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It’s like those Christians have a different word for everything! 2) Sin

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, January 10th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 10 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Romans 7:7-25, Psalm 14, Luke 7:36-47

ello, my name is Scott and I am a sinner." Of all the lessons that the Christian church could learn from the world around us, I suspect that the greatest one would be to borrow that phrase from organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and adapt them to the challenges that we face living as Christians in the world.

Think for a moment about how that phrase functions within an AA meeting. The most important part of any meeting is when the various members stand up and share from their own experience – stories about their personal struggles with addiction and the problems that have come out of that struggle for themselv es and the people that they love.

But before they get into any of that, every single one of them introduces himself or herself as an alcoholic or an addict. They all say it and that includes both the person who has not had a single drink in fifteen years and the person who was out binge drinking a few nights ago. It is a question, not p

rimarily at least, of what they have done so much as a question of who they are. I suspect that the church would be much farther ahead if we would learn to think of what we call our basic problem, sin, along the same lines as how Alcoholics Anonymous thinks about addiction.

But that isn’t going to be so easy. One of the big problems we have is our whole language about sin. In fact, I would suggest that our understanding of this word that is an essential part of our Christian faith is sorely lacking.

What is sin? Sinis a part of the vocabulary of the world around us. Think about the last time you heard someone use the word outside of the context of the church. They probably said something like, “This cake is sinful,” or “Chocolate is my favourite sin.” And, when it is used like that, what does the word mean? It is usually a way of speaking about something that is extremely desirable, that you probably should not have or do, but that you fully intend to indulge in anyway. If you want to sell a product, sinful is actually a very good way to describe that product.

So that is how the world around us uses the word. I’m sure that you all understand that such a meaning is pretty far from what the Bible means when it uses the world. But, I would argue, when we use the word inthe church, we don’t do all that much better.

In the church, we mostly talk about sin in the plural, and refer to all of the little things that we do wrong. (Though, of course, we are usually much happier to talk about the little things that other people do wrong.) For many Christians, that is all that a concern for sin is about: counting up all the little things (or sometimes big things) that mostly other people do wrong.

The problem with that is not that such things don’t matter; they do. We all regularly get things wrong and we all have to deal with the fallout from that: the people we hurt, the damage we do to ourselves and to the world around us. But that, as far as the Bible is concerned, is only the smallest part of our problem with sin.

The Apostle Paul explains what the real problem with sin is in his letter to the Romans: “I do not do the good I want,” Paul starts, “but the evil I do not want is what I do.” He is simply saying that he has problems with the bad things that he does and his failure to do good things. So, at this point, he is taking about what we usually talk about when we discuss sin.

But note where he goes from there: “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.” He just took this whole concept in a very different direction. Though he has acknowledged that there are problems with his actions, he is actually saying that his actions are not really where the problem lies. There is something else – something within him – that is the real source of his misery and failure. And Paul wants us to focus, not on those individual actions, but on the internal thing that is causing them.

That is what the Bible is actually talking about when it talks about sin: an attitude, something that we carry around within us that gets in the way of us being who we want to be and that stops us from doing what we really want to do. The basic attitude that causes us so much trouble is sometimes called pride, but that is not necessarily the best word to use. Pride, after all, can be a good thing. There is nothing wrong with having pride in your worthwhile achievements or in being proud of your friends and the people you love.

No, the attitude that gets us in trouble is more than just your everyday pride. It is what the Greeks called hubris, an attitude that puts yourself and your own needs and desires ahead of everything else – both what is human and what is divine. It is an attitude, above all, where you try and build yourself up by taking others down.

In our relationship with God, hubris means that we try to put ourselves in the place of God because we think we know best. That is the sin that is described in the garden at the beginning of the Bible. Adam and Eve’s sin was not that they disobeyed an order and ate the fruit anyways, it was that they sought to take the place of God by becoming masters of good and evil.

But it is in our relationships with other people that we see the destructive power of hubris most often. This comes out of a basic human assumption (a false assumption by the way) that honour and self-worth are a zero sum game.

That might take a bit of explaining. A zero sum game is a system that is closed with no additional value coming into it. A good example of a zero sum game is the actual game of Poker. There is only so much money in a poker game – all of the money that all of the players combined bring to the table. That means that the only way that you can win at poker is by taking other people’s money. In other words, you can only win if other people lose. That’s all a zero sum game is.

We all understand zero sum games because they are simple and straightforward. I win, you lose is a pretty simple concept. That’s why we often assume that everything in life works like a zero sum game, even though it is clearly not true. For example, we assume that things like budgets (government budgets, family budgets and church budgets) work like that. We assume that there is only a fixed amount of money coming in and so we make cuts and assume that that is what will balance the budget.

