There is a Gala Dinner at 5pm in support of the Thursday Night Supper and Social tonight at St Andrew’s everything has been prepared. While we do not want anyone to take any risks to get there, if you can come, you will definitely be given a wonderful meal.
From April 16 to June 26, Rev. Scott will be observing his first Inter-mission. This leave, has been available since 1995 to Ministers that have five years of service in a church. Until recently this was not commonly observed by Ministers. As you know from news and first-hand, stress is a major trauma in any society, industry, organization and the church. You certainly know that churches around the world are in a period of rapid change. Session has endorsed this Inter-mission in concordance with the Presbyterian Church in helping Ministers cope with the pressures of ministry.
The April Session Meeting established a plan of action to enable the day-to-day function of the church remain attentive to the needs of all. A plan that attempts to have the who, what, when taken care of.The Church Office (Jan & Joni) will be focused on delivering their representative functions and need to have time to complete them. Please try to spare their precious time so they can deliver the best in the next 10 weeks.
The Church Office will continue to be open as before 9:00 am to Noon daily.The change will be that Tuesdays and Thursdays a volunteer greeter will be in place to take messages and arrange for answers to any questions. The greeters may not have the answers you need but will try to pass your request to someone who will get back to you. Your patience will be greatly appreciated.Phone calls to the office on Tuesday & Thursday will go the voice mail – your call will be returned at a future date.
Session is aware this change will cause some delays in responding to requests.In no way will the pastoral care ministry be affected by the inter-mission. Initiatives have been implemented to have a primary and backup Ministers available to meet emergency needs. By all means call one of the Ministers, the Church Office, the Clerk of Session or any Session Elder for help. We are committed to help our church family throughout the Inter-mission.
In delivering this plan we hope that the congregation will find a small change to the day-to-day operations. If you would like to volunteer for the greeter duties call Rob Hodgson @ 519-658-5237.
Shown below is the Intermission Calendar of Pastoral Care, Office Greeters and Scheduled Preachers for worship
We are excited to have the staff of Camp Cairn back this summer. This is a great week for our children. Everyone is welcome to participate: friends, neighbours, grandchildren. We will also need some adult helpers. If you can help out, please speak with Joni.
John 15:12-17, Ephesians 2:4-10, Psalm 139:1-16, 23-24
L
incoln Alexander ______, it is such a wonderful privilege for all of us to be able to celebrate your baptism today. It is wonderful because it means that your parents and your brother have been willing to share you – their joy in you, their hopes and dreams for you – with all of us and with Christ in this very meaningful way.
I remember when we first heard from your parents that you were coming and how exciting that was. When I heard what they had named you Lincoln Alexander, I wondered (the way that you do) what significance there was in such a name. One thing that occurred to me, for example, was that you might have been named after one of the most famous presidents of United States. You could certainly do worse than to be named after a man of such vision, the great emancipator who changed the world for good. We certainly still need people who will stand up and stand in integrity for what is right, no matter what the cost may be. But no, your parents tell me that you weren’t exactly named after Abraham Lincoln.
Next I wondered whether you might be named after Lincoln Alexander. That is also not too shabby for a namesake. Lincoln Alexander is a very important barrier breaking leader as every Canadian knows (or at least as every Canadian should know and it is a tragedy if they don’t). Alexander was Canada’s first Black member of parliament and first Black cabinet minister as well as Ontario’s 24th Lieutenant Governor. He blazed the trail for so many minority voices and leaders who have followed in his wake. But it appears that you were not named after him and the “Alexander” in your name is, not surprisingly, a gift to you from your father.
My next guess was that you were named after history’s third most famous Linc, the star character of the “Legend of Zelda” video game series. In fact, that is not really my guess at all but is actually who your father told me that you were named for. That too, is a great legacy – the hero of thousands of quests, the saviour of the beautiful princess Zelda – you could do worse! But alas, while your father does say that you were named after that Linc, I am not entirely sure that your mother agrees.
So we are left with what I am pretty sure is the ultimate truth. Lincoln, you weren’t named after anyone, not really. You are Lincoln, and your parents want you to be your own person and for you to grow up and set your own course and find your own destiny in life. That is what your parents hope and expect for you and for your brother overall and that, along with their love, is the greatest gift that they will ever give you.
The very concept of a God has long led human beings to struggle with strange concepts. We describe God as this being who is far beyond our limited human understanding. God is all-knowing and there is nothing in the entire universe that can ever escape God’s sight. We also believe that God is not limited by time and is able to view the past and the future just as easily as the present. Above all, we confess, God is powerful and nothing can resist the imposition of God’s will.
Now this understanding of God has created many problems in our philosophies and theologies. It makes us struggle with the problem of evil – if God is good and all-powerful like that, how is it possible that God would permit evil to occur? That is a great question and people of faith have been struggling with it for a very long time. Unfortunately, it is not a question we are going to be able to answer here today.
There is another question, connected to this idea of the nature of God, that I think we ought to deal with. If God is indeed all knowing and all-powerful, what does that mean about our own free will? Is the entire path of Lincoln’s life all laid out for him? Has it already determined what he will be and do – that he will be a great emancipator, or a breaker of barriers or a rescuer of princesses or some other thing? Is the whole future path of his life written for him? Is it written for you and for me? And if it is, what is the point of all the human plans, hopes and dreams that we cherish?
A quick reading of our responsive psalm this morning would certainly seem to indicate that we have very little control over our own paths through this life: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” That certainly seems to be saying that all of our paths are completely determined – that God has literally hemmed us in and so limited our choices that we simply must move in the directions that God has given to us.
