News Blog

163rd Anniversary Celebration at St. Andrew’s

Posted by on Thursday, October 18th, 2018 in News

 This coming Sunday, October 21, 2018, St. Andrew's Hespeler will celebrate our 163rd anniversary as a congregation. We will mark this anniversary, as we always do, by celebrating our heritage, but this year we will try to look at that heritage in some new ways and take a look at our connection with the people who inhabited the land before us. We will pray for healing and reconciliation for both indigenous and non-indigenous people in Canada.

We will have some very special guests that will help us to celebrate as we learn and grow. We are very pleased to welcome:

Theresa McGregor: Drum and Song carrier, Moon Bundle, Earth and Water Protector and Traditional Women’s Dancer

Mino Ode Kwewak N’gamowak (Good Hearted Women Singers) will sing and dance with Theresa.

Sasha Sky & Shannon Pride of the White Owl Native Ancestry Association who work to bring healing to aboriginal people and others.

After worship at 10 am, the celebration will continue downstairs in the Fellowship Hall.

A Potluck Lunch will follow at 11:30. Please plan to bring a dish to share. All are welcome.

The Blanket Exercise which will follow the lunch at noon. The Blanket Exercise is a moving experience that has helped many people understand how aboriginal people have experienced our common history. It will be led by Sasha Sky and Shannon Pride


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Administrative volunteer positions available

Posted by on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018 in Clerk of Session



Effective October 19, 2018 Jan Bancarz will resign as Administrative Assistant.

The Session of St. Andrews has instructed the Human Resources committee to find a suitable replacement. This will take some time to accomplish.

Session has implemented a temporary volunteer schedule to have support in the office and complete administrative tasks in the interim.This volunteer schedule will run from October 22 until December 31, 2018 or an Administrative Assistant is found.

Your help in filling the schedule will ensure we have people to respond to visitors and maintain our open-door policy.  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 3-hour shifts are available for volunteering. Taking a day or a few days will allow us to keep the office open to the public. 

 THANK YOU

Please contact Rob Hodgson or  Rev. Scott McAndless for volunteering or more information on this program.

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When “Fanboys” Change their Minds