It usually doesn’t work because there are some things that you cut and it means that you have less money coming in. (For example, a church might say that it would be cheaper to have services every other week without realizing that such a move would probably also reduce givings in half or even more.) And then, of course, there are also things that, if you spend more on them, it may actually increase revenues and you actually end up ahead of the game. Budgeting is so hard precisely because it is not a zero sum game.

Neither is self-worth. There is no limit to the value of a human being because we are all loved by God and God’s love has no limit. So it is quite possible to enhance your self worth without taking any from anyone else. Indeed, the very idea of the church is that when we come together we can build each other up and all gain in value together.

But still we seem to behave all the time as if it is a zero sum game. In social interactions what that means is that we behave all the time as if the only way for me to gain self worth is by devaluing someone else. So that is how hubris works in our relationships – it leads us to unnecessarily tear other people down in a vain attempt at building ourselves up.

That is why the attitude behind our sinfulness is so much more of a problem than the collection of particular things that we do wrong or fail to do right. In fact, it is because of hubris that we actually prefer to think of sin in terms of all the various things that we do wrong. That makes the business of morality seem more like a zero sum game. It makes it seem like all I have to do is count up all of the faults and errors of other people and compare them to my own. If I have fewer faults than other people (and, of course, we are always far more likely to see other people’s faults than we are to see our own) then it seems like I win and other people lose.

But morality is not a zero sum game. As far as I can see, the God that we worship – the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ – is not interested in our games of who wins and who loses and will never be impressed if you manage to make yourself look better by putting somebody else down. That is why our focus on sins – on mistakes and errors and missteps will never get us to the place where God wants us to be.

That brings me back to where I started – with the phrase, “Hello, my name is Scott and I am a sinner.” I really do think that that is where we ought to start in our worship as the community of the church together. But you need to understand what I don’t mean by that. I don’t mean that I have messed up in my life, that I have made mistakes and have regrets. I mean, yes, have done all of that, but that is not what I mean when I call myself a sinner.

What I mean is that I struggle with my own sense of self-worth. I am afraid that I am not good enough – not good enough for God and not good enough for other people. I am afraid of being rejected. And so I try to cover up all of that and create worth for myself and sometimes try and do that by putting down other people or exploiting things or people. And that struggle is my problem. It is a problem I should not have because I am valuable and so are you. We are valuable and important (if for no other reason) because God made us and God loves us. But we seem to have a hard time believing that and so we think we have to build our self-worth in other ways.

That is our problem and that is what leads us to do things like put down other people in an effort to feel better about ourselves. That is what leads to things like greed when we think that we will have more value when we have more stuff. It really is the root of all our other problems.

Paul tells of his own struggle with this insidious force in his life. It leads him, he says, to do the very things that he doesn’t want to do because the pull is that strong. Even laws and rules don’t help. In fact, they make it all worse because when we inevitably break them or see other people break them they just give us another excuse to think worse of ourselves or look down on somebody else.

And so the cycle continues and we feel like we will never be able to break out of it and so Paul cries out in despair, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” But there is hope because Paul goes on from there to say, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

And so, yes, we need to talk about sin in the life of the church. We need desperately to come to terms with this force in our lives that leads us so far away from the path that we need to follow. But we really need to come to terms with what we actually mean when we talk about sin.

Jesus does set you free from the power of sin. Not simply by offering you forgiveness for all of your regrets and failures and mistakes (though he does offer you that when that is what you need). More important though, Jesus sets you free from the power of sin by letting you know just how much you really matter.

I’m going to close with a very explicit application of all of this. Here is what I want you to do with it. Stop putting down other people to feel better about yourself. Stop holding someone else back because you think it gets you farther ahead. Don’t tell me that you don’t do that because we all do. See the part in the Bible where it says we are all sinners. It’s just that some of us are more subtle about it than others. Examine yourself this week and, when you catch yourself doing it, tell yourself that you don’t need to. You are beloved by God.

Sermon Video:

Body, Mind and Soul – Study Guide on Human Sexuality

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Wednesday, January 6th, 2016 in News

On Wednesday, January 13 at 7:30 pm, we will begin our study of Body, Mind and Soul - A Study Guide on Human Sexuality. This study has been published by the Life and Mission Agency (specifically Justice Ministries) and by the Church Doctrine Committee and is designed to help congregations to enter into a respectful and thoughtful conversation about what can be controversial and divisive issues in the church.

