News Blog - Page 169 of 246 - St. Andrews Hespeler

I believe in… the resurrection of the body

Posted by Scott McAndless on Tuesday, September 4th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 2 September, 2018 © Scott McAndless

Isaiah 11:1-9, 1 Corinthians 15:12-26, Psalm 7:1-11

can’t be the only one to notice, am I? The world is kind of a mess. I mean, all kinds of things are just falling apart. Political alliances like NATO and the United Nations – organizations that maintained an unprecedented ( if imperfect) global peace for decades have fallen on hard times. Russia, in particular, seems to be hard at work destroying some of our most cherished institutions like democracy. North Korea is clearly working as hard as ever at creating weapons of mass destruction and putting them in missiles that go ever further.

And that is just the global political situation. Look at the environmental situation. Even if we somehow manage to avoid blowing up the planet with some weapon or other, that hardly seems to matter because our collective action seems to be destroying the environment and even changing global climate patterns.

I could go on but you get the point. We seem to have all kinds of reasons to despair for the future these days. It is honestly getting to the point where I am actively avoiding certain kinds of news stories. I don’t remember ever doing that before.

But that is okay, right? I mean, we’re Christians, aren’t we? And I have been told often enough that Christians don’t really have to worry about the long-term future of this world because it is not our destiny. We ultimately belong to another world because someday, when we die, our bodies will decay and remain in this world but our souls will live on in another, better place. So why would we worry about this world? In fact, would it not be a good and very Christian approach to life to totally forget this world, its needs and its future? “The world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” So why not just take whatever you can from the earth – plunder the forests, the seas, the depths of the earth – because our future is not here.

I will admit that that is exactly how some Christians do approach life and often how outsiders assume that all Christians think. But I think that most of us would say that it doesn’t sound quite right and indeed it isn’t. But why not?

The Bible does promise us that we have the hope and promise of an afterlife. Because of Jesus – because of what Jesus has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection – we can look forward to a life beyond this present existence. I believe that and I know that many of you do too, but how are we supposed to reconcile that with a commitment to this present world. We have two questions from the catechism this morning. The first focuses on our hope for a life beyond the present life by talking of our belief in the resurrection of the dead. But the next question asks about hope and the hope that it talks about is very clearly talking about hope for this present world. “We hope for a transformed world in which justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” So which is it? Are we supposed to have hope for this world or just for the next?

Well, we are not the first Christians to wonder that. The Christians in Corinth were dealing with very similar questions shortly after that church was founded by the Apostle Paul. It was not easy to be a Christian living in Corinth in those days. It usually meant cutting yourself off from your family and from just about everything else. So things were tough for those Christians and they started to give up on this world and many began to think that their only hope was to be found in the next.

How do we know this? Because of how Paul wrote to them in order to correct them. He asks them an odd question in our reading this morning: “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” Now how can that be? How can a group of Christians, who have heard and clearly believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, possibly not believe in a life after death? It doesn’t make any sense.

But here is what is going on. It seems clear that those Corinthian Christians did believe in the afterlife. Everything that Paul writes to them in this letter takes that for granted. Paul is not correcting them for failing to believe in life after death but rather for the way in which they are conceiving of that life. Rather than believing in the resurrection of the body, they believe in the immortality of the soul.

This is not all that surprising, really, because most of the Christians in Corinth were Greeks and the immortality of the soul was a very Greek way of thinking about life after death. It was the Greek Philosophers, especially the great teacher Plato, who first proposed the idea that there was, within the human person, some spark of the divine – a soul – that was, in its very nature, immortal. The body could die and it would decay away, but the soul would live forever.

Now that is an idea that probably makes sense to many of us, because that is how we generally think about the afterlife as well. I don’t know how many times I have been there at a funeral and seen people look down at the body of their loved one and say, “They are not here anymore, but their soul will live on in another, better place.” The immortality of the soul is our go-to way of talking about life after death.

But what Paul is pointing out to the Christians in Corinth is that that is not exactly what he taught them when he preached the gospel to them. He didn’t promise the immortality of the soul, he promised the resurrection of the body. He preached that their hope for life after death was found in the fact the God had raised Jesus’ body from the dead. The promise was that since God had done this for Jesus, he would surely do it for them as well.

So, in this letter, Paul is correcting them for falling back into the Greek way of thinking about the afterlife and so denying the gospel that he had preached to them which was based on God’s power to raise the dead.

Now I will admit that there is a part of me that wonders why Paul is so concerned about this distinction. We are talking about the afterlife here and, while the New Testament promises of a life after death are clear, I do not believe that the Bible gives us anything like a clear description of what that life will be like. I do not believe that human language has words that could possibly describe what such an existence shall be like. I mean, consider the descriptions that are offered. One passage speaks of streets paved with gold. A lovely image, of course, but it hardly seems like a very good practical or literal description. Do you think that driving on ice is bad? Imagine driving on a street paved with gold?

