark side to it. We see that in this very passage we read this morning. It is also an extraordinarily destructive event where those who are opposed to God’s rule are wiped out, like in the story of Noah’s ark. The destruction is also described as indiscriminate. With two in the field, one taken, and the other spared, two women grinding grain, one taken, and the other left.

Ambivalence Towards the Future

So there is a promise and a threat as we look towards the future. And that is, I think, a perfect reflection on how we actually feel living in the world these days.

As we look forward, we certainly hope that God is at work creating a better world. But, at the same time, how can we help but be worried that the road from here to there will be terrible and filled with horror, destruction and violence? The future, as has always been the case, is a place that provokes in us very contradictory feelings.

An Announcement

And given all that we cannot help but feel as we contemplate the future, what would you think if I came in here this morning, stood before the church and made an announcement?

“Hey everybody, I know that you are all worried about the state of the world, but I have good news for you. Jesus is coming back. I have studied all of these obscure Bible passages and made these intricate calculations, and I know exactly when he will arrive. He will be here on Sunday December 14, at 11:00 a.m. local time.

“Now, it is true that, between now and then, things are going to be very dark. There will be wars and rumours of wars and terrible signs all over the earth. But don’t worry. So long as you all do exactly what I say between now and then, you will be okay, and you will be received in God’s kingdom.

“Unfortunately, I can’t say as much for the people of that other church down the road!”

Am I Crazy?

What would you think if I came in and said something like that? I know you would probably not accept what I said. You would conclude that I am either mistaken, lying or going crazy. And I am kind of glad that that would be your response. That demonstrates that you are smart, that you are capable of critical thinking.

But can we say that everyone would respond to all preachers who said something like that in the same way as you smart folks? No, we cannot. We know for a fact they won’t. Certain preachers, with the right amount of charisma and speaking to the right audience and using the best media can definitely get people to believe them.

Joshua Mhlakela

It has happened repeatedly throughout history. You may recall that it happened again just a couple of months ago. South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela prophesied that Jesus would take true believers to heaven before a global tribulation on September 23^rd and 24^th of this year. Many of people believed him.

His message went viral on TikTok, with videos amassing millions of views. It was amazing how many people believed him and acted according to what he said. Some even continued to believe him when that date came and went without Jesus’ arrival.

That’s right. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you if you didn’t hear, but the world didn’t end on September 24. And then Mhlekela revised his date, admitting only that he had made a mistake by using the Gregorian Calendar instead of the Julian Calendar. And some even continued to believe and follow him then.

Jesus then also failed to show up on the new date, October 6-7. I’m not sure what Mhlekela said next because people stopped listening.

Not Getting Personally Sucked in

Now, I know that we might be tempted to laugh at people who fall for this kind of message. It makes us feel superior to think that we would never get sucked into this kind of prophecy.

It is good to inoculate ourselves personally against being taken in by this kind of thing, of course. We can do that by reminding ourselves that people have been predicting the end of the world and the coming of Christ for a couple of millennia now.

There must have been literally millions of date predictions that have come and gone at this point, and every single one of them has failed. At this point, it certainly does take someone with a very big ego to think, “Hey, they were all wrong, but I am the one who finally got it right.”

Damaged Caused

However the danger of these predictions extends beyond the individuals who fall for the message. They can do a lot of more generalized damage. In particular, they can give a lot of power to those who make them.

There is no question that fortunes have been made and empires and religions have been built around such predictions. Churches such as the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s  Witnesses got their start and built huge followings based on predictions that they were able to exploit.

In both of those cases, when the dates of their predicted ends came and went without anything happening, they adapted and changed so that the modern expressions of those faiths are quite different. But the initial leaders of the movements leveraged those predictions to become extremely powerful. In their pursuit of wealth and power, they caused significant damage to many who believed them.

Fear of the Future

The future is frightening. It is full of something that we naturally fear: the unknown. And fear is a powerful emotion, as anyone knows who has ever dealt with a phobia.

If you have a deep-seated fear like a fear of heights, or flying, or spiders, your logical and rational mind can be absolutely no help to you. Your rational mind may know very well that that railing is secure, that cars are much more dangerous than airplanes and that the vast majority of spiders are actually beneficial. None of that does not help you one tiny little bit when you find yourself face to face with something that terrifies you.

