Author: Scott McAndless

https://youtu.be/y8xAq_TmXxY

Hespeler, 19 June 2022 © Scott McAndless
1 Kings 19:1-15a, Psalm 42 and 43, Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 8:26-39 (Click to read)

We are told in the Gospel of Luke that one day, Jesus got into a boat with his disciples, and they sailed off and they landed on the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee in a place called the country of the Gerasenes. Jesus was a stranger there, an outsider. But they had perhaps at least heard of him and the notoriety he was gaining on the other side of the lake.

I know that many communities, if they were visited by people who had a certain amount of celebrity, would generally make a point of ensuring that some of their leading citizens would be there to meet them and make sure that they got a good impression. That is why I think it is rather significant that the first person that Jesus met in that country was about the worst representative that you could imagine. He was greeted by a very troubled young man.

The Man who Met Jesus

It was a man who had a fraught relationship with things like clothing and with housing. He tended to walk around naked and had set up a homeless encampment in the local graveyard. What is more, the Gerasenes clearly weren’t quite sure what to do with this man who caused no end of trouble. They had tried everything they could do as far as they were concerned, locking him up in chains and shackles and putting him under guard, but nothing prevented him from ruining their lives.

It makes me wonder. If Jesus were to come rowing up to the shores of our city, our society today, who could we imagine being the first one to go out and meet him? I could nominate a few people who would fit the bill. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence either that just about everyone who comes to my mind is also a young man. Society seems to have a long history of troubled young men.

Who Would Meet Jesus Today?

So, who might Jesus meet as he came to shore? Perhaps the young man who, five years ago, walked into a mosque in Quebec City and began to gun down worshipers there. Perhaps it would be the self-proclaimed involuntarily celibate man who, two years ago, ran down eleven people with a van on the streets of Toronto.

Or, in light of more recent events, how could we fail to mention the man who felt so threatened by the mere existence of black people in his country that he drove over 300 km to find a majority black community in Buffalo so that he could kill as many of them as possible as they shopped in a grocery store. And how could we fail to mention the very troubled young man who celebrated his eighteenth birthday by purchasing two high-powered high-capacity rifles and using them to shoot up an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas?

The Reaction to Troubled Young Men

I believe that, in many ways, we today react to such young men much like the Gerasenes did. Oh, we have tried all kinds of measures in order to prevent the devastation that they cause. We put them in chains, we lock them in shackles, we increase guards and security measures on every school and every other vulnerable place in our society. In some jurisdictions we put them to death.

But somehow it just keeps continuing to happen. Somehow another troubled young individual comes along sooner or later. And, while I agree that maybe taking a few steps towards making it harder for such troubled people to get their hands on highly effective and efficient killing machines, the truth of the matter is that even that is also treating a symptom and can only be a part of treating the underlying disease.

Jesus’ Approach

But Jesus came along that day with a different focus than the local people. He wasn’t there to punish this troubled young man. Jesus wasn’t interested in band aid solutions to the problems that plague us. Jesus was a healer. He did not simply deal with the symptoms of the problem – the fear and the violence that the presence of this young man caused in the community. Jesus was always interested in dealing with the underlying issues. That is what true healing is all about, after all.

So, what did Jesus do when he came on the scene? First and foremost, he engaged the young man as he was. The first words of Jesus that are reported to us form a simple question. “What is your name?” he asks. But, as the answer makes clear, he is not asking the young man to identify himself. He is asking for the name of the demon that possesses him.

Demon Possession

And we should be careful to understand what that means according to the understanding of that time and place. I know that we usually assume that we understand what they meant back then when they spoke about demon possession. I mean, we have all seen movies like The Exorcist, The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby. They have led us to believe that, those who believe in demon possession, always think of it as some sort of malevolent supernatural being that takes control of somebody’s body.

Now, it is true that there were people in Jesus’ time who believed that such things happened. But that is not the only kind of trouble that they described using the language of possession. You see, they understood most every ailment and trouble that people dealt with – including those we understand in medical terms – in exclusively spiritual terms.

Our Understanding is Different

We know that conditions like depression or addiction or anxiety disorders may have a whole host of medical, physiological, psychological and perhaps spiritual causes. Well, they only saw the spiritual causes of such things and so the only language they had to talk about them was spiritual language.