Posted by on Monday, October 15th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 14 October, 2018 © Scott McAndless
John 20:19-29, Acts 20:7-12, Psalm 16:1-11
I
f there is one thing you need to know about Simon, it is this. He loves Apple. I’m not talking about the fruit here; I’m talking about the company. Simon doesn’t just like Apple products, Simon doesn’t just exclusively use Apple products. Apple products give meaning to his entire life.
      I mean, you probably know some people who always have the latest and greatest model of the iPhone®, who you never see without the ends of Apple Earpods® hanging out of their ears, who do all of their work on a Macbook Pro®, read and create with an iPad® and an Apple Pencil®, but I’m not just talking about that. For Simon that is only the beginning. He does that almost without having to think about it.
      No, Simon goes out of his way to make sure that every part of his life bears the Apple logo on it. His entire home is run by his HomePod®. Any appliance that is not able to connect to it is not the kind of appliance that Simon wants to have. Any television show that is not available on AppleTV® is a show that Simon doesn’t need to watch. Simon doesn’t have a life, he has iLife® and that is good enough for him. That’s Simon. If you know that about Simon, you will know everything there is to know. You will know how he will react in every situation because he will do whatever Siri® tells him to do. He once drove into a ditch because Apple Maps® told him to.
      Do you know a Simon? I have known a few. And if you don’t know someone who is that big of a fan of Apple products, maybe you know a fan of some other brand: Honda, Nike or maybe Tim Hortons. So, if you don’t know Simon, just imagine for a moment that you do. Can you see him there – wearing his Apple Watch®, Think Different® t-shirt, sporting a tattoo of an apple with one bite out of it? You know the type.
      So let’s say you know a Simon. You know that Apple is the organizing principle of his life until one day it isn’t. Yes, one day Simon comes along holding an Android phone and tells you that he is now Android all the way. What would you think? Wouldn’t you assume that something serious – maybe even earth shattering – had happened in Simon’s life to make such a radical change? You might not know what, of course. Maybe he had his iPhone® explode in his hand or maybe he had an Android phone literally save his life. You might not know what, but you would know with certainty that something undeniable had happened.
      Okay, now consider this. You have eleven guys – just them and a few of their friends – that you have always known one thing about. Most of the time they are pretty normal people. They work, they play, they eat with a few strange habits but they are just regular folks. But there is this one odd thing about them. One day a week they treat completely different­ly.
      I’m not just saying that they take that day off (which is in itself a pretty extraordinary thing in our 24 hour seven days a week world). It’s that that day is completely different for them. They won’t do anything. If the fire goes out in their house, they won’t even relight it. They get on an elevator that day, and they won’t even press the button to say which floor they want to get off on. They are just freakishly strange about this day, so much so that the way that they keep that day gives meaning and definition to their entire week. You might even say that the way they keep that day gives definition and meaning to their entire life. That is how significant it is to them. That day of the week, by the way, is Saturday.
      And then, one day, you run into them and everything has changed. All of a sudden, they don’t care about Saturday at all. It is just another day for them. All of a sudden it’s all about Sunday. Sunday is the day that means the world to them and that gives meaning to their entire week and their entire lives. You’ve got to figure that something very important and undeniable happened to them on a Sunday.
      That is the quandary we have when we look at the early Christian movement. The early Christian Church, in the years following the death of Jesus, was entirely made up of Jews. And, as Jews, these were people for whom the keeping of the seventh day of the week, Saturday, meant everything. It wasn’t just a day off for them, it was, as I have portrayed, an observance that gave meaning to their entire existence. And yet the evidence clearly indicates that, all of a sudden, all of these Jews just stopped observing the Sabbath. Saturday suddenly meant almost nothing to them. And instead, it was suddenly all about an entirely different day of the week; it was all about Sunday.
      People don’t do that, don’t make that kind of radical change, without a very good reason. You have to assume that something happened to them, something very powerful, that made them look at the entire week and at their entire lives in a very different way.
      So, the obvious question when you look at the early church is this, what happened? The short answer to that question, as explained in our reading from the Catechism this morning, is the resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. That is the one thing that changed everything for the church. In fact, I happen to believe that perhaps the greatest evidence we can present for the reality of the resurrection of Jesus is that that is about the only way we can possibly explain why a bunch of Jews would make such a drastic change in their lives. Only something as extraordinary as a resurrection could have convinced them to do that.
      But I know how we usually think of that. We think of the resurrection as a one-time event. It only happened on one Sunday, Easter Sunday. But I am not sure that the early Christians experienced it exactly like that.
      This morning we read the accounts of three Sundays in the life of the early church. The first Sunday that we read about, in the Gospel of John, was, of course, a story of Easter Sunday. “When it was evening on that day (that is, Easter day), the first day of the week (that is, Sunday), and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews...” So what we have in this passage is the church, in the form of the disciples gathered together, on a Sunday. And when the church is gathered in this way, they have an experience of the Risen Christ. “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”
