We are lucky to live in a land of plenty, however not all do. In Malawi people go without even the most basic of necessities. We need to reach out and send people to them, so they can be helped and put in a better place and survive.
This mission is coordinated by the PWS&D to help education development, hospital improvement, village health programs as well as HIV and AIDS programs to help inform people on the threat of this disease.
We need to raise $500 per member by mid-March 2018 to be successful in sending our congregation members. Please contact Peter Moyer, Bill Pettit, Jean Godin or Elaine Benson from the Mission and Outreach Committee for further details. Or call the church office to be put in contact with one of these people.
For more information on the Mission, please consult http://presbyterian.ca/im/missiontrips/
The 9th Episode of the Podcast "Retelling the Bible" came out earlier today
During the first season of his podcast, storyteller, W. Scott McAndless is retelling the story of the nativity of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, trying to help us to see some of the historical and biblical references the author is making - helping us to hear the story more as the author may have intended.
In today's episode, the announcement of a Year of Jubilee comes to the small village of Nazareth. All males are called to return to their ancestral homes. Many of the villagers seem doubtful when they hear where this proclamation is coming from, but one young carpenter and his intended wife feel a stirring in their hearts. Gabrielle M. guest stars in the role of Mary.
I encourage you to subscribe and to listen via one of these popular Podcasting apps. Each of the links below will take you to a page where you can subscribe:
Here is a special gift to my listeners (which you will understand after hearing today's podcast) a cutout of Judas the Galilean to add to your Nativity Scene this year.
his Christmas and Advent season, I wanted to help us get a new perspective on the same old Christmas story. And I figured that the best way to do that was by listening to the story through the voices of characters that we don’t usually get to hear and to see it through their eyes. So this morning, I want to tell the story of Christmas through Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.
I realize, of course, that I am not necessarily the ideal person to tell her story. It might take a bit of suspension of disbelief, but I hope you just go with it. At least I am kind of dressed for the part this morning.
So here we are, in Elizabeth’s voice:
I used to dread it when my husband, Zechariah, went off to do his priestly duties, to serve in the great temple with the Levitical priests of his section. It wasn’t just that I missed him while he was gone, though I certainly did. I felt so alone when he wasn’t there. There were just the two of us. My only other living relative was my niece, my sister’s daughter, Mary, who lived far off in Galilee.
Zechariah and I had had no children. It had been ten years and, for all our trying, I had just not been able to conceive. And I knew that Zechariah’s heart was broken because of this – that he longed with all his heart to have a son to teach the prayers to and who could someday take his place in the brotherhood of the priests. That was hard for him but he had no way of knowing my pain.
For me, my failure to produce a son wasn’t just my disappointment. It was my death. It made me a nobody. No one would see me, speak to me or even acknowledge my existence. They would when Zechariah was around, of course, they had to respect him as a priest. But while he was gone, it was as if I had disappeared too. It is just the way that things are. A woman needs a man – whether it be a father, a husband or a son – to give her a place to stand in the community. I didn’t blame the others for their failure to see me. They just didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t fit into their understanding of the world. I didn’t hate them, but over the years, I convinced myself that I didn’t care what they thought and I set about doing what I could to survive until my husband returned.
Just to make it through, sometimes, I would go and meet with others like me – the women in the area who had never carried a child. Every one of us had her own story. There were some, like me, who had just never managed to conceive, but there were others whose stories were even sadder, if that is possible.
There was one woman, for example, who first knew a man (much older than her) when she was very young. He promised her so much – that he would love her, that he would take her away from her father who, she tells us, would beat her often. She was so young, so naïve that she didn’t know that this man was just using her for his pleasure and had no intention of keeping any of his grandiose promises. Well, of course, they were eventually caught doing something that, well, they shouldn’t have been doing. He just accused her of seducing him. She was the foul temptress, the Delilah that had defeated another Samson, and so everyone agreed that he was not to blame. He walked away with no dishonour while she – she would carry the dishonour for the rest of her life. No one would ever marry her. Any child she might have in any sort of relationship would never be acceptable. So she was as barren as the rest of us, only for different reasons.
