Was Jesus an “atheist” because he taught that God is Spirit?

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, May 15th, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 15 May, 2016 © Scott McAndless – Pentecost

John 4:7-24, Galatians 5:16-26, Acts 2:17-21

f you were to ask me the question, “Do you believe in God? I would answer that question without a moment of hesitation: “Do I believe in God? Yes, of course I believe in God.” In fact, that is kind of the obvious answer for someone in my position to give. It is an answer so obvious that, in general, nobody would even bother to ask the question.

In fact, being a Christian is one of the things that offers me continual assurance that, yes, there is a God because, you know, sometimes I look around at the world and I see everything that goes wrong and it does make me wonder. When I do start to wonder like that, the thing that often reassures me that there is a God who exists and cares is what I have heard and learned from Jesus.

That is why I was surprised to learn recently that one of the really big problems that ancient pagans had with Christians back in the bad old days of the Roman Empire was that they considered us to be atheists.

I mean, you could say a lot of bad things about Christians. We have our flaws and shortcomings and failures. But not believing in God? I wouldn’t call that one of them.

So I’ve thought about that accusation over the last little while. I’ve thought about it a lot. Why would pagan Romans accuse Christians of being atheists? And I get, of course, that the pagans were a bit upset that the Christians wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of their gods. But this was about more than just a question of Christians refusing to recognize Jupiter or Mars or Mercury. To tell the truth, the traditional Roman religions had been on the decline for years before the Christians ever showed up on the scene.

No, this wasn’t just about protecting the status or worship of any particular gods. This was about the Christians challenging the very concept of divinity that the Greco-Roman world had. The problem was that the Christians were a-theists. The problem was that they did not believe in theos, which was the Greek word for the concept of divinity.

And, you know what, in that sense, I think that the critics of Christianity may have been right. Starting with the very words of Jesus and continuing through the life of the early church, the Christians had ways of talking about and interacting with God that totally blew that Greek concept away. If you listened – I mean really listened – to Jesus and his disciples you simply would not have been able to conceive of God in the same way again.

Think, for example, of the way that Jesus speaks of God in our reading this morning from the Gospel of John. Jesus is engaged in a conversation with a Samaritan woman about matters of religion. Jesus has just said something to her that has made her realize that she is not just talking to an ordinary person – that he can somehow speak for God. And her immediate response is to ask him a religious question: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but [Jews like] you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

The question she is asking is a theistic question. It is the kind of question that Romans might ask about their gods. Where is the best place to worship Jupiter, they might ask. The name of the god might be different but the concern is exactly the same. There are all kinds of assumptions behind a question like that. She is assuming that God requires a certain sort of worship from us. She is assuming that place matters when it comes to such worship. Even more important, she is assuming that worship, properly done in proper places, will influence God to act in certain ways.

And everyone in that world at that time would have expected Jesus to jump into that argument and explain to the woman exactly why it was right and good to worship God only in a particular place – in the temple in Jerusalem. Because if anybody in that world knew anything about gods (and this includes both Jews and Gentiles) they knew that it was vastly important that you access those gods in the right ways and in the right places.

But, while Jesus does acknowledge that, historically speaking, Jerusalem is the place for accessing God, he also says that that is no longer true now. In fact, he announces a brand new insight into the nature of God: “God is spirit,” he says, “and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” And there, right there, you have one good explanation for why people accused Jesus’ followers of being atheists.

You see, the whole development of religion is one of the ways in humans have always dealt with the basic fears that come with life in this very unpredictable world. I mean, who can stand going through this world and just not knowing what terrible thing might happen next? Sickness and disease, war and pestilence, accidents and all kinds of other terrible things that can go wrong seem to shadow our every moment of existence as human beings on this planet. And, most terrifying of all, so much of it seems to happen for no apparent reason.

And so people looked to their gods to explain these things and especially to find a way to control all of the terrible and frightening things that seem to happen in this world. Religion developed as a way to control the things that happen to us by controlling the gods who make these things happen. Holy sites were chosen, temples were built and priests are consecrated to manage all of the ways that the gods were manipulated with rituals and sacrifices to influence them and make things happen in certain ways. I think that this is true of any religion including Judaism and even Christianity in many of its forms.

But when Jesus declared that it didn’t really matter where you worship God – whether in Jerusalem or Samaria – because God was spirit, he was really declaring but he didn’t believe in that kind of God – the kind of God who could be manipulated with our religion.

And, it must be said, that this was a very dangerous thing for him to say because what was at stake was not only the question of where one might worship God. Religion, in all of its forms, has built up these complex power structures over the centuries. If the priests and religious leaders are able to manipulate the gods and so control the terrible things that may happen in this world, then they are extraordinarily powerful and they can use that power as leverage in other areas of life. That’s how religion becomes a powerful tool for manipulating whole populations and for amassing great wealth, which is what it has been for much of human history.