It is our hope that, as a result of this study, we may be able to respond back to the national church as they seek to find the best ways to relate to various groups in our society who may have diverse views on sexuality and sexual morality.

It is understood, going into this discussion, that we will likely not all agree about what the positions of the church ought to be in all such matters. This is okay and may even be a good thing. Diversity of opinion is an indication, after all, that people feel passionately about things that are very important.

So everyone is certainly invited to attend and participate. Materials will be provided, but if you would like to prepare for the discussions ahead of time, I would like to suggest that you download the document (using the link above) and read it. To prepare for the first discussion, I would suggest you read pages 14-37. Some copies of these pages will be available at St. Andrew's on this coming Sunday morning.

Hope we can see you there.

It’s like those Christians have a different word for everything: 1) Salvation

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, January 4th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 3 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Matthew 14:22-33, Acts 16:25-34; Psalm 106:6-13, 19-21

ne of my favourite Steve Martin comedy routines goes like this: “Let me give you a warning, okay.” he says on his album, A Wild and Crazy Guy. “I was in Paris about two months ago and – it was just a little vacation, I was on the east coast, I had seven days off and said ‘Well, I’ll just go over there and go to Paris.’ But let me give you a warning if you’re going over there. Here’s an example: chapeau means hat. Œufmeans egg. It’s like those French have a different word for everything! See, you never appreciate your language till you go to a foreign country that doesn’t have the courtesy to speak English.”

I like that routine because it is an important reminder that language matters and sets us apart from one another. But, even more important, it reminds us that when you live in a unilingual environment – when, in your day-to-day life, you go without meeting people who can’t speak your language as most people in North America do – it is so easy to forget the huge barrier that language can be. It becomes a bit of a shock to realize that there are other people in the world who cannot speak like you do.

I thought that was rather interesting because it seems to me that, in many ways, the church today is dealing with the same issue. The Christian church in North America has a language that we speak amongst ourselves that is largely unintelligible to the world around us. But, because we live in the unilingual world of the church, it can be easy for us to forget that and to be shocked when other people don’t understand or misunderstand what we are saying.

It is not that the church has “a different word for everything” though. In most cases, we actually seem to make sense to the world, but the world is understanding something completely different from our words.

use the same words as everybody else. It is just that, when we use them in the church, they mean something different. Sometimes that means that we can be talking away to the world in a way that is perfectly clear to us and may even

Another symptom of this issue is that it also creates problems of misunderstanding inside the church too. Our own people become unsure of exactly what we mean by some of the things we say. Let’s take one simple word that we use all of the time in the church: the word salvation. Salvation is a very common word in the world around us. Salvation is, after all, just a word that means the act of saving. And people talk about saving all the time.

People probably talk most often about saving with the meaning of setting things aside or storing things up: “I saved up my money for my retirement.” or “I saved $100 at the Boxing Day sale,” someone might say. People also talk about saving in terms of rescuing people from dangerous situations: “The fire department saved twenty people when the building caught on fire.” or “Batman saved the citizens of Gotham City from the Joker.”

But when we talk about salvation in the church, when we talk about being saved and needing a saviour, do we mean that same thing? Not really. Most of the time we have some very particular saving in mind. In the church, it seems, people only need saving from one thing: sin – or maybe two things: sin and hell.

It is a major limitation on the meaning of a very rich and full word when you narrow it down to only apply to being saved from one very specific thing. But that is what salvation seems to mean in the church. It is what it means to call Jesus saviour. And our restrictions on the meaning of the word sometimes cause us problems. I remember, for example, back in my university days, I went away to an Evangelical Christian conference for about week. Most of the plenary sessions took place in a large conference hall and, part way through the week, the organizers noted that people trying to get all of their friends to sit together were causing problems by reserving large blocks of seats and not letting anyone else sit in them. So, about half way through the conference, a sign went up at the entrances to the hall: “Saving seats is not permitted in the assembly hall.”

Well, people complained immediately. “Are we not evangelicals,” they asked. “Do we not believe that Jesus came as the saviour of the whole world? Who are these organizers to say that seats cannot be saved? We will preach the gospel to the seats too!” Okay, I know, they were just joking. But it does immediately show up the key differences between how the world uses the word and how we use it.

But it is not just a problem that comes up with seats. I remember, back in those days I saw myself as bit of an evangelist. I thought it was my task to convince everybody I met that they needed Jesus Christ as their personal saviour. (I have mellowed a bit on that account in the years since university but I was very much into it at the time.) But you know what I discovered? Sometimes the kind of salvation I was offering wasn’t the kind of salvation that people were looking for.