And, by the way, we don’t even need to appeal to an all-knowing God to run up against this whole question. The whole scientific approach to reality – where every effect has a cause – has led us to the idea that everything in a human’s life is pre-determined. For example, if the decisions that I make are determined by such things as the levels of certain chemicals in my brain, previous life experience and the circumstances that surround me, can I really say that I have free will to determine the course of my own life?
So what is it? Are we truly free beings who have an ability to set our own course in life, or is everything determined ahead of time and are we merely puppets who must follow a course that has been already set for us? To put it another way, who is Lincoln? Is everything that he is destined to be or to do already written? Is his destiny already decided by science? By his parents? By God? “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” Is that what that means?
It certainly is possible to read the Psalm from this morning and conclude that that is what it is saying. But I don’t necessarily agree that it is the way that we were intended to read it. The Psalm, you see, isn’t really about the freedom of human will, it is about how well God knows us and relates to us. The psalmist talks about how God is everywhere with him and how he could not escape God even if he tried no matter where he might go in the entire universe. “If I ascend to heaven, you are there;” he declares, “if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
This is not a matter of God chasing us everywhere we go or anticipating our every move with all-knowingness. It is rather the case that, wherever we go, God is already there, has always been there because there is no place in the universe where God cannot be. The psalmist is able to set his own path as he travels through the universe and through time, it is just that wherever he goes, he will discover that he has been able to do nothing outside of the grace and benevolence of God.
It is in that spirit that I understand the words, “you discern my thoughts” in this psalm. It is not that God is somehow reading your thoughts from someplace on the outside. It is more that God is already present in your brain just as God’s presence is everywhere else in the universe. The God who gave us the ability to think, reason and choose can hardly fail to completely understand the processes by which we make our choices – processes, by the way, that modern neurologists have only begun to understand.
That is why I do not feel as if believing in God means that you lose your free will. Your course through life is not all set. Even when you are acting in obedience to God, it is not the type of obedience you might expect from a soldier drilling on the parade square where every moment is programmed out. There is not just one path for your life that is God’s correct and sanctioned path for you. Rather than acting like your drill sergeant, God is your constant companion on the journey. When you are open to God’s presence, God becomes so intimately involved in the decisions you make that it’s hard to know where your thoughts end and God’s begin.
Lincoln’s baptism today is a wonderful reminder of the entire basis of our Christian faith. We have today welcomed Lincoln fully and completely into everything that the Christian faith can offer to anyone. We have offered him hope, forgiveness, salvation and life eternal. We have welcomed him into full membership in the church of Christ, though, of course, we will wait until he is older before we ask him to choose for himself whether he will take on all of the commitments and responsibilities that come with being an active member of this congregation. These are all wonderful, divine and valuable gifts – gifts that many in this world have not found.
But what has Lincoln done to gain these things? Basically nothing. He just showed up – that is it. He didn’t even have to demonstrate any faith or understanding and it was his parents and us who confessed faith today. So how is it possible that we could offer so much to Lincoln today when he has done little to nothing to deserve it? This makes no sense according to the logic of our world, but it is the greatest mystery of the Christian faith, perhaps best expressed in a couple of the verses that we read this morning, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” It is only by the grace of God, a gift freely given, that we can claim so much for Lincoln and it is because of the grace of God that none of us can claim anything more than what this child has been given.
But there is one other gift that we have claimed today that doesn’t always get the same attention. The apostle continues on from there to talk about the purpose behind it all. “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” What this is saying is that God has loved you, me and Lincoln so much that God not only gives us salvation and hope, God has also given us the great gift of meaning – that your life will mean something. God has something for you to do. Again, this is not just a matter of God having one specific thing for you to do and if you fail to do this one thing you will have failed. It is more like what we have been talking about that God will be there with you as you make your choices and develop what is actually important to you and that, if you are open to God’s presence, God will enable you to carry out the good works that have been prepared for you as you follow your path.
And this also we can celebrate today. We do not know what particular “good works” are in Lincoln’s future but we stand in awe of the great potential that is there in just one young life. Will he grow up to set free some in this world who are still in bondage like Abraham Lincoln did? Will he break yet unimagined barriers in politics, science, engineering, who knows what like Lincoln Alexander did? Will he save a princess? I don’t know, but I do know that some great good works have been prepared for him to do, that is why his heavenly father has claimed him, that isinin why his Lord Jesus has saved him and that is why we celebrate his baptism today.
Sunday is going to be extra special! We have two wonderful celebrations. We will be celebrating the Sacrament of Baptism, so please help us support this beautiful family. And then we will be celebrating a 90th birthday. Come out and join us for worship and celebration at 10:00 am.
he sun was rising on a new day, but it was also rising on a new reality. There, inside a borrowed tomb, had been a man utterly defeated. He had stood up against the greatest powers in this world – the power of hate, the power of privilege and exploitation, the power of death – and he had been defeated in the worst and most shameful way possible. The dark powers of this world had won as they always seem to win.
But on that Sunday morning, all of that had been changed. Defeat had been turned into victory. Shame had been turned into glory. And, in that place haunted by the regrets of what might have been, death had been turned into life.
I wonder if we understand what this really means. It means that the fighting is over – that the battle is won once and for all. The greatest and most persistent powers of this world have been routed. And I have long wondered, if the greatest dark powers of this world were defeated way back then, why is it that so many still to this very day are living in a world of shame, discouragement and death?