But Jesus, with one short phrase, “God is Spirit,”throws all of that carefully developed power structure to the wind. And I almost mean that literally. There was just one word – both in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke and in the Greek language of the gospel – one word that was used to speak of both spirit and wind. Pneuma, in Greek, is a word that mean both spirit and wind. Ruach, in Hebrew also means both spirit and wind. So when Jesus calls God spirit he is also calling God wind and, as Jesus says elsewhere in this same gospel, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Jesus was saying that, if God is spirit, then God is about as easy to nail down and control as the wind. And I realize that we, as modern people do have a better understanding of where the wind comes from and where it goes, than did the people of Jesus’ time. We know about atmospheric pressures and air currents and how they can influence and change the flows of the wind. But all our knowledge has not brought us to the place where we can make it blow when, where and as hard as we want it to. If we could do that, we would have shut down the fire in Fort McMurray so easily, but we can’t. If the goal of our relgion is to bring God under our control and get him to behave and make life play out as we want, we will be sorely disappointed.

Religion has always had one other goal other than the controlling of the gods. It has also been very useful (especially for those who are most powerful in society) as a way to control populations. Religion has been used to make people to behave in certain ways, to make sure that they don’t ask for too much in the way of change or reform. The fear of the gods and the promise of the religious power structure to control the divine powers in this world has been used to impose laws and standards of behaviour on people and to teach them that they must tolerate the present structures of the world rather than to ask for change.

This power too is destroyed by that one simple phrase, “God is spirit.” We see that in our reading from the letter of Paul to the church in Galatia where Paul writes, “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.” If God is spirit then God is not outside of you telling you through laws and words and scriptures how you ought to behave, God is within you prompting your behaviour in quite unpredictable ways.

Now it must be said that the Christian church has had a troubled history with that declaration of the absolute freedom of believers that is proclaimed in passages like this one. The church has sought to govern over the actions and even the thoughts of its people through laws and rules and power structures, but the original declaraton of your freedom remains there in the scriptures and so, I pray, it will never be forgotten by God’s people.

So, with just three words, “God is spirit,” Jesus really does do a lot to destroy the traditional ways in which people have imagined God and how they have tended to work out their relationshiop with God. It is, I believe, one reason why, in those early centuries, people saw how the Christians lived and declared that they were dangerous atheists – people who did not believe in God in the ways you were supposed to believe in God.

Now, it is it is important to note that Jesus, in saying such things, is not throwing us into the chaos of a Godless world where anything could go wrong at any moment and nothing has any meaning. Jesus does still believe in God, and the God that he does believe in is clearly a God who is extraordinarily gracious and kind and caring. It is a God who he speaks of, above all, as Abba – a word that we will examine in more detail in several weeks. So clearly, it is not Jesus’ intention to leave us with the impression that we are stuck going through life in a dangerous universe where anything can go wrong and nothing ever makes any sense. There is a God and we can trust that God is gracious. It is just that we cannot expect to control that God through our religious practices. We do those things for different reasons.

In the same way, Paul insists, our freedom from the obligation to follow the law does not make us immoral and dangerous people who will inevitably degenerate into the worse excesses of behaviour. He insists that God, as spirit within us, prompts us to the highest of impulses, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

So do not be afraid of those three words, “God is spirit,” and where they will lead us. But they definitely disturb the ways in which the world has learned to think about God. I think it was one of the things that led to that anti-Christian accusation of atheist. Though Jesus seems to have been clear on this matter, it seems that the church has long struggled with such a view of God. It seems to be easier to fall into the old ways of thinking about and relating to God. All it seems to cost us is our freedom – our freedom from law and from fear.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could just get so hung up on the radical ways in which Jesus spoke about God that it would transform us? Wouldn’t it be amazing if the outside world looked at us and said, “I’ve never seen a people who believed in a God like that! Doesn’t remind me of any God I’ve ever heard of.” And then, maybe, they would ask to learn more about the God that we worship.

#TodaysTweetableTruth #Jesus said God=Spirit, presenting view of God so new it seemed atheistic. What if we had such a radical view of God?

Sermon Video:

Warrior’s Wardrobe

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, May 8th, 2016 in Minister

Sermon Video:

Hespeler, 8 May, 2016 © Scott McAndless – Mother’s Day

1 Samuel 18:1-9, Ephesians 6:10-17, Psalm 3

hen I was a student studying at Presbyterian College in Montreal, I was given an extraordinary opportunity – an opportunity that few students for the ministry are afforded these days. There was a small church in the city of Laval, just across the bridge north of Montreal, called Northlea United Church. It was a church that was struggling as an English church in what had once been, but was no longer, a fairly strong English community.

The church needed a minister to care for them but couldn’t afford fulltime ministry. A student seemed like an excellent option for them, but the United Church, as a matter of policy, wouldn’t allow their ministry students to minister in that way. The Presbyterian College didn’t mind if their married students (I don’t know why, but you had to be married) did take a pastoral charge while studying, but there were no Presbyterian congregations in need of a student minister. So, when I (a married student) came along, I was asked, “Say, would you like a job preaching to and taking care of a little United Church in Laval for a bit of money and a manse to live in,” I jumped at the chance.

It worked out beautifully and not just for the obvious financial reasons. I still believe that that church taught me at least as much about being a minister as the college did. I had this wonderful place where I could take the things that I was learning in classes and apply them to the real life of the church while I was learning them. I had this place where I could go and make mistakes and get things wrong – and yes, I made lots of mistakes and got lots of things wrong – and the people still loved me and we worked through any of the ensuing problems together.

