Plan to join us on this special Sunday as we kick off our Hespeler Arts Palooza! This will be a period of 6 weeks when we will have numerous opportunities to explore our creative side. Sign up sheets for the various workshops/lessons will be available on this last day of sign up. Included in HAP will be:
Start your week off with a 30 minute walk; Monday mornings, January 27 - March 2, in the gym from 9:15 am - 9:45 am. Walk at your own pace.
Explorations in Music for kids (and one for everyone) - 5 weeks from Sunday, February 2 - Sunday, March 1.
Watercolour workshops led by Debbie from Debbie Ellis Watercolours, for adults
Birdhouse building workshop for kids and their parents
Knitting & Crocheting lessons on Tuesday mornings, from January 28 - February 18
Milk Bag Weaving, also on a Tuesday morning
Hymn Sing & Tea
Open Mic Rehearsal
Open Mic
Master Class with Laura Pudwell, accompanist: Gregory Gibson
Mini concert & gallery
Watch your bulletins and newsletters for more information./
Next Sunday, on January 19, 2020, we will be joined by the Rev. Dr. John-Peter Smit. Rev. Smit is the Regional Minister for Congregational Health with the Synod of CNOB (our synod). He will share his wisdom with us during the worship service by preaching the sermon and then, immediately after worship, we will move downstairs for a workshop.
He will help us to better envision our future together as a congregation and how we can all participate together in bringing that vision to light. Rev. Smit has a long history of successfully helping congregations do this kind of work and so we hope that you will plan to come out and fully participate in this workshop. This workshop is for everyone (not just the leadership groups) and we hope that everyone will take part.
Coffee tea and some light snacks will be put out to sustain us through the process but the workshop will not extend far into the afternoon. Quiet activities for children will be available in the nursery during the workshop.
I believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. I believe that he is the Son of God and the one who has revealed God to us in a uniquely powerful way. But holding such belief can be a challenge sometimes. Being a believer doesn’t mean that you never have doubts or questions. Being a believer is not the same thing as being certain. And so I have thought, as I’m sure you have also thought at times, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to know rather than simply to believe? Wouldn’t it be nice to be presented with the evidence right there before your eyes and be put in the position that left you with no room to doubt?
Wouldn’t it have been nice, for example, to have been
there for that episode we read about in the Gospel of Matthew this morning? There
doesn’t seem to be any room for doubt in that scene. John the Baptist is so
certain that Jesus is the one that he’s been looking for, that he even protests
that it would be inappropriate for him to baptize Jesus because that would
imply that, in some sense, Jesus was less important than John! But even the certainty
of John is blown out of the water by what happens immediately following the
baptism: “just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were
opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting
on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I
am well pleased.’”
Now, wouldn’t it have been something to witness that – to see the Spirit
of God descending just like a dove flies down from the sky, to hear that voice
speaking so clearly? I mean, surely that’s about as close to proof and evidence
as you can get. And there clearly must have been a lot of people who were
there. The gospel writers speak of large crowds going out to see John the
Baptist despite his remote location. So hundreds, if not thousands, could have
witnessed the incredible event. The result of such an experience must have been
that huge numbers of Judeans and Galileans left that day in the certain and
secure knowledge of exactly who Jesus was and what he had come to do.
Except, well, if you
continue to read through the gospels from this point in the story, that’s not
quite what seems to have happened, is it? Oh, there is no question that people
are very interested in what Jesus does in his ministry. He is able to gather
huge crowds most everywhere he goes. But, as interested as the people are in
Jesus, they hardly seem very certain about what he represents. In fact, I seem
to recall an episode later in the gospel, when the disciples report back to
Jesus about what the people have been saying about who he is and there are all
these crazy ideas floating around – “Some say John the Baptist, but others
Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (Matthew 16:14) So
apparently there were a lot of people speculating about who Jesus was, but,
with all of that talk, no one seemed to be saying anything about the words that
reverberated from heaven in front of all those witnesses. It wasn’t being
rumoured all over the place that he might be the Son of God.
And, what’s more, we are told that even John – even the Baptist
who Matthew tells us was so certain when Jesus was standing in front of him – was
soon racked with doubts on that very subject. We’re told that, later, when he
was in prison and waiting for his own execution, he became so discouraged that
he sent word to Jesus asking him outright whether or not he was the one. Is
that the kind of thing that you would ask after hearing the voice of God
booming directly from heaven telling you exactly who Jesus was? I mean, if you
have heard the voice, you have no need to second guess what you see Jesus doing
afterwards, do you?