It turns out that, according to the Gospel of Luke, there were a couple of angels wondering that very thing. Specifically, they were wondering why the women were there. They had come to grieve and mourn and minister to the dead. They were stuck in the moment of defeat. But defeat was so three days ago! Now the victory had happened. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” the angels wanted to know.
But those women aren’t the only ones. You still do that, don’t you? You seek the living among the dead. Don’t be surprised that I know your secret; I only know it because it is my secret too. We look for the things that give us life among the dead things of this world. Many seem to assume that wealth and possessions can give us life but these things are dead. How can they give life?
Some people live only for the pleasures of the body – no matter what those pleasures may be. The lusts of the flesh take many forms. And it is a good thing to enjoy these things – good food, pleasurable experiences, that feeling when you are strong or powerful – but remember that your body and the pleasures that it experiences are mortal and limited. When you live only for these things, you are spending your life pursuing what is ultimately dead. Is that not also a case of seeking the living among the dead?
No, we are not called to seek the living among the dead. As followers of Christ, the risen one, our job is to spend our lives for the sake of what is alive. Our job is not to perpetuate the ways of death – the philosophy that says that the only way to deal with the violence and killing of this world is with more killing and violence – our job is to show the way of life.
One way that we do that is by proclaiming, as we do on this day, that the tomb is empty, that Jesus is risen and that we have come to know him even though he did die. One way that we do that is by proclaiming that the power of violence and death have been defeated once and for all, that they are false lords sitting on empty thrones. One way that we do that is by gathering at this table where we celebrate a meal that is not merely eaten in memory of a great man who sadly died but is the feast of the living Christ.
When we eat and drink in hope at this table, we can know that he is alive and present with us in this moment and will continue with us as we leave this place even as these morsels of bread and sips of wine will go with us and remain part of us. He will be with us always, even until the end of the age.
Why do you look for the living among the dead? It is a good question. You don’t need to. He is alive. He is present and I invite you now to join together in the feast celebrating that new reality.
he sun was rising on a new day, but it was also rising on a new reality. There, inside a borrowed tomb, had been a man utterly defeated. He had stood up against the greatest powers in this world – the power of hate, the power of privilege and exploitation, the power of death – and he had been defeated in the worst and most shameful way possible. The dark powers of this world had won as they always seem to win.
But on that Sunday morning, all of that had been changed. Defeat had been turned into victory. Shame had been turned into glory. And, in that place haunted by the regrets of what might have been, death had been turned into life.
I wonder if we understand what this really means. It means that the fighting is over – that the battle is won once and for all. The greatest and most persistent powers of this world have been routed. And I have long wondered, if the greatest dark powers of this world were defeated way back then, why is it that so many still to this very day are living in a world of shame, discouragement and death?
It turns out that, according to the Gospel of Luke, there were a couple of angels wondering that very thing. Specifically, they were wondering why the women were there. They had come to grieve and mourn and minister to the dead. They were stuck in the moment of defeat. But defeat was so three days ago! Now the victory had happened. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” the angels wanted to know.
But those women aren’t the only ones. You still do that, don’t you? You seek the living among the dead. Don’t be surprised that I know your secret; I only know it because it is my secret too. We look for the things that give us life among the dead things of this world. Many seem to assume that wealth and possessions can give us life but these things are dead. How can they give life?
Some people live only for the pleasures of the body – no matter what those pleasures may be. The lusts of the flesh take many forms. And it is a good thing to enjoy these things – good food, pleasurable experiences, that feeling when you are strong or powerful – but remember that your body and the pleasures that it experiences are mortal and limited. When you live only for these things, you are spending your life pursuing what is ultimately dead. Is that not also a case of seeking the living among the dead?
No, we are not called to seek the living among the dead. As followers of Christ, the risen one, our job is to spend our lives for the sake of what is alive. Our job is not to perpetuate the ways of death – the philosophy that says that the only way to deal with the violence and killing of this world is with more killing and violence – our job is to show the way of life.
One way that we do that is by proclaiming, as we do on this day, that the tomb is empty, that Jesus is risen and that we have come to know him even though he did die. One way that we do that is by proclaiming that the power of violence and death have been defeated once and for all, that they are false lords sitting on empty thrones. One way that we do that is by gathering at this table where we celebrate a meal that is not merely eaten in memory of a great man who sadly died but is the feast of the living Christ.
When we eat and drink in hope at this table, we can know that he is alive and present with us in this moment and will continue with us as we leave this place even as these morsels of bread and sips of wine will go with us and remain part of us. He will be with us always, even until the end of the age.
Why do you look for the living among the dead? It is a good question. You don’t need to. He is alive. He is present and I invite you now to join together in the feast celebrating that new reality.
John 12:12-19, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Psalm 118:1,2 19-29
H
ave you heard the word? They say that that man from Nazareth has come to town. He’s here for the festival. You’ve heard about the stir that he has been causing up in Galilee. He’s a storyteller, they say, loves to tell these stories about farming and seeds. Obviously he’s coming down here to support the local farmers and it is about time! Farmers don’t get the respect that they deserve. They feed us all! So what do you say, shall we grab a few of these palm branches, symbols of the fruitful earth, and be part of it? Hosanna! Jesus comes in the name of the Lord to save us from disrespecting farmers!