When I finally finished my studies and was ready to move on to my next steps as an ordained minister in a Presbyterian Church, the people of Northlea threw us a party. They gave thanks for all that they had shared with us. They gave us their blessing and promised to pray for us. And they gave me a gift: this preaching gown.

I have carried this gown with me ever since and worn it a lot. It has seen a lot of joyous occasions and more than its share of bad ones. It almost didn’t make it. Once, several years ago, I was wearing it at the end of a service following a baptism. I had carried a lit candle out of the service, put down the candle and then turned around and just happened to lean a little bit too far back. But, with a few minor repairs, the gown made it through. I am glad to still have it and still wear it from time to time. I reminds me of some of the really important and meaningful things I learned from and shared with the people of Northlea United Church in Laval. In many ways, they are still a part of everything that I do as a minister.

When, a little while later, I was ordained in my first charge, I received another item of clothing. This stole (designed to go nicely with my robe) was presented to me by my mother. Not only was it presented by her, it was made by her and by my three sisters each one of whom took her turn with the stitching. When I wear it, it reminds me that so much of what I bring to the work that I do is what I bring from my family who did so much to form me and build me up.

And then, a few years ago, as you all know, there was someone who I thought of as both a friend and a mentor. His name was the Rev. Ruggles Constant. When I first arrived here in Hespeler as a minister, Ruggles was dealing with many health issues and was quite limited in what he could do, but he certainly went out of his way to support me and to pass on some of his wisdom and experience in really helpful ways. When he passed away two years ago, I was honoured when he asked me to preach at his funeral and a little puzzled when he told me that I was to preach on the topic of the full armour of God – the passage we read this morning from the New Testament.

Ruggles’ daughter, Stephanie, did two wonderful things for me. She told me that her father had been kidding and I could preach on whatever I thought was best and she gave me Ruggles’ gown. When I have worn it since, I have been greatly comforted to know that Ruggles continues to be with me.

And then there is this stole given to me by someone in this congregation. Another supporting friend and, in her own way, a mentor.

This is, for me, a very special wardrobe that I carry with me. I’m sure that you understand that, for me, the value of this wardrobe is much more than just the value of the textiles.

When I came to this morning’s reading from 1 Samuel, this wardrobe was what came to my mind. In this passage we find ourselves in the middle of the tumultuous times of King Saul, first king of Israel. Saul came to be king in a time of great danger, when the people of Israel faced their greatest threat to date in the form of a very frightening enemy called the Philistines. Better equipped and better organized, the Philistines threatened to wipe the Israelites from the face of the earth. And Saul was able to do what nobody had been able to do before and created an army that could fight back against the Philistines in a disciplined and organized way.

Saul’s success was perhaps limited. It was not as if he made the threat go away, but he was able to organize a real resistance – more sustained victory than anyone, even Samson, had been able to do. Saul did slay his thousands of enemies. And his son, Jonathan, to whom he hoped to pass the kingdom someday, also became a great warrior. Everything was, well, maybe not perfect but as good as it had ever been.

And then David came along. And it wasn’t as if David was perfect; he clearly had his flaws. But he definitely was someone who had potential. He was a leader like few others had ever been. And both Saul and Jonathan seem to have recognized that immediately.

Saul saw David’s ability as a threat. Here was the man who was potentially a better war leader than Saul had ever been – who could lead men to attack and kill tens of thousands where before Saul had merely slaughtered thousands. Someone like that could get good enough to take over the kingdom from him. So Saul began to plot to bring David down.

But Jonathan, Saul’s son, seeing the exact same potential in David, had the exact opposite reaction. Of course, David was just as much a threat to Jonathan and his future as king as he was to his father. But rather than responding with fear or with that common response of wanting to put someone else down in order to bring yourself up, Jonathan was able to respond with grace.

And that is what it means when he takes off his armour and sword and arms and even his very robe and gives it all to David. In essence Jonathan is taking everything that he has built up for himself up until that point in his life – his reputation as a warrior and a leader, his skill and training, his status and making a gift of it to David. David hasn’t earned any of this yet. Yes, he did bring down Goliath with one well-placed stone, but that could have been a lucky shot. There is a great distance between that and being a great leader of men. But Jonathan’s gift opened up all of those possibilities and closed off the likelier possibility that David would have just ended up a forgotten footnote to history.

Jonathan’s gift leads me to think in two particular directions. As I have already said, it makes me think of all of those people who, in their own ways, gave of themselves so that I might become the person that God was calling me to be. It is Mother’s Day, of course, so I cannot help but think of my own mother. It is Christian Family Sunday so I cannot help but think of all of the ways in which my family nurtured me, taught me and even sacrificed of themselves for my sake. And, of course, it is not just family who do that for us, though they often do it in the most enduring way.

Families, by the way, are also so influential on our development that they can do the most damage to us when they let us down and they can put wounds in us that we end up carrying for the rest of our lives. So if you are able to remember all that you received from your family and you find that you have been blessed by them and sent on your way through this life in a positive way, you have been, in fact, extraordinarily blessed – more so than many if not most of the people in the world today. Your first application of this story, therefore, is to remember your mother and your family and give thanks to God for all that they have been to you.

On this Mother’s Day and Christian Family Sunday, if it is possible for you to do so, take the opportunity to thank your mother and those other people in your family for all of those sacrificial ways in which they acted to make you who you are.