No, instead of literal descriptions of the afterlife, what we have in the Bible are images and metaphors. No one can tell us that it is this or that, we can only say that it is kind of like this or kind of like that. And concepts of the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body are the same thing – they are simply images that are meant to give us some idea of what that existence will be like.

So why is Paul so insistent that they must speak of the afterlife in one particular way? It is not that they are wrong. The immortality of the soul is a helpful way to conceive of life after death. But he was commending to them a better way to think about it. But why? What is so much better if you think in terms of the resurrection of the body?

One part of the answer, as far as Paul is concerned, is that talking in terms of the resurrection of the dead reminds us how we have access to that other life. It is a reminder that we have gained access to the life beyond because of Jesus and especially because of what he has accomplished for us in his life and death and resurrection. It is a reminder that we will be raised because Jesus was raised. And that part of the answer is what Paul particularly focuses on in our reading this morning from his Letter to the Corinthians.

But there is also another reason why Paul stresses the idea of the resurrection of the dead and it takes us to the heart of the issue that we have been talking about. If you only think of the afterlife in terms of the immortality of the soul, you will naturally tend to devalue the things of this world. After all, your body and all of the physical things that it depends on will pass away. They will turn to dust while your soul lives on through eternity. This makes it easy to assume that the eternal thing is the only thing about you that is important and that the passing things of this world matter not at all. I would say that the idea of the immorality of the soul is one of the key reasons why Christians have developed a bit of a bad reputation for being quite willing to let this world be destroyed because it is all only so much dust.

But if you learn to think of the afterlife in terms of the resurrection of the body, you cannot think in such terms. Quite simply, such an idea of the afterlife means that the body and the things that sustain the body matter. They matter because God made them in the first place. And precisely because God made them in the first place, God can make them again even after death.

Now I realize that thinking of the afterlife in terms of the resurrection of the body creates problems and quandaries for us. If our hope is for a resurrected body, well then what will that body be like? Which body will I get after I die? The strong and healthy one that I had when I was eighteen years old or the old and broken down one that I had when I died in my eighties? And what about those whose bodies are destroyed or cremated or eaten by sharks in the sea? Does that mean that they have lost all hope of the afterlife?

But these questions all miss the point of the idea and the point that Paul is trying to get across. As I said, no one can really say what the life beyond the grave is like. We have not the language to describe it. The resurrection of the dead is not a literal description of what that life is like, it is a helpful metaphor to help us wrap our heads around the meaning of that existence.

But Paul encourages you to think of it that way for some very good reasons. It is to remind you that your hope for life after death is found in God (and not in some inherent nature of your soul). The God who created you and the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is quite capable of raising you as well as giving you a body that you cannot understand now but that fulfills all of your hopes. It is a reminder that, when you die, you will be in the hands of a loving and benevolent God and that is a good and comforting thing.

But secondly, and I think more importantly, it is there to teach us that our hope is not merely for another world beyond this one. We need not and must not wait to find hope. To work for justice, for what is right and good in this world is not only possible, it is an essential part of being a follower of Christ Jesus, the resurrected one.

Posted by Nonsequitor on Tuesday, September 4th, 2018 in Clerk of Session

Good Day eh!

The RACE TO ERASE is back and team Light Side of the Moon has been created on http://www.racetoerase.com. Your Captain the humble Rob Hodgson is looking for three crew to accompany him on a one day mission of fun, fellowship and some serious challenges. Last year we were challenged to listen to music and name the artists, sing silly songs, dance (yes dance), roll beer barrels and all the raised funds go to Hope Clothing.

I encourage you to seek me out or create a team of your own. This is a major fund-raiser for Hope Clothing in 2018. If you can't participate you can still be involved by sponsoring the team of your choice. 100% of the funds are donated to charities.

Dig out your space suit and prepare to travel "to infinity and beyond" <lol> "phasers on fun."

Who is welcome at the table?

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, July 29th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 29 July 2018 © Scott McAndless

Luke 7:31-35, Ephesians 2:11-22, Proverbs 9:1-6

n February 1, 1960, at 4:30 in the afternoon, four young men sat down at the lunch counter inside a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. They had been shopping at the store, had purchased a few necessary items like soap and toothpaste, and their plan was to sit down at the lunch counter for a cup of coffee before they went on their way.

Except that wasn’t their plan, not really. Oh, they would have been only too happy to pay for their coffee and sit and drink it in peace and leave, but they knew that the staff at Woolworth’s was not going to serve them. You see the young men were black and the store had a clear and well-stated policy that only whites could be served at the counter. And so they were refused and in response the men simply remained where they were, sitting peacefully.

They might have been peaceful, of course, but that doesn’t mean that everyone saw them that way. People were freaking out. They shouted at the men, insulted them. They accused them of being unruly, disruptive and especially of creating racial strife. Yes, people said that they were the ones who were making racial strife happen. The “troublemakers” just calmly remained where they were until the store closed for the night and they left as peacefully as they had come.