I remember one long conversation with a woman who was very deeply involved in the women’s movement. For years she had been on the front lines of standing up for women’s rights in Canada and around the world – doing things to help save women from oppression. And here I was trying to convince her that, all these years, she had been chasing after saving herself and others from the wrong thing and that she needed to be concerned instead with saving herself (with Jesus’ help) from her personal sin. I didn’t get very far with her and, I think, rightfully so.

As I think back on it now, that is just an extreme example of something that happens more than we might think. How often does it happen that we are offering to save people from one thing when they are actually looking to be saved from something else? Now, I’m not saying that salvation from sin is not necessary, it is. And, in fact, when that woman that I was talking to was fighting against the oppression of women around the world, what was she truly fighting against if not sin? She was fighting against an insidious sinful attitude that has infected society for a very long time – the attitude that women are of somewhat less value than men. It is a sinful attitude that has led to much evil in the world. And the fact of the matter is that if we are going to identify Jesus as the one who saves us from sin, it is time that we think about how Jesus saves us from the sin that make women less equal than men. We need to talk about how Jesus saves us from the sin of racial inequality and economic inequality and all other attitudes that make one group more valuable than another.

So, there is a problem in that even when we talk about Jesus saving us from sin, we are thinking too small about sin. (We will look closer at our concept of sin next week.) But there is also another problem. If we’re going to call Jesus a saviour, should we not acknowledge that there are things other than sin that people need saving from. Take the story that we read from the gospel this morning. Peter is out on top of the water – walking around in the midst of the stormy waves when all of a sudden (and maybe quite understandably) he realizes that this is not supposed to be possible and he panics and he starts to sink. And what does he do? He prays. He talks to Jesus (that is the definition of prayer, after all) and he says, “Lord, save me.”

It is, perhaps, the shortest prayer in the Bible. It is also very clearly a prayer to Jesus for salvation. But let me ask you, if Jesus had answered Peter and said, “Oh, Peter, I’m glad you have called on me as your saviour. Just confess your sins to me and I’d be glad to save you from them,” would that have been an answer to Peter’s prayer? Of course not! As much as Peter had sins that he needed to be saved from, Jesus knew very well that there was something much more urgent that he needed to be saved from in the moment. Jesus responded most appropriately to Peter’s prayer by simply sticking out his hand and grabbing onto him to keep him from sinking.

In the same way, when the jailer in the story from the Book of Acts asks Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” he is referring to a major crisis in his life that might well lead to his death or poverty. His job security, among other things, has just been reduced to rubble with the prison. Salvation means many things to him in that moment and yet Paul and Silas assure him that Jesus can give him whatever salvation he really needs.

And that is how Jesus operates. His salvation is not a one-size-fits-all salvation. He offers to people the salvation that they need most urgently. We see this throughout his life and ministry. When he meets the sick, he offers them healing and not just forgiveness of their sins. When he meets the blind, he offers them sight. When he meets that spiritually blind, he offers them enlightenment and wisdom.

And when we step back from the ministry of Jesus and take a look at the overall story of the scriptures, we see a God who has been working in many ways throughout history to save his people and all people. Sometimes that includes saving them from sin and from the effects of sin, but God’s salvation is never so limited in its scope. Our psalm reading this morning is a great example. The psalm does acknowledge the problem of sin. Indeed, our reading begins with a confession: “Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.” The sin they are confessing is, in fact, their failure to recongnize the love and greatness of God.

But when they talk about God saving them, what kind of salvation do they have in mind? God has saved them, the people declare, by getting them out of slavery and mistreatment in Egypt. Salvation, in this psalm, is salvation from oppression. And so, when you are talking to people suffering under oppression, what do you think that the Bible is teaching you about the kind of saviour that they need?

It is true that part of our job as Christians is to offer people salvation. It is true that Jesus has come to us as our saviour and the saviour of the whole world. What has happened down through the centuries, however, is that we have limited that notion of salvation far too much. We have presented to the world a saviour who really only saves people from one thing that people sometimes haven’t felt a great need to be saved from and who may be in rather urgent need to be saved from something else. Is it any wonder that the church finds itself struggling these days with a sense that the world finds us somewhat irrelevant?

I believe that we ought not to be afraid to proclaim to the world that we have a saviour – a saviour who is for everyone and anyone. But how do you proclaim that? Not by going out with the message, “This is what we think you ought to be saved from and so you had better start being concerned about this!” No, to introduce somebody to a saviour, you have to first really listen to that person and find out what they are struggling with and what they need to be saved from. And then you have to seriously ask yourself how Jesus (or his followers today) might intercede to save that person in the way that responds to what they are struggling with.