Hey, what are you sitting around wasting your time here for? Haven’t you heard that Jesus has come to town? He is the one who has made his name up north for being such a good exorcist. He’s been casting demons out right and left. And you know that those Galileans up there are all yokels – not sophisticated like us Jerusalemites. They are likely to blame all sorts of things on evil demons including mental health issues like depression or bipolar disorder. So you know what that means, don’t you? It means that he will be leading a campaign against mental illness. Grab a palm branch, we need to be part of this.
Jesus is coming to town – you know, Jesus – the one who when he was asking his disciples who people were saying he was and one of them said he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, he didn’t deny it – that Jesus! Well, if he is the Christ, that surely means that he has come to gather the people, form and army and drive the Romans out of this country for good. That is a campaign that I can support. Who is with me? Arm yourselves with palm branches and let’s go kick out the bloody Romans!
Jesus? Jesus? Oh yeah, I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he the one who said, “The poor will always be with you”? In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing I’ve ever heard about him. Hey do you suppose that means that he’s all about helping rich folks get richer? Maybe he’s got some good stock tips or investment advice and I’m all in on that kind of thing. See this palm branch? It is green, a symbol for money! Wave it around and lets all get rich!
And so it went. I like the way that the Gospel of John tells the story of Palm Sunday – it’s just a little bit different from what you find in the other Gospels. John puts it like this, “The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him.” The way John tells it, it seems like more of a spontaneous thing with people turning out for their own reasons and Jesus and others, like the Pharisees, responding to what was happening. I like that. I think it must have happened pretty much like that. But it also puts particular emphasis on the problem that people have always had with this story.
People have always wondered how it could have happened like that – how there could have been this huge crowd of people welcoming and shouting the praises of Jesus one day and then, just a little bit later (less than a week) the same crowd was screaming for his death. And the traditional answer to that question – the answer that I heard from the pulpit as I was growing up – was that it was all a big misunderstanding.
You see, I was taught that the people of Jerusalem were welcoming Jesus because they had some very specific expectations of what kind of messiah he was going to be. They thought that Jesus was coming, as the messiah was often pictured in certain passages of the Old Testament, to lead some kind of armed revolt against the Romans and set the land free from the people who occupied it. They got all excited about that, but when Jesus didn’t turn out to be exactly what they were expecting (they were mad when Jesus didn’t take on the entire Roman Empire at once) they turned against him and, kind of ironically, delivered him up to the representative of the Roman Empire to be killed.
Now, I am not saying that that is entirely wrong, but I will tell you one key thing that I learned in my New Testament studies courses at seminary that causes a problem with that interpretation. This is actually a pretty well-kept secret and I was kind of shocked when I learned it so I am a little worried that I might just blow your minds here but this is what I learned: we actually don’t know what Jews were thinking in the time of Jesus. Shocking, I know! But this is a very important point.
And this is not just a matter of not being able to read the minds of people who lived 2000 years ago. The fact of the matter is that we actually do not know very much about the state of Judaism in the time of Jesus because Judaism, as we know it, actually didn’t exist back then. Judaism, what we know as the various sects of Rabbinic Judaism that are followed in the world today, only started to come into being a few years after the time of Jesus. In Jesus’ time, the Jews still had the temple, the sacrificial system and the priesthood; things that together defined their religion. But that was all taken away from them at once, about forty years after the crucifixion of Jesus when the Romans destroyed the temple. In 70 AD, the Jews lost everything that had once told them what it meant to be a Jew and so they basically had to reinvent their entire faith from scratch.
Most of the things that we associate with Judaism, including their devotion to the scriptures, many of their worship and their rituals really only came into being after the time of Jesus. And I tell you that mostly so that you will understand that nobody has a really clear idea what anybody was thinking when they went out to greet Jesus waving their palm branches. Their thoughts are almost completely alien to us.
Where they expecting something from Jesus? That seems clear. They were shouting “Hosanna!” and hosanna means “save” or “help.” They clearly wanted Jesus to do something for them and were hailing him as someone who had come “in the name of the Lord” to save them. But saving and helping can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Save me from what? Help me how?
At least some of them also seem to have been greeting him as messiah, but, again, what did that mean? We don’t know what Jews in Jesus’ time were looking for in a messiah. In fact, the only indications that we have are that there was a great variety of expectations. Sure some may have been looking for a leader of an armed revolt, but there are also indications that some were looking for someone who would lead a religious reform or for someone who would lead the people to submit to Rome. The fact of the matter is that there were probably as many different expectations of what Jesus would do for them as there were people in the crowd. In fact, isn’t that exactly how things often go?
I don’t know if you have noticed this, but we seem to be living in a golden age of populist leadership. It is a time when the people who seem to have the greatest success as leaders are not necessarily those who are able to communicate the best policies but rather those who are best at presenting an image that people can connect to. People seem to vote for or follow such leaders not for what they specifically plan to do but because of how people feel about them. The best of such populist leaders don’t get very specific at all about what they are going to do, they somehow present themselves in such a way that people just believe that they are going to be for whatever they want them to be for.
Donald Trump is an excellent example. He seems to be a master at getting a lot of people to project the things that they hope for or the fears that they want to be protected from onto him. For example, it seems that a whole lot of white Evangelical Christians came to believe that he was one of them and would save them, despite a large amount of evidence to the contrary. It is all about image, getting lots of attention and allowing people to project their desires onto you. And Trump is hardly the only example we could look at. It seems to me that Justin Trudeau employed a populist approach in his own way – at least to the extent that his success was more based on his personal image than it was on his policies. His popular image certainly allowed some people to project their hopes onto him. Now that it seems that that image is tarnishing somewhat, we may see if he is able to adapt to a new kind of leadership. The early indications of the new PC leader, Doug Ford, also seem to be that he is taking a very populist approach to the upcoming provincial election campaign.