So, the story of the baptism of Jesus with its very public
confirmation of who Jesus was, leaves us with a big question mark. If it all
went down like that, why wasn’t everyone completely certain about who Jesus was
throughout his ministry? I can think of two possible answers and I suspect that
both are correct to a certain extent.
The first answer is that proof is not the fix for all our faith
issues that we think it is. Just because, at some moment in your life, you are confronted
with something that absolutely convinces you that God is real and that God is
present in some powerful way, that doesn’t mean that you will never again doubt
such realities. It is simply not true that, the more proof you have of
something, the less doubt you will have about it.
Doubt is something that is simply in our human nature. And it is
actually a gift and a very good thing. Doubt is what makes the researcher not
just accept the established results of previous science, and instead push on and
keep asking questions until a new theory and better answer is found. If
humanity had never struggled with doubt, we would have struggled with far more
ignorance as we settled for insufficient answers.
But we are sometimes tormented by doubt too. Even when you have
been convinced of something that is really important to you – when you have
been given ample proof, for example, that somebody loves you – you can still be
racked with doubts about their love. Why? Simply because the answer to the
question, “do they love me?” is so very important to you. Well, the things you
believe about Jesus fall into much the same category. They are the kinds of beliefs
that people build their lives around. And, because of that, it may not matter
how much Jesus proves to you that he’s there and committed to you, you may still
doubt it just because it matters that much.
So actually, I do not find it impossible that John and the others
gathered at the Jordan River really did hear a voice booming down from heaven
that identified exactly who Jesus was and yet could have still walked away from
such an experience doubting what their eyes had seen and their ears had heard.
But that is all based on the assumption that everything that
happened by the Jordan was plain for everyone to see, but as I look closer at
what the passage actually says, maybe we ought not to be assuming that. Matthew
is actually rather careful in how he describes the events of that day and the
more I read it, the less certain I am about who saw and heard what.
In fact, you can kind of get lost when you delve into the grammar
of Matthew’s description. “The heavens were opened to him,” it says, “and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a
dove and alighting on him.” But who is he in that sentence? And
is the he who saw it the same him upon whom the Spirit alighted?
I suspect that Matthew quite intentionally kept all of that rather vague.
Matthew doesn’t actually tell us who saw what.
Even more strange, he also doesn’t actually tell us who heard
what either. All he writes is, “And a voice from heaven
said…” You’ve all heard the classic philosophical
question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, does
it make a sound?” Well, Matthew kind of leaves us with a similar philosophical query.
What does it matter what a voice from heaven says if we don’t know who heard it?
But an even better question is what does the voice of the Lord resounding from heaven sound like,
and how would you recognize it? There are, of course, many stories in the Bible
of people hearing God’s voice. The Old Testament prophets, for example, are always
talking about how God told them this or God told them that. And I always used
to imagine that just like any other conversation except that you couldn’t see
God when God was speaking, only hear. But the more I study the prophets, the
less convinced I am that it worked like that.
As you look at how they operated, you realize that, most often,
when they speak of what the Lord
said to them, they are reflecting on the events happening around them or in the
larger political sphere and are detecting some message from God in those
things. It would seem that hearing God’s voice is a little bit different from most
every conversation you have ever had.
We read a psalm together this morning, the beautiful 29th
psalm, which is all about hearing the voice of the Lord. “The voice of the Lord is over the waters;” it
declares. “the God of glory thunders, the Lord,
over mighty waters. The voice of the Lord
is powerful; the voice of the Lord
is full of majesty.” But, as you continue to read, you start to wonder what
exactly the voice of the Lord is
as it does things like break cedars trees, make forests and mountain skip, flash with
fire, shake the wilderness and make oak trees whirl. Soon it becomes clear enough,
what the palmist is actually describing is a powerful thunderstorm and the
effects it has on the countryside.
What the psalmist is saying is that, at least sometimes, the voice
of the Lord can appear in the form
of a powerful storm. But think of what that means for a moment. If God can
speak through a powerful storm, then it is quite possible for one person to
witness that storm and think, “Wow, that is a powerful storm,” and somebody
else might see that same thing and respond, “Yes, Lord, I have heard what you
are saying.”
The voice of the Lord is always and has always been open to
interpretation. I have thought about that a lot recently as I have reflected on
what has been happening in the world. Speaking of storms and God speaking
through storms, how about the firestorms that have swept through Australia over
the past few weeks. They have been huge and unprecedented. As of last week, an
area of that country as large of all of Southern Ontario – from Windsor in the
west to Tobermory in the north to Peterborough in the east – all of it has been
destroyed by fire. That is huge – some would say apocalyptic – in scale.