The next morning, when the store opened, the men were back and they had brought 16 equally black friends with them. All twenty men went to the counter, ordered something and were refused service. I mean, what did they expect, the policy was clear. Well, of course, they knew exactly what to expect and when they were refused they simply sat there all day.

The next day there were sixty. The day after that, three hundred showed up, so many that the decision was made to divide the protest and groups were sent to other stores and shops with segregated lunch counters. Within a few days, the whole thing had blown up and people all over Greensboro (mostly blacks, of course, but some others too) were not buying anything at all from stores with segregated counters. There was backlash as well with people shouting insults and racial epithets at the protesters. There was some violence directed towards them in one incident as well.

But the protestors hung tough. So did the stores at arguably greater cost. During that time, they saw their revenues drop by a third and there is no retail operation that can sustain those kinds of losses for very long. By the time the protests ended, Woolworth’s had lost millions of dollars – and that is millions of 1960’s dollars. I’m sure it would be billions in today’s terms. The protests ended with Woolworths finally caving in. They tried to do it in as quiet a way as possible. They called in some of their own black employees (for they had no issue with employing such people), had them take off their work clothes and, dressed as customers, go to the counter and order. They were served with no ceremony or fuss and the battle of the lunch counter just ended.

But my question is why. Oh, I don’t wonder why there were protests of racial inequality or why there was resistance against those protests. I understand that racial tension had plagued that part of the world for a very long time by then. But my question is why was that the particular flash point. Why did it have to be about food and especially about who was allowed to eat it with whom? Why did everybody involved put everything on the line for that particular issue? You will note that the Woolworth’s store had already desegregated everything else at that point. They had a diverse staff that included black people. The men had no trouble at all accessing the sales counter, only the lunch counter.

I suggest to you that both the protesters and the owners of the Woolworth’s knew very well what they were doing. They both independently decided that the lunch counter was a hill worth dying on because they had an instinctive understanding of just how dangerous the idea of people eating food together can be.

To see that, you only have to look to the scriptures. If you have ever tried to read all the way through the Bible, one of the first things you probably noticed is that the book is obsessed with food. I mean, there are pages and pages of rules about what you can and cannot eat. You can’t eat this animal but you can eat that one. You can eat fish but not ones without scales. You can’t eat veal if it is cooked in a certain way and you can’t eat anything made with yeast at all at certain times of the year. You can’t get too far through the Bible without asking yourself what all of this is about. Why were the Jews supposed to abide by so many rules about food?

It is true that the kosher diet is generally a healthy diet, but that is also true of the way that most ancient people ate. These rules were not primarily about health and safety. No, the more you read, the more you see that the rules were actually about setting the people of Israel apart from all of the other people who lived around them. They were to be holy and that meant separate. But how could food rules achieve that? For this simple reason, because the rules were so strict and so complicated that even sharing a table with someone who didn’t follow them was impossible. It meant that you could never eat with someone who didn’t follow exactly the same rules.

In other words, the Bible understood the principle that the people of Greensboro North Carolina were fighting over in 1960. You can do all kinds of things with people of other races and nations; you can work together, trade together, even fight the same enemies, but so long as you never eat together you will remain forever a people apart.

Jesus understood that principle too. And as much as he respected the laws that were a part of his own religious heritage, he was determined that he would never allow food laws and customs of who you could share a table with get in the way of getting his message of the kingdom of God out. And people noticed it and criticised him sharply for it. Jesus himself admits as much in our reading this morning from the gospel: “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking,” he laments, “and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”

Note that this is Jesus himself saying this – acknowledging that this is the reputation that he has. And it is indeed a terrible thing to have people say of you. That particular charge, the accusation of being a glutton and a drunkard is actually listed as a capital crime in the Book of Deuteronomy. According to that ancient law, if your parents publically declared that you were, “A glutton and a drunkard” – those are the very words – the entire town was required to gather together and stone you to death. So this is no idle charge being leveled at Jesus. This is a very serious thing for Jesus to be acknowledging in public.

But what does it mean? Well, that is also clear enough when you look at the passage in Deuteronomy. The charge, in Deuteronomy, is about generally unruly and destructive behaviour and not specifically about how much food or alcohol a person ate or drank. The particular “unruly behaviour” that people seem to be concerned with in Jesus’ case has to do more with who he shared his food and drink with than how much of it he consumed. The most damning thing about Jesus was that he was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”

In this story, therefore, you should think of it like you would think of the people criticizing the sit-in protestors at the Woolworth’s store. They are all up in arms at the very idea that all different sorts of people – people of different races, different economic status, different morality – should eat together at the same lunch counter. But they were especially freaked out at Jesus because he was the one who was enabling all of this. He had not only pulled his own stool up to the counter but was actively inviting all sorts of unsavory characters to join him on their stools.