What am I saying, that these leaders are all the same? No. Nor am I saying that there is no place for populism in leadership. Populist leaders can do a lot of good (though there is no question that they can also do a lot of evil – there are historical examples). No, I think that the real danger is not the leaders as much as how all of us deal with the image of the leaders. There is a problem when we are more interested in image than we are in substance. There is a problem when we turn off our critical thinking and just react to image. Lots of people have gotten in trouble by doing exactly that.
I do not believe that Jesus set out to make a populist entry into Jerusalem. He did apparently set out to project a particular image on that day. It says that “Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: ‘Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!’” But the image he was projecting was one that, at the very least, should have made people stop and think critically about the expectations that they were projecting into him.
Jesus was a good leader – we would even say a perfect leader – who had truly come “in the name of the Lord.” He did his best to communicate what he had really come to do both in word (as in, for example, his many parables of the kingdom of God) and in public relations actions (like, say, riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey). But none of this prevented people from projecting their own expectations, prejudices and fears onto him.
It is easy for us to do that with Jesus too – to make Jesus stand for and represent what we want him to represent. It didn’t just happen on Palm Sunday, it has happened throughout Christian history. Jesus has been used to promote slavery and to lead the charge against it. Jesus has been used to keep women in their traditional subservient place and to break them out of it. Racists and white supremacists had only been too happy to claim to have Jesus on their side but so have civil rights leaders and campaigners for equality.
Here’s what I would challenge all those people with – the truth that Jesus didn’t come to be on your side or on anybody’s side. Yes, people went out to him waving their palm branches and putting their expectations on him, but Jesus met them on the back of a donkey. He wasn’t coming to promote your idea or your way of fixing what you see as wrong in the world. He was coming to call you to change, to repentance and to be part of a new world. If there is one lesson that you can take away from Palm Sunday, it is to lay down your own ideologies and ideas about how to fix the world and just be open to allowing Jesus to change your mind and your heart.
So, by all means, let us join the throngs and wave our palms; let us shout “Hosanna,” which means save. But let us not assume that we can do it without allowing Jesus to challenge all of the ways in which we live in this world. He will challenge us on how we treat others. He will challenge on us on questions of fairness and justice. Palm Sunday isn’t just a party; it has to be the beginning of a redeemed world.
I just read an article on the web on how churches operate and how the bible states a congregation should view the church. My reason for reading this item was based on the past 5 years of our dogged pursuit for sustainable financing. I am not saying these pursuits weren’t necessary – they were vital to our continued existence. We have reached a plateau where we can take a deep breath and thank God for the reprieve. So naturally, this leads to OK what next? Our mission of serving the community is a very good start. So to are all the dedicated people who make things happen here at St Andrews.
Jesus said that “no congregation would be able to rise above the level of its leadership” (John 13:16). If today’s churches are failing to realize the Lord’s vision for them it can only be because they have adopted some other vision to guide their lives and work. For most churches that vision can be summarized as “perpetuating the status quo indefinitely into the future.” Such a vision denies the plain teaching of Scripture concerning God’s will for His people. It fails to challenge the priorities and values of the followers of Christ and encourages them to spend most of their precious time, energy, and resources on temporal rather than eternal things. Such a vision settles for a “good enough” approach to managing the affairs of God’s people instead of the “press on” attitude recommended by the Apostle Paul (Philippians 3:12-15).
GOD'S VISION FOR HIS CHURCH: A NEW YEAR'S PLEA TO LEADERSHIP by T.M. MOORE
My mission today after reflecting on how we could move forward has revealed that in the short term we need to focus our attention on the next 6 months on some internal pressures that need to be challenged.
The Prayer Chain needs a replacement coordinator upon the retirement of Mary Vincent. The interim replacement found is no longer able to continue in that function. Please pray we can find the right person! Or better be the right person.
The Meals Ministry needs your help. Call Joni and volunteer.
During Scott’s intermission (and vacation) it would be very helpful if a weekly “host” could be found for the guest preachers on Sundays. Session has implemented a strategy that the Beadle’s duties on Sunday be included in this function. Accordingly, the Beadles are requested to arrive @ 9:30 and assist the guest preacher in whatever needs or questions they may have.This practice could be applied anytime Scott is absent to ensure we allow the pulpit supply the best experience @ St Andrews.
The Pastors Intermission runs April 16th to June 30th and a five-week vacation there-after. In these 15 weeks the administration of St Andrews will need volunteers to keep the status quo. We had a similar challenge with our last empty-pulpit before Scott arrived.More so now with the Administrative Assistant having much fewer hours and Joni’s task list being full with current responsibilities. I ask that you declare this a mission critical situation and help lead us to a new plateau of realization.
I will share with you that elections for Deacon and Elders will be implemented in September of 2018. This too is a mission critical objective to fill Session and Deacon positions so those that are leading have a wider base of influence. Strength in numbers will result in opening more opportunities in the future. Currently Session has 9 full-time Elders. There need to be at least 12-15 to be effective.We are short 3 Deacons to ensure Districts have a representative. An under-staffed Session will not lead us into a better vision of worship. We need help – your help in 2018.
Deacons and Elders have met twice to resolve the Youth Leader position at St Andrews. Mike Wasyluk leads the discussion and is very knowledgeable and charismatic. Mike has been seconded to the Waterloo Presbytery in his roll to increase youth church involvement. These meetings are scheduled to take place at least twice more and you are cordially invited to join us in the vital mission. Come join in a discussion of contemporary and educational matters – ask Joni for the next date.