Well, to a certain extent, I think we are all naturally futurephobic. So, when somebody with a little bit of charisma comes along and promises to make the unknowable known, our response may not be entirely rational. Our emotions may take control of the situation.

So, it is not all that surprising that people do respond irrationally when someone comes along offering a clear path through future events.

Exploitation of the Fear

And people have been exploiting that human tendency since forever by offering clear predictions of what is to come and when. It doesn’t even matter whether their vision of what is coming is positive or negative. Anything that can give a sense of certitude will always seem less scary.

And Jesus understood that about us. He understood how vulnerable the fear of the future can make us. And Jesus abhors the very idea that anyone should use fear to attempt to control us. Jesus came to show us perfect love and, as the apostle wrote, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” 1 John 4:18

That is what Jesus is talking about when he says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” It is not that Jesus cannot know about future events. It is certainly not that he isn’t in the Father and the Father isn’t in him. (John 14:11) It is more like he chooses not to know.

Jesus Does Not Exploit Our Fear

It is his way of saying that he will not use the fear of the unknown to manipulate or exploit his people. And if Jesus won’t do it, neither should any of us.

But this is not just a rebuke to those who would set dates and use them to feed their own power. I believe it is a general rebuke to any church or any organization that tries to use fear to keep its people in line.

And that is a rebuke that falls very broadly. Fear is a tool that Christianity has employed again and again throughout its history. We have used the fear of hell and damnation, the fear of expulsion from the community, and even at times the fear of physical punishment to keep our people in line. We have used it to make people fear having the wrong thoughts as well as engaging in incorrect behaviour.

But just as Jesus refused to wrest control of what happens next from God, the church must refuse to take control over people’s salvation, thoughts and actions unto itself.

Letting Go of Control

Let us learn to say, “We don’t control who will be saved, that is only in the gracious hands of God.” Let us learn to say, “Our doctrines do not define for all time who God is; God defies all human definitions!” Let us add these and other understandings to the teaching that “the knowledge of the future is in God’s gracious hands alone.”

What I mean when I say that this verse in the Gospel has caused no end of trouble for the church over the years is that it will be tough to let go of what has been the church’s most effective tool. Fear works. It can motivate people like few other things can.

However, the history of people making predictions about the date of Christ’s return reveals that such motivation will inevitably lead us to a dark place sooner or later.

Facing the Future with Confidence

I know that many of you, as you look around at the state of the world today, find that there are many reasons to fear what may be coming at us. I understand that fear; I often feel it too. All I’m going to say is that I am not going to try and make you feel better by telling you how it is all going to go and when the end will come.

Such an answer might make you feel better in the short term, but I don’t believe that either of us will find that helpful in the long term.

Instead, I will seek to encourage you by telling you that the future is unknown, but that it is in the hands of God. And the God who holds that future is the “Father” revealed to us in Christ, who is compassionate, forgiving and full of grace.

Believing that, I promise you, will free us all up to build new possibilities for the future that defy all of the troubling signs that are in the world today.

We are closed Saturday, December 6th.

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Hespeler, November 23, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Reign of Christ
Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 46, Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 23:33-43

There is something strange that caught my eye in our reading this morning from the Gospel of Luke. It is a familiar enough passage – one that we have all read many times before. It is Luke’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus. And as he is nailed to the cross, Jesus is repeatedly mocked, but he is mocked for one thing in particular.

King and Messiah

The Jewish leaders mock him for claiming to be Messiah. Messiah is a word that means “anointed one.” And it was historically a word that Jews used to describe the king or some other person that God had appointed to lead or save the nation.

The Roman soldiers who are carrying out the execution don’t understand the subtleties of Jewish concepts, so they just mock Jesus for claiming to be the King of the Jews, which means about the same thing. And the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, agrees because he has ordered that a mocking charge be posted above Jesus’ head on the cross: “This is the King of the Jews.”