There was another sister who was raped by a man in her community. It was his crime and everyone knew it, but the way it was dealt with was according to the ancient law – the man could be stoned to death, or he could pay the penalty in silver… and marry her. It wasn’t much of a choice for him, of course he married her, his third wife. She was given no choice at all! And then he resented her for it after the marriage and decided to never touch her again, so of course she had so no chance of having children either.
They all had stories like that – so much sadness, so many tragedies. Our stories were all different but we had in common that we didn’t really belong anywhere. When my husband was away, the only time that I didn’t feel completely alone was when I was with them.
We would encourage each other with stories – our stories, the stories that had belonged to us long before they had come into the hands of men who wrote them in their scrolls, claiming them for themselves. They were stories that mother had passed down to daughter since before anything could be written down. And, though we all knew them, it brought us great comfort to share them with each other in this way.
There were stories about Sarah and how, even in her old age – when it was far too late for her to even dream about it – God had visited her that she might have a son. There were stories of Rebekah and how she strove mightily that she might bring her twin sons, Esau and Jacob, into the world. And, of course, there were Rachel and Leah, whose fierce competition with each other to bring children for their husband Jacob into the world created the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. And there were some who loved the story of Tamar and how she tricked Judah (who had dishonoured her) into giving her children. All of our stories were stories of women who struggled to bear and then saved the life of the nation by doing so.
But, for me, the greatest heroine of all was Hannah. I saw myself so much in her story. She, too, suffered for so long without a child. She, like me, had a husband who loved her – who knew the scorn and the rejection that she faced but who also felt powerless to help her. But most of all, I loved her because she seemed able to find a way to express her hopes and fears and frustrations to God – did it without even speaking aloud – and she found a way to be heard by God in the anguish of her unspoken words.
Hannah gave me hope that things could be different – oh, not for me. It seemed far too late for that and I dared not hope for it. But her story made me hope that maybe something could change for others someday.
The thing that made me believe that was the song of praise that she sang when God finally gave her the answer to the prayer of her heart – when her son the Prophet Samuel was born. She prayed and gave thanks to God, but not like some might. She didn’t just thank God for giving her what she wanted. She knew that God had done so much more – had overturned the very order of the world. “The Lord kills and brings to life;” she proclaimed, “he brings down to Sheol and raises up.The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts.He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour.” That was the hope that I held onto in my hours of greatest despair.
One of the few bright spots in my life all of those years when I longed for a child was my niece, Mary. I would take care of her for weeks at a time because my sister was often sickly and later died. My favorite story – the story of Hannah – quickly became hers as well. And we would sing Hannah’s song together – our little secret and our shared hope for a different kind of world.
I don’t think I ever really understood Hannah’s story or her song until that time when Zechariah came home from his time of service in the temple. Something was so different about him. But he would explain nothing to me – in fact he couldn’t speak at all! It didn’t really matter though because I could read so much just in the look on his face. He was so excited and he took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom and, well, there are some parts of the story that you don’t really have to hear in detail, do you? Let me just say that something went right that night that hadn’t gone right before.
Before long I could finally believe it when I felt the flutter of new life growing strong within me. I knew my child would be no ordinary child – that he would be like Hannah’s child, Samuel, and would change the course of the history of my people. That was when I decided that I would make the same vow that Hannah did and that my son would drink no wine or strong drink his whole life long. He, like Samuel, would be devoted to God his whole life long. Later, to my wonder, when Zechariah could speak, it turned out that he had made the same vow as well, but for his own strange reasons.
But the best part of all came when my beloved niece, Mary, came to visit. She was still so young – still only a girl in my eyes – but she brought her own story of an impossible pregnancy that amazed and frightened me at the same time. It frightened me for her, most of all, because it was so hard to believe and I knew that people have a hard time believing girls to begin with – especially when it comes to any story at all related to sex and childbearing. Somehow people are always only interested in what a man has to say on the subject.