Here, then, my challenge to you. This week, really listen to someone – anyone. Listen to what they are struggling with in their life. Or maybe listen to what they are struggling for in this world. And try and figure out how Jesus can be a saviour to them. I’m not saying that you have to tell them what you come up with, just try and understand their struggle for salvation. If you can’t figure out how Jesus can be a saviour to that person in their situation, maybe, just maybe, your understanding of the salvation that Jesus offers is too small.

Sermon Video:

Posted by Nonsequitor on Sunday, January 3rd, 2016 in Clerk of Session

Place of New Hope Advisory Committee

November 17, 2015

Information on New Hope:

Applications for grants to two more funds have been filed.
We have promises from approximately 10 people/families to support Hope Clothing, financially ($150 each) for 2016 & 2017. Still lots of time to join these supporters!
Jane Neath will continue to research funds for grant purposes.
The BIG push is on for community involvement/understanding/recognition/use of Hew Hope. Please spread the word.
Please consider purchasing "Lisa's Cookies" as a way for the volunteers of Hope Clothing to fund raise. They are an eager bunch who are pleased to accept the responsibility of growing their mission with your support.
There was an overabundance of clothing stored in the Fellowship Room. This has been sorted out and hopefully will not be repeated. The staff liaison for Hope Clothing is Joni Smith. In the future we would like to recommend that anyone who has inquiries, can contact Joni for info.
Thank you for your patience as we grow.

What happens when you baptize a six year old?

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, December 28th, 2015 in Minister

Today I had the privilege of conducting the baptism of a six year old child. In the Presbyterian Church, there is no defined age for a baptism and I have baptized people at various ages through the years, but this was my first six year old. I found it a deeply meaningful celebration for a number of reasons but mostly because the child got to have a say to and express his faith at the level of understanding. I adapted the baptismal questions as followed:

Minister: Candidate, I know that you have heard the name of Jesus, that you are learning about him, his words and his stories. Candidate, I want to ask you a very important question. Based on what you know right now about Jesus, are you willing to trust him and to serve him as best as you can?

Candidate: Yes, I am.

Minister: Candidate, as a sign of your trust in Jesus, are you willing to be baptized?

Candidate: Yes.

Minister: Mother and Father, in his own way, Candidate could probably teach us all a great deal about what it really means to have faith in Jesus. But he is still growing in his knowledge about Jesus and his gospel. He needs someone to help and protect his faith as he grows. Will you do that for him?

Parents: We will.

Minister: But that is more than we can ask of two people alone. Big brother, will you, as big brother, also do your part to help Candidategrow in faith?

Big Brother: I will.

Minister: And will you, Witnessand Witness do what you can to assist this family in this very important task before them?

Witnesses: I will.

(Congregation stand)

Minister: But even a loving family and committed friends are not enough. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a church to create a faithful Christian. Will you, the people of St. Andrew’s Hespeler, provide for Candidate and his family a community where they can all grow in faith and explore their relationship with God in Christ? Will you welcome and value them for who they are?

Congregation: We will.

Scott: Father and Mother, will you make sure that this congregation (or whatever congregations you may belong to in the future) has the opportunity to fulfill the promises that they have made here today?

Parents: We will.

Minister: Then, by all means, let us celebrate this sacrament of faith and commitment!

The most fun part of the baptism? I must say that I have never had a candidate so eager to say yes to my questions!

#RefuJesus

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, December 28th, 2015 in Minister

Hespeler, 27 December, 2015 © Scott McAndless – Baptism

Matthew 2:1-5, 13-15, Luke 2:22-35, Psalm 148

he people of Alexandria were all stirred up and you could understand why. After all, didn’t the city have enough of its own problems? The economy had been dismal for years. Ever since the death of Anthony and Cleopatra, Roman taxes had only gone up and up. (It seemed as if nine out of every ten bushels of wheat produced in the Nile valley was shipped overseas to feed the ever-hungry people of Rome) and the lack of a descent flood of the Nile in, like, three years, meant that there just didn’t seem to be enough to feed Egypt’s population.

And then there was the labour market. It had been, what, like a thousand years since anybody was hiring in the pyramid building industry. And really, what other work was there for good hardworking Egyptians? Mummy wrapping? Hieroglyphic drawing? Slavery? The guys who whip the slaves? Listen, the point is that there were only so many good jobs to go around and the last thing they needed was outsiders – non-Egyptians – coming along and taking away good jobs from hardworking Egyptians.