I don’t think that they were completely wrong in their approach – there are spiritual dimensions to such problems. But I also believe that we can only bring true healing to someone who is struggling when we address the whole person – body, mind and spirit. And I believe that Jesus, in his healing activities, did understand that. So what was Jesus doing when he asked the name of what it was that was plaguing this man? He was demonstrating an openness to consider that whole person and what he was struggling with. And the answer that he received spoke volumes.

Not One Single Cause

“Legion,” the young man said. And that was, first and foremost, a clear acknowledgment that all he was struggling with could not be reduced to a single cause. The cause was legion. I know that that is always going to be the temptation when there are populations struggling in our society. We always want to find just one thing to blame it on: violent video games, broken families, drugs. There have even people who’ve tried to blame it on abortion or the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

But you should be suspicious of any attempt to place the blame on one thing. It is almost never an attempt to come to terms with the real causes but rather an attempt to advance the speaker’s agenda and to keep everything else in society unchallenged and unchanged. The issues are always more complex. They are legion.

The Legions

“Legion,” the young man said. And I suspect that it was no mistake that he used the Latin term for the Roman troops that were occupying the whole territory. What were the legionaries there for if not to make sure that the people who were in charge remained in charge?

We are not told, of course, what events had led this young man to spiral into his violent and self-destructive way of life, but I think, given that his troubled mind went immediately to the word “legion,” it is very likely that the structure of his society, maintained by the legions, had something to do with it.

Structural Issues

And as we think of our troubled young people, we have to be willing to take into account the ways in which they have experienced a system that feels like it is stacked against them. They were raised in a world where it was considered normal to have active shooter drills in their schools – where they were taught to expect that there would be people who were trying to shoot them. They are living in a situation where few people like them have any reasonable path to afford their own home or have job security. They have lived their whole lives wondering whether the environment, as we have known it, is going to be able to maintain their population.

These are systemic problems and I realize that not every young individual will experience them in exactly the same way. Any one of these issues alone might not be an insurmountable problem, but when they are legion they do become overwhelming.

The Problem with Healing

The story of Jesus and this troubled young man is ultimately a very hopeful one because Jesus does bring healing to him. Jesus does this by addressing the whole person and that is what we need to do. But there is another aspect of this story that is rather troubling we need to face up to it. We have to recognize that there is enormous resistance to that healing power in the story.

The story ends like this: “Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind… Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.”

Now how does that make sense? Here they have feared this man and the havoc he has caused for a long time. But now that Jesus has apparently eliminated this terrible issue, they are upset and they want him gone. Why, it is almost as if they do not like the fact that this man has found some healing.

Healing Disrupts

I believe that that is exactly what is going on because, in order for this man to find healing, the system that was at work in that community had to be disrupted. How else can we understand the destruction of the entire herd of pigs being necessary to the healing? There is no question that such a destruction would have dealt a savage blow to the local economy.

But there is more to it than that, something systemic. People have long wondered why there might have been such a large pork industry in that region. I mean, they weren’t raising hogs in order to sell to the Jewish population, so who were they selling to?

They must have been selling to the foreign occupying troops. They must have been selling to the legions. Yes, they were dependent on the industrial military complex for their local economy. They were deeply embedded in a system that relied on everything remaining exactly the way it was. And the way that Jesus had healed this man had demonstrated to them that his healing required a disruption of that system. So, yes, of course they wanted Jesus out of there.

Why we Don’t Fix Things

And that is precisely the problem with where we are when it comes to dealing with this never-ending crop of troubled young men who are wreaking havoc in our society. Healing is possible; something better is possible. The problem is that such healing will only come with our willingness to change the systems that are maintaining this status quo. And there are certain powers in our society, very influential powers who profit enormously from the way that things are set up right now, who are dead set on making sure that that doesn’t happen. They won’t hesitate to run the healer out of town.