And after your family, remember the others who invested in you – all those who, like Jonathan, took the wisdom and honour and standing that they had built up and were willing to invest some of it in you. Every single one of you has had people like that. Do you realize what an incredible gift that was? I know that I could not be who I am today without the people of Northlea United, without my teachers and mentors, without the influence of incredibly wise and gifted men and women like a certain Ruggles Constant. On this day, if it is still possible for you to do so, would it not be good for you to do whatever you could to show your gratitude to those people in your life.

But that is not the truly exciting thing about this story of David and Jonathan. The blessing in this story is that we sometimes get to be David and have other people build into our lives. The exciting opportunity about this story is that we also get to be Jonathan and to build into the lives of others. Every person here has the opportunity to do that. It may be someone in your family – a child, a grandchild, a niece or nephew. It may be some associate, someone in your social group. It most certainly could be someone in this congregation – a young person perhaps or someone somewhere on the fringes of this congregation – but I assure you that, if you look around, God is placing those opportunities to invest the human capital that you have built up into someone in your path.

You may ask why you should do that – why you should be willing to give of yourself or sacrifice of yourself for the sake of another. I will admit that it is something that seems not to make much sense according to the way of thinking of this world. This world is mostly interested in Saul’s approach – is much more inclined to want to keep others down in order to protect its own interests. I’ll be honest, this is an approach that I have even seen too often in the church. No sooner does someone start to accomplish something and build a worthwhile ministry or outreach than other people start to tear them down, criticize them and otherwise make sure that they don’t get too big for their britches.

The world may favour Saul’s approach, but God favours Jonathan’s. When you choose to invest yourself in others for the sake of the kingdom of God, God will bless that and bring amazing things out of it. The greatness in Jonathan, because of his choice to share it graciously with David, became something that endured long beyond Jonathan’s life. It continued through the kingdom that David built and the dynasty that he founded. It continued and continues still through his distant descendant, Jesus the Christ. That opportunity to do something important, significant and lasting is God’s gift to you.

#TodaysTweetableTruth You can be a Saul and put others down to lift up yourself up or you can be a Jonathan and invest your life in a David.

Here is a video introducing our next sermon series that begins on May 15, 2016

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Saturday, May 7th, 2016 in News

Here is an introduction to a sermon series that will begin on May 15:

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A Ribbon Cutting

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, May 6th, 2016 in News

Yesterday (Thursday) was Food Bank day. We had some fun cutting the ribbon on our brand new freezer.

A BIG SHOUT OUT to Nelson Aggregates & Jonas Appliances for your generosity in providing the freezer (and delivery). This will be a huge help for us to be able to continue to reach out to our community to provide much needed help.

Over 30 families in the Hespeler community are served every other week, with more new people coming each Food Bank day.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make this possible.

Alberta Fires

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Thursday, May 5th, 2016 in News

Responding to the Alberta Fires

Smoke fills the air as cars line up on a road in Fort McMurray, Alberta on Tuesday May 3, 2016 in this image provide by radio station CAOS91.1. At least half of the city of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta was under an evacuation notice Tuesday as a wildfire whipped by winds engulfed homes and sent ash raining down on residents. (CP)

Fort McMurray in northern Alberta under an evacuation notice Tuesday. Image provided by radio station CAOS91.1.

The PCC national office has heard from The Rev. Lisa Aide, minister at Faith Presbyterian Church in Fort McMurray (link to message). The people from the congregation have all made it safely out of the city, though they are scattered north and south. They are waiting to hear about the status of their homes, manse and the school where they worship.

Donations to support immediate relief and long-term rebuilding for people affected by the fires may be made to Presbyterian World Service & Development for “Alberta Fires”. Funds will be used in consultation with presbyteries and local congregations to support Presbyterian, ecumenical and other relief efforts. Watch for more updates at presbyterian.ca

Donate now

Give Online and indicate “Alberta Fires”
Call 1-800-619-7301 to donate with a credit card
Mail a cheques to PWS&D at 50 Wynford Dr. Toronto, ON M3C 1J7 Indicate the gift is for “Alberta Fires” on the cheque memo line.

Update from Faith Presbyterian Church in Fort McMurray

Thursday May 5, 2016

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers, right now everyone is safely out of Fort McMurray, but we are scattered north and south of the city, so we’re giving thanks for social media which has been a wonderful tool to help people stay in contact. We at Faith church greatly appreciate all the prayers and support that we have received via email and text messages, it is wonderful to know that we are not alone during this time of trial. We know that at least two members have lost everything to the fire, and the rest of us are still waiting on news, one way or the other. So far the manse and the school that Faith worship at seem to be safe from the flames but we won’t know until were able to return home what is waiting for us.
We are also asking for prayer for all of the first responders and everyone else who is in the city trying to save what they can, for we know that it is going to be a hard and stressful battle, so please hold these brave men and women up in prayer, for they need it most of all.
Thank you once again for all of the prayers and the support that has been shown to the people of Fort McMurray, it means a lot to know that we are being lifted up in the prayers of God’s people. The next few months are going to be hard but we know with God’s help we grow stronger, for our city is strong and we know that we are not standing alone. If anyone would like to get in contact with me please feel free to contact me via Facebook.
Thank you once again for everything.
Blessings,
The Rev. Lisa Aide
Faith Presbyterian Church Fort McMurray

Prayer

We are deeply saddened by the fires of Fort McMurray. We cannot begin to imagine the stress and panic that many must be feeling as they sit helplessly watching these unfolding events. We are also mindful of the exhaustion firefighters on the front lines must be feeling. Our prayers are clearly with everyone facing these challenges. May God’s strength uphold all those seeking to cope with this tragedy and may the desperately needed rains come quickly.

