Year: 2016

Beyond the Worship Wars; Building Vital and Faithful Worship

Posted by on Saturday, December 31st, 2016 in Clerk of Session

Session received a book review from Family Ministries Co-ordinator, Joni Smith in December.  Joni is working towards completing another course from Knox College entitled “Reformed Worship.”  Part of this study included a required book called

"Beyond the Worship Wars; Building Vital and Faithful Worship” by Thomas G. Long. A very interesting read that explores the nature and best practices of churches that are growing in vitality right now. This book addresses a lot of issues that we have been hearing about. 

 “In brief there are 9 Characteristics of Vital Congregations listed with explanations.  They are:
              o   Vital Congregations make room, somewhere in worship,  for the experience of worship.
o   Vital and Faith Congregations make planned and concerted efforts to show hospitality to the stranger.
o   Vital and Faithful Congregations have recovered and made visible the sense of drama inherent in Christian worship.
o   Vital and Faithful Congregations emphasize congregation music that is both excellent and eclectic in style and genre.
o   Vital and Faithful Congregations creatively adapt the space and environment of worship.
o   Vital and Faithful Congregations have a strong connection between worship and local mission, and this connection is expressed in every aspect of the worship service.
o   Vital and Faithful Congregations have a relatively stable order of service and a significant repertoire of worship elements and responses that the congregation knows by heart.
o   Vital and Faithful Congregations move to a joyous festival experience toward the end of their worship services.
o   Vital and Faithful Congregations all have strong, charismatic pastors as worship leaders.

“I would recommend that you read this book.  It is easy to read and not terribly long, but will make you think about why we do, or should do, some things and the theology behind the reasons.” Says Joni.

Session Elders have committed to read this book in 2017 and invite you to join us in exploration of real Vital and Faithful Congregations in the world today.  Session is actively exploring how we can make the book available to the entire congregation.  Imagine a book study open to everyone focused on intentionally making St. Andrews Hespeler a Vital and Faithful Congregation for future generations.

To quote an Elder at Session in December 2016 –“We know that the Presbyterian Church of Canada is struggling to keep members, just as most organized churches in North America are.  This does not mean St. Andrews’ Hespeler has to follow this pattern. We have choices.”   The quote above is a recount of the discussion and may not be 100% verbatim (Rob).



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The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

Posted by on Monday, December 19th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 18 November, 2016 © Scott McAndless
Luke 1:46-55, Luke 12:13-21
      “Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any spectre I have seen.” It is with those words that Ebenezer Scrooge greets the arrival of the Ghost who is called, “The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.”Scrooge is not alone in this. Nothing frightens us more than the dark unknown of the future.
      Nevert heless, though his trembling legs can barely hold him up, Scrooge promises to brave the Ghost’s company and to pay heed to whatever it may show him. In this he lies, as we all probably would in his situation.
      The ghost doesn’t speak but it shows him people reacting in various ways to the death of some wealthy person. There are some men of business for whom the death barely registers. Then Scrooge goes to see two women and a man who have pilfered various objects from the dead man’s rooms and his body and are seeking to sell them to a pawnbroker. Finally, he is shown a poor couple who are in debt to this man and who rejoice that his passing has given them a little more time to settle their debts.
      Scrooge observes all of this but does not see any of it – at least, he does not see the central truth of it all – though it is obvious enough to us, the readers. The dead man is, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge himself. We all guess it within a few paragraphs, but Ebenezer misses it. He doesn’t even recognize his own laundress when she takes his bedclothes to the pawnbroker. For that matter, he doesn’t recognize his own blankets and sheets and the curtains that have hung about his bed for these many years. He neither recognizes his own buttons nor pins nor the debtors who owe him money.

      How are we to explain this? Whatever else he is, Ebenezer is not a stupid man. But he is like us in this one thing: he has wilfully blinded himself to the inevitability of his own death. He just can’t see it. We hear him grasping at other explanations as unlikely as they may be: there just happens to be someone else standing in his habitual spot in town and the dead man is remarkably like him in every imaginable way but that is (Scrooge explains to himself) simply because the ghost has chosen for him the best possible morality lesson. The most obvious conclusion, that he, himself, Ebenezer Scrooge, has died, this he cannot see.
      And I cannot blame him because I think that this is something I do – and you do it too. We will admit, of course, to the logical inevitab­ly that we shall die some day. We know the statistics, the medical limits of the human body, the realities of life. We just don’t wantto see it. But, in the end Scrooge is put in a place where he cannot help but see it and it is a moment that changes his entire life. Such a reality, when we face it, can only do the same for us.
     