I think we should have our house in order and then reflect on the true meaning of church in 2018 and beyond. It is my hope that in the Fall of 2018 we can endeavor to fulfill the true calling that we all are directed to be as a Christians. We have come so far and now is the time to renew the charter of our faith. In my humble opinion.
ast week we talked about something unique in the nature of the God that we meet in the Bible. The people of Israel, unlike their neighbours around them, came to understand that their God was a God who made covenants. He entered into a relationship with his people where he required certain things of them and promised, in return, that he would remain faithful to them by continually showing them steadfast lovingkindness.
And that kind of covenant relationship is a good and beautiful thing. To be in a covenant relationship – any kind of covenant relationship – is a great blessing. I know that many of you have been blessed by such a relationship in your life, as have I. A good marriage, where each party in the marriage promises to support the other and to remain faithful and loving in the good times and in the bad, when everything is easy and when it hard, is such a covenant relationship. Many people are also deeply blessed by a similar dynamic in other relationships – enduring friendships and family ties, certain working situations and so on. Being in that kind of a relationship does more to form us, give us confidence and hope and help us to be our very best than just about anything else in life.
But there is a potential downside to being in a covenant relationship. Anytime you enter into something with that level of commitment, there is a danger. When you only trust someone a little and they let you down, it may hurt a bit, but you will probably be alright. But when you are in a covenant relationship and somebody lets somebody down, it can be absolutely devastating and can bring some real long-term effects. And the thing is that disappointment and betrayal are almost inescapable in some ways. None of us are going to be perfect covenant partners. We will all likely fall short in some way or another sooner or later. And when we do, and when it is a serious betrayal, that hurts and wounds us in ways that often stay with us for the rest of our lives.
That is what makes this idea that the God of Israel is a God who makes covenants so surprising. It means that, by choosing frail humans like us as covenant partners, God is exposing Godself to disappointment, pain and heartbreak that we can hardly even fathom. If God makes a covenant with people, they will let him down. That is about the only thing that can be guaranteed.
And that is indeed the history of the covenant that God made with the people of Israel. There are countless examples of how the people of Israel disappointed God in the Bible. Even as Moses was standing in the presence of God and receiving the terms of the covenant on top of Mount Sinai, we are told that the people at the foot of the mountain were busy casting their own alternate god out of gold. Think of it – a people flagrantly violating the terms of their covenant with their God even while the covenant is being set up. That would be comparable to a bride or a groom cheating with somebody else even while the wedding ceremony is going on! Can you even fathom the feeling of betrayal that God, as a covenant partner, would feel at that moment!
And that is, of course, not the only instance. As you read through the scriptures, the story is repeated again and again as the children of Israel repeatedly turn away from the God who has chosen them, forget the ways in which he has asked them to live and run after other gods and strange practices. Again and again in the Bible, God is portrayed as a jilted lover, a cuckold. Sometimes he speaks of his anger at the betrayal, sometimes he is just so indescribably sad, but the theme of God’s disappointment is a theme that runs through the whole Bible.
But despite it all, God doesn’t give up and doesn’t forget the promises that he made. No matter what, God reminds them, they will be his people and he will be their God. God responds to the people in various ways. He gives them the law through Moses – not as a way of making their lives miserable by piling on rules and regulations, but in order to offer them some real and helpful guidance on how they should live out their lives. More than anything, and especially if you read the Book of Deuteronomy, the law seems to be about helping them to create a just and fair society where everyone is given the resources they need to live a decent life.
But law seems to fail to accomplish its true intention. Rather than live up to the spirit of the law, the leaders prefer to put the emphasis on the form of the law with festivals, sacrifices and rituals becoming the focus. So God sends in the prophets to correct and challenge the people – especially the leaders. “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies” the prophets say on God’s behalf. “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever–flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24)
So God attempts to call the people back to the keeping of the covenant through the prophets but the prophets are rejected, persecuted and even killed. They are too much of a threat to the established order and the people who are in charge and so, despite their enduring, beautiful and poetic words, the work of the prophets cannot persuade the people to keep to their side of the covenant.
But still God does not give up, does not walk away from what only looks like a bad deal from his side. Ultimately, the Book of Deuteronomy and the Books of the Kings conclude, God decides that he must send the people out of the land altogether. They are invaded and taken away to captivity by the Babylonians so that the land itself might have a chance to rest and recover from the lack of justice. But even there, God does not forget his promises. After a generation has passed, he relents and allows his people to return from their exile and start over again in the land that he had given to their ancestors.
And that is the story, if you want to put it in a nutshell, of the entire Old Testament. God is the faithful covenant partner who is disappointed again and again by the partners that he has chosen. Like a longsuffering wife who just refuses to give up on her violent or abusive husband, he just keeps coming back for more. That is how it is portrayed.
And how do you fix a relationship like that? I mean that sincerely – how do you fix it? Because Lord knows that we have all seen more than our share of relationships like that. Some partners are abusive, some neglectful, some more than a bit cruel. Don’t get me wrong, there are all kinds of wonderful relationships out there where you see a couple constantly building each other up and offering encouragement, but what about the other kind where they only seem to manage to tear each other down?