But that is not all. Even the criminal who has been crucified beside Jesus also mocks him with the same Jewish jibe that he has claimed to be the Messiah. Meanwhile, the one on the other side (perhaps because he is a Gentile) joins the Romans in assuming that Jesus has claimed to be a king. But he accepts this claim and assumes that Jesus is about to come into his own kingdom.

It is not surprising, of course, that all of these people have heard the rumour that Jesus has made such a claim. That particular idea about him seems to have spread widely.

Assumption About Kingship

So, I get that they want to make fun of Jesus for claiming to be a king. What is somewhat odd, however, is that they all make the same assumption about what that means. They all know what makes a king a king. They know what a king or a Messiah’s first job is. And their reason for thinking that Jesus is a failure is that he had not done that one thing.

So, what is that one thing? What has Jesus failed to do? Has he failed to establish an effective bureaucracy? Is the problem that he has not managed to pass any legislation? Has there been some public relations gaffe?

No, it is none of that. They know he is not a good king because he has failed at the number one priority of a ruler. He has not saved himself.

Priorities of Leaders

And it made me wonder. Is that really true? Is that what leaders are supposed to prioritize? Are they supposed to make sure to cover their own… back first and everything else comes after that?

So, I looked around at what leaders do today. And guess what, it turns out that the Jewish leaders, the Romans and the first criminal were right. The evidence is clear. The first job of a leader is to save themselves.

We see it in Ottawa these days. Our country is led by a minority government at the moment. And minority governments can fall at just about any moment, and the people in charge could cease to be leaders.

Primary Motivation

That’s why it seems as if everything the government does these days is motivated by one of two things. Either the government wants to avoid an election that they might not win, or it wants to make sure that any election it goes into will create a majority, which will mean that their position is safe for a long time.

And it seems to me that everything they do – every budget and piece of legislation is undertaken with that calculus. Sure, they hope that these things might do good for the country. Maybe some of it even does. But all of that takes a back seat to the number one priority – to save their own skin.

Across All Parties

I do not say this as a particular criticism of the ruling party. I know that any other party in the same position would do the same thing. It is how the system works. It is set up so that all who aspire to be leaders will always seek to save themselves first. And the justification often goes like this: if we are not in charge, we can’t save the country. So, we have to save ourselves first; everything else comes after that.

As is often the case, much of this is seen even more starkly in the United States right now. You may wonder sometimes why Republicans these days do not challenge their own president, even when they do not agree with his policies. So many of them have been so controversial that they cannot simply agree with all of them.

The reason they don’t challenge him is because they know that if he wishes to, he can remove them from power by backing someone else against them in a primary election. They know that their first priority is to save their own jobs.

And the opposition party is no different. Every move they make seems to be calculated to save their own seats in Congress first.

Mockers Seem to Be Right

So, I guess what I am saying is that, if we look at leadership and how it works in our world to this very day, the critics and mockers in our Gospel reading this morning are absolutely right. Jesus is a failure as king. He has proven it by failing to save himself.

And if we are going to buy into the way leadership works in our world, it seems that we need to join in the mockery. Let’s point our fingers and laugh at Jesus, the worst king ever!

Claiming Christ as King

Ah, but I know that you haven’t come here to mock Jesus today. In fact, you are here on the day known as Christ the King Sunday – the day when the church has, for centuries, gathered to celebrate the kingship of Christ and to pray for his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

Perhaps, if we want to claim Christ as our king, it is time for us to embrace a new understanding of what it means to be a leader.

Learning from Jesus

I realize that our political leadership is not listening in today. Our renewed understanding of leadership may not change what happens in the parliaments, congresses and legislatures of the world today, but perhaps if we start following the example of Jesus in our lives and in our churches, something new could spread from there.

So what can we learn from Jesus in this passage that may give us a new perspective on leadership today? What traits do we see in him that may help us to understand how his failure to save himself is the essence of true leadership?

Forgiveness

Well, the first thing that stands out to me as I read this story is this. His immediate response, even as he is crucified, is to say “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” instead of concentrating on saving himself.

Now, the very idea of forgiving your opponents – especially when they are in the process of attacking you – is something that seems unthinkable to modern leaders. Instead, we see the opposite. Your critics attack you, what do you do? You double down. If your political enemies make some mistake or gaffe, you are absolutely going to capitalize on that.