There is no question that something significant has happened in
Australia, but whether or not there is a message in it is a matter of
interpretation. One person (such as, apparently the Australian Prime Minister) might
look at the devastation and say, “Wow, that is terrible and horrible and everything,
but we don’t really have to change anything about how we live.” And somebody
else looks at the same thing and may hear the voice of the Lord saying, “Maybe
it is time for everyone to make some serious changes.”
Now, one way of seeing this might be right, and the other might be
wrong. Presumably either God is speaking or God isn’t. And I certainly have my
thoughts about which interpretation is right. But, because everyone has a stake
in what the interpretation is, there is no answer that is unmistakable, by
which I mean people always seem to find ways to make mistakes when it comes to
the voice of the Lord.
So, if you are looking for certainty about God, about Christ and
who he is, the answer seems to be that it doesn’t quite work like that. If you
were there on the day when John baptized Jesus (an event that I certainly
believe really happened) I’m not sure what you would have seen. Maybe you would
have seen a dove fly from a nearby branch, maybe the clouds formed some unusual
formation. Maybe you might have even heard thunder or some other unusual sound
rumbling from the sky. Somebody who was there saw all of that and heard the
voice of the Lord in it, but would you have? And if you did, would you have
believed? Maybe. I hope so, but still that would be different from being
absolutely certain about who Jesus was.
I understand why you would like to be certain. It is natural. But
clearly that is not how God works. And there is a good reason why. I actually don’t
think that people operate all that well from a position of certainty. When
people are completely certain about their position, that is when they turn into
tyrants. That is when, even sometimes with the best of intentions, they can
easily become persecutors or oppressors of those who disagree with them.
There is a humility that comes from struggling with doubt (at
least when you’re honest with yourself about it) and so God doesn’t give us
certainty. God invites us to faith and though it may be harder, I do believe
that it is better.
Stay tuned for lots of opportunities to explore your creativity! Starting on Sunday, January 26th and running for 6 weeks. Something for everyone, adults and children, week days and weekends. Musics and arts!
There is actually a whole lot to be said for doing everything in the way that it has always been done. Take a Sunday morning worship service for example. When I am planning a worship service that follows the normal weekly pattern, it is always a lot less work. I can just copy and paste what we’ve done before and then make some changes as needed. I know where to go to find hymns and prayers and other elements of the service. Even more importantly, there is a psychological comfort and ease in working according to pre-established patterns and forms.
But just try planning an unusual or innovative worship service. You find yourself basically reinventing the wheel. You have to go back and rethink the function of a prayer or a litany at a certain point in the service and then write the thing according to that purpose. That is a lot more work. And that is just when you’re preparing for the thing. The actual worship service itself takes even more concentration because it’s just a lot easier to lose track of what’s next and how it is supposed to go.
And if that’s true about a worship service, it is doubly true about any new or innovative project or event that you might consider in the church. The first time you do something, you have to invent or create just about every aspect of what you do. There is also much more potential for something to go wrong in some unanticipated way. After you’ve done a program a few times it can be so much easier and a lot less work.
For example, as you will see as you continue to read through this newsletter, we are about to embark on a bold new endeavour in the coming weeks; we’re calling it Hespeler Arts Palooza. Though this is something that builds upon some past successful events, the scope of what we are attempting is quite new and rather daunting. It hasn’t even started yet and we are already feeling the stress of it as we work on schedules and finding innovative ways to get the word out to the people we are trying to engage.
So, given that new is hard, you have to ask the question: why even try it? Why not just keep doing things the way that they have always been done? Of course, there’s also the added benefit that church people often take a great deal of comfort from what they are used to and what they have experienced before and are more likely to criticize or even complain when dealing with the unfamiliar. So why even bother trying anything new?
The reasons are many, but I would like to share a few with you from my perspective.
Just because something worked in the past, doesn’t mean that it is the best or only way to do it moving forward. In fact, since the church finds itself within a rapidly changing society – a rapidly changing world! – we find ourselves in a situation where what worked in the past might be increasingly irrelevant to society. But, if we never try anything new, we will never be able to compare what worked in the past with what works today.
Yes, there is a comfort to be found in doing what we are used to, but we must ask, is comfort what we are called to as followers of Christ? No. We are called to lives of faith and trust in God and stepping out and taking a risk by trying something new is indeed an excellent way to exercise our faith muscles.
While there is indeed comfort and ease in routine, there is an excitement that comes with trying something new. We cannot constantly be in such an excited state, of course, because it can wear us down, but seasons of excitement are needed to keep us engaged and interested.