But it wasn’t just about the economy. You had to think about the question of security. The rumour was that these people who were coming in had been part of an incident that had frightened the whole city of Jerusalem. That’s right, they had employed fear (also known as terror) and we all know what you call people who use terror to achieve their goals – or at least what we call people who don’t look like us and use terror to achieve their goals. That’s right, we call them terrorists.

And what was the “incident” that they were involved in? Well it seems to be nothing less than a plot to replace the existing, duly appointed government with some new and previously unknown figure. That’s right, it was nothing less than an insurrection.

Did the existing regime overreact by sending in the troops and exterminating all of the children in an

entire region? Well, yes, there is absolutely no doubt that they did and Egypt certainly should send a sternly worded letter to Rome to protest such absolute atrocities. But, even so, Judea needs to solve Judea’s own problems. By all means, construct refugee camps on the borders of Judea – maybe in Galilee. I mean, yes, Herod is in charge of Galilee too, but what I’m saying is that surely there has to be some kind of local solution without having these people show up in Egypt.

And, dare I risk saying it, these people from Judea were followers of a strange and foreign religion. They didn’t worship real gods – not the ones that you could actually see in a statue or an inscription – and they wouldn’t even acknowledge the greatness of gods like Horus, Isis and Osiris. They just had this idea of some invisible God who ruled over the whole world – a radical and dangerous idea if ever there was one.

That is exactly what the people of Alexandria were saying as they peeked through their blinds and spoke behind their hands about the newcomers – the few families from some town called Bethlehem – who were settling down in their city. What good could come from these refugees anyways? They were only a drain on Egypt – a drain on the world. Nothing good could come from allowing them to come into the country.

It is what people have always said about refugees. Did you think that it only came up in the most recent talk about bringing in huge numbers of people from Syria and some of the surrounding counties? No. Canada may well be a country built by immigrants and refugees but that hardly means that each wave of people coming in was welcomed with open arms.

The Gospel of Matthew doesn’t offer any account of what sort of welcome Jesus, Mary and Joseph received in Egypt. All he writes is that “Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.” People have often taken that to mean that they left alone and without telling anyone, leaving other children of Bethlehem to their fates. The flight into Egypt has long been a standard piece in traditional Christian art and always it had been portrayed with only three characters making that flight. But I have a hard time believing it would have happened like that. What is being described is a major persecution for political beliefs – for the belief that there was someone else out there who had a better claim to rule over Judea than Herod.

Unfortunately, there is a long history of how people react in such times and there is little reason to think that Joseph’s little family would have reacted any differently. Matthew portrays them as having a home and family and friends in Bethlehem. How could they possibly have even considered leaving if they did not at least attempt to take some of those people with them? So I imagine at least a small group of Judeans from the area around Bethlehem escaped, making their way through the desert towards Egypt.

And how would this small tribe have been welcomed in Egypt? Undoubtedly in the same way that such people have always been welcomed: with suspicion, judgement and fear. Did you know that, in the first century, Egypt (and especially Alexandria) had a very large expatriate Jewish community? But even that likely would not have made much difference on how they were welcomed. What we often see is that people who have already arrived as immigrants or refugees in a country can be very grateful for the opportunities that they have received and yet still oppose those opportunities being given to others still on the outside.

So, yes, there is every reason to think that the family fleeing from Bethlehem would have met with all kinds of rejection and scorn. And how wrong that was! Jesus, we believe, came into this world to reveal God to us, to bring us back into relationship with God and to say and do things that would change all history. He came to bring salvation upon all nations including the Egyptians who, within a couple of centuries, would embrace Christianity with unparalleled enthusiasm. But, when he arrived, the people of Egypt only saw him as a dirty, dangerous and a best gotten rid of as soon as possible refugee child.

Which is a way of saying that the things that people assume about refugees is generally not true. Many of you have probably seen an email that has circulated whenever, in recent years, Canada has talked about taking in more refugee families. This email that you’ve probably had sent to you by some aunt or cousin declares that refugees receive a monthly allowance of $1,890.00 and each can get an additional $580.00 in social assistance for a total of $2,470.00. Which it compares to what is received by Canadian pensioners, an amount of only $1,012.00 a month.

The email was obviously written by someone who wanted people to be very appalled at all that refugees take away from our Canadian resources. And the email, which has been shared literally millions of times in countries all over the world, has obviously connected with all kinds of people for that very reason.