But I knew that my job was merely to believe her – to take her and her word as it was. Sometimes that is the most important thing that God asks us to do for anyone. And when I did believe her (which I did with my whole heart) I felt my child jump inside me – the biggest movement that had yet come from him – and I knew that he believed her too.
It was only natural for us to fall back on the story that had always been that shared secret between us. We talked into the night of mother Hannah and how she alone could understand what we had both gone through – the scorn and rejection, the disappointment and frustration. And, because of that, she was also the only one who could feel our relief, hope and new joy. It was like she had stepped out of the history of our people and joined directly in our circle and we could not have been more happy to welcome her.
It was then that Mary opened her mouth to sing the song that was on both of our minds. And it was Hannah’s song that she sang, but it was more truly hers now, and mine too. The words had changed somewhat but I could still hear Hannah’s voice in all she sang; “"He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
And we knew that the hope of Hannah and the hope of all forgotten women down through the history of our people was finally going to be fulfilled and that God’s messiah would indeed draw near. He would be present when vulnerable girls with troubling stories were believed. He would be present when abused and rejected survivors were given a place and a voice. He would be present when the despised like me were beloved again. And then God’s kingdom would be at hand.
The 8th Episode of the Podcast "Retelling the Bible" came out earlier today
During the first season of his podcast, storyteller, W. Scott McAndless is retelling the story of the nativity of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, trying to help us to see some of the historical and biblical references the author is making - helping us to hear the story more as the author may have intended.
In today's episode, we jump back before the beginning to trace some of the reaction to the census that was taken at the time when Jesus was born. A rebel named Judas and his friend, Zadok, plan their response to the Roman initiative - a response that will have a big impact on the birth of Jesus and of the Christian faith.
I encourage you to subscribe and to listen via one of these popular Podcasting apps. Each of the links below will take you to a page where you can subscribe:
Here is a special gift to my listeners (which you will understand after hearing today's podcast) a cutout of Judas the Galilean to add to your Nativity Scene this year.
Malawi Africa has been affected with famine, disease and a degrading economy that leaves many without education or even electricity. Help them by donating money to our mission to Malawi fund to send members from our Church family to go and do God's will by showing compassion. This mission is coordinated by the PWS&D to help education development, hospital improvement, village health programs as well as HIV and AIDS programs to help inform people of the threat of this disease. We need to raise $500 per member by mid-March 2018 to be successful in sending our congregation members.
Please contact Peter Moyer, Bill Pettit, Jean Godin or Elaine McLean from the Mission and Outreach Committee for further details. For more information on the Mission, please consult http://presbyterian.ca/im/missiontrips/
s that in the Bible? It is one of those questions that you just have to ask sometimes when you read this book. And few passages elicit such a response more easily than the one we read this morning. It is a story that seems odd on so many levels. Jesus is just walking along one bright morning, he sees a fig tree in the distance, sees that it has some leaves on it, and feels a little rumble in his stomach. He is hungry so he goes over to see whether it has any fruit on it.
Now, mind you, it is not exactly the right season for figs, but I guess if you’re really hungry (as I guess Jesus was) you can hardly blame a guy for hoping that there might be a few early fruits. I mean, who hasn’t been there: you open the cupboard and hope against hope, when you see the old Twinkie box shoved up in the back corner, that there will be just one golden cake still hidden inside. You can hope, but when you discover that the box is empty how do you react?
You might feel a momentary surge of anger at whichever member of your household took the last cake and failed to throw out the empty box and put Twinkies on the grocery list again. But, thankfully, most of us can deal with that anger without it turning into a homicidal rage. The really shocking thing in this story in the Gospel of Mark is that Jesus essentially goes into an arboricidal rage over his failure to get a snack. For the crime of not bearing a fruit (at a time when fig trees don’t generally bear fruit anyway), this particular fig tree is condemned by Jesus to death. “May no one ever eat fruit from you again,” he cries out against it.