You will mock them relentlessly, but you will never ever forgive them. But Jesus does. What does that teach us? It teaches us that resentment and holding on to grievances against your political enemies does have power. But it is mostly a power to prevent true leadership.

How Lack of Forgiveness Affects Us

In fact, it tends to mean that we get stuck. The fact that so much of our politics today is bogged down in endless studies and negotiations and produces so little change for the better, probably has a great deal to do with how hard our leaders cling to their grievances and enmities.

But the power that Jesus unleashes here – the power of forgiveness – always opens up new possibilities. Here, on the cross, Jesus creates a whole new reality with the forgiveness of his enemies. It is the new reality of the kingdom of God; it will transform the world.

I would encourage you to embrace this power of forgiveness. As you let go of whatever resentments you have been carrying, you may find yourself becoming unstuck. You may find yourself set free to embrace change and new beginnings. That is the kind of leadership that Jesus demonstrates to us on the cross.

Service

Beyond forgiving his enemies, Jesus does something else that is supremely unleaderlike. He serves. Far from saving himself, he literally sacrifices himself before their eyes. That is something that we see rarely in a leader in our age.

We’ve already discussed how leaders seek to save themselves first. But let’s pause for a moment to consider why they seek to save themselves. It is often not the reason that they tell themselves – that they have to remain in charge in order to do the good that no one else will do.

Knowing Our Worth

Usually, the reason has much more to do with the fact that they begin to associate their worth and their identity with the power that they wield. To let go of it is to let go of everything that makes them them. So, they refuse to let go.

But Jesus can do that because he knows his worth. He knows who he is better than anyone who has ever lived. That is precisely why he can give himself up when the time comes.

And that is true strength. Those who cling to their power or position because they need it to feel right about themselves are the ones who are displaying a deep weakness.

The strength that Jesus shows in this is something that all of us can tap into. For we have an identity that no one can take away from us. We are children of God, and we have worth that we carry with us precisely because of what Jesus has done for us in this very scene.

That is why you don’t need power or position to matter. And ironically enough, that is the very thing that can make you a good leader. We need the kind of leaders who are confident enough in themselves to put the good of the people or of the church or the institution first, before their desire to keep their position.

Confidence in the Future

And finally, the thing that makes Jesus the kind of king we need is that he can look to the future with hope and confidence. When the criminal on one side of him is the only one to defend Jesus against his mockers, and declares that he has done nothing wrong, he turns to Jesus with a request: “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.”

And Jesus doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t get caught up in the questions that might weigh us down. He doesn’t seek to define the kingdom and when it will come. He doesn’t worry about that even though he himself has said, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.” Mark 13:32

None of those details worry Jesus because he knows the future is firmly in God’s hands. He doesn’t need to control it or even understand it personally. So he can reply to the man, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

True leaders don’t need to control everything and everyone to feel secure. They know the power that is found in placing trust – trust in God and trust in others. We need leaders like that.

Jesus, King of This World

Jesus is the king who brings us to the reality of the kingdom of God. It is not just an otherworldly reality like the one that the criminal on the cross went to that very day. The kingship of Jesus is meant to teach us all how leadership can better work in this world.

I hope that we can all take his lessons of forgiveness, self-sacrifice and hope to heart. If we can embrace that sort of leadership, it can really be the start of new possibilities for our church and far beyond our walls.

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Hespeler, November 16, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 65:17-25, Isaiah 12, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19

The gospel of our modern age, I sometimes think, could have been taken from our reading this morning from the Second Letter to the Thessalonians: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

It is the gospel preached, not by the church (or at least not by all churches), but by governments all over the world. As they cut their budgets and impose their austerity, the justification is often exactly that: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

Welfare Reform

It is part of our political history in Ontario and Canada. Many years ago, when people fell into a situation where they did not have sufficient income to live, they would be enrolled in programs such as Unemployment Insurance and Welfare, and the government would step in to support them.

But then governments all over the world found that those kinds of programs were getting too expensive and carried out major reforms. Here, as a result, Unemployment Insurance became “Employment Insurance.” Welfare became “Workfare.”