Does it matter that the so-called facts in the email are not actually true? I mean the amount that it says that refugees receive is actually a maximum amount that a family might possibly receive as a one-time payment – not a monthly payment at all so it doesn’t even make sense to compare it to a monthly pension payment. No it probably doesn’t matter because a lot of people don’t care about the facts. They are far more interested in what they see as the reality that refugees are a drain.

But it’s not just about the facts anyways; it is about truth. The truth of the matter is that it has been consistently shown throughout history that refugees bring far more to a country than they take out of it. Yes, at first when they arrive with almost nothing and are unable to work they do receive to a certain extent (though probably less than you might think). But in the long run they certainly give back far more than they ever receive. Indeed, some of it is literally paid back. Any travel expenses that are paid to get them here are literally a loan that they have to repay within a certain amount of time.

But, more than that, it has been found through wave after wave of refugees from various parts of the world, that there has been a continuous story of contribution to Canada in all kinds of ways. Far from taking jobs away from Canadians, in the long run they actually create jobs by helping the economy to grow and through their own enterprise. They pay more into systems like the pension plan or the health care system through taxes than they ever receive. Are there a few exceptions – people who ultimately don’t contribute much? Of course there are, just as there are in other sectors of the population. But overall the contribution of refugees to their host countries is extraordinary.

And the Bible is certainly in tune with these truths. You may not be aware of this, but Jesus is hardly the only refugee that the Bible celebrates. In fact, the list of Biblical refugees is almost a who’s who of scripture. We have Moses, who fled political persecution in Egypt when the king of Egypt wanted to kill him for fomenting a slave revolt. Jacob fled domestic persecution (a brother who was going to kill him) and sought refuge in Haran. The prophet Jeremiah fled an invading army and went to hide, like Jesus, in Egypt. Two other prophets, Ezra and Nehemiah were refugees in Babylon who returned to rebuild their war torn city of Jerusalem. John, the one who wrote the Book of Revelations, was a refugee from imperial power on the island of Patmos.

All of these people would definitely fit the modern United Nation High Commission on Refugees’ definition of a refugee and we regularly celebrate all of the great and wonderful things that God did through them. They were and are no drains on any nation. They are miracle workers, leaders, great thinkers and more whose contributions echo down through the ages.

And that isn’t even counting all of the people in the Bible who don’t fit the strict definition of refugee but who migrated out of a deep need – because of famine, financial disaster and devastation. On this list we could include people like Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, all the children of Jacob, Ruth and Elijah. Can you imagine what the world would be like without the contribution of people like that?

It is true that the world is presently in the throes of the largest refugee crisis in history with 60 million people displaced, the biggest cause of this displacement being the ongoing war in Syria. Of course such a large crisis is going to create waves of trouble all over the world. Of course it will not be solved or even made much better easily. This is a huge global problem the size of which we have never seen before and we will have to put some policies in place and perhaps set some limits that we do not feel all that comfortable with.

But in the midst of all that, let us not forget that a refugee crisis is not just about numbers and statistics. It is about families – real families just like one that included a woman named Mary, her husband named Joseph and their young child. It is also about families that may cause some disruption or even trouble when they arrive but who also have so much to offer to the world. This calls for a certain attitude towards strangers and refugees that is also an essential part of the Christmas message.

Sermon Video:

How the Leper found Christmas (or “What if Mark 1:40-45 were written by Theodor Geisel”)

Posted by Scott McAndless on Monday, December 21st, 2015 in Minister

Video Version:

Hespeler, 20 December, 2015 © Scott M^cAndless

Mark 1:40-45

Every Jew in Capernaum really mattered a lot

But the leper, who lived outside Capernaum, did not!

Because of psoriasis his skin was all white

And the people who saw him reacted in fright.

But as much as they scorned him for being impure

The leper detested himself even more.

He was certain that all this had happened to him

Because he’d deserved it – because of some sin.

So he spent all his days in a terrible mood

And in dark depression he constantly stewed.

For nobody loved him – no body at all

And that’s why his heart was two sizes too small.

It is fair, I think, to compare Dr. Seuss’ story of the Grinch who stole Christmas with the story of the leper from Mark’s Gospel. They actually have a great deal in common. Both the Grinch and the leper live outside of town – away from the society of other people. This is not stated in the gospel story, of course. But it is understood. There were numerous laws and rules in the Galilee of Jesus’ time that required all

lepers to stay out of populated places. A leper risked getting stoned to death just for coming into town. The Grinch’s reasons for living away from others seem to be a bit different – seem to be based on a basic mutual dislike – but the effect is the same.