And just in case anyone thinks that this is a joke or a metaphor, we all get to return to the very same spot on the path between Bethany and Jerusalem the very next morning to see that the same fig tree is now “withered away to its roots.” It is, in other words, not just a little bit sick but so completely dead that it is quite clear that no one ever will eat its fruit again.
I have heard a lot of people stumble over this passage, and not surprisingly! The initial impression that the story gives is that Jesus is behaving like a someone having a temper tantrum – using whatever power he has available to him (and he has a lot of power) to destroy something that has given him the slightest bit of irritation. So what are we supposed to do with this passage – accept that Jesus had a thing against fig trees and move on?
Well, actually no, I don’t think so. In fact there is a whole lot going on in this passage that we miss. In fact, I would even say that there is a vital message for the church today hidden in it – one that I pray that we do not miss.ld even say that there is a vital message for the church today hidden in it
One reason why we miss the message is because we forget what we are reading when we read the Gospel of Mark. We assume that we are reading a history book or a journalistic account of the events of Jesus’ life. I believe that Mark would have been appalled to know that people would read his book in such a way. Mark was writing a gospel, not a mere historical account and so the author was trying to communicate a whole lot more than just what happened. He was trying to explain who Jesus was and what he had come to accomplish and, in order to do that, he did not hesitate to use common literary tricks to get his message across.
For example, there are a number of times in his Gospel when Mark starts telling one story about something that happened to Jesus and then, all of a sudden in the middle of the story, everything gets interrupted by something else that happens, seemingly out of the blue. (For example, there’s this story when Jesus gets called on to go to the house of a man named Jairus and heal his daughter but gets interrupted on the way there when a sick woman touches the hem of his garment. Mark 8:40-56) Then, once the interruption has been dealt with, the original story resumes and is concluded. (For example, Jesus goes on and heals the girl.) This doesn’t just happen once in this gospel but several times. And, if you read this gospel closely, you start to wonder what on earth is going on. And the closer you look, the more likely you are to conclude that this has not just happened by accident but that the author has gone out of his way to tell his story in this way.
But why would Mark choose to do that? Is it just a style thing? Or is this one of the ways in which Mark deliberately chose to get his message across? It seems to be the latter because if you look closely at each instance where Mark does this, there is special meaning being communicated. In particular, in every case, there is always a strange connection between the two stories that are interrupting each other. In other words, you cannot completely understand the beginning and the end of the story without understanding the interrupting part in the middle and vice versa.
The passage we read this morning is a perfect example of this storytelling technique. Mark starts off with the story of Jesus and the fig tree, but then he gets interrupted by the story of Jesus and the temple. After cursing the fig tree, Jesus goes down to the temple and starts causing quite a commotion, driving out sellers, overturning tables and even stopping people from carrying things through the temple. It is only after all of this is over that we return to the story of the fig tree.
Therefore, if Mark is using this pair of stories in the same way that he uses the other interrupting stories, we should expect that there should be some important connection between the story of the fig tree and the story of what happens in the temple – that he has a message that he is trying to get across by putting these two stories together in the way that he does.
So what might that message be? Is the connection, perhaps, that Jesus was really grumpy after not having any breakfast and not finding any figs on the fig tree and that that’s what put him in a bad mood which led to the incident at the temple? No, I don’t think so. I think that Mark has something much more serious to say and that we ought to pay attention to it.
What if the fig tree and the temple are one and the same thing? That is to say, what if the fig tree is a metaphor for the temple. You see, when we read the story of Jesus in the temple, we often focus on the mechanics of what he does. He seems to be attacking the commercial activities that are taking place in the temple and so, down through the years, Christians have been inclined to apply this story by limiting or being very careful about anything that looks like commercial activity in the church. There are churches, for example, that will absolutely forbid any sort of exchange of money for services or goods within the sanctuary. We figure that we can escape the condemnation that Jesus pronounces on the temple by avoiding any activities that look vaguely similar to what was going on in the temple that day. But what if that isn’t enough? What if Jesus was getting at something deeper than specific activities?