      Jesus understood the power of seeing the reality of mortality. He told a story of a man who had done well for himself. He had a great deal of land and it produced a huge abundance of crops. He had everything that he could dream of and the only problem he had left was trying to figure out where to store all his wealth. The conclusion seemed obvious. If he had all of this, he must have deserved it. He must have done everything right and was being rewarded by God for it. But Jesus called him a fool because he had failed to take one thing into account: the reality of his own death – a reality that proved that all of his priorities were wrong and that he really was a fool.
      Now, most often in the life of the church when we talk about the reality of death changing things, what we are actually talking about is what happens after death. It usually boils down to the idea that you should be motivated to do good out of a healthy fear of eternal punisment or (perhaps better) by the promise of an eternal reward in heaven. But actually that is not what Charles Dickens is talking about in A Christmas Carol (and I don’t think that it is what Jesus was talking about in his parable).
      Dickens probably believed in heaven and hell, but he was not actually interested in motivating people by means of eternal reward or punishment (Nor, do I think, was Jesus). Heaven and hell actually have no place in Dickens’ story of Ebenezer Scrooge. The only punishment he sees is to be found in this world. We see that in the suffering of Scrooge’s very first ghostly visitor: Jacob Marley. Marley, Scrooge’s dead old business partner, is in agony, but it is not the agony of hell. His agony is discovered in this exchange:
      Scrooge sees the suffering of his old friend and seeks to comfort him by telling him that he was always a good man of business. To this Marley cries out in deep pain: “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
      Marley’s agony is simply this. His life was the only opportunity he had to do good, to help the weak, to comfort the afflicted, to assist those in need and he didn’t use that opportunity. Now that life is gone and he has no more power to do any of it. His agony is now to see the starving people and have no power to give them food, to see the grieving and to be totally unable to offer comfort, to not even be able to weep with the one who weeps. His powerlessness to help, to respond with human decency, is what makes him suffer now.
      Friends, life on this earth is a precious gift. And one of the things that makes it most precious is the fact that it is limited. Realizing that is a hard thing, no one can easily see the reality their own death, but it is something worth seeing because it allows you to learn what Scrooge learned and what Jesus was trying to teach in his parable: to invest however much time you have on this earth doing what really matters.

      
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Christmas Basket Night

Posted by on Saturday, December 17th, 2016 in News

Last week we had our annual Christmas Basket night for our Thursday Night Supper & Social guests.  Many people from our congregation donated items to make up these baskets.  The contents of the baskets included practical and fun items for the adults.  Many thanks to all who provided the items for the baskets, they were wonderful and very much appreciated.  Lots of fun was had by all!




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God is with us: Special reflections on the Christmas story and a baptism

Posted by on Monday, December 12th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 11 December, 2016 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 7:1-4, 10-16, Matthew 1:18-25

Sunday, December 11, 2016 was a very special day at St. Andrew’s Hespeler. We celebrated a baptism (that had, as you will see, an interesting back-story) and had our children present to us their version of the Christmas story. This all came together in an unusual message that offered a unique perspective on ancient Biblical passages. As this message was integrated throughout the service, I present more of the service, particularly the Baptism, than I usually would.

Note that the names of the parents and child have been change to preserve their privacy on the internet.

Reflections on Isaiah 7:1-4, 10-16
K
ing Ahaz of Jerusalem was in a bit of a bad spot. Two powerful kingdoms, the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Aram had entered into an alliance against him and they were coming to attack. Things looked bad. The heart of Ahaz and the heart of all his people were shaking like the trees of the forest shake before the wind.
            But that was a long time ago in a very different world. How are we supposed to understand what it was like for them to be frightened of kings and armies that we have never even heard of? Well, think of it this way: what if the presidents of Russia and the United States made an alliance together and decided to invade Canada in order to gain control of our water supply? How would you feel? Are the leaves of your forest shaking in the wind? That what what King Ahaz and his people were feeling.