That was what Jesus did and people hated him for it – just like they hated the Greensboro lunch counter sitters. In fact, they hated him so much that they killed him for it. Oh, it may not have been the only reason why, but it was certainly on the list! There were, by the way, lots of people 1960’s who would have been only too happy to put the men who sat at the lunch counter to death too.

Our reading this morning from the Catechism for Today asks the question, “Who may participate in the Lord’s Supper?” It is a question that the church has historically answered with a great deal of caution. We have been careful to exclude all sorts of people – children, people who were declared guilty of certain sins (but curiously not of others), and often people who were outsiders – from the communion table. We excluded them because we understood what the good people at Woolworth’s understood and what the Old Testament food laws understood – that it is dangerous to eat with the “wrong kinds” of people, that allowing it to happen changes things in ways that make people uncomfortable.

If you leave churches alone – if you allow them to default to whatever is most comfortable and what is familiar – they will naturally become communities of homogeneity. They will become places where everyone looks alike, speaks alike and acts alike. Oh, we may not post it on the door. In fact, we tend to want to put the very opposite on the door – “Everyone welcome,” we put on our signs. But the normal tendency is, when someone arrives who breaks the conformity, to find subtle and even overt ways to let them know that they’re not really welcome. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we are doing it.

I don’t condemn churches for having this tendency. It is only human. But it is not what the church is supposed to be. That is why I am glad to see that our readings from the catechism and from the scriptures today remind us that we, in the church, are nothing if we are not the heirs of Jesus of Nazareth. And when we gather at the communion table we are not just sharing a simple meal and we are not just doing some churchy ritual.

There is a reason why the church, right from the very beginning, made a shared communal meal the very heart of their common life. It wasn’t just to remember the last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples (though it was certainly that). It was also meant to be a reminder of all those times that Jesus broke the rules of his society by sharing his table with outcasts and strangers, with tax collectors and sinners.

This is not a communion service – at least not a communion service as it is traditionally practiced in Presbyterian churches. But I have brought some bread today. I have brought it for you. Take a piece all of you. If, for some reason, you cannot eat bread with glutton, take a rice cracker. Take it and hold it for a moment.

Now, before you eat it, will you take a moment to imagine something for me? Imagine you are not sitting in a church right now. No, you are sitting at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. Not only that, but imagine that you have been told all your life that you better not be seen eating here. That you are not welcome and that if you refuse to respect the traditions of this lunch counter, then you are a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser, a drunkard and a glutton and a friend of all the wrong sorts of people. You will be accused of inciting racial hatred and it will be your fault if people get hurt. Do you want that on your head? Wouldn’t it just be better to meekly and mildly move on to eat with your own kind?

If you can just imagine such a situation (and I know that that is pretty difficult for most of us who have not experienced that kind of discrimination) but if you can do it, you will have found a better sense of what it actually means to celebrate communion. Now eat this bread at that lunch counter.

Communion is a radical meal, an earth-shattering meal, or at least it is meant to be. And maybe we can all reclaim that power by choosing to truly welcome strangers and outcasts to the feast.

Sunday, July 29. Who is welcome at the table?

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Thursday, July 26th, 2018 in News

There are a number of things that will make worship at St. Andrew's Hespeler Presbyterian Church very special.

Our special music will feature Bob and Ray blessing us with a duet called "How Long Has It Been" (Written by Mosie Lister, Arranged by Richard Kingsmore). It is always a treat to hear Ray and Bob sing together.

Zoé McAndless will also grace us with her interpretation of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major. She will be accompanied by Corey Linforth on the piano.

In our sermon we will consider what a world-changing event that happened in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960 has to teach us about Communion and being the church.

Sermon Title:

Rev. Wally Little, longtime minister of St. Andrew’s Hespeler has passed away.

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Wednesday, July 25th, 2018 in News

Rev. Wallace Inglis Little – Peacefully passed away at home in Stratford, surrounded by his family on July 24, 2018 at the age of 83.

He was devoted to his loving wife, Audrey of 60 years and was a cherished father of Jane (Pep) Philpott, Judy (Paul) Boivin, Karen (Rob) Congram and Kathy (the late Mark) Hoogsteen. Grandpa will be dearly missed by his 13 beautiful grandchildren, Bethany (Alex), Jacob, David and Lydia Philpott; Andrew, Luke and Sophie Boivin; Ben, Abby and Caroline Congram; and Timothy, Daniel and Samuel Hoogsteen. Wally was predeceased by his son, Gary Wallace Little (1966); his granddaughter, Emily Katherine Philpott (1991); his parents, Chester and Jessie; and his siblings Norman Little, Elgin Little, Jean McIntosh and Thelma Clarke. He had many loving nieces and nephews as well as several dear sisters- and brothers-in-law. Wally will also be greatly missed by his dedicated caregiver, Mai.

A man of great wisdom and integrity, Wally had a huge heart and a gentle spirit. He touched countless individuals during his 50 years of congregational ministry in Winnipeg, Cambridge, Collingwood, and Wasaga Beach, as well as serving in Thornbury, North Bay and Blantyre, Malawi in his retirement.