If the fig tree represents the temple, Jesus’ anger at the tree (which is irrational on the surface) makes a whole lot more sense. Jesus isn’t especially angry at the fig tree for its failure to produce fruit in a season when it shouldn’t produce anyways. He is angry at the temple, not just for particular activities that are taking place there, but for its general failure to bear fruit.in the temple, but for it'uce fruit. He is angry at the temple, not just for particular activiti I also suspect that Jesus’ curse,curse "suspect that Jesus'ruit.in the temple, but for it'uce fruit. He is angry at the temple, not just for particular activiti“May no one ever eat fruit from you again,” is directed at the temple more than the tree. This seems especially obvious when you realize that Mark wrote this Gospel very soon after the temple in Jerusalem had been completely destroyed at a time when it was quite clear that no one would ever worship or eat from its fruit again. Mark is telling his readers that, just as Jesus could curse a fig tely destroy and no one would ever worship "ivititree to death and it would actually die a day later, he did curse the temple to death and it was destroyed forty years later.
But what if this is not just about some ancient temple? What if it is about the church and the challenges we face today? Think of in this way: Imagine that Jesus came today to St. Andrew’s Hespeler and, on the way in, had a run in with Andrew'ut the church and the challenges we face today?would ever worship "iviti a fruit tree. I’m not going to say a fig tree because we’re hardly familiar with them. So let’s say that he had a run in with an apple tree that tempted him with its leaves but disappointed him with a lack of apples. If that apple tree was us, what would it say about our church and how Jesus might react to us were he in our midst today?
In other words, what fruit might Jesus be looking for from us and from the church in general today and would he find it or not? We could talk for a long time about that question and I know that there would be many different opinions. My personal feeling is that the fruit that Jesusow that there would be many diffeerent y and would he find it or not?hh is looking for is a church that makes a place for all people. At least, that’s what I hear in Jesus’ call for the temple to be “a house of prayer for all the nations.”
One thing I think that that especially means in our modern context is that the church needs to be a place of safety for the victims of this world. If our churches are not a place where victims of domestic abuse, sexual harassment and other similar crimes can feel the freedom to tell their stories and can be believed, for example, we have a real problem. And sadly, when today I hear some church leaders standing up for abusers instead of victims, it makes me think that Jesus would get very angry indeed with at least some of our leaders!
But I suspect that there is even more fruitfulness that Jesus would look for. He would ask for a church that is involved in actions that positively impact the lives of people in the community. After all, didn’t Jesus often speak of how the kingdom of God would be found when the hungry were fed, the naked clothed and the strangers welcomed? I know that we could always do more to step up to such challenges, but I would say that at St Andrew’s we do pretty well at marking such activities a priority. Let us press on and always be open to what more Jesus is calling us to do.
I also suspect that we have an indication in this story of what Jesus might see as a sign that a church is failing in the fruitfulness department. It is true that the activities that he disrupted in the temple were those activities that were focused on the financial support of the institution. The changing of money and selling of sacrificial animals was an essential part of the financial life of the temple. After all, you can’t maintain a huge religious institution like the temple without some revenue sources. Jesus can’t argue against the mere presence of money within the temple precincts but what he seems to be complaining about is the fact that the search for revenue in the temple has become all consuming and saying that a concern for it is what has been pushing the temple away from its primary task and that was why it had become so unfruitful.
I personally don’t think that Jesus actually got so mad at a fig tree one day that he cursed it to death. I suspect that Mark took some of the things that Jesus said about unfruitful trees and the power of prayer and turned those sayings into a kind of living parable – knowing that it would be much more powerful that way.