            And God wanted to help the king and comfort him and so he sent his prophet, Isaiah, to the king while he was out inspecting the defenses of the city. And Isaiah’s message was pretty simple. Don’t worry, don’t shake like a leaf, he said. The enemy nations that you are worried about, they are about to be destroyed.
            But maybe that all sounded too good to be true for King Ahaz and his buddies. And maybe Isaiah could see that he didn’t believe it. So Isaiah said that the king could ask for a sign. It could be anything in the whole world from the deepest depths of the earth (which they called Sheol) to the highest point in the heavens. But Ahaz wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t ask. And so Isaiah said, “Okay, then God will choose the sign.” And guess what the sign was:

Leader: People of God, Robert and Susan have some very good news for us.
People: What’s the good news?
Parents: We have a son!
L: Praise the Lord! There is new life among us. Let all God’s people say, “Amen.”
P: Amen!
L: What is his name?
Parents: He is called Ryan ______ ______.
L: And why do you bring him here?
Parents: That he may take his place among God’s people.
People: Do you know that he needs to pass through the waters of baptism?
Parent: Yes we do, may we proceed?
L: May they?
People: Yes! We rejoice with you in the gift of your child, Ryan, and we promise to provide you with a circle of belonging in which he will have a place. As friends, we will offer a home to worship God and learn the Sacred Story.

Hymn #138 While Shepherds watched

Affirmations:
L: Please join me as we welcome this new life among us using the words printed in the bulletin.
P: Little child, welcome to this world, this amazing and scary world. Welcome to light and dark, hot and cold, good and evil. Welcome to love and hate, truth and lies, good times and bad. Welcome to the long human pilgrimage from birth to death. Anything can happen here; everything is possible. Some things must be chosen; others left behind. Welcome to the real world and this circle of friends. Here we turn to God for help in making the choices that lead to life.
L: Ryan, for you Jesus Christ came into the world; for you he passed through the waters of baptism; for you he broke bread with sinners and outcasts; for you he endured the agony of the cross; for you he triumphed over death. You, little child, know nothing of this. How will you ever know? Who will ever tell you?
Parents: We will!
L: Ryan, this is too big a job for your parents alone. Who is going to help them?
People: We will!
Witnesses: And so will we!

L: Ryan, who will protect and nourish you until that day when you turn to God and say yes to God’s life of compassion, justice and peace?
Parents: We will!
L: Who is going to help them?
P: We will!
Witnesses: And so will we!

Prayer of Approach
God, sometimes we look around at the world where you have placed us and we are dismayed. We see leaders and events that make us shake like the leaves of the forest shake before the wind. We worry for the future. Thank you that you understand our fears and that you meet us with the assurance that you are with us – that you even sent your Son, Jesus Christ, into the world that we might know you in him.
Thank you for the gift of this child, Ryan, who teaches that truth to us again: God is with us. May we all experience the renewing power of that truth here today. Amen.
L: The peace of the Lord be with you always.
P: And also with you.

Act of Baptism:
Minister: Ryan, the God who created you has made this promise; Don’t be afraid; I have rescued you. I have called you by name; now you belong to me. When you cross deep rivers, I will be with you; the waters will not overwhelm you... I am your God, the One who saves you. (Isaiah 43:1,2)
Ryan ______ ______, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of all.
Ryan, know that you are now in the care of all who surround you. Know that you belong to God and to this household.
As I cup my hand around your head little one, may God hold you and keep you.
As I rock you in my arms little one, may Christ shield you and encompass you.
As I bend to kiss your cheek little one, may the Spirit bless you and encourage you.

Welcome:
L: Friends, this is Ryan, a son of God!
P: Welcome, Ryan!

Y
ou see, that was the sign that Isaiah offered to King Ahaz as he trembled like a leaf. He turned around and pointed to a woman just like Susan – a woman who was pregnant (or who maybe soon would become pregnant – the Hebrew is not quite clear) and he said that when she had her baby, Ahaz would have his sign. The sign would be the child himself. For the child would be called Immanuel and Immanuel means “God Is With Us.”
            And he explained that, by the time that child had grown up enough to know the difference between right and wrong (maybe by the age of thirteen), the world would have changed and the kingdoms that were threatening King Ahaz would have been destroyed. Isaiah was absolutely right. Within a few years, the world did change. Aram and Israel where destroyed and there was a whole new political landscape.
            But you know what? That wasn’t just a prophecy for that particular time and place. This was a Word from the Lord and the Word of the Lord has this way of remaining alive and active long after it is first spoken. That was why centuries later a man named Matthew would pull out the ancient words of the Prophet Isaiah – words spoken to King Ahaz when he and all his people were shaking like leaves in the wind – and speak them to people in this own time who were shaking like leaves in the wind.