Cremation has taken place. Internment at a later date at Elma Centre Cemetery, Atwood. Visitation at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 25 St. Andrew Street, Stratford, on Friday, July 27, 2018 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. Memorial Service at St. Andrew’s Hespeler Presbyterian Church, 73 Queen St. E., Cambridge at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 28, 2018. Rev. Mark Wolfe officiating.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to:

The Ontario Rett Syndrome Association
PO Box 50030
London, ON N6A 6H8
www.rett.ca

Presbyterian World Service & Development
50 Wynford Drive
Toronto, ON M3C 1J7
www.presbyterian.ca/pwsd

or

The Alzheimer’s Society of Perth County
1020 Ontario St., Unit 5
Stratford, ON N5A 6Z3

would be appreciated by the family and can be arranged by calling the funeral home or returning to the Current Funerals page and clicking on the Make a Donation link. Please forward your cheque directly to the charity of choice at the above address.

Our most sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Little Wallace June 10 1935 to July 24 2018.

The Pescod Family

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Monday, July 23rd, 2018 in News

Many people at St. Andrew's have been joining in prayers for the family of Kathy Pescod (the daughter of Brenda Holm). We would like to share the following link. It will give you updates on what the family is going through as well as information on the Gofundme campaign that they have started.

The church does not endorse Gofundme or any particular campaigns, but we do feel that there are many in the congregation who would like to have this information and would perhaps choose to take part. We would therefore like to share the following link with the congregation.

Please continue to pray for them.

GoFundMe Link.

#AnabaptismEnvy

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, July 22nd, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 22 July, 2018 © Scott McAndless

Genesis 17:1-8, Acts 2:37-42, Psalm 100:1-5

was raised in a Presbyterian Church as a part of a fairly typical Presbyterian family at that time which meant that I was baptized as an infant when I was only a few months old. Since I was born near the end of the famous Baby Boom and at a time when the vast majority of the children born in Canada were baptized, my parents stood at the front of the church with a large group of parents and we were all baptized one after the other in a kind of an assembly line.

And that wa s fine. I mean, I didn’t remember it, of course, but my parents told me that it had been done and I had no reason to be concerned that it hadn’t. But then I grew up and, in time, I came into contact with another group of Christians who didn’t do baptism in quite the way that it was practiced in my church. These Christians are collectively called Anabaptists – a group that includes denominations such as the Baptists and various kinds of Mennonites. These churches do not generally see a baptism that is performed on an infant as a valid baptism and will argue that, to be truly valid, baptismal candidates should be of an age where they can actually choose for themselves whether or not they want to be baptized.

And when I first came to know Christians who believed this way about baptism, I will admit that I found their position to be very interesting and even persuasive. It kind of made sense to me, this idea that baptism should be something that you enter into willingly of your own accord. In fact, I will even admit that I started to wonder whether maybe there was something invalid or even illegitimate about my own baptism.

So, yes, I went through a period of time when I questioned my baptism. And you know how it is when you are going through adolescence. Who doesn’t remember those days? You struggle with everything. If you are a person of faith, you almost inevitably question that faith at some point. You certainly struggle over your own moral choices and decisions and can be very hard on yourself when you (also inevitably) fall short. So I went through all of that too but, in some ways, it was complicated by the whole baptism question. I couldn’t help but wonder if my baptism was at the root of all my problems. Maybe if I had been baptized later, as a believer professing my own faith, it would have taken, it would have sunk in deeper and would have had a more lasting effect on my moral behaviour and my doubts. I suffered (and I am going to go ahead and hashtag this one because I think that it’s time) I suffered from #AnabaptismEnvy.

I suspect that I am not the only one. So I do think that the question that is raised in this morning’s reading from the Catechism is a very important one: “Who may be baptized?” Finding the answer to that question did not only put my own mind at ease regarding my own baptism, it also helped me to understand the real meaning and purpose of the sacrament.

First, let me clearly affirm what I learned as I matured as a Christian. Any struggles I had as I grew up and matured in my faith all stemmed from my own basic humanity and absolutely not from any deficiency in my baptism. I have known, and continue to call my friends, many Anabaptists. They are very fine people and highly committed to their faith and to doing what they see as right in the world. But the fact that they were baptized at a time and a place of their own choosing did not mean that they had been spared the struggles and the doubts that are common to all of us.

I have observed one thing in a number of cases: when a person comes to that point in their life when they decide to make their public commitment to Christ by being baptized, they will often go through a kind of a honeymoon period shortly afterwards. There will be a time when all is beautiful and wonderful and clear for them and their Christian lives are so easy. Such a time is a great thing and a wonderful gift for a person to experience. But the reality is that a baptism does not solve all your problems and unless you actually address the negative patterns and triggers in your life, sooner or later that honeymoon period will end and you will find yourself returning to old ways and old problems.