But, in a sense, it doesn’t really matter whether Jesus did it or not – the point in Mark including this little episode was to teach us something much more important about the temple and (I suspect) the church. It is a reminder to us that Jesus is looking to us to produce fruit in this world, that that is why we are here. Everything else that we do – all of the things that keep the operation going – are here to support and enable that fruitfulness. Will Jesus be gracious and patient with us when we sometimes fail to bear that fruit? I do not doubt that he will. But if lose we sight completely of that need to produce the fruit of righteousness – especially if we are distracted by money matters – well, it seems that Jesus could have a bit of a temper… would be much more powerful trees and the power of prayer and turned those sayings into a kind of living parable -- kn
Today the 7th Episode of the Podcast "Retelling the Bible" came out.
During the first season of his podcast, storyteller, W. Scott McAndless is retelling the story of the nativity of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, trying to help us to see some of the historical and biblical references the author is making -- helping us to hear the story more as the author may have intended.
In today's episode, Mary and Joseph finally arrive in Bethlehem after their long and difficult journey and seek shelter even as Mary approaches her time to deliver. They are seeking hospitality in a very particular place - just not necessarily at the particular place we have long assumed.
I encourage you to subscribe and to listen via one of these popular Podcasting apps. Each of the links below will take you to a page where you can subscribe:
In the past missions there have been successes in Malawi, but the country is still in need. We need to sponsor members from our congregation to go and give hope to those who are in a dire situation. This mission is coordinated by the PWS&D to help education development, hospital improvement, village health programs as well as HIV and AIDS programs to help inform people on the threat of this disease.
Please consider our fellow human beings and help us send people to go to them through donations. We need to raise $500 per member (for a total of possibly 3 members) by mid-March (which is the deadline for this mission) to be successful in sending our congregation members.
Please contact Peter Moyer, Bill Pettit, Jean Godin or Elaine McLean from the Mission and Outreach Committee for further details. For more information on the Mission, please consult presbyterian.ca/im/missiontrips/
This is just a reminder that the book that will revolutionize your knowledge and understanding of the Bible's story of Christmas is available now and can still be shipped before Christmas (or in the case of the ebook immediately).
Are you really going to let another Christmas go by without getting the inside scoop on the season?
The Gospel of Luke alone tells the story of the birth of Jesus set against the background of a census taken on the orders of Caesar Augustus. This historical setting has always raised serious questions: Was there ever really such a census? Why does Luke describe the census as being carried out in a manner that does not fit with what we know of Roman practices and policies?
This book struggles with questions like those in a creative way which leads to some surprising new ways to understand Luke’s timeless story of Mary and Joseph and their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Part investigation, part exercise in creative imagination, this book will help you to see the Christmas story in a whole new way.
Here are some links that will help you find the book:
hen Mark wrote his Gospel – which most scholars agree was written sometime around the year 70 CE – he had two main purposes for doing so. The first one is kind of obvious. It had been about 40 years since Jesus had been crucified which meant that the people who had been there and seen Jesus and known him in the flesh were pretty much all gone or going soon. There was a need to set down the words of Jesus and the stories of what he had done in a way that would endure.
But there was a second agenda to the writing of the gospel that isn’t quite so obvious to us, but that actually may have been even more important to its writer. Mark was writing the story down for the people in his church – a church that was living through some very difficult times. He wanted to show them how to be the church in those times – to be a church that would be faithful to the vision and calling of Jesus.
And for me, that is one thing that makes this gospel so helpful to us today because, honestly almost two thousand years later, we are still trying to figure out the same thing. Of course, Mark can’t lay out too many of his lessons to the church explicitly because he is telling stories about things that happened over a generation ago. A lot of his messages come through in the way that he chooses to tell the story.
For example, there is a long stretch of narrative in the middle of the Gospel where Jesus and the disciples seem to criss-cross the Sea of Galilee. They travel in a boat and, whenever they land in some place or another, there is always some crowd of people that Jesus needs to minister to or some problem he needs to take care of – someone to heal, a demon to cast out or whatever it may be.