Those name changes were not just window dressing. The programs were reformed in ways that pushed people into work. You had to be actively engaging with the working world in order to qualify. You had to be actively searching or training or moving towards gainful employment in some way to access those benefits.

Putting up Barriers

And there is a lot to be said for that approach, to be sure. There is a lot of wisdom in that maxim of “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” But if you ever have to navigate such programs, you quickly learn that they don’t assist people towards work as well as you might hope.

They are often more about justifying denying somebody benefits because they fail to jump through hoops than actually helping them get work. It is enough to make you wonder whether the reforms were more concerned with cutting budgets than getting people working.

But, despite such problems, the campaign has continued ever since. It certainly has in the US. The system that covers Americans who simply can’t afford medical insurance there is called Medicaid. And the Medicaid system was designed to cover people, including children, who can’t afford insurance in any other way. Now, they may be working, but they do not have insurance offered by their employer, and they are not paid enough to afford it themselves.

Medicare Cuts

 Recent legislation passed in the United States has cut funding to Medicaid. But the way they cut it is telling. In fact, the government argued that it reduced the budget without cutting coverage because they only introduced work requirements. So, rather than, “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,” it has become “Anyone unwilling to work should not get health care.” That is how it has been sold.

But this is a little bit different from the creation of Workfare programs. In those programs, there is an attempt to assist people in finding and preparing for work. They don’t have any of that in the cuts to Medicare. It is simply a matter of them introducing all of these hurdles that you have to go over or through in order to prove that you are employed enough to get Medicaid.

These hurdles mean that, even if you are employed, you might be denied because you can’t prove it. In some cases, people may not have the time to jump through the hoops of getting it because they work too many jobs. And the simple fact that they believe that the introduction of this work requirement will mean that they can spend less on it kind of gives away the game. They are simply using these requirements to create reasons to deny people the coverage they need.

So, while I do see wisdom in the teaching that “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,” Ifind that there are a lot of problems with how it is turned into policy.

A Biblical Principle

But, of course, this connection between working and eating is not just some connection that politicians have come up with. It is an idea that comes from the Bible. So, as a good Christian who believes that the Bible is a gift given to us by God, I have to deal with this passage. I can’t just throw it out because I see some problems with the way it has been implemented.

So, let’s ask the question, what was going on in that church in Thessalonica that led to the imposition of the rule that “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”?

Assumptions about Laziness

We may read it today with our modern assumptions about who is lazy. Whenever I hear people talking about those who are lazy these days, they always seem to be referring to those who are poor. If people are poor enough to need to access food banks or other support programs, the assumption that many people make is that they somehow lack initiative or a work ethic.

They will assume that, mind you, without knowing anything about such people. They may actually be working very hard. Perhaps they are caregivers, perhaps they work two or three part-time jobs because none of their employers give them enough hours. They may be doing vital work that just doesn’t pay. But it’s just easier to assume they’re lazy than to examine any of that.

Those are the assumptions – often false assumptions – that we make in our society, driven by decades of political rhetoric. But did people in New Testament times make the same assumptions?

Ancient Assumptions

It the ancient world, they thought about work very differently. Work was something that was done by slaves and by poor labourers. But it was actually considered a shameful and embarrassing thing if you were upper class and you were caught working.

For example, in order to be in the Roman Senate, you could not work. Anyone who was involved in trade or manufacturing in any way was automatically excluded. The only way to get in was if you owned enough land that was worked and managed by slaves. But you didn’t do any work yourself.

The vast army of slaves and labourers who kept the Empire running really had no choice but to work hard all the time. The people who didn’t work were the rich and what’s more, they were proud of not working.

Communal Meals

The context of the comments we read this morning from Second Thessalonians has to do with communal meals. It was common in the Early Church for the people to gather on a regular basis for a meal to which all would contribute according to their means.

There were many slaves and poor folk in those churches who could contribute little to these meals, but it was not because they were lazy. Their status in society meant that their work was unpaid or poorly paid.

But there were at least a few in those churches who did have the means to contribute more. And their contributions probably meant that these communal meals were the best meals that the poor folk had all week. But these richer members were far more likely to be the people who did not work because they did not need to.