The Rev. Karen Horst
Moderator, 2015 General Assembly

Gracious Garments

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, May 1st, 2016 in Minister

Hespeler, 1 May, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Genesis 2:25-3:11, 21, Hebrews 13:10-16, Psalm 40:4-11

he story of the creation of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis was always about much more than just the question of where the human race came from. Adam was never just supposed to be a historical figure. Even the earliest people to tell and pass down this tale knew, after all, that the name Adam meant man and that he represented humanity as a whole. They knew that his wife’s name meant living, and so they understood that this story was not about history or events that took place in the earliest mists of time so much as it was about what it meant to be human beings living in this world here and now.

For example, the particular selection of verses that we read from Genesis this morning seems to be preoccupied with one particular question about being human. The question is this: why do human beings wear clothes. I mean, think about it, the story originated in the ancient Near East which has one of the most temperate climates in the whole world. They didn’t have to deal with the extremes of a Canadian winter. Even rain was a rare event. Clothing, for them, was not a physical necessity most of the time, so they needed an explanation for why human beings, alone among all the creatures on the earth, wore clothing. So if you were going to tell a story about what it meant to be human, that mystery was something that, in their minds, you needed to tackle.

And the story makes it clear that, in the ideal world as God originally intended it, clothing was not necessary. “The man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” The need for clothing, apart from protection from the elements, is, according to this story, actually a reflection of what has gone wrong with human life in this world.

Think about what that means for a moment. The

Bible says that the need for clothing is a symptom of what is wrong with our humanity. There certainly is something to that idea. For nothing divides and dehumanizes us quite like clothing does. Did anyone here go to high school? We have a lot of people here who went to high school in very different time periods. So let me ask the question: when you were in high school, was there an “in” group and an “out” group? And was clothing used as a marker of whether someone was in or out? When you were at high school was the way that somebody dressed ever used as a reason to mock or exclude that person? Clothing is definitely used to separate and divide people in unhealthy and unhelpful ways.

Clothes, in the Genesis story, also seem to represent that human fear of being ourselves. When Adam and Eve are first created, the idea that they are “naked and not ashamed,” seems to symbolize a relationship were they are able to fully share themselves with each another. They don’t need to hide behind anything; they can just be themselves. That they suddenly feel uncomfortable with such nakedness after their disobedience is an indication that something has gone wrong. And, to this very day, we still struggle with just being ourselves in front of other people.

So clothes are part of the problem. But they also seem to be an undeniable necessity given the failures and the shortcomings of our human nature. We just can’t go through life letting it all hang out – not literally and not figuratively. Yes, there are exceptions to that. A few times in your life you might hope to have a relationship with somebody where you feel completely free to be yourself all the time. It can happen in a good marriage or an excellent friendship. But it is rare and most of us spend our lives hiding who we really are from the vast majority of people that we meet; afraid that, if we were to show our true selves, we would be rejected.

This is something that this story in the Book of Genesis is acutely aware of: human beings are flawed. We have our shortcomings and we have our failures. That is a part of what it means to be human. But the amazing thing that we see in the story in Genesis is that, although God is clearly angry at the failure of his humans and deeply disappointed in them, that does not prevent him from being entirely gracious to them.

When the man and the woman first awake to the realization that they are flawed and find this deep inner need to cover up those flaws, they attempt to improvise a solution to their problem: “they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” But this is, clearly, at best a temporary solution. Fig leaves are simply not the most flexible or durable material to make clothing out of but it seems to be the best that we humans can do sometimes.

But then, right at the end of the story, there is a little surprise. At the end of the story, after God has handed out all of the consequences to the woman and the man for their disobedience and to the serpent for his part in it all, there is a little side note: “And the LordGod made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.” And so we learn that, as far as the Bible is concerned, the invention of the first durable set of clothing is to be credited to God. Think of it; the Lord God was the very first person to design a line of clothing.

And I find this idea of God as the first cosmic fashion designer to be very interesting. It tells me a few very important things about God and our relationship with God as human beings.

It tells me, first of all, that we have a God who understands our weakness and failures. God clearly understands what the man that the woman are struggling with, which means that he understands the struggles of all humanity. This is rather extraordinary when you think about it for God has no experience of shame. Why should he? And yet he understands that the man and the woman need clothes not out of their physical necessity but because they feel shame for their inadequacies.

This willingness of God to deal with us where we are as opposed to where God thinks we are supposed to be is of enormous importance. Have you ever had somebody in your life who absolutely refused to deal with you the way that you were – somebody who simply would not accept that you might be fearful or shy or lacking in confidence or whatever particular problem you were dealing with? I’ll bet that each and every one of us has had to deal with someone like that at some point. Was that person helpful to you? Probably not. In order to really help you with getting where you need to be, your friends need to start with you where you are and not where they think you ought to be.