Video Presentation of Matthew 1:18-25

            When Matthew told the story of how Jesus was born, the ancient words of the prophet would suddenly mean a whole lot more than they had ever meant before. In particular, that name, “Immanuel,” was important to Matthew because he knew that he (and all Christians like him) had experienced something special in the person they knew as Jesus. Somehow, in Jesus, they had experienced God like they had never experienced God before. Somehow, in this flesh and blood man, God had been present. For Matthew and the people of his church, Matthew’s story of how Jesus came to be conceived and born explained that: it was a new fulfillment of an ancient sign given by the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz.

At the end of the service, Robert, Susan and Ryan return to the front and take Ryan to the manger.

Final reflections on Ryan
I
 am going to tell you the amazing story of how Ryan came to be here today. Seven months ago, Robert and Susan were living in a city in Alberta that you may have heard of: a place called Fort McMurray. They had gone there after school here because there was lots of work there and the pay was good. Many others from across Canada had done the same as Alberta had one of the few booming economies in the country.
            But, seven months ago, things were maybe not so bright. The petro-powers of the world (especially Saudi Arabia) had made an alliance together against Alberta. The price of oil had dropped like a stone taking much of Alberta’s economy with it. The future of Fort McMurray was not looking so bright as it once had. And that was before seven months ago when a massive, nearly unprecidented fire came sweeping through the city.
            We can’t blame one fire on global climate change, of course. Climate doesn’t create individual events, but it is true that that fire is part of an overall trend towards bigger and more destructive fires around the world. A dangerous sign for the future!
            We all saw the pictures and the video footage. It was positively apocalyptic. It was like the end of the world. And people were shaking like the leaves of a forest shake before the hot, burning wind. And, of course, people were asking where God was in the midst of that crisis.
            And I believe that God has sent us an answer: The young woman conceived and bore a son and called him Ryan. And, no, Susan didn’t conceive Ryan at that very moment when Fort McMurray looked like hell on earth. Ryan had actually been conceived about four months earlier. But does that matter? No, because the message is still the same. The world may change but this child, like the one born in Isaiah’s time and even like Jesus, is a sign to us from God – a sign that means that God is with us.
            How do I know that? I know it because that is how God works. I know it because, by the time this child grows up and is old enough to know the difference between good and evil, the world will have changed. I don’t even know how. Trump will not be president of the United States. Trudeau will likely not be our Prime Minister. The economy will have changed and I wouldn’t mind if oil isn’t such a big part of it. We don’t know. But the key thing is that the things we are worried about now, the things we are afraid of, may not matter by then. Yes, maybe we’ll have new things to worry about, but even that may not matter because of one key truth that God has sent Ryan to remind us of: God is with us.

            And so it is Ryan who will lead us out into the world today. As you follow this child into the world, May God make safe for you each step; may Christ make open to you each pass; may the Spirit make clear to you each road; And may you travel hand in hand with your God.
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The Ghost of Christmas Present — Seeing the Heart of the Matter

Posted by on Sunday, December 4th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 4 December, 2016 © Scott McAndless – Communion
Luke 6:37-45, Psalm 72:1-7, 18,19, Deuteronomy 15:7-11
W
hat was the best Christmas dinner that you ever had? How would you describe it to me? I bet that if we were to put that question out as a general survey, we would get a great variety of answers. Some would speak of dinners from long ago, even from when they were small. Others would speak of one from recent memory. You would hear of menus and guest lists and decorations.
      But if you really pressed people to say what made it truly special, they would go beyond speaking of those things. They would start to speak of something very hard to describe: a warmth, a sparkle, a glow that somehow made the gathering that special – the kind of thing that is hard to pin down but that makes all the difference.
      It would be much the same thing if I were to ask you to describe to me your very best memory of a Christmas morning. There would be some who would focus on the presents that you received or perhaps that you gave. Others would focus on the people who were there, but most would talk about something that gave a special shine to everything that happened.