There is something else that the two of them have in common: there is no real medical reason for their banishment. More than anything, the cause of their troubles seems to have to do with the accident of skin colour. Certainly there is nothing physically wrong with the Grinch that means that he cannot live in Whoville. The thing that sets him apart (at least according to the movie version of his story) is that he just happens to be green and people haven’t been able to accept that.

The odd thing is that that is likely true of the leper too. This is confusing because, for us today, leprosy refers to a very specific medical condition – a highly contagious disease called Hanson’s disease that destroys the nerve endings in a person’s body leading to terrible disfigurement or worse. But ancient people were never so accurate in their medical diagnoses. The people in Jesus’ world just called any skin condition that persisted for any length of time leprosy – any skin condition. That includes persistent rashes, eczema, psoriasis. So things that, for us, are easily treated or managed with creams, salves or other medications meant for them that you were banished from the ordinary society of other people. So the leper may well have been an outcast because his skin just happened to be a strange colour – perhaps white or bright red.

So people labeled as lepers could be unfairly and unnecessarily cast out. It was all based on attitudes of blame. Everyone – including the lepers themselves – blamed the victims for their disease. They must have done something to deserve it. They must have been exceedingly wicked for such a thing to happen to them. The real problem, in most cases, was not the skin condition but the attitude towards it.

And the worst thing about it was that the attitude actually made the condition worse. Being banished from society meant that they could not take care of their skin and so wounds festered, lesions became caked with dirt and new infections were picked up. And it was practically impossible to break out of that cycle.

That leper was sitting outside of the town

When all of a sudden there came walking down

The street a great crowd. And among all these folk

Was Jesus the prophet and healer who spoke

And he told them of life and a God up above

Who poured out on people a most perfect love.

But at this the leper just scoffed and he vowed

That he’d prove that this preacher was merely a fraud.

So he jumped out and fell to his knees with a jeer.

The crowd all stepped back in considerable fear

While the leper cried out in a tone that was mean.

“If you’re willing,” he sneered “you can make me clean.”

Now I don’t know if that request was spoken in exactly that tone or not. But I do know that it was certainly an odd way to put it. The man seems to have had no doubt that Jesus could heal him. What he does question, however, is whether Jesus would choose to do it. And, you see, he had good reason to think that Jesus wouldn’t. After all, why would Jesus treat him any different than all the other people who had long ago decided that he wasn’t worth the trouble?

Remember, this guy’s biggest problem wasn’t any skin condition. It was attitude – both his and everyone else’s. And he simply couldn’t see any way that those attitudes could change – not his own and certainly not anyone else’s. Why it would have taken something truly extraordinary to break through years and years of assumptions and suspicions, of hatred, fear and blame. Why someone would have to do something crazy like...

Jesus felt compassion and reached out his hand.

He touched that poor leper that knelt on the sand.

The people cried out and drew back in dismay

“Jesus, why’d you do that?” they started to say.

The healer ignored their concern for hygiene

And said, “I do will it. I say you are clean.”

And what happened then? In Capernaum they say

That the leper’s small heart grew three sizes that day.

But a far greater wonder is yet to be told.

For those who saw Jesus behaving so bold

Were stunned to discover their hearts too could grow

To encompass that man they had once feared to know.

So sisters and brothers, don’t wait to show love.

In your hands is a power that comes from above.

To touch is to care and to care is to heal

And that’s how from heaven God’s love you reveal.

And he heard him exclaim ere he strode out of sight,

“God’s love is for all – you are God’s delight.”

St. Andrew's Stars Episode:

We had a wonderful time

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, December 18th, 2015 in News

Thursday Night Supper and Social was another wonderful success on the evening of December 17. A wonderful supper of Turkey, ham, stuffing, potatoes, pies and more was served to a roomful of happy people. We celebrated a birthday and welcomed a very special guest for the children:

A special Thursday

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Thursday, December 17th, 2015 in News

Today is a special Thursday.

It's stocking stuffer day at Food Bank. Julia brought lots of of great "stuffers" from Operation Christmas Child. There are many items donated to the Christmas Shoeboxes that cannot be kept in them, i.e: liquids, any toy with a war theme (that tends to be a lot of lego themed kits), feather boas for girls, lots of candy, etc. These items don't go to waste, they are distributed to local charities in order to help as many people out as possible.

We thank the talented ladies who have donated their beautiful knitted items. There are colourful mittens, hats, baby items, sweaters, etc. There will be a table of these items out at Food Bank today.

And lastly it is the annual Christmas dinner/party for Thursday Night Supper & Social. The ladies have been busy cooking up a storm. It smells incredible in the church.

(please note that this will be the last Thursday Night Supper & Social until January 7th)