I don’t know how often I have encountered in people this notion that they are unable to access God’s grace or be part of the church or even to pray because they don’t have everything worked out in their lives. “I can’t talk to God,” they will say, “because my life is such a mess.” Well God, fortunately, doesn’t work that way. If he did, none of us would have any hope and no one would ever belong to the church. It is very helpful to know that that is where God joins us on this journey of life where we actually are and not where we are supposed to be.

The second thing I would note about this is that God’s gift of clothing is different in substance from what the man and the woman are able to create by themselves. This is obvious: Adam and Eve’s attempt to clothe themselves is plant-based; God’s gift is animal based. And one of the problems seems to be that Adam and Eve’s approach is less durable because it is plant-based than the one that God offers.

But there seems to be more than a question of durability at stake here. Here is one thing I notice: when we wear plant-based clothing, when we wear things like cotton or linen or even fabrics like wool that are harvested from animals, nothing needs to die in order for us to be warm and cover our “shame.”

Death itself doesn’t seem to be part of the plan at the beginning of the story of the Garden of Eden. At least, the way that it is described, the man and the woman and all of the animals were supposed to live together in such harmony that nothing ever needed to die. The lion and the lamb were supposed to lie down together without anyone getting eaten and even the strongest of predators were supposed to live as vegetarians. It is rather interesting that we seem to have, in this portrayal of ideal life in God’s original garden, a world where nothing has to die in order that something else may live.

But that ideal has apparently failed with the failure of the humans, and it is interesting to see that God’s very first act upon learning that his ideal vision for life in this world is not going to work out is to kill something. Some animals (it doesn’t say which ones) have to die in order to create the right kind of clothing for the humans. These are, according to Genesis, the first recorded deaths. This has to do with more than just the relative quality of plant-based and animal-based clothing.

When ancient human beings finally became aware of their place within this world, when they realized that there was a difference between them and the other animals that lived alongside them (a realization that they came to by telling stories like this one in the Book of Genesis), they discovered something kind of scary and amazing. They realized that other living beings were dying so that they could live and be strong and healthy – so that they could eat meat from time to time and so that they could have strong and durable clothing. They realized that there was something tragic about that, but they also realize that there was something sacred about it.

Almost all ancient humans of all races and cultures came to that amazing realization and many ancient cultures celebrated that sacred tragedy with a ritual called sacrifice. An ancient sacrifice was how you killed and prepared your supper in a way that acknowledged how sacred and tragic the death of that animal was. But the ritual of sacrifice also had a great benefit. Most of the sacrificial animal was eaten by the worshippers who brought it and by the priests who prepared it for them. In addition, skins were taken and turned into clothing and leather and to make other useful things.

But some parts of the animal couldn’t be used. These parts – the bones, the fat and some other bits – were burnt up on the altar as a gift to God. In this way, they believed, the sacrifice created a meal that was shared with both God and the worshippers – a shared meal that was all about rebuilding the broken relationship between God and his people.

And I believe that this action of God who slaughters some animals in order to clothe Adam and Eve is anticipating that – all of that. It is a recognition that the world is a tragic place where things die and that sometimes animals die so that you can live and become who you need to be. It is also aware of the sacredness of such an act and the potential for healing to come out of it.

Christians don’t practice sacrifice, in part because they believe that Jesus, in himself, has fulfilled everything that could ever be achieved by animal sacrifice and that he did that by offering himself up for the sake of those who fell short of what they needed to be. If that is true, then it means that God, in his first act in the garden was already anticipating both the sacrificial system and the coming of Jesus himself. It is all right there in that short line at the end of this morning’s reading.

It is about what it means to be human because it is talking about things that we all struggle with. But, even more important than that, it talks about a God who is there with us in our struggles and whose presence makes all the difference in the world.

#TodaysTweetableTruth God clothes Adam & Eve with skins reminding us that God meets us where we are with grace and of Jesus’ death for us.

The Rev. & Mrs. Gentle

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Thursday, April 28th, 2016 in News

For those who remember having Rev. Gentle as our minister, his widow, Margaret Gentle has passed away. Condolences can be left at Smith's Funeral Home in Burlington.

We are keeping the Gentle family in our thoughts and prayers.

Obituary for Sara "Margaret" Gentle

GENTLE, Margaret (nee Hanna) -

Passed away peacefully at Appleby Place Retirement Residence, Burlington, on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, at the age of 95. Loving wife of the Rev. Stanley W. Gentle (deceased October 1995). Predeceased by brothers; Stanley Hanna (late Mary) and Irvin Hanna (late Jean), and sister-in-law; Betty Nancekivell. Cherished aunt of nieces; the Rev'd. Canon Marni Nancekivell (Ralph Malashevsky) of Oakville along with their daughter Amanda Malashevsky, Margaret Ann Childerhose, Heather Hanna, and Norma Jean Edgecomb. Aunt of Russell Hanna (Marilyn) and Lloyd. Margaret will also be missed by cousins and other great nieces and nephews. Margaret's long life is celebrated by extended family and her many friends from Appleby Place, Burlington East Presbyterian Church and other churches where Margaret and her late husband served in ministry. The family wishes to thank Dr. Amanda Jerome and staff from Appleby Place Retirement Residence for the excellent care that was provided to her. Private cremation has taken place. Visitation will be held at Burlington East Presbyterian Church, (505 Walkers Line, Burlington), on Tuesday, May 3, 2016 from 10:00am until the time of Service of Remembrance beginning at 11:00am, with reception to follow in the church hall. Interment at Woodland Cemetery, Hamilton. If desired donations in Margaret’s memory to Sleeping Children Around the World or Burlington East Presbyterian Church Memorial Fund would be sincerely appreciated by the family. (Arrangements entrusted to SMITH’S FUNERAL HOME, BURLINGTON, 905-632-3333).