Sometimes, of course, the sad reality is that a relationship becomes so destructive that the best possible way forward is to separate and go on and build your lives apart from each other. The only alternative is that there be real substantial change, but how do you go about doing that? Sometimes people will try making vows and promises – “I promise you, baby, this time it is going to be different, this time it is going to be better” – but in my experience those kinds of promises, often made in desperation are bound to fail sooner or later. That was what God found with the people of Israel and sometimes finds with us. We make promises and vows but too often our resolve is simply not enough to keep us faithful.
Sometimes, in an effort to save the relationship, people will try setting up rules and boundaries. This is what God did through the Law of Moses. But, as we have seen in that case, rules can quickly lose their meaning, in any relationship, what you really need is not outward obedience to rules but inward and genuine devotion and commitment. Sometimes an outside voice is found to help the participants in the relationship to learn to see the relationship in new ways. I guess you could say that prophets coming in to speak for God carried out this function in the Old Testament.
So basically, in the Bible, God tries the very things that we try to repair a wounded relationship. There is repentance and forgiveness and ups and downs, but everything seems to fall short at one point or another. What is a deity to do when he just doesn’t want to give up – when God absolutely refuses to walk away from the covenant he has made? God is desperate to make this work. What would you do?
Well, what God does is opt for one dramatic act that is intended to change the entire dynamic of the relationship. His plan is to make a dramatic demonstration of just how much he cares for his people hoping that this will finally convince them of his love. You will see something like that, sometimes, in ailing relationship. I’ve heard of a person, for example, who walked away from a high paying but super high pressure job that had been slowly been killing him as well as his relationship with his family. It was a radical choice that left the whole family much poorer off financially but so much more healthy in other ways. It was a hard thing to do, but it totally changed the dynamics of a once-failing relationship. That was the kind of dramatic move God needed.
God made that move, we believe, in the person of Jesus. God chose to enter into the fullness of all that it means to be us in Jesus Christ. That changes the dynamic of the covenant so dramatically because it means that, for the first time, God can understand the struggles of the covenant from our point of view – can understand the weaknesses we struggle with, the temptations that we face. In understanding the limitations that we face, God can deal with us with a new and powerful compassion.
But, more than that, in Christ, God gives us the supreme demonstration of what God’s love looks like and it looks like Christ who is willing to put up with all of the pain and rejection and shame of the cross for our sake. It looks like a man who is innocent and has done nothing but stand up for what is true and right being struck down for it in all injustice. It looks like a friend who is willing to give up his life for the sake of his friends. And you could talk about the love of God and how deep it is and how wide it is forever and you will never be able to equal what was shown to us when Jesus was nailed up on that wood.
That is what God does for us in Christ Jesus. That is the story that we will be rehearsing yet again over the next couple of weeks. And I know that none of that makes all of our problems go away. We are still weak. We still fall short of our best intentions. We still do not live up to everything that God expects of us. But the relationship has changed because of Christ. The covenant has moved beyond the mere matter of obedience to an affair of the heart.
It has moved towards what Jeremiah was promising when he said, “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
God took it there for us in Christ and in our hearts we will live out that covenant with hope and power. That is what is different because of Jesus.
he ancient Babylonians had a myth about a great universal flood sent by their gods to destroy the life of all the humans on the face of the earth that they had made. Only one man and his family made it through – survived by building a great ship and riding it out. And if that story sounds a bit familiar it should. It is a basic plot that I am sure all of us would recognize if we know anything about the Bible.
The ancient Babylonian story was not exactly the same, of course. The hero of the story was named Utnapishtim instead of Noah – a fact that I share with you mostly because I just like to say “Utnapishtim.” And, of course, the deity involved in the Babylonian story was not the God of Israel but rather a collection of ancient Babylonian gods. But the story corresponds so closely that most scholars would say that the biblical story is dependant on the much older Utnapishtim story.
This is, in itself, not all that surprising. The ancient Hebrews were a part of the ancient world in which they lived and they knew the stories of their neighbours. They quite naturally developed their own versions of those stories which they told for various reasons. Some of these stories they told to work out their understanding of ancient events – and there may well be ancient events behind this one – the memories of some ancient flood that was likely not universal but that devastated an entire region. But these stories weren’t just about things that had happened a long time ago. They were mostly told as a way to process the things that they were coming to know about the God that they worshipped.
For example, one of the big differences between the Babylonian story and the biblical story is the reason for the flood in the first place. In the older story, the Babylonian gods basically decide to wipe out the humans because they are too noisy. Like grouchy neighbours on the upper floor of an apartment building, the gods are upset about all the noise downstairs and the flood is just their way of turning on all the taps until they overflow to “persuade” the noisy neighbours to move out. And, for the Babylonian gods, the only regret that they have for doing this is that when the human race is wiped out, there is nobody left to feed them with burnt offerings and so they do come to regret it, but for rather selfish reasons.
The ancient Hebrews heard that story and they knew that it didn’t sound quite right. At least it didn’t seem to be how the God that they were coming to know – the God who had made the people of Israel his own people – would behave. So the story they told mostly differed in how it reflected the relationship between God and the people of the earth. So, for example, instead of being annoyed that the humans are too noisy, God, in the biblical story has a legitimate beef with the people of the earth. They are evil, given to violence and murder, and God decides he is not going to stand for it any more. So there is the first difference from the gods of Babylon. The God of Israel is motivated by justice.