New initiatives mean new ways to connect with people. Think of it in a travelling metaphor. When you are travelling over familiar territory with people that you know, the group tends to behave in very self-sufficient ways. There is no need to stop and ask anyone else for directions. You all know where and how to get the supplies that you need. But when you are travelling over unfamiliar territory, you are often forced to deal with other people and you have to deal with them in a place where you are not the expert. There is a humility and a mutuality that is found in unfamiliar territory, attitudes that would serve the world well in the coming in this young century.
But, of course, the most important reason for trying something new is that we are emulating our God who says:
You all know what it is like at the turn of the year. Everybody else is doing it, so you tend to look back and look forward and at least pause to think about what happened in 2019 and what you’d like to happen in 2020. Many of us even make resolutions – setting out our intentions to be different in the new year. And of course, the people who run gyms and personal training companies and dieting plans all know it. Every year they sign thousands of people up for the services that they provide.
But, even though people always seem make the best of
plans on the first of January, it seems just as common for people to struggle a
bit on the follow-through. So, five days on, it doesn’t seem too out of place
to ask how you are doing. How are you following through on
that exercise regime, that diet plan, that other resolution that was going to
revolutionize your life in 2020?
If you are doing well, that is great. But it’s only been
five days; I think we all know that the real test is likely yet to come. And I
don’t mean to mock anyone’s best intentions, but I don’t think it is any secret
that, if you do follow through 100% on your New Year’s resolutions, you are
definitely beating the odds. Most resolutions collapse into so much dust before
the first month of the year is over.
It is almost as if making a decision on an arbitrary date
on a calendar created by a man named Gregory doesn’t have the magical power to
bring about all of the changes we really crave in our lives. Well, as much as I
applaud everyone’s best efforts, I think that is exactly the case. But that
doesn’t mean that the change you may want is out of reach for you. And actually,
the instinct is good; the idea of making the change at the beginning of
something is good. It is just that we may be reaching for the wrong beginning.
There is something very special about the way that John
decides to begin his gospel story of Jesus. You see, the Gospel of Mark decided
that Jesus’ story began when he was baptised – that you really didn’t need to
know anything about him before that happened. Then Matthew and Luke came along
and said, “Wait a minute, you have to go back earlier than that to understand
Jesus. You have to know about what happened when he was conceived and born.”
Then it was like Matthew and Luke turned to John and
said, “There’s no way you can start your story any earlier than that.” And John
said, “just watch me!” He decided that you really can’t understand who Jesus is
and what he did if you don’t go back way before Jesus was born – back to the
very beginning of the world, in fact. “In the beginning,” he begins. And
it is, of course, a very intentional echo of the opening of the Book of
Genesis. But, instead of saying, “In the beginning when God created the
heavens and the earth…” he says, “In the beginning was the Word.”
Now, entire books – whole libraries – have been written
about what John meant by that phrase, “the Word.” It refers, of course, to the fact
that, in the Genesis story, God creates by speaking things into
existence – by saying, “Let there be…” But it also means more than that.
It refers to the biblical notion that the ideal of Wisdom (who is, interestingly
enough, personified as a woman in the Proverbs) was actively present with God
in the work of creation. (Proverbs 8:22-31)
Even more surprising, it is a reference to a central concept of ancient Greek philosophy. You see, John wrote his Gospel in Greek, and the Greek word he uses there, the word that is translated in English as word, is the word logos. But logos is not just the common, everyday ancient Greek word for a word. It was a special word for word that was mostly used by philosophers to talk about deeper ideas of meaning and understanding. That’s why we find it as a root in scholarly English words like biology, technology and logic.
So,
in just the opening few words of his gospel, John introduces us to all sorts of
interesting ideas and concepts about this world and how it came into being. But
actually, the most amazing thing that he has to say about the beginning of all
things is yet to come. He reveals – almost in passing, almost as if were a
minor point – that this Word, this way that God spoke all things into being,
this notion of divine wisdom, this organizing principle of Greek philosophy –
was not something apart from God, but was, in fact, indistinguishable from God:
“and the Word was God.”
But John is not quite finished blowing our minds, because there is one more key step in this story of the work of the logos in creation. A few lines later he reveals that the Word became flesh and it is clear, as you continue, that he is talking about the main character of this Gospel – that this pre-existing Word of God is one and the same as Jesus of Nazareth. And that statement left a puzzle that Christians have spent the ages arguing over and trying to understand – how could Jesus possibly be the totally human man who was known and loved by his friends in Galilee and yet also at the same time the pre-existing Word of God who was from the beginning and was also, somehow, God?