      That thing – that undefinable quality – is what is sometimes called the Christmas Spirit or even the magic of Christmas. It is a shared attitude that somehow has the ability to take fairly ordinary things – food, interactions, words – and make them truly exceptional. I am sure that every single one of us has felt that Christmas spirit at least one time or another, but we would be hard pressed to describe it exactly or to force it to appear when we wanted it to.
      There have been various attempts to portray this Christmas Spirit down through the years. Sometimes I think that, more than anything, that is what Santa Claus is – an attempt to draw a picture of Christmas Spirit. But, as much as I love Santa and what he represents, I think that someone else actually succeeded better in portraying what it is all about: Charles Dickens.
      In his classic tale, A Christmas Carol, the secon d ghost that visits Scrooge after midnight is called the Ghost of Christmas Present. But I would suggest to you that, more than anything else, he is a representation of the Christmas Spirit itself – a Christmas spirit that is reborn every twenty-fifth of December.
      The ghost wears a simple green robe, bordered with white fur that hangs loosely about its bare chest. Its feet are also bare and on its head is no other covering than a holly wreath. Its face is clear and joyful and girded round its middle is an antique rust-eaten scabbard that contains no sword.
      Most interestingly, however, as the ghost conveys Scrooge upon his nocturnal journey, he bears with him a flaming torch. The purpose of this torch is not merely to cast light upon the things that they are seeing but to produce a special incense. We discover the power of this incense as Scrooge and the Ghost visit a shop where the poor folk of the city have brought their Christmas dinners. These people are so poor that they do not have the means within their dwellings to cook and so they bring their dishes to a “Baker’s Shop.” I’m guessing, that these meals are pretty poor and simple fare.
      But, as Scrooge watches, the ghost (who is invisible to everyone but him) delights himself by lifting the cover off of each dish and sprinkling it liberally with the ash from his torch. It is an odd vision, but the meaning of it seems clear. The ash represents the power of the spirit of Christmas to transform. As the story continues, it becomes clear that the ghosts cannot just transform simple meals into Christmas feasts, it can also transform ordinary interactions into signs of peace on earth and goodwill to all and ordinary gatherings into joyous signs of the kingdom of God. And Christmas does have this power. I know that we have all experienced it at some point or another in our journey through Christmas past and present.
      I think that there is a spiritual truth to be found in this. Our tendency as human beings is to judge the value of the people and things that we see. When we do this, we tend to look at the surface of things. We’ll focus, for example, on the actual contents of the Christmas meal and how it was cooked, to judge how good it is. The torch of the Christmas Ghost reminds us that we must look deeper than the surface.
      Jesus would remind us of the same thing. “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good,” he taught “and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” His point is that you really cannot judge anything unless you can see the heart and not merely the surface of things.
      This is, of course, why Jesus taught that we should not judge at all. We are so inclined to look at the surface of things that we are blind to what really matters. Jesus suggested, wisely, that it is better to leave the judging up to God who can see the heart in all matters.
      But the lessons that Ebenezer Scrooge learns from the Ghost of Christmas Present are not limited to finding that warmth and joy of Christmas by looking to the heart of things. There is also a very dark and negative side to what he learns. Scrooge hasn’t just missed the joy of Christmas, he has also actively participated in judgement against the people of his city.
      Near the beginning of A Christmas Carol, two men enter Scrooge’s offices asking for his support in their charitable efforts on behalf of the poor. Scrooge’s answer is quite memorable. “Are there no prisons?” he wants to know. And he inquires likewise of the Union workhouses, the Treadmill and the Poor Law. These were the means by which England, in that era, dealt with poor – basically by punishing them for their poverty.
      The assumption you see (and this is an assumption that Scrooge himself clearly makes) is that the poor are responsible for their own misfortune – that they are poor because they have chosen to be idle. Thus Scrooge dismisses them by saying, “I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned – they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.” When the kind-hearted gentlemen inform Scrooge that some people would rather die than go to such places, Scrooge replies, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