Now, of course, there is history behind that. Jesus clearly did travel all over Galilee and the Sea of Galilee was indeed one of the most convenient ways to travel long distances. But the way that Mark tells the story has a certain pattern to it. Every time the disciples leave the boat, they are met with an urgent need. Even when (as in the passage we read last week) the disciples intentionally set off to a private place along the shoreline so that they can have an opportunity to rest and relax, they are followed there by huge crowds of people and Jesus ends up having to feed them.
So the stops along the shore clearly represent something for the ongoing life of the church. They represent the mission of the church – how we are sent out into the world to heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and help the afflicted.
Throughout this section of the Gospel, the only time when the disciples are alone with Jesus and he is able to give them his undivided attention is when they are in a boat, on the lake, heading to their next destination on the shoreline. There Jesus takes time to teach, correct and demonstrate the gospel to the disciples. Some amazing things happen on those crossings – the stormy winds are stilled, Jesus goes walking on the water – but it is all just for the sake and the edification of the disciples.
So if the stops along the shoreline represent the external ministry of the church, the crossings represent the internal Christian life of the church. It represents what happens when the church withdraws from the world for a little while to learn and grow together. In modern terms, it represents what happens for us in the church today when we gather on Sunday mornings to worship, pray and support each other. This is something that has been recognized for a long time. It is one reason why this part of the church – the main part where the people sit – is often called the “nave,” which comes from the Latin word for a boat. That idea is taken from that notion that Jesus and the disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee is a picture of what the church is supposed to be.
And that means that when Mark wrote this, he wanted the churches he was writing for to pay special attention to what happened and what was said on those Galilean lake crossings – to expect to find a message for how the church ought to be together. And if they were supposed to find a message there, maybe there is a message that would apply to us as well.
For example, on one of these many crossing Jesus apparently just spoke up out of the blue and said, “Watch out – beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” And it was, to be fair, an odd thing for someone to say for no apparent reason, so it certainly is understandable that this left the disciples kind of bewildered and wondering what sort of beverages made with the aid of yeast Jesus might have been imbibing.
I have thought a fair bit about what Jesus might have meant by that odd saying. I have decided that what he actually meant wasn’t all that hard to understand. You see Jews, from ancient times, had a certain taboo against yeast. Yes, yeast was very useful for making things like bread and wine, but it was also something that, in that climate, could get into all kinds of things and be very destructive. So Jews generally saw it as an unclean thing and that was one reason why, during Passover time, they ate bread made without yeast. So when Jesus talks about dangerous yeast, he is clearly talking about something that might infiltrate the church and take it away from what it needed to be.
The threats that Jesus identifies as possibly infiltrating and leading the church astray are “the Pharisees” and “Herod.” These represent two key worldly powers in Jesus’ world. Herod, the king, represents secular power and the Pharisees represent religious power and authority. The threat, clearly, is that the church might get sucked into the agenda of the power systems in this world – that we begin to forget what our mission is in a quest to just keep on the right side of this world’s powers.
If that is what Jesus is warning against, then it is certainly a prescient warning because, as I reflect on the history of the church, this is a problem that we have run into again and again down through the years. When, three centuries after the time of Jesus, the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, the church suddenly had access to secular power that it could previously only dream of.
There were benefits to this power, of course. The church could build magnificent buildings, commission great music and artwork and hopefully influence society into better directions. So the church gained power but it also lost, at that point, so much that had made the church what it was. The lessons of that age alone show us that Jesus was certainly right to warn us that any alliance with earthly power can lead the church in directions that may not fit the original vision of what was supposed to be. At the very least, some caution is needed.