Labourers Get Priority

So, in that context, what does it mean to say that “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”? It means that, when the communal meal is served, those who have spent their days labouring should get priority, while those who contributed so much of the food should hang back because they have not spent the day working.

The letter goes on to say, “For we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work.” This is also directed at the wealthier members of the church. They are busybodies – that is to say that they think that they get to tell everyone else what to do. They figure that that is their privilege. Because they have leisure and because they provide so much to the church, they get to control what everybody else does. They are busybodies.

Paul’s Clashes

These are the people that apostles like Paul clashed with all the time – the wealthy supporters of the church who thought that, since they would often feed any visiting apostles and have them stay in their houses, they should be able to tell the apostles what they should preach and teach.

Paul resisted this and mentions his resistance often in his letters. And it was one of the reasons why he insisted on working and earning his own bread in order to remain independent. That’s what it means in this passage when it says, “we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labour we worked night and day.”

Rich Busybodies

So to be clear, the problem in Thessalonica was not that there were too many poor people who were too lazy to work and earn their living. The problem was that there were some rich people who thought that, since they didn’t have to work for a living, they should be able to tell everyone else what to do.

And the rebuke that is given to those people is this: “Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.” But that is perhaps a deceptive translation. What it literally says in the original language is this: “We exhort them… to be quiet about what they do and eat their own bread.”

In other words, they should not be going on and on about all they do for the church and, since they have lots of their own bread at home, they need to let others go first for the communal meal.

Wisdom for Today

So, if you are taking this verse from 2 Thessalonians as a biblical justification for modern policies that seek to punish or limit benefits for poor people because they are assumed to be lazy, I do think you need to have a closer look at the situation that the letter was addressing.

But that is not to say that this letter doesn’t have anything to say about our modern poverty issues. When you look closely at what it is saying, it is trying to value and honour those who labour for their living.

We are not actually all that good at honouring those who work for a living. That is why, though productivity has risen greatly over the last decade, wages for those who labour have not kept pace.

Instead, we have seen that those who do not do the labour are able to benefit the most from the work that is done. CEOs in particular are the ones who have seen their compensation soar.

Modern Busybodies

And sure, I’ll admit that the CEOs do work for that money. But on average, they are paid 200 times as much as the average employee in Canada. 200 times! Do you really think they work 200 times harder? Is the average employee 200 times lazier? No! The CEO may bring other things to the company, like connections or strategies, but not multiple times more work. And so, the money paid has become unhinged from the amount of work that is done.

But even more disturbing, the overpaid wealthy have become busybodies. They have become the ones telling everyone else how they ought to live and setting the priorities of the entire system. A rebuke may be needed.

Isaiah’s Vision

In our reading this morning from the Book of Isaiah, the prophet is imagining a perfect world – the coming of God’s kingdom on Earth. “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;” God says through the prophet, “the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight.”

But note how he describes what it is like to live in such joy and delight. Does he say, “Nobody will have to work anymore, that we’ll just receive a basic universal income and we can just laze around all day? No, he doesn’t see it that way at all.

Instead, he says this: “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat, for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain or bear children for calamity.”

Working in the Kingdom of God

Wow! Isaiah’s ideal of a perfect world is not one where nobody works, but it is of a world where those who do the work actually get to enjoy the fruit of their labour. And yes, now that I think of it, that does sound like a pretty amazing kind of world.

Too bad we seem to be working so hard at building a world where (to make an example of just one company) thousands upon thousands of Amazon employees work long hours and yet don’t earn enough to own houses or have enough to eat. Too bad we are working on building a world where Jeff Bezos and folks like him are the ones who seem to enjoy most of the fruits of the labour of those who work long hours.

Come to enjoy some Christmas music!

Watch sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/jxG3AHRAGUw

Hespeler, November 9, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Remembrance Sunday
Joel 3:9-12, Micah 4:1-5, Psalm 98, Luke 20:27-38

Imagine for a moment that you are a peasant living in the fifth century BC in Judea. You spend your days working hard to take care of your little plot of land.

In order to do that, you have just a few pieces of precious equipment that have been passed down in your family for generations. You have a long pole with a metal hook on the end. You use this to prune the branches of your olive tree and your fig tree so that they are able to produce fruit.