      I wish I could say that Scrooge was the only one to take such a cold-hearted attitude towards the poor, but I think that you know that such an attitude has far from disappeared since his days. In some ways, I would say, it is an attitude that is only on the rise in our times. And, what’s more, such an attitude does make a certain amount of sense. If you only look at the appearance of things – if you see someone not working (or not able to get a well enough paying job) it is easy to come to the conclusion that it must be because of some deficiency on their part – they haven’t tried hard enough or lack a work ethic. It is also the easiest conclusion to come to because it means that their problems don’t really have anything to do with you.
      But, as I say, it is only possible to think that when you look at the surface of things. Once you begin to see the heart of the people involved, you begin to realize that the causes of poverty are much more complicated than that and, what’s more, our own fates are much more intertwined with the fates of the poor than we ever suspected.
      It is Scrooge’s visit to the family of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, that makes it impossible for him to only look at the surface of that family’s poverty and troubles. In particular, his heart becomes drawn to the Cratchits’ young son, Tiny Tim, whose health is so poor that Scrooge asks the ghost whether he will live for long. The answer is far from encouraging which leads Ebenezer to beg for a different outcome. The ghost turns the old miser’s cold words back on him: “What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” When you begin to see the heart instead of the surface of things, you realize how cruel our normal manner of thinking is. Scrooge is appalled at himself as we should be too.
      Scrooge’s final exchange with the Ghost of Christmas Present is the most disturbing. He detects two figures that are hiding underneath the skirts of the ghost. They are two children: a boy whose name is Ignorance and a girl whose name is Want and they are in an abominable state. They are, the ghost informs him, the children of all humanity and their terrible state isn’t just a threat to themselves but, if they are not saved, they will bring destruction on all humankind.
      “Have they no refuge or resource?”Scrooge cries out and in reply, the Ghost simply turns his own words back on him again: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” Scrooge falls into despair, not only because the ghost forced him to look at the heart of matters but, by looking to the heart, he has come to realize that the plight of the poor is not just their problem but that it is a problem that affects all of us and threatens to doom us all. Want leads to ignorance and ignorance is deadly. If you let enough of the people fall into ignorance, they become a force in society. They will support tyrants and demagogues. Ignorance breeds more ignorance and it all spirals out of control. Scrooge has realized that the plight of the poor and forgotten ishis own plight as well.
      Dickens didn’t invent this idea, of course. The Bible recognized first that the plight of the whole of society is connected to the plight of its poorest members. That is why, in the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses instructs the entire nation by saying, “Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so.” This is not merely for the sake of those who are poor but for the blessing of all: “for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.” There will always be poor among us, Moses warns us, the problem of poverty will never entirely go away, but God actually brings good out of it by creating an opening to blessing for all of us.
      Jesus echoes this idea when he teaches his followers and says, “give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
      The Ghost of Christmas Present teaches Scrooge a vital lesson. It teaches him that, by looking only at the surface of things, he has effectively blinded himself to the truth that surrounds him – the truth about what lies in the heart, especially in the hearts of the poor and forgotten, and the truth about how connected we really are.
      Christmas is a time when this habitual blindness is set aside. I have been amazed, for example, at the generosity that has been on display in this congregation and community over the last couple of weeks. You may have heard the story of a refugee family that showed up here about two weeks ago. It was the first real cold day of winter and they had sent their children to school that morning without any winter clothes because they just didn’t have any. We took them down to Hope Clothing and gave them as much as we could immediately and when there were a number of things still needed an urgent message was put out on Facebook.
      Do you realize that that message was shared 18 times that we know of and quickly seen by over 3000 people? And the response that we saw to that need was overwhelming both to our volunteers and to the family. People want to be generous. They want a way to look past the surface of the Syrian Refugee Crisis (which is a complex mess) and look to the heart of the people involved. Christmas is one good reason why they were willing to do that and the transforming power comes when we learn to see like that all year long. Dickens understood that. More importantly, so did Jesus.
      Will you allow the spirit of Christmas to transform you, not just during this Christmas Present but through the whole year that God places before you?
     