It’s Garage Sale time!

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Monday, April 18th, 2016 in News

Please drop by the gym on May 7th, 8:00 am - noon to find that perfect treasure.

Drop off of your donations to the garage sale can be made on Friday afternoon.

Wrathful Robes

Posted by Scott McAndless on Sunday, April 17th, 2016 in Minister

Matthew 22:1-14, Psalm 30, Galatians 3:23-29

m I the only one who reads this morning’s passage from the Gospel according to Matthew and just wishes that everybody would just calm down a little bit? We have, in this passage, a parable of Jesus – a story of a dinner party. In this case, it is a wedding feast given by a king in honour of his son. The basic premise of the story is simple enough. The host of the feast wants lots of prominent guests and so he invites a large number of important people. The twist comes when none of the important people are able to attend the meal and the king kind of panics because, in that society, to give a feast and have nobody show up would reflect very negatively on the host. He ends up packing his dining hall with all sorts of undesirable people in the end.

And that is, basically, the parable that Jesus did tell to his disciples. In fact, if you were to turn over to the Gospel of Luke you would find a version of this same parable where that is all that happens. I have always preferred Luke’s version of this parable for that reason. The story is simple and straightforward without anything extra going on. I’ve always kind of avoided Matthew’s version of the parable because everybody in the story seems a little bit crazy. They all overreact.

We have, first of all, the guests who are first invited to the feast. The king sends his servants out to deliver the invitations because, of course, this was before the days of the internet when you can invite a bunch of people to your party with a few emails and Facebook messages. And the people who receive the invitations, just like in the parable in Luke’s gospel, are unable (or perhaps unwilling) to come. Now, I don’t know about you, but I was always taught that if you are invited to go someplace and you cannot attend, you politely say that you are very sorry. You return the RSVP with a friendly note that expresses your regrets. Is that what these invitees do? No they do not.

They seize the servants who bring the invitations, turture and kill them! I don’t care how much you don’t want to go to a dinner party, there is absolutely no way that murder and torture is a reasonable way to communicate that to your host. So yes, I really wish that the invitees would just calm down a little bit.

But then, as I continue reading, I’m not sure that the king’s reaction is all that much better. The king is upset at how the people he invited to his party treated his servants. That is understandable. But his reaction is very much an over-reaction. He doesn’t just punish the murderers, no. He gathers his troops, attacks the entire city where they live and burns the place to the ground. That is definitely overkill.

So we go from a bloody RSVP to an even worse response on the part of the king. After that, however, the whole thing just becomes bizarre. The king has just filled his banqueting hall with whoever the slaves could find – a crowd that is described as including “both good and bad.” It is clearly a mixed bag and he knew that when he invited them to come in. But then the king comes across one of these guests who is, in his estimation, not appropriately dressed. Well what did he expect?

Nevertheless (and we really shouldn’t be surprised at this point) the king overreacts. He kicks the inappropriately dressed guest out of his party but he’s not even content just with doing that, as excessive as that might seem. No, his instructions are, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Once again, how is this an appropriate way to respond to the minor ettiquet breach of somebody being underdressed at a party?

So there seem to be all kinds of problems specifically with how this parable is told in Matthew’s gospel. Did Jesus have two wildly different versions of this one parable – one where people acted in a fairly reasonable fashion and one where everyone acted a little crazy – that he told on different occasions? And then did Luke copy one version into his gospel while Matthew copied the other?

That’s one possibility, but it is more likely that, when Matthew wrote down his version of this parable, he was trying to help his readers by making it clear to them what his own understanding of the parable was. And Matthew, plainly, saw this parable as an allegory. An allegory is a special kind of story in which every element represents something else. So, in Matthew’s mind, the king, in this parable represents God. The people invited to the feast are the Jews whom God has invited into his kingdom. The servants are the prophets who bring God’s message to the people of Israel and so on.

When you read it as an allegory, the strange overreactions make a lot more sense. The way that the invitees abuse the messengers is so crazy because it is supposed to represent how the nation of Israel historically rejected God’s message by abusing and killing the prophets.

And by the time that Matthew wrote this gospel, the City of Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Roman army and so Matthew even states that this parable predicted that terrible event by including the destruction of a city by troops in his allegorical interpretation. Again, an event that makes little sense if it is an attack provoked by an impolite response to an invitation to a party but that makes a whole lot more sense if you see it as the consequence of an entire nation rejecting the message of God that was brought by the prophets and by Jesus the Christ himself.