Your Equipment

You also have a plowshare – a little bit of metal that you attach to the end of your plow so that it is able to dig into the earth and create furrows to plant your seed.

But that is about it. There are no other metal tools on your farm. These ones should ideally be made of iron. I mean, this is the fifth century BC, and the Iron Age started centuries ago!

But have you seen the price of iron these days? So, maybe you envy your neighbour’s iron plow and pruning hook, maybe you borrow them whenever he’ll let you, but yours are unfortunately only made of bronze.

A Call to War

So there you are, just managing to get by and feed your family using the tools that you have. But one day all of this is disrupted by a call to war. Some enemy has been identified, and they must be defeated and so the call has gone out to all the people. “Proclaim this among the nations: Consecrate yourselves for war; stir up the warriors. Let all the soldiers draw near.”

Except there is one problem. The nation doesn’t have any warriors or soldiers sitting around and waiting for that call. It is a simple agricultural nation; there is no standing army. The call for warriors is a call to you! “Let the weakling say, ‘I am a warrior.’”

And the standing army is not the only thing lacking. There is also no military budget. (You think Canada underfunds its military; well, you have no idea!)

No military funding in ancient Judea means no supplies, no weapons, no war infrastructure. So, what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to prepare yourself to stand on the battlefield? Well, you are expected to “beat your plowshare into a sword and your pruning hook into a spear.”

Abandoning Your Family

So let me get this straight. You want me to abandon my family and farm. You want me to leave them to fend for themselves while I go and risk my life on the field of battle, from which I may never return or may only return severely wounded.

And you also want me to take the only tools that I have, and take a great wooden hammer and beat them against a rock until they are somewhat straight and useless for farm work, but are poor substitutes for proper weapons. And you want me to take those tools away from my family so that they can’t even work the land while I am gone?

Dealing With the Call to War

That is the situation that is described in our reading this morning from the Prophet Joel. We do not know what particular battle the prophet is summoning the people to or when. But when you receive that call, you may not even care where you are going. Your country is calling on you, and you are going to go even if you have to provision yourself and even if you go at great risk.

Reading Joel’s prophecy today does feel fitting, doesn’t it? Today and on Tuesday, we are certainly remembering many who responded to that very sort of call. They put their lives and careers on hold. They left families and loved ones behind and went at great personal cost because their country needed them and had called. We have nothing but gratitude and love for those who have done that.

Ambivalence

And yet we also feel somewhat ambivalent on these occasions because we recognize that loving and appreciating warriors is not the same thing as loving or appreciating war.

And I think that Joel’s call recognizes that ambivalence. Not only does he highlight the fact that families are left destitute, that farms are left to go to weed, and the tools for working them are destroyed. He also calls the nations to a specific place called the “Valley of Jehoshaphat.”

War is Hell

The Valley of Jehoshaphat is a deep valley on the east side of Mount Zion in the old City of Jerusalem. It is also called the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, or Gehenna. As you may know, Gehenna was the word that Jesus used when he spoke about hell.

That’s right, Joel is not talking about the physical valley near Jerusalem, he is using it as a metaphor. He is calling the nations of the world to Hell because he knows that war is hell. And here you thought that U.S. General Sherman was the first one to say, “War is hell.” Well, as is true of many things, the Bible said it first.

Micah’s Call

On this day, we do thank the warriors and recognize all that they and their families have sacrificed. But we don’t celebrate war itself. We pray for peace. We pray for a world where that kind of service and sacrifice is not needed.

And that takes us out of the Valley of Jehoshaphat to the top of a nearby mountain. Another prophet, the Prophet Micah, heard the call of Joel and he asked, “But do we really have to go to the Valley of Jehosphaphat – the Valley of Hell?” And he decided that the answer to that question was no. He decided that God might be calling us to a mountain instead.

“In days to come,” the Prophet Micah declared, “the mountain of the Lord’s temple shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”

Which Mountain?

The mountain he is talking about is just a little bit to the west of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. It is the one called Mount Zion. The Temple of the Lord, the God of Israel stood there in that day, but it is where the Islamic Dome of the Rock stands today.