140CharacterSermon From Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge learns to see the heart & not to judge by appearance. This is a gospel lesson.
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December 4: Communion Sunday and More!

Posted by on Thursday, December 1st, 2016 in News


The first Sunday in December is always Communion Sunday at St. Andrew's. This year there are a number of other things happening on this Sunday that will make it even more special and meaningful.


  • Everyone is invited to bring in their family Nativity Sets for the worship service. We are already beginning to see the incredible variety of sets and hear some of the meaningful stories that people tell about the origins or history of their set. We will be dedicating our family nativity sets and praying for the link between church and family at Christmastime. Make sure you bring your set and put it out in the sanctuary for the beginning of worship.

  • There has been a wonderful and generous response to our "Angel Tree" initiative and the contributions are being piled up under the Christmas Tree in the sanctuary. One Sunday we will dedicate these gifts which will be distributed to families in the community through our Thursday Night Supper and Social. You won't believe all that is under that tree until you see it!
  • We will have the opportunity, if we choose, to contribute a special gift towards our Benevolent Fund which is used to support families in the community who are facing unexpected or emergency situations.
  • Special Musical treats! Anthem: Come My Light (with a special guest on the organ). Original music by local guitarist, Robert Dwyer.
  • The minister will continue his Advent series of sermons based on Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol by looking at the meanings found in the description of the Ghost of Christmas Present.
We hope to see you here!
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The Ghost of Christmas Past

Posted by on Monday, November 28th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 27 November, 2016 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 43:14-21, Philippians 3:4b-16, Psalm 51:1-12
I
t will happen in just a little less than one month. People will go to bed filled with expectations. They will have sleep “with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads.” The visions may vary from person to person. The kids w ill dream of presents and stockings bursting full. The adults, maybe, will dream of turkeys and stuffing and mashed potatoes. A huge number will dream of family, friends and loved ones coming together and what it will be like when they gather.
      Christmas, more than any other festival in our lives is full of expectations. That is as true today as it was almost two hundred years ago when Clement Moore wrote his famous poem and included that line about the sugarplums. And expectation can certainly be wonderful, but there can also be a downside to them.