      I realize that you’re going to tell me that there is nothing very extraordinary about that. It’s Easter! Of course the disciples had an experience of the Risen Christ; that’s what Easter is about. But stay with me a moment here because I don’t think the gospel writer is quite done in his explanation of what the church really experienced, because what is the very next thing that he says?
      “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.”[1] so we jump immediately to the next Sunday, the next meeting of the church, as if nothing significant has happened in the meantime. And, indeed, I think that John is saying that nothing has happened. I think it’s important for John to say that the church next experienced the risen Jesus when they gathered again on a Sunday.
      There are other stories of the church meeting with Jesus after his death that happened on Sundays. There’s one at the end of the Gospel of Luke where two disciples are walking along on a Sunday and are joined by a third who explains the scriptures to them and then all three sit down to share a meal and, when the stranger breaks the bread, the others suddenly recognize that the risen Jesus is among them. That also is a description of the early church meeting on a Sunday where two or three are gathered, the scriptures are preached and bread is broken. That gospel writer, Luke, is also saying that this was the regular Sunday experience of the early church.
      We read one more story how about the church gathering on Sunday this morning. This one happens many years later as told in the book of Acts, but everything in this story sounds very familiar. It’s Sunday, the church comes together to break bread, and there’s even a preacher there to preach a sermon. In fact, in a way that no doubt resonates with many Christians down through the centuries, there is a preacher who has a tendency to preach a little bit long. I mean, I’m sure that nobody in the entire history of this church has ever thought the sermon was too long so maybe you can’t relate to that, but I have heard that many Christians do think that sometimes. So we have it all, a Sunday gathering, breaking bread or communion, and a really, really long sermon. It is a stereotypical Sunday church meeting that Christians from down through the ages would recognize.
      But there is one truly extraordinary element in this Sunday meeting as told in the Book of Acts. It happens when Eutychus falls asleep while Paul drones on and on. He plunges from the third-story window apparently to his death. What is important about that story? Is it just another great miracle story among many miracle stories in the book of Acts? No, I think there’s something special about this one because it happens when the church is gathered on Sunday.
      The writer tells his story very carefully at this point. He doesn’t say that Eutychus is actually dead, merely that everyone thinks that he’s dead. And when Paul comes along he doesn’t explicitly say that Paul raises the dead boy to life. It could be that Paul is saying that the others are merely mistaken in thinking that the boy is dead. The author avoids saying in so many words that it is a resurrection miracle, but he certainly gets across the point that the church experienced it as a miracle. The emphasis is certainly on their experience and feelings in the last phrase, “Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted.”
      I think that this is the author’s way of saying that, even many years after the first Easter, the church was still experiencing the power and reality of the resurrection of Jesus when they gathered on Sundays – in this case, of course, experiencing it very practically in the salvation of Eutychus.
      I’m not saying that it happened so dramatically every week, of course, but I would say that the New Testament writers are in agreement that the experience of the risen Christ was not just limited to one Sunday or just to a short period of time. It was something that kept on happening over and over again each Sunday as the church continued to meet, to pray, to listen to scriptures and break bread, they discovered the risen Jesus among them in many ways.
      It didn’t only happen on Sundays, of course. I have no doubt that there were some pretty amazing experiences that happened on other days of the week. But it was on Sundays, when they gathered, that it happened most consistently and reliably for the early church. And that is the only thing that can really explain how a bunch of Saturday fanboys were willing to change everything that they had ever been and had ever told them who they were to suddenly start treating Sunday like it was the only day that truly mattered.
      But here’s is the thing: it doesn’t just need to be them. Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified by Pilate so long ago, is nevertheless still just as alive today as he was for the early church. If they consistently experienced the power of his resurrection week after week when they gathered, then why wouldn’t we? The bottom line is that there is no reason why we shouldn’t. Indeed, I know that it still happens sometimes. I have experienced it myself and I have heard of the experiences of many others. Such experiences are a gift of God, come in many forms, and they are received (like all of God’s gifts) by faith. There is no reason why you should not be able to have such an experience of the risen Jesus.
      In fact, I would suggest that the main reason why it doesn’t happen more is because we have largely convinced ourselves not to expect it. In our stubbornness, we have closed ourselves off from the experience by the ways in which we are always rationalizing everything, focusing on the negative and trying to keep control of everything. But just think if you, like those early Christians, were to approach each Sunday with an overwhelming expectation – if you were to walk into church each week not knowing where you would find the risen Jesus (perhaps in a reading or in a word that was shared, perhaps in a beautiful piece of music, in the face of your neighbour, perhaps even in a piece of bread and a cup of wine), but knowing that he would be there for you. Maybe you would also learn the true meaning of Sunday.
     