And if that is just too much ancient history for you, let’s consider a modern example. Our own church, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, several decades ago, entered into an alliance with the Canadian government to do something that both the church and the government felt was a good thing at the time. It was supposed to be about education and about “saving” Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. But I would argue that the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod insidiously infiltrated any good intentions that there were in that project and, as a result, so much evil was committed against Canada’s indigenous families that it has proved nearly impossible to even document. So, there again, would it not have been wise to pay some heed to Jesus’ warning about yeast?
But there is an even more contemporary example than that. This morning a letter from a number of church leaders in Alabama was published. They were voicing their support for Roy Moore – a man who it is very hard to deny by now is a serial sexual assaulter and molester of underage women – in the upcoming Senate election. There is great evil in such an endorsement. It will do a great deal of harm, in particular, in the victims who sit in the pews of those church leaders. So why did they do this detestable thing? Once again, I see the influence of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod at work. These leaders were seduced by the lure of earthly power to do something that betrays so much of what the church should stand for. Once again, Jesus was right to warn us to be wary! the Presbyterian Church i ancient history for you, let'
So Jesus is definitely making an important point that might impact the future of the church, but the thing that really strikes me about this passage that we read this morning is the reaction of the disciples. I can’t find any better way to describe it other than to call it stupid. Here Jesus has offered a worthwhile and fairly clear lesson about something that might threaten the mission of the church, and the disciples totally miss it.
Now, Mark’s Gospel actually contains a lot of stories about stupid disciples so that, in itself, is not surprising. What is special about this story is the reason why the disciples don’t get it. They don’t get it because they are distracted and they are distracted because they are worried that they don’t have enough bread with them. In other words, they are so obsessed with the question of their own survival and the basic needs of life that they are not open to even hear what Jesus is trying to tell them.
And let me tell you, that feels very familiar to me as someone who has been working in the Christian church for over a quarter century. Every church I have worked with and that I have had connections with has had a certain level of anxiety about its survival. Every one of them felt the struggle (especially at this time of year) to meet the budget. It is a natural thing to feel when you are living in times of great change and we are certainly living in such a time. But this passage in Mark is there to teach us how dangerous such anxiety is. Our obsession with bread can make us miss the lesson about yeast. Our worries about survival can mean that we spend all of our time on that instead of genuinely listening to what Jesus is saying to us in this time and place.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t just leave us there. In this story, we see him reaching out to his disciples to help them break out of their survival fixation. So he starts asking them a series of question that is oddly specific. “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” he asks them. “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They are all questions from their recent experiences with him – questions that have very objective and quantifiable answers: “Twelve” and “Seven” to be specific.
What he is doing, of course, is reminding them of how God has provided for them in the past. If they can remember that God has been there for them before, the idea seems to be that it will be all the easier for them to expect it of God in the future. But I think that it is telling that Jesus wants them to remember with such precision. He invites them to dwell, not on what they felt or what it looked like but on the specific numbers that represent God’s provision.
He does that because he understands us – he understands that our human nature often makes us forget the triumphs and the victories that God has given us and focus instead on the parts that didn’t go so well. The negative (even when there is a lot less of it) easily outweighs the positive and so we need to remember specific facts and numbers from the times when we knew that God was there for us.
What would Jesus say, I wonder, if he were in the boat crossing the Sea of Galilee with us today? Would he be somewhat exasperated with us that we are obsessing over bread when there are some real yeasty concerns in our world that we ought to be worrying about? I suspect that he might. But he would also understand our concerns about bread. That is why he might ask us questions like, “That time when your church had to replace the entire heating system and the quote was so high that it scared you, how many months did it take for the money to be raised?” He might ask, “How many years now has Hope Clothing been running with no stable funding whatsoever and yet you have somehow always kept it going as a church?” He might ask us, “How many people ate at the Thursday Night Supper and Social last week and the week before, and where exactly did the food come from again?”
Now that I come to think of it, there are lots of stories that Jesus could ask us about with answers no less amazing than the disciples’ answer in the boat. And if you don’t know the answers to those questions, maybe you should – maybe if we all did we would worry less about bread and more about yeast. Maybe then we would understand.