      I remember the Christmas when I was about 10 years old or thereabouts when the reality of Christmas just didn’t measure up to my expectations. I guess that when I was younger than that, it wasn’t all that hard to simply be overwhelmed by the experience of opening presents and thinking about how awesome they were. But I clearly remember that year when I finished opening of my presents and I just wondered where that feeling of awe was. It wasn’t that my presents hadn’t been great – they had been. I had gotten exactly what I had asked for. It was just that that feeling of being overwhelmed by what I had received that I seemed to remember from when I was younger just wasn’t there. I was disappointed; I had been done in by my expectations.
      And I know that you don’t feel too bad for me about that. I’m sure that every child experiences that at some point and that it is a certain corrective to the infantile greediness that we experience at Christmas when we are really young. I learned and I adjusted and I think I’m the better for it. But there are other times when we are done in by our Christmas expectations and it is not necessarily a growning experience:
      A father, who has always poured his love and care into a family Christmas dinner and has always looked forward to that warm feeling of having everyone gathered around one table, finds his expectations thwarted this year. One son has a new girlfriend and it is really serious. He has been invited to spend the evening with her family and really wants to go. A daughter has joined the military and will be shipping out to Germany a week before Christmas. A second daughter just landed her first job as a paramedic and, as the low person on the totem pole has to work all the Christmas shifts this year. None of the kids will be home and, as proud as he is of his children and what they are doing, he can’t help but be bitter and angry all season long and make everyone around him miserable. His good, positive and wonderful memories of Christmases past seems to have made this Christmas almost not worth celebrating.
      In another part of town, a grandmother and matriarch of a large family has had to give up so many of the things that she has always done for her family this year. She just doesn’t have the stamina to cook the turkey, decorate the room and table, shop and wrap and do a thousand other things. Her children and grandchildren have very thoughtfully organized and parcelled out all the various tasks amongst themselves. She won’t have to do a thing but sit back and enjoy the holidays. She is so appreciative that she is doing her best to make them all feel miserable because their efforts aren’t exactly giving the results that she had in the past.
      And, lest you think that it is only good memories of past Christmas that can cause problems by building up expectations that are no longer realistic, consider these people for whom Christmas every year is a dark time:
·               The man whose father left his family one week after Christmas when he was only ten and who every year feels a deepening dread that he will lose the people he cares for as the season approaches.
·               The woman whose ex-husband drank too much every Christmas and who still feels the pain of his beatings every December 25.
·               The man who still plays out an angry discussion about politics that he was part of during a Christmas dinner ten years ago. He cannot let go of it!
      When Charles Dickens wrote his Christmas classic story about how people can change, especially at Christmas, he knew that the first thing that he had to deal with was the memories of Christmases past. They have a unique power to affect how we see and live out Christmas today. And they do that for each and every one of us.
      The first ghost that Ebenezer Scrooge meets after the warning he receives from Marley has long proved to be the hardest one for artists, animators and directors to illustrate. It is a ghost who is exceedingly hard to pin down. It’s face changes constantly to evoke figures from Ebenezer’s past and even the number of its arms and legs cannot be stated with certainty. This is a reflection of how our memories of the past affect us. They are rarely clear. Sometimes the happy events of the past are magnified (and any negative parts edited out) as we look back upon them with nostalgia. Negative events, for their part, have a tendency to grow worse as we look back on them. They are indistinct because we rarely have the courage to look back at our past memories without the adornment of our own fantasies and it is precisely for that reason that they have such power over us.
      The one feature of the Ghost of Christmas Past that is entirely clear is the light that burns like a flame from the top of his head. This light is the symbol of hope in Scrooge’s encounter with the ghost. By casting a clear light on all of the events of the past – good and bad – this light has the potential of exposing them in truth. Basically, Dickens is saying that, when we dare to examine the events of our past clearly – even if they are painful or too good to believe – we rob them of the power to destroy our present.
      So, for example, as we follow Scrooge’s journey through the past (which includes many a good memory such as the rauchaus Christmas party in Fezziwig’s shop) we discover among other things that his experience of want and poverty so deformed him that it made him into a man who loves money more than he loves humanity. It is a scar that runs deep.
      But this exposing light is so frightening to Scrooge. He cannot face it. As he jouneys through his past, Scrooge becomes ever more disturbed and fearful until at last he can take it no more. “Remove me!”Scrooge cries out to the ghost, “I cannot bear it! …Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!” And then, when the ghost does not comply, Scrooge does what we all do when we do not want to face our past clearly, he grabs the ghost’s hat which is in the form of a giant candle snuffer. He forces this cap down over the ghost’s head until he extinguishes the flame.
      The Ghost of Christmas Past is the only ghost that Scrooge has the power to banish. By extinguishing its light he makes it go away. And we too have that power. We can choose to extinguish the light the illuminates our own past and allows us to see it for what it truly was. We often do so because, like Scrooge, we are afraid to face the reality of our own past. We suppress it deep inside and think we have controlled it. We have not. We have only given it more power over us. Scrooge can only be free of the past that has enslaved him to the pursuit of money by facing this past, and so his trials will continue as he faces his other ghosts.
      Dickens’ Christmas Carol is a great work of literature and, as such, it contains great and universal truths – truths that we call in the church Gospel truths. The truth that he teaches about the past and its power to enslave us is also found in the Bible. We read two passages this morning that talk about how God would release us from the power of the past to deform us. In the Book of Isaiah, God implores the people of Israel, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” He is asking them to make sure that they aren’t trapped by their memories of the past. And the past he is talking about here is a good past; he is talking about the time when God saved them from the Egyptians by leading them through the Red Sea. In fact, the prophet describes those past events in some detail, speaking of “the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.”
      But God is aware of how even memories of the most positive events can mess us up. When he says, “do not remember the former things,” he does not mean to repress them or to quench them, like Scrooge, with an exstiguisher cap. He actually invites the Israelites to examine the past closely by describing it. He’s talking about how trust in God can help to keep that past from controlling you or destroying you.
      The Apostle Paul says much the same thing in his letter to the Philippians, talking about how he forgets what lies behind and strains forward to what lies ahead. Here the past that might destroy him is not all good. It is more of a mixed bag. He talks about positive things like his heritage and education but also negative things like his past persecution of the church.
      The message, however is much the same. Paul is teaching us, by example, that we cannot allow the past to have power over us. He is not telling us to repress the past or our memory of it. On the contrary, he describes these things from his past in quite explicit detail: “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”
      He knows these things intimately because he has not hesitated to examine them closely under the harsh light of reality. It likely made him uncomfortable as it made Scrooge uncomfortable but he would not snuff out the light of truth and it is precisely because of that that he has the freedom to strain forward to whatever God has put in front of him without being weighed down by his past.
      Sisters and brothers, I know that many of you are like Ebenezer Scrooge. I am not accusing you of being a miser or of being as cruel as him. That is not what I mean! But I am suggesting that many of you, like him, have allowed your memories of the past to have too much power over you to define you, to tell you what you can and cannot do and to overwhelm you with guilt or regret or grief or a host of other feelings that threaten to destroy you. Know that God wants to set you free from the power of your past to control and define you. That is why he sent Jesus into the world. That is what forgiveness and redemption and death and resurrection were all about: setting you free from all that.
      Will you trust God enough to take a lamp (or the light that shines from the head of the Ghost of Christmas past) and examine your past and see it for what it truly was so that God may set you from living under its power. That action was the first step towards making Ebenezer Scrooge the man that God had always meant him to be. It can be for you and for me as well.
     

140CharacterSermon Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Past teaches: if we have courage to examine our past, God sets us free from its power over us 
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