[1] Some translations here have “Eight days later.” It is true that that is what the original Greek text says, but, in the context, the first Sunday seems to be counted as the first day, eight days later would mean the next Sunday. I believe this translation is correct.


Sermon Video:

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An Opportunity to Experience the Blanket Excercise

Posted by on Friday, October 12th, 2018 in News

Please join us on Sunday, October 21, 2018 at noon for



The Blanket Exercise is a workshop that explores the nation-to-nation relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. Its goal is to build understanding about our shared history by walking through pre-contact, treaty-making, colonization, resistance and reconciliation. Participants will also be able to smudge before and after (if they wish) and participate in a discussion around what the exercise was like for them.

Our special guests to assist us in this workshop will be Sasha Sky and Shannon Pride of the White Owl Native Ancestry Association.
All are welcome to come and participate in this moving event. Join us at St. Andrew’s Hespeler, 73 Queen St. E., Cambridge, ON in the Lower Fellowship Hall.

Join in a Pot Luck Lunch 11:15 am if you wish.

Children are invited to “Explorations in Music” which will include playing and making instruments during the Blanket Exercise.

Hosted by St. Andrew’s Hespeler (standrewshespeler.ca) with the White Owl Native Ancestry Association (wonaa.ca)

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Gratitude

Posted by on Tuesday, October 9th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 7 October, 2018 © Scott McAndless Communion, Thanksgiving
Genesis 1:27-2:3, Matthew 12:1-14, Psalm 92:1-15
I
t was late on the sixth day when the Lord God turned to the newly created humanity and said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” And the Lord God said to Godself, since this responsibility for the Earth has now been passed on to the humans, then I declare that this work of creation is finished. What more do I need to do? The humans can be in charge. I’m sure that will all work out fine. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.
      And very truly did humanity hear that command and they said one unto another, “Okay, you heard the Creator, we’ve got some work to do! There is a whole world out there to have dominion over and that adds up to a whole lot of filling and subduing. And yes it will be hard but we will subdue the land itself and break it with the plow and the shovel and the backhoe so that we might have dominion over it. We will make the earth produce food and great wealth in precious stones and metals and we will make the land itself a great treasure – real estate, we will call it – and it will become so valuable that it will produce millionaires and even billionaires.
      In the same way we wi ll exercise our dominion over the beasts of the earth, we will take them and make them to work for us and we will breed them for our food. We will exercise our dominion over the seas by extending great nets to sweep up all of the fish, we will dig out harbours for trade and pour all of the waste we produce along the way into the waves even until a giant garbage patch of floating plastic forms in the Pacific Ocean.
      And our dominion over the air? Well, that might take some time, but eventually we will build great machines that will enable us to fly, like the birds, on the winds themselves, we will take our craft even to the stars and there we will build great satellites which will constantly send information from one place to another and that information also will make huge amounts of money for someone.
      And so it was that humanity went to work subduing the land and the sea and the air. And lo, it was very good for it created great amounts of wealth and prosperity for many, if not for all.
      But the Lord God looked upon the people that he had made and saw that, though they were fulfilling their destiny, there was something that was just not quite right. For their subduing work brought them great profit and wealth and, while this was a good thing, they found that the more they worked and gathered wealth to themselves, the less they seemed able to rest and to enjoy these good things that they had. Instead they felt a compulsion to gather ever more and more for themselves.
      Yes, they had good things, but, as they looked around, some of them saw that their neighbours had more than they did and so they were not satisfied. And there were even some who were able to gather to themselves so much wealth and so many goods that they would never be able to spend or use them all, but still they were not satisfied and they used the influence and wealth that they had in such a way us to favour themselves and they became even richer.
      And while they were doing this, they were taking everything that they could from creation. They did not see the need to let the earth or the sea or the air rest or regenerate. They were constantly seeking ways to make the earth produce more and more. They did not rest from pumping their waste materials into the air and the sea. And they pushed the animals and the machines and the men and women who did their hard labour to be ever more productive and even used the technology to make it impossible for people to escape their work and the expectation of productivity it just never stopped. But that was good, right? They were supposed to subdue and have dominion. Wasn’t that what their Creator said that they were made for?
      When the Lord God saw this, he recognized that his work of creation was not quite finished. One more thing had to be created. And so it was that the Creator opened up the books of creation and said, I’ve got one more trick up my sleeve. And on the seventh day, the Lord God created rest.
     