But
I am not going to try and unravel all of the mysteries of the Holy Trinity today.
In fact, I don’t really think that it is a mystery that can be completely
understood by human thought and reason. I just want us to note, for the moment,
that John believed that to truly understand Jesus and why he came and what he
accomplished, you need to go back not just to his baptism, not just to his
birth, but to the very beginning of all things.
And
that brings us back to us and the struggles that we sometimes have to be and
become the people that we want to be. As I said, we seem to feel this pull to
want to make resolutions or to improve ourselves at the beginnings of things,
like on the first of January. It is a correct impulse; the problem is just that
we are looking towards the wrong beginning.
Here
is what the Letter to the Ephesians says about you becoming your best person –
the person that God always intended you to be. He says that God “chose us in Christ before the foundation
of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” He is saying that the story of your
transformation didn’t start at the beginning of the New Year but rather at the
beginning of time itself. And you may say, “How can that be? I wasn’t even
around way back then. I think I would remember something like that.” And no you
weren’t. The apostle is not suggesting that you were a pre-existent being who
was there at the beginning of all things and you just don’t remember it.
But he clearly agrees with the author of the Gospel of John that
Jesus is that kind of pre-existent being and, because Jesus was there and you
are in Christ today, there is a sense in which you were there too. But Ephesians
adds new depth of understanding to what it was that Jesus was doing there at
the beginning of all things. The idea seems to be that Jesus began his great
work all the way back then. Jesus’ work of bringing the human and the divine
together, of wiping away everything that could ever separate you from God and
of recreating you as the best person that you can be, is not tied to just one
moment in time – not even the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross or of the
resurrection. It is a project that has always been intended to take all of
eternity to be fully realized.
And I think that this is one idea that has always been lacking in
our plans to improve ourselves. Our thinking about making ourselves better is too
future oriented. We try to become better people by suppressing who we have been
– by seeking only to forget or overcome the mistakes or regrets of the past.
This causes a problem because we end up trying to become brand new people who
are completely disconnected from everything we have ever known or been. I
believe that this is actually a formula for failure. You cannot embrace change
without knowing who you are or where you have come from.
And that is why Jesus is able to engender the kind of change you
truly need in your life. Jesus doesn’t just know who you may become, Jesus is
also intimately connected with whom you have been. But I am saying more than
just that Jesus is understanding of the mistakes and the errors that you’ve
made in the past or the ways in which you failed to measure up to your best
intentions. The Letter to the Ephesians is saying that Jesus was there when you
– everything that you were ever meant to do or be – were just a gleam in God’s
eye. Jesus was in on the planning phase of your life. And Jesus has been
pulling for you to become the person you were intended to be ever since. In
fact, Jesus likely has a better sense of who you are supposed to be than you
yourself have.
Now, I do believe that this is a notion that has often been
misunderstood and even abused down through Christian history. This notion that
God has a plan for people’s lives, for example, has been used to make people
stay in situations where they are abused or mistreated. Slaves, for example,
were often told that it was God’s good will for them that they remain slaves.
Women in abusive relationships often receive the same message to this very day:
this relationship is God’s will for you and therefore you have to put up with
the abuse. That is a lie!
The whole point of this teaching is not that you have to accept
the situation into which you were born or in which you have been placed. That
would be to say that the world or that society or that the economy is what has
predetermined what person you are supposed to be. No, the point of this is that
Jesus knows you better then the world knows you, better than your society know
you and better than the expectations that other people have put on you. Indeed,
Jesus also knows you better than you know yourself and that is how you can
discover, even later in life, new depths or new understandings of what God is
calling you to be. This is about you learning to be true to your true self no
matter what the world might think or what the world might say.
Now, what does all of this have to do with the efforts that we
make to change or improve ourselves especially at the beginning of a new year?
The tradition of simply making New Year’s resolutions is, I believe, ultimately
a self-defeating thing. If you set out into the new year armed only with your
willpower to create a better you, you will inevitably fail sooner or later and
the discouragement that follows will only set you back.
I would suggest that more is needed than just decision and
willpower. You need to go back, not just to the beginning of the year, but to
the very beginning. Jesus was with you there and I would suggest that you begin
by meditating with Jesus on how God sees you and what God is calling you to be.
Do not let the fear of what other people might think get in the way. Do not
waste your energy trying to conform yourself to what other people think you
should be, but be transformed into that vision that God has for you. That is
how true change, the change that you may crave, will come into your life.
We had a great taco dinner (on Friday, December 27th) - thank you, Randy & Erin for gifting us dinner. Then we enjoyed some time together with a Secret Santa game and Christmas crackers.