The second difference in the biblical story is God’s response after the disaster. God, like the Babylonian gods, does regret the slaughter of the flood. But the God of the Bible doesn’t merely miss the sacrifices of the people. Yes, it does say in Genesis that “the Lord smelled the pleasing odour” of Noah’s sacrifice after the flood, but rather than inspiring God’s hunger, the Bible says that the sacrifice reminds God of his love for the people he created. He realizes that to seek to destroy them was wrong, that it didn’t really solve anything but only made things worse. So here is the second wonder about the God of the Noah story – he is able to learn and grow.
It is a bit surprising, perhaps, if you have always believed that God never changes, to read that God changed his mind after the flood. But I honestly believe that that passage is more about the changing and growing realization of the people who were telling this story as they learned more about the God that they worshiped than it is about Godself changing. The more they came to know this God who they were exploring by telling these stories, the more they discovered, especially about God’s devotion to justice and what was right.
But there is another aspect to the story of the flood that sets it apart from so many other similar stories that come to us from the ancient world. God doesn't just repent of what he has done, he makes a covenant. And here is the most amazing thing of all in this story about what the ancient people of Israel learned about the God that they worshipped. He was a God who made covenants. From what we can tell from the history of the ancient Near East, this was something that was unique. No other ancient peoples had a covenant making God. This was probably the first thing that set the Hebrews apart from their neighbours.
Now covenant is not necessarily an everyday word for most of us, so I do want to make sure we all understand exactly what one is. A covenant is an ancient word for what we might call today a contract or a deal or an agreement. In ancient times covenants were originally made between larger groups of people like tribes or nations, so you might also say that a good word for it might be treaty.
When ancient people made a covenant, they would come together and decide on the terms of their accord – what each party owed the other. There was usually some kind of document that laid out all of the blessings that the participants in the covenant would receive if they kept the terms and (since you can’t have the one without the other) there would also be a list of the curses that would be visited upon them if they broke the covenant. In addition, there would be some sort of monument set up that would remind the parties of the commitment that they had made so they would not break the terms of the covenant.
These covenants were extremely important in the ancient world. They created peace and prosperity for those tribes and nations that entered into them. But, generally speaking, in the ancient Near East, covenants were only agreements made between tribes and nations or between individuals. But the ancient people of Israel came to understand something quite different – that they had a God who made covenants.
We see that covenant-making God being introduced, in a sense, in our story this morning from Genesis. He, unlike that ancient gods of Babylon who are only interested in greedily eating up the meat of the sacrifices after the devastation of a flood, instead God wants to make a covenant with the people who have just come off of the ark and all of his creatures. God asks very little of them but he makes a huge promise in return. “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
God even sets up a monument for this covenant. “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” He is speaking, of course, of the rainbow that often appears in the sky when there is rain. But the symbolism of it is very significant. God speaks of laying down God’s bow – that is to say his war bow, his weapon of war. It is a clear demonstration of his commitment to no longer use violence against this world.
What’s more, he states that the reason why the bow will appear is not to remind us but God to keep the terms of this covenant. “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” This reminder of the covenant is so important that you probably noticed that it is repeated three times in the text.
And so, in the Noah story, we are introduced to this radical idea of a God who makes covenants – who voluntarily puts himself and his integrity on the line for the sake of his covenant partners. And this one unique trait that is revealed about the God of Israel drives much of the rest of the scriptures. When we next encounter God, we find him choosing to make a covenant with one particular righteous man and wife pair: Abraham and Sarah, and to make a nation out of them that will bring a blessing to the whole world.
Later, because of that covenant and because God remembers his covenant promises, he saves the descendants of Abraham and Sarah from slavery in Egypt and creates them as a nation. He also sends Moses to teach them, through the Law, how to live up to their end of the covenant. And throughout the Old Testament we are told the ups and downs of that covenant relationship and how Israel sometimes disobeys and goes astray, things go wrong but God never forgets his covenant promises.
Even the Psalm that we read this morning was all about the covenant between God and his people. Though you may not have noticed that, you probably noticed that it was a little bit repetitive with the same phrase being repeated over and over again: “for his steadfast love endures forever.” Well, there is a reason why that phrase was considered so important that they needed to keep saying it over and over again in that psalm. “Steadfast love” was a key technical term in the forming of ancient covenants. It was the quality in a person (or group of people) that made them committed to keeping the covenant. If God had steadfast lovingkindness, the Israelites were saying, they they could be sure that God would never desert them or abandon the promises he had made to them. God’s steadfast love – his covenant commitment – was the driving force behind everything that he had done for them.
And, of course, covenant isn’t just an Old Testament idea, it is also the foundation of the New Testament. Christians proclaimed that Jesus had come to create a new covenant with his disciples – a covenant not based on laws and rules, but a covenant of faith that we celebrate and renew every time we perform a baptism and every time we gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
This concept of a covenant making God revolutionized everything about the relations of God with his people. It gave people hope and security to know that they had a God who would not forget them or his promises to them.
What does it mean today to know that our God is a covenant making God? It should continue to be a source of encouragement to us. Every time you are tempted to think of God as a God who is out to get you, to punish you for the slightest mistakes or to make you suffer for the decisions you made earlier in your life, you must remind yourself. Look for some monument that will remind you of God’s steadfast love – a rainbow in the sky, a baptismal font, a loaf of bread, the glory and beauty of nature. These things are placed there as a continual reminder to you that God is a God who makes promises to you and will never fail in them. These things will remind you that God has already given you his steadfast love and that his steadfast love endures forever.
Knowing such things, reminding yourself of such things truly has enormous power to change your perspective, change how you see God and how you see everything. So know this one thing about the God that you worship – that God is a God who makes covenants.