      I suspect that many of us are not quite sure what to do with the creation story in Genesis chapter one. Most have probably come to the conclusion that we can’t just read it as a simple historical account. And we at least struggle with the notion that the entire universe was created in six 24 hour days. But I think that is okay because I don’t believe that it was ever meant to be read in that way. It’s not a story about the origins of all things so much as it is about the purpose of all things and it is especially about the meaning and purpose of being human beings in this world. And that commission that God gives to the newly created humans on the sixth day – the command to multiply, subdue and dominate – actually tells me a lot about how we approach our humanity. I wouldn’t just say that God told us to live in this world in that way, I believe that it is a drive that is built into every single one of us. We are in this constant quest to have more and more. We seek to build up wealth because we feel insecure or because it makes us feel important and, left to ourselves, we are not inclined to stop.
      I do believe that God placed that drive within us, but God also created us, as the creation story makes clear, with a need for sabbath. That is why we are here. Today is Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful opportunity to stop for a moment and be thankful to God and to the earth and to one another for all the good things that we enjoy. But is being thankful going to be enough? Thankfulness, at least as we often practice it, is little more than a pause in the midst of our work of subduing and dominating in this world.
      How often do we experience thanks like that? When someone patronizes your store, for example, contributing to the wealth that you are accumulating, it is not uncommon, at the conclusion of the transaction, for you to say thank you. It is nice, of course, it is polite, but it doesn’t really change anybody and is often quickly forgotten.
      You are working on something and ask someone to grab you a tool that you need. They hand it to you, you pause for but a moment to say, “Thanks,” and then you are immediately back to work. Again, that is nice, but is that really what thankfulness is all about.
      I am glad to see all of you here today, that you have taken time out of what I know are your busy schedules of subduing and having dominion in all kinds of ways, to say thanks – thanks to God, thanks to everything that has contributed to your prosperity. But is that all it is – is that all we need – a brief pause in all our work to say thanks? The way that we use that word, thanks, may not quite capture what we actually are in dire need of here today so let me propose another word: gratitude.
      Thanks can just be a word, but gratitude is an attitude that lingers long after the sound of a word fades away. Thanks can be very polite thing to offer, but gratitude can transform you and the person to whom is it is given. Thanks is sixth day enjoying the blessings of what you have accumulated through your work. Gratitude is Sabbath rest in what you have received whether or not, by the measures of this world, what you have received is considered to be enough.
      So let me give you a challenge and encouragement on this Thanksgiving Sunday: be thankful, yes, but even more practice gratitude. The word gratitude comes from a Latin word that means welcome, pleasing and praiseworthy. Gratitude means welcoming everything that you have and celebrating it as a pleasing and praiseworthy gift of God. It is the attitude that God has when God looks out over God’s work at the end of the sixth day of creation and saying, “It is good.” In fact, it is God’s expression of gratitude on the sixth day that actually makes it possible for God to rest utterly and completely on the seventh.
      God doesn’t do what we would do and worry about the job that he was doing all week. He doesn’t lying awake saying, “Did I give the octopuses too many legs?” or “What was I thinking making those mosquitoes?” or “What will people think of me when they see the platypus?” No, God knows the goodness in creation and so can rest in whatever has been made. That’s gratitude.
      It doesn’t seem to come as easily for us as it does for God. We go about our job of subduing and having dominion but never seem to be satisfied because we cannot receive whatever we receive with a simple attitude of gratitude. We constantly second guess the work that we do, worry that others will judge us for it and most of all we seem to have a hard time learning to be satisfied with what we have. If we could learn to practice gratitude, perhaps we could find true rest – sabbath rest – in this world.
      It is kind of odd, when you think about it, that God should give his people an actual commandment, an order, to take a break – observe a sabbath. You would think that we should have figured that one out ourselves – that you shouldn’t keep anything going, much less yourself, forever without a rest. But God knows us better than we know ourselves, God knows that we will tend to drive ourselves to continue to subdue and have dominion because we’re afraid that we won’t have enough or that somebody might do better than us. God knew that you would need to learn to rest in what you have.
      I know that sometimes people have treated the sabbath commandment as a burden and as a reason to criticise other people. Jesus ran into that a lot. People criticised him for letting people enjoy themselves with a little bit of free grain or for actually relieving people’s pain and suffering on a sabbath. Jesus rightly pointed out to them that they were really missing the point of the sabbath. Sabbath was not about burden, it was about freedom. It was not about obligation, it was about gratitude. Sabbath was made for humans because we need it, not to hurt us. God gave you sabbath in order to save you from your natural tendency to work to excess. It is an invitation to trust God enough to rest in what you have. That is how God always works, by the way: salvation by grace through faith or trust.