So, no, a baptism is not going to fix you. That is actually not what it is for. But what is it for? That is the question that really matters here, isn’t it? And to answer that question we really have to dig into the scriptures a bit. In our reading this morning from the Book of Acts, we find the Christian church at a very pivotal moment. It is several weeks after the resurrection of Jesus and the church is having its big coming out moment on the Day of Pentecost. Up until then there had been a discipleship group around Jesus – a group that is said, at one point, to have included at least 72 people. In other words, it wasn’t exactly huge. It was a somewhat limited group and its focus was not really on growth in numbers. But all of that changes as the church makes its big debut on Pentecost.

So after a bit of a fire and light show in which flames descend upon the heads of individual believers followed by a pretty impressive display of the disciples’ ability to speak a huge number of strange languages, the big moment arrives. Simon Peter gets up and preaches the first sermon of the Christian Church – a sermon that he begins, by the way, by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, I know that we might look like it, but these people are actually not drunk.” That is personally my favourite first line of a sermon in all of Christian history.

But, however it begins, it is obviously a very persuasive first sermon because, at the end of it, a huge number of people – Luke says that there were three thousand of them – want to become a part of whatever this new thing is. “Brothers,” they say, “what should we do?”

This is an incredibly important moment. A movement is defined by its membership and so there is a real need to know who belongs. If you are organizing a new club, for example, you might set up bylaws or standards of dress or behavior. Only those who agree to abide by these things can belong. When you are starting is also the best time, of course, to establish membership fees. This is because, above all else, a movement is defined by who is in and who is out. So what Peter says next here is going to define the church for the next two millennia.

And what does Peter say? Are there any rules of behavior? Are there any dress codes, any fees? No. This is what Peter says, “Repent, and be baptized.” That is it. If you read the entire sermon, it is clear what Peter means when he says, “repent.” He has just spent several minutes describing the corrupt system of this world – the system that put Jesus to death. Based on everything that he has just said, to repent clearly means to give up and turn your back on the corrupt system of this world and seek a new basis for life. That is the only requirement and it is basically an exasperation with this world and its delinquent ways. It is about a desire to see change and to be a part of that change.

And, it is with that understanding that Peter offers the next step which is baptism: “be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” What then is baptism? It is an outward sign that you belong to a different system.

The most important explanation of the meaning of baptism in the scriptures sees it as an image of dying and being raised up to new life. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Paul writes to the church in Rome.“Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Dying to something old in order to be raised up to something new is about the clearest image you could find of turning your back on one system in order to embrace another. That is exactly the same kind of transition that Peter is talking about in the Book of Acts.

So, more than anything else, baptism is a declaration of what system you belong to, of where your allegiances now lie. It is not a statement that you understand everything, that you have all of your beliefs worked out or that you have all of the answers. This Peter makes quite clear when he continues to speak to the Pentecost crowd, “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”

To the all important question of who may access this incredible power of baptism, Peter gives the clear answer, there are no real limits. It is for you, yes, but also for your children and note that no age limits are given. Even more surprisingly, he says, it is for those who are near – those who are already sympathetic to the message – but also for all who are far away and may have no understanding of these things. And he leaves the reason for this until the last when he declares that ultimately the grace that is received in baptism does not depend on the person who is being baptized themselves but only on the calling of the Lord our God.

So how is this any kind of answer to the question of Anabaptism envy? The Anabaptists are indeed correct that it is good to come to God and, as a competent adult, choose for yourself to be baptized as an act of personal commitment. And, of course, many people do exactly that in many different churches including our own. But Peter makes it clear in this passage from the Acts that this is not the only way, nor is it necessarily a superior way. This is because the grace of the baptism is not dependent on us but on God. And God can and does make a place for everyone. Can the person who has such a reduced mental capacity that he will never understand the meaning of baptism be baptized? By the grace of God yes. Can an infant who may or may not someday choose for herself to be a follower of Christ be baptized? By the grace of God, yes.

For baptism is nothing and has no power if it is not a celebration of the grace of God and no one can put limits on the limitless grace of God. The promise of baptism is a new start, freedom from this world’s madness and its corrupt systems. That promise is for you, wherever you are in your life, whatever you struggle with and whatever your level of understanding. You may have had it claimed for you when you were an infant but you can and should continue to claim that promise daily. That is how the promises of God always work.

Hocus Pocus

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, July 15th, 2018 in Minister

Galatians 3:23-29, Romans 6:1-11, Matthew 3:13-17

have here a perfectly ordinary box of pencil crayons. It is something so completely ordinary that you could find in most any household (or at least any household where there are small children hanging around). But what if I were to tell you that I can make these pencil crayons disappear? Yes, you heard me right, I can make them disappear in the wink of an eye.

Now you’re looking at me skeptically right now and I do not blame you! I mean, who could have to power to do such an amazing thing! But I tell you that all of your skepticism will disappear as fast as, well, as fast as these pencil crayons will in just a few moments.