So that is one thing that is going on in this passage: Matthew is turning Jesus’ parable into an allegory. But that particular allegory does not especially help us to understand the part at the end of the parable where the guest is thrown out of the party because he is not appropriately dressed, so let me point out something else about the way that Matthew tells the story. Did you notice one very particularly annoying pattern of behaviour in this parable? Did you notice, in particular, that nobody seems to be able to accept a gift or to be the recipient of generosity?

I mean, the people who are invited to the wedding feast, their invitation was essentially a gift. They were turning down nothing other than an evening of good food, entertainment and conversation. And yet they set the whole story off its rails by being unwilling to receive a free gift and doing so violently. What’s more, I would suggest to you that the man who is not wearing the wedding robe at the end of the story is essentially doing the same thing.

We do not know what all of the customs were around wedding celebrations in ancient Biblical societies, but we can be pretty sure that there were a lot of them. And some people have suggested that one of the customs at important weddings may have been for the host of the wedding to provide his guests with fancy robes to wear at the wedding. If that was the custom, then everyone who heard this story would have seen the man who is not wearing the wedding robe in a very different light.

It is not that he doesn’t have appropriate clothes to wear; he has been provided with the appropriate clothes. It is just that he has refused that gift, perhaps because he thinks that his own, dirty and everyday clothes are good enough. When you look at the parable from this angle, it seems to be all about people who have a hard time accepting generosity from others.

And you wouldn’t think that should be a problem, would you? After all, every single one of us has had times in our life when we were unable to meet all of our needs by ourselves. We all have had times when we get by with a little help from our friends. And given that that is something that literally every human being will have to deal with at some point in their life, you would think that it wouldn’t be hard for anybody to accept generosity from somebody else.

But it is. I’ll bet every single person here knows somebody who just can’t stand to receive a gift or a generosity. You all know people who, if you try to give them something or do something for them, they will drive you crazy trying to stop you. Maybe some of you are like that yourself and you just cannot stand being on the receiving end of a gift.

Why do people do that? Why do we have trouble accepting the help we need when we need it? Part of it is that we believe that we are supposed to be entirely self-sufficient in all things and that, if you are anything less than that, you must have failed in some way. Even if you find yourself in a position of need because of something that was entirely out of your control, you are still made to feel that it must, in some way, be your own fault and so you resist accepting help or, if you absolutely have to take it, you do everything that you can to cover up that fact.

If you are involved in the outreach ministry of this church, or most any church, this is something that you run into all the time. We have the privilige of being involved in giving people things – things like food, clothing, good nutritious meals, counselling – that they would not be able to get otherwise or, in some cases, they would have to give up something else that they also needed in order to obtain it.

And, I’ve got to say, it is a real privilige to be able to be involved in this kind of ministry. The people involved genuinely enjoy being able to give these things away and we also enjoy the people that we give them to. But, of course, few people enjoy havingto receive in this way. Few people want to come in and access the services that we offer. Over time, the people that we serve become our friends and they enjoy coming here because our workers and volunteers create a warm and hospitable atmosphere.

And it is good that we help people to learn to receive because I would suggest to you that none of us can ever achieve our potential as followers of Christ, or as human beings, if we do not learn to receive. We cannot even be followers of Jesus without learning to receive from Christ. Our salvation, our hope and our new life in Christ are all things that we cannot make happen for ourselves. We can only receive them as gifts from God.

The robe in the parable, the robe that the guest refuses to wear, has often been seen as a symbol of those gifts from God. It is the robe of righteousness and salvation and new beginnings and we do not have the capacity of wearing such robes by providing them ourselves. We can only receive them from the hand of God. God gives these things freely but we, foolishly, often have trouble receiving them. We would like to think that we are good enough and strong enough and capable enough to achieve all of these things on our own. Like the guest at the party, we insist on wearing our own robes instead.

But the lesson of the parable is that if you do not learn to receive from God when you need to receive from God, you do not belong at the party. And I don’t actually even think God needs to cast you into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth because you have already cast yourself out of the party by a simple refusal to receive a gift freely given. It is that important to learn to receive. Our very salvation – our potential to be all that we are meant to be in this world – depends upon it. And one of the ways in which we learn to better receive from God is by practicing receiving from others.

Therefore, I would encourage you, this week, to do one simple thing to deepen your walk with God. This week, when somebody offers to give something to you or do something for you and doesn’t want anything in return, just take it. Receive that gift and do it without feeling guilty for receiving. Receive it, without it hurting your pride. Take it without plotting to pay them back in anyway. Just receive it. Just practice gratitude and say thanks. If you are unable to do this, try to get to the bottom of why you can’t. Receiving can be just as important as giving. It is an act of grace. Practice receiving grace from others and you may just find yourself able to receive more from God and starting to grow more into the person that God has called you to be.

#TodaysTweetableTruth Ask yourself why u have so much trouble receiving from others. Receiving can be just as necessary as giving sometimes.

Sermon Video:

Election of Elders and Deacons

Posted by StAndrewsHespeler on Friday, April 15th, 2016 in News

On May 1, 2016, St. Andrew's Hespeler will be holding an election of deacons and elders for the congregation. We have been working hard this week to prepare packages for all the members to facilitate this process. Thanks to everyone for your help in preparing the elections. In particular I would single out for thanks to our temporary roll clerk, Joni Smith, who did her very best to make sure our roll was up to date and nobody was left out and Isabelle who was wounded in the line of duty with a paper cut!

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