      So, when you gather with your loved ones today or tomorrow or, I hope, soon, yes do pause to say thanks – thanks to God and thanks to the earth and to each other. But don’t just leave it there. Practice gratitude together. Take the time to celebrate whatever you have, to welcome it, to savour it. Recognize that whatever you have is a good gift, a divine gift. It is very good. Rest in what you have today, without even thinking about what you might need tomorrow. This is gratitude.
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A Very Special Sunday: Thanksgiving, World Communion and More!

Posted by on Friday, October 5th, 2018 in News

In an event happens only every decade or so, this year both World Communion (celebrated the first Sunday of October) and Thanksgiving Sunday (celebrated the day before the second Monday) will fall on the same day this year. All of this will make for a very special service this week.

  • We will celebrate Thanksgiving with traditional hymns, message and prayers of thanksgiving.
  • We will celebrate the common communion table that is shared by all Christians of every time, place and denomination.
  • There will be some very special music including:
    • Agnus Dei (by George Bizet) Given in praise by Margaret McKenzie-Leighton 
    • Love is Like a River (By Jeff Silvey and Suzanne Jennings)  Given in praise by Joyful Sound! with solos by David and Bob!
  • The Minister, Rev. W. Scott McAndless will preach on the practice of Gratitude.

It is also our custom to offer our people an extra opportunity to support our outreach work on Communion Sundays. This Sunday special offering envelopes are being made available to support the community lunches that we offer every second week to those who come to the Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank distribution.



Also, a couple of final reminders:
  • Ballots to elect Elders and Deacon need to be returned to the church for counting by the end of the service this Sunday.
  • Questionnaires for the upcoming Presbytery Visitation can be returned this Sunday and need to be returned to the church by the end of worship on October 14.
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Race to Erase Poverty – crunch time

Posted by on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018 in Clerk of Session




 Hello: St Andrews

Well all was spiffy with the preparations with our teams up until the point we lost a member. Each team must have 4 participants and unfortunately, through a situation beyond control, one of the LSOM members had to withdraw.

Well October 13th is two weeks away and we desperately need a replacement team member. Please reach deep and help us out.


There are perks in joining us 

 - free Tee Shirt (to keep)
- free breakfast & lunch 
- riotous fun for a few hours 
-  a warm glow from helping out 
-  stress free exercise for the mind & body
         
Please join us for a day of smiles, laughs and groans which supports a great cause.  Hope Clothing                                        

"Team"  Light Side of the Moon: 




Team" I am a cheeky Monkey; 



 Join us please........Rob



  