So, without further ado, let’s just do it. Are you ready to be amazed? In a moment you will be when these pencil crayons disappear. 1, 2, 3 and gone! Oh, it didn’t work. That’s funny, it worked perfectly when I was practicing… box full… 1, 2, 3… woosh… What could I be missing?

Let’s try again. Prepare to be amazed. 1, 2, 3 and nope. What am I doing wrong? Does anybody know if there is one more crucial step you need when you are doing magic? I’ve got the banter, the slight of hand, what is missing? The magic word? Well, I guess that I could give that a try. What is a good magic word to use? Ok, let’s try hocus pocus. 1, 2, 3 and “Hocus Pocus!” And the pencil crayons are gone!

Here is a demonstration of the trick that I did:

And that is, is it not, the essence of magic. You take a perfectly ordinary, everyday thing – like a bunch of pencil crayons in a box – and you make them do something that those ordinary things are not supposed to do. But that alone does not make it magic because magic has got to be a performance. It doesn’t work if it doesn’t come with a good magician’s patter, exaggerated gestures and, above all, you have got to have some magic words.

But where does that idea come from? Would you be surprised if I told you that it comes from religion? Probably not. Various ancient and even modern religions have made use of what is sometimes explicitly called magic. The idea of witchcraft, for example comes out of various ancient pagan religions and there are even modern “witches” who claim to continue in those ancient belief systems.

But what if I were to tell you that that particular kind of show magic where an entertainer uses special gestures and magic words and everyone is supposed to know that it is not real magic but an act, that specifically comes from Christianity and was actually created as a parody of it.

How do I know that? I only have to look at the so-called magic words that I used this morning. “Hocus Pocus,” what do those words mean. Are they simply nonsense words? No, they are not. The “us” endings of the two words mark them, first of all, as imitation Latin words. And when those words “hocus pocus” first appeared way back in the seventeenth century, everyone knew exactly what Latin words they were imitating.

In the Roman Catholic Church at that time, and for many centuries after, priests always led the services in Latin, the language of the church. This was especially true when it came to performing sacraments – the most important of which was the mass, or what we would call communion. At the key moment in the mass, the priest would make a grand gesture – would lift up a piece of bread on high and break it while saying, in Latin, “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” which means, “This is my body.”

Now those English words, “This is my body,” are words that I have used many times myself – that most every Christian leader uses when leading a Communion service. They are, the gospels tell us, the very words that Jesus said when he broke the bread at the last supper, but that Latin formulation had a very different sense to it in the 17^th Century. Roman Catholics at that time (and to a certain extent still today) believe that when the priest makes that move and says those words, it is at that that moment that the miracle of transubstantiation occurs.

Now I’m not going to try and fully explain the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation here. I’ll just say that that church teaches that, in communion, the bread and the wine actually change in substance and become the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ (even while they still look and taste like ordinary food and drink). Protestants generally don’t agree with that idea, at least not completely. Presbyterians say that, while Jesus Christ is truly present when we have communion, that presence is spiritual in the community and not literally in the bread and wine.

Anyways, a few hundred years ago, everyone knew that those words, “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” were the words that many believed triggered a miracle. Of course, most laypeople couldn’t speak Latin so they tended to shorten the formula to a simpler, “Hoc est corpus,” or “This is body.”

Now, just try saying those words a few times fast: “Hoc est corpus, hoc est corpus, hoc est corpus,” and maybe you can tell me where those famous magic words, “Hocus Pocus,” came from. That’s right, early magicians, when they first created the magic show, chose to use magic words that were parodies of the key words from the Roman Catholic mass. In fact, the whole act, the waving of the hands, the very idea of magic words, were all a popular parody of what happens in every church where people gather to celebrate communion and other sacraments like baptism.

And here is my problem – here is why I bring up the whole thing: a few centuries later, I feel like people understand magic shows. They know that they are all make-believe. They know that it is all a trick and that nothing really changes – just like these pencil crayons have all been cut and glued together so that they drop when I stop squeezing the box. They also recognize that the whole patter and gesturing and even the magic words are really just gimmicks that are supposed to distract you while the musician puts one over on you. But that’s okay, of course, because it is not real. It’s just entertainment.

So we get how magic shows work, but do we understand the thing that they are parodying? Do we understand how sacraments work? I mean, do we even think that they work at all?

We recognize two sacraments in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. They are Baptism and Holy Communion. And there is no question that those two sacraments point to the two most important truths about what it means to be a Christian. Baptism speaks to us about how we all, each one of us believers, belong to Christ, that he has cleansed us and forgiven us and done it by grace and not by our works. Communion speaks to us of the truth that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, that he is alive and among us and we can know the power of his resurrection.

But I think that it is worth asking why we need sacraments to do that. I mean, aren’t we supposed to know that we belong to Jesus because we have chosen to trust him? Aren’t we supposed to believe that Jesus is risen from the dead because of the witnesses and their testimony? We know these things by faith; what do we need sacraments for?