But he is not really talking about that literal geographical spot. He is talking about an idea. The mountain he is talking about is the opposite of the Valley of War and the Valley of Hell. It is rather the symbol of another possibility for humanity.

New Possibility

For on that mountain, a new possibility comes into focus. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.”

The promise is that no more shall the tools of this world be beaten out of shape and used for mutual slaughter. The war machine will no longer claim the bodies of our youth to feed its insatiable appetite. The tools will be repurposed to what they were always meant for, to till the land and to build up the strength of our families.

That is the promise of the mountain. It is not a particular place. If it were a place – if it were that particular mountain in Jerusalem which, to this very day, remains a piece of land that people are willing to fight and kill for, that would only lead us back to the Valley of Hell, where we cannot escape eternal conflict. It is the idea of a mountain where we can seek another possibility.

Our Choice

And my point today is simply this. Both of those calls are there in the Bible. We have the call of Joel, who calls us to the Valley of Jehoshaphat and to use all of the creative power of this world to slaughter one another. But we also have the call of Micah, who calls us to the mountain where we can use the creative power of this world to build up our families, where war is so unthinkable that we don’t even need to learn how to do it anymore.

The Bible lays both of those possibilities before us. God lays both of those possibilities before us. The message is clear, isn’t it? We must choose which call we are going to answer. Will we go to the valley, or will we go to the mountain?

The fact that both of those prophecies are there in the Bible is important. That tells us that neither is inevitable. We are not fated to go to either the valley or the mountain. It is up to us to choose. That is the reason that the calls of both of these prophets have been preserved for us. But which one will we listen to?

The Lure of the Valley

The answer should be obvious. The devastation of the valley is clear. Yes, there are deeds of bravery there. Yes, there is much heroism there that we can celebrate. But the wastefulness of the valley is terrible. It sucks up so many plowshares and pruning hooks that are meant to be used so that the earth may thrive. We should choose the mountain.

But we also know that humanity has chosen the valley again and again throughout its bloody history. In fact, the valley is often the easier choice. It is easier to be led by the desire to dominate, the impulse to hate someone because they are different and the thirst to possess the land.

Judgement and Arbitration

So, if the valley is constantly drawing us in, how can we choose the mountain instead? Well, Micah tells us what it will take. He tells us that it takes the hard work of judgement and arbitration. “He shall judge between many peoples and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away.” In the Bible, judgement and arbitration always include the hard choice to not simply defer to one party because they are strongest or wealthiest.

Too often in our world, we look at the party that has the most weapons or the most economic leverage, and we decide that it is easier to let them have their way.

If we let Russia have land in Ukraine because they want it or if we let Israel build luxury resorts in the Gaza Strip because we don’t want to challenge them, that is not judgement. That is simply a way of bowing to tyranny and it will always and inevitably lead us right back into the valley.

Sharing of Resources

The second thing that Micah says will draw us to the mountain is this: “They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” That is the key promise that God gave to the ancient people of Israel. And it is a simple one.

It is a symbol of having enough. If you were able to sit underneath your vine as it produced your grapes and your fruit tree as it produced your figs, you had enough.

What it is not, however, is an image of inordinate wealth and prosperity because if everyone has their own vine and fig tree, then there are no huge disparities of wealth between the rich and the poor. It is not that I get one fig tree to sit under and Elon Musk gets a trillion.

What then do we need to construct on the mountain? We need to construct a more egalitarian society. We need to offer ways to those who have more to share it.

The Dangers of Inequality

What, do you suppose, does that have to do with peace and with making sure that the swords get beaten into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks? Much more than you may think. At its root, so much of the violence of this world is driven by that deep drive to have more than somebody else.

And it is often those who are seeking to build up their investments and turn their profits who drive us into the wars, though they are not the ones who fight them. They are only too happy to let the poor peasants beat their pruning hooks into spears and their plowshares into swords.

The choice for this world could not be starker. Will we go to the valley or will we go to the mountain? Let us pray, and let us work our way towards the mountain. Let us not give in to the strong pull of the valley. The ancient prophets of Israel understood the choice. I hope we do too.