        
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…and out came this calf

Posted by on Monday, October 1st, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 30 September, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Exodus 32:1-8, 15-24, Romans 1:18-23, Psalm 135:1-5, 14-21
T
he Bible tells us that, even while Moses was up on the top of Mount Sinai and receiving the Ten Commandments and the Law from the very hand of God, the people of Israel were down below breaking one of them – breaking it hard. That commandment was the second one, the one that said, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
      Even as God was dictating (or inspiring or however it was actually transmitted) that law, Aaron was apparently hard at work melting down gold and molding it into the form of a calf, a beast that is found on the earth beneath. God, we are told, was not pleased. In fact, God was so angry that he was willing to wipe out the entire nation right there and then and Moses had to talk him out of it.
      But let me play the devil’s advocate for just a moment here and just ask the question why. What was the big deal with one golden calf statue? I’m not talking about the technical defense that the Israelites might give – how could they be punished for breaking a law that they had not yet received? That may be a valid question, but I am asking a much more fundamental question: what is the problem with idolatry anyways?
      The impulse to create idols is probably as old as human civilization itself. Some of the oldest human artifacts found have been statues of various gods and goddesses. So the desire to make them seems to be almost knitted into the very fabric of our humanity. But why? What do we think that we are going to gain from creating idols? They are costly and labour-intensive so why would anyone invest that much into something if they didn’t think they were going to get something out of it? What do people think that they are going to get from their idols?
      Perhaps we can answer that question by looking a little closer at what was happening in the camp at the foot of Mount Sinai when that fateful decision was made. The people, clearly, are afraid. They have just escaped from slavery in Egypt having been led through a series of harrowing and amazing experiences by this man Moses. But now Moses has disappeared up the mountain. He’s been gone for far too long and they feel exposed and frightened. So they turn to Aaron and ask him to make them feel safe.
      And so this is what Aaron offers them. He takes their gold, he melts it down and he creates a golden calf. This makes them feel safe. But why does it make them feel safe? Well, I would suggest you that the issue that is at stake here is the visibility of a god. The issue at stake is not a question of which God is being worshipped. You probably noticed that when the people of Israel saw the golden calf they responded by saying, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” suggesting that they associated this golden calf with certain unknown gods, perhaps even the gods that they had seen in Egypt. But Aaron’s response to the golden calf is a little bit different. Aaron builds an altar and he says, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” this suggests that Aaron was thinking of that calf as being somehow associated with the worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel. And, indeed, that is the history of the golden calf. We know that certain Israelite people, particularly in the northern Kingdom of Samaria, did associate the worship of the God of Israel with a golden calf.
      So, the issue that is at stake in the golden calf incident is not a question of which God is being worshipped. There seems to be some confusion about that. So I would suggest that that is not what God is reacting to. The issue is that God has a problem with is how he is being worshipped and that God has an issue with the use of idols in his worship. But why?
      That takes us back to the question of why human beings have always made idols. I would suggest to you, the reason why they did it was they were seeking influence and control over their gods.
      Take the ancient Greeks, for example. They believed in a god called Poseidon. Why did they believe in Poseidon? Because they were surrounded on all sides by the sea and they knew how unpredictable and how dangerous the sea could be. The sea was very frightening for ancient people. They didn’t understand the tides or the terrifying tsunamis that could sometimes come in with such destructive power. And when people are frightened, what do they do? They try to assert control.
      And that’s what the Greeks did. They created idols in the form of Poseidon, the god of the sea. It was a way of capturing Poseidon, anchoring him in one place, and when he was in that one place they could do things to influence his actions. They could perform sacrifices and rituals that would influence the otherwise unpredictable acts of the sea. And that, I think, is the origin of that human impulse to create idols. It is human beings seeking to control the otherwise uncontrollable and to exercise a degree of influence over that which is completely outside of their control and so terrifying.
      It is a normal reaction and, by the way, one that I think we often have without thinking. I love the way that Aaron describes the making of the golden calf when he is confronted by Moses after the fact. Moses asks him, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” And the best answer that Aaron can come up with is to say, “So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” “I threw the gold in the fire and this calf just came out,” he says, almost as if he didn’t have anything to do with it. And I realize the Aaron is just trying to get out of accepting the blame here, but I think that there is some truth to what he says. There is a sense in which we do create idols in moments when we are frightened almost without realizing what we are doing. We throw the gold in the fire of our frightening experience and an idol pops out.
      But, with this commandment, God is declaring that this will not be an appropriate way to relate to Yahweh, the Creator God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God, in other words, is not going to be tied down in one place. God is not going to be worshipped in such a way as to limit his own freedom of action. That is why God refuses to be made into an idol and will not countenance the worship of other gods in the forms of idols.