I mean, what are sacraments but ordinary everyday things – a bit of water splashed on the head, a little morsel of food and a sip to drink – ordinary things that are dressed up with fancy costumes, a few fancy gestures and, yes, words that sound suspiciously like magic words. They kind of remind me of a magic show and does that mean that they really are just so much hocus pocus? Is it just a trick?

Well, it is true that we belong to Christ by faith alone. All that is really required of you to be a true follower of Jesus is that you trust him. But you do need to understand that faith is not just a matter of intellectual assent. That is what we usually assume, of course, that having faith simply means screwing yourself up to believe that certain things are true. If you can give that intellectual agreement then you have faith. But it doesn’t quite work like that.

This is partly because of how we operate as human beings. As much as we might like to think otherwise, human beings do not operate merely on an intellectual level. Just because you think something is true doesn’t mean that you have faith in it. You need to do something.

For example, you might think that another person is absolutely the perfect person for you. She or he (I mean, whichever one is appropriate for you) is beautiful, smart, interested in all the same things that you are interested in. They are perfect. But would you marry him or her without spending time together, without talking, without actually doing things together first? Of course not. But why not? Your intellect says that they are perfect for you and you for them.

The reason why you wouldn’t do that is because human beings don’t work that way. We don’t operate merely on an intellectual level and we certainly don’t make commitments only based on what we think is true. We need to do something that engages us, that makes our commitment concrete to us.

Well, sacraments operate something like that as we live in and grow in our faith in Christ. They don’t make us believe. They don’t really have anything to do with convincing our intellect of anything, but that does not make them useless or hocus pocus or trickery.

This is what the catechism says about the role of sacraments is in our faith: “The grace effective in the sacraments comes not from any power in them but from the work of the Holy Spirit. Rightly received, in faith and repentance, the sacraments convey that which they symbolize.”

So what does that mean? It means that the power of the sacrament is not found in the concrete and visible thing that is a necessary part of it. There is nothing special about the water that is used, nothing special about the bread or the wine. Nor is the power found in the gestures or in the words that might seem to operate like magic words to an uninformed spectator. The power is in none of these things. The power of them is to be found in the Holy Spirit working in the gathered people, not in the things.

Nevertheless, the things – the water, the bread, the wine – are needed because they give an anchor to our experience, they allow us to ground God’s power in things that we can touch and taste and feel because we need that. It allows our faith to progress beyond a mere intellectual agreement to something that can become a part of our identity and our very being – just like the time you spend with someone who is perfect for you allows mere intellectual knowledge to become this thing that we call love.

Now generally, when I preach about sacraments and their meaning it is during a service when we are observing a sacrament – either baptism or communion – but that is not the case today. I took up the topic today because it is in our reading from the church’s catechism. So normally I would leave you at this point to contemplate on how you can use the particular sacrament that we celebrate to deepen your faith.

But I am not going to direct you towards one of the two church sacraments today. They are the model for another kind of sacrament that God offers you in the world. If you approach it with faith, yes, you can find Christ in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of communion. But God also puts before you many other objects where you can discover Christ’s presence: something shared with someone in need, that can be a sacrament. A well-tended plant that grows and produces, that can be a sacrament. There are sacraments waiting for you in the forests, on the beaches, most everywhere you go if you have the eyes to see them. It’s not magic; it is the work of God’s Spirit upon you. So go from this place today and find the sacramental presence of God in a needy world.

A Magical Service

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, July 13th, 2018 in News

Please join us for worship on Sunday, July 15, 2018 at 10 am. It promises to be a "magical" service.

For one thing, we are looking forward to hearing a beautiful duet sung by Annette Denis and Ray Godin: "Where No One Stands Alone."

Secondly, when the sermon has a title like this, you know you are in for a bit of magic:

Please plan to stay and join us for a cold drink in the foyer following the service.

Damage at the Church Building

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Tuesday, July 10th, 2018 in News

Some people might have heard that there was an incident at the church yesterday. Apparently, a driver failed to set the parking brake while making a delivery involved with the road work further up Cooper St. The 5-ton truck took off, all by itself, headed down the street directly at the church building.

The very good news is that nobody was injured. It could have been a very dangerous situation.

The truck took out the metal railing and damaged the retaining wall that lead to the lower Queen Street door. The truck then hit the buttress next to that door, deflected to the west and took out a downspout and then broke one of the windows on the Fellowship room. Of course, the walkway and some of the sod were also damaged.

The Operations Committee is presently evaluating the damage. Fortunately, there is no question about who is at fault and where the liability will lie! There will likely need to be some kind of engineering evaluation in case there was any structural damage. (If anyone does have contact with a good structural engineer, please let us know.)

Things could have been much worse, so we are thankful that they were not. The entrance to that Queen Street door will have to remain closed until it can be made safe.

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