      With all of that in mind, I think we can now turn to the question of how we can apply this particular commandment to the Christian lives that we live today. What does it mean to not have idols today? We are not tempted, as were the Ancient Greeks, to create a statue of Poseidon and think that we can use that statue to control the tides or the actions of the ocean. But that is not because we are not seeking control. That is simply because we no longer believe that you are able to control such things using statues. We understand what causes the tides and the currents in ways that the ancient people simply could not. I would suggest to you that whatever it is that we do use to try to control the uncontrollable forces of our world, these are our idols even if they are not necessarily in the forms of people or birds or beasts.
      For example, we seem to be living in these days in a world filled with events that seem out of control. There are many different elements that make people feel this way right now: refugee migration in unmanageable numbers, an opioid epidemic, a climate crisis and some related disasters, just to name a few. In such an environment, it is only natural that people would react out of fear and grasp for anything that might even feel a little bit safe. In other words, we seem to live in a time that is rife for idol making.
      But, again, chiseling out a few statues isn’t going to work for people today, so what do we do? I think that one trend that we see is people grasping for political leaders who tap into that feeling. Globally speaking, we seem to be in an era when so-called populist leaders are able to rise like never before.
      I would argue that the reason this is so is because these are specifically the kinds of leaders who can project that aura that makes people feel safe even if the policies they are putting forward may not work and could possibly even make things worse. I would suggest to you, without naming any names, that we are using some of our populist political leaders these days as idols. And, yes, they are false gods and they will doubtlessly let us down sooner or later but in the mean time, a great deal of damage may be done. But it is like we can’t help it. We throw the gold in the fire of a scary global situation and out pops an idol.
      And I honestly don’t think that Christians should feel too complacent about this either. These are stressful times for the Christian church – times when we seem to feel a great deal of insecurity about the future for all kinds of reasons – and I think that we, too, have been tempted to create idols in order to make ourselves feel safer.
      Remember that, in the commandment, God is warning his own people about the danger of making idols of Godself as much as he is warning them against making images of other gods. So, I wonder, how might we still do that as believers today? What sorts of things do we construct that we think will be able to limit or control the action of God in our favour? Once again, as modern people were not going to resort to making statues and thinking that that’s going to control God, so what do we use instead?
      Well, let me suggest one thing that I do see Christians doing. It’s the way that we sometimes use this book, the Bible. Yes, it is true that we see this book as inspired by God and believe that it gives us a unique insight into the character and will of God especially as it has been demonstrated to us in the person of Jesus Christ. That is all true.
      The problem, for me, comes when people take that basic truth and push it further to say that, because they know the Bible, they now know exactly what God can and cannot do, how God can behave, on whom God may have mercy and on whom God will not have mercy. If you fall into a mode of thinking that, say, because I know this verse of scripture or I know that verse of scripture I therefore know an absolute and unchanging for all-time truth about God, you have fallen into idolatry. You have taken a good thing, a great gift of God in the scriptures, and turned it into a mere idol. I believe that that is exactly the kind of thing that God is warning us against with this commandment.
      Yes we get scared. The world is a scary place, maybe especially these days, and in response we often do see golden calves just coming out of the fires of our fears. But God knows you are better than that. God knows that, if you will trust him, you can deal with the uncertainty, the change and the unresolved future. God believes in you enough to give you a command: don’t fall back on idols. Don’t just give divine powers to the latest lump of gold that comes out of the fires of your affliction. It might feel good in the moment. You might feel extremely relieved to have finally found a god of your own creation to tell you that it will take care of everything and keep you safe, but over time you will see that the only God who can save you is the living God, the God who will never be limited to one time or place by some human made construct, the God who doesn’t just brush you off with easy answers, but who is in it for the long haul.
      Thanks be for that God. 
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Sunday, September 30. Lots of reasons to join us!

Posted by on Thursday, September 27th, 2018 in News

This coming Sunday, September 30, will be very special in many ways. It will be:

  • Orange Shirt Sunday: Everyone is encouraged to wear an orange shirt or blouse in an act of solidarity with First Nations People and what they suffered and lost through their experience in Residential Schools. More information about Orange Shirt Day can be found at www.orangeshirtday.org.
  • Potato Harvest: Many St. Andrew's folks planted potatoes in the Spring. This is the day when we bring those results of our planting back to the church. All potatoes brought back will be donated to the Thursday Night Supper and Social this fall. You are also encouraged to bring any other gifts to support this community dinner. We will have a “Grand Gardener” contest (for our Sunday School students) to find out who grew the heaviest potato.
  • Our Adult Choir has prepared a beautiful anthem called,  "Soil of God, You and I" that will feature Solos by Margaret, Erin and Lynn. 
  • Our minister, the Rev. Scott McAndless will lead us to rethink the second of the Ten Commandments and ask what it might mean to not create idols today.
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