So there we are; that is the challenge that is before us. But let me just say that the hope presented in this story is real. Jesus did bring healing to that young man because he didn’t care about how much it cost. And when troubled people of any age and any gender encounter people who have that kind of sense of priority, I really do believe that healing is not only possible, it is nearly inevitable. It is a question of priorities and it is a question of us being willing to engage people with a compassion and a level of commitment that knows that there are things that are more important than just maintaining things the way that they have always been. Such disruption, in fact, has always been very much at the heart of Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God

https://youtu.be/pXWH0gIyu-E

Hespeler 5 June, 2022 © Scott McAndless – Pentecost, Communion
Genesis 11:1-9, Psalm 104:24-34, 35b, Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-27 (click to read)

I want you to do something for me. I want you, for the next couple of minutes, not to look at the reading that we had from the Book of Acts a few minutes ago. Do not look at it on your bulletin or in your Bible. I mean, we only just heard it read and I’m sure that many of you also read along, so it should be fresh in your minds anyways. But I’m also aware that, now that I’ve told you that you can’t do something, you also probably feel this irresistible temptation to do it anyways. That is human. But resist that temptation.

I don’t want you to look because I want to share with you an experience that I had a couple of weeks ago. I was attending the Festival of Homiletics – a gathering that allows church leaders to hear some of the best and most creative preachers in this hemisphere as they preach and talk about preaching. It was a great experience. And I was listening to a conversation between two preachers.

One of them was Nadia Bolz-Weber, a rather amazing Lutheran preacher, and she was talking about how we can sometimes skip over verses. And she pulled out, for example, the passage we read this morning – the passage that is traditionally read every year in churches on this day, the Day of Pentecost.

A Throwaway Verse

And she was remarking that she had been reading and preaching on this passage for years and had found it to be very powerful. But if you had asked her, over those many years, if there was one verse that she could have dropped, that was completely incidental and you didn’t need to bother thinking about, it would have to be the first verse of the chapter.

That verse didn’t matter one bit and it wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t there in the Bible. But then, last year, she took out this chapter and she just couldn’t get past the first verse. All of a sudden that one verse that she would have been ready to just throw right out of the Bible for years meant the world to her.

Now, at this point, I was feeling pretty much like I’m sure you’re feeling right now. Because I didn’t have a Bible with me. I didn’t have a bulletin with the text in front of me. I was asking myself what on earth the first verse of the chapter said. I’m pretty sure every preacher listening was wondering. Certainly, the other preacher up on the stage was wondering because she asked. Then Nadia Bolz-Weber read us the verse. Chapter two of the Book of Acts starts like this: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”

Caught Off Guard

And as I heard those words, I felt the tears come to my eyes. I knew exactly what she meant. Whoo, talk about a powerful book, eh? Talk about a tricky book! I mean, it is almost as if God, through some process of inspiration, planted that verse right there so many centuries ago. And it just sat there, unassuming, a completely benign verse that everybody just read over and forgot and then, all of a sudden, in 2022, boom! It hits us over the head. It suddenly means the world.

Because yes, we took it for granted that being able to gather together and worship and pray in one place was something that we could do at any time. Granted, we didn’t always do it. There were other things that got in the way or that seemed more important at the time. I have long said that one of the marks of any Christian in our society is that they are, at the very least, aware of which church they don’t go to on Sunday. But we at least knew that the possibility was there.

But then, suddenly, the possibility wasn’t there. And we did find ways to meet virtually and that was good and it taught us many things. There were some definite pluses to it, as a matter of fact. But that did not change the sense of loss that we felt and still feel. And because God understands how we feel, I truly believe that God has sent us a message this morning. God wrote it for us more than 1900 years ago. It has been delivered to us this morning. And that message is, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”

What its Telling us

So, let us think today about what that verse means in the story of Pentecost. Pentecost is, in the minds of many Christians, the birthday of the Christian church. Yes, the story of salvation centres around Easter Sunday. The resurrection of Jesus brings us the hope of life beyond death and of victory beyond the defeats of this world. But the creation of the church would have to wait fifty days until, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, Christ would bring it into being.

But this verse is a reminder that, before the rushing of the wind and before the descending flames of fire, there was something else that made Pentecost possible – the simple fact that they were all together in one place. And we believe that it was God who made the wind rush. And it was God who made the flames come down. These things were signs of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, a gift that made the church a possibility. But could God have given that gift if the people of the church had not gathered together in one place?

Gathering in Person Matters

On one hand, the answer to that question is yes, of course. God can do whatever God wants. But, on the other hand, there seems to be no question that there was something essential about the church gathering on that day. There is something about feeling the warmth of other human bodies around you. There is something about hearing and feeling one another’s breaths and being able to greet one another with the clasp of a hand or what the early church called a holy kiss. And when we do things together in one another’s presence, when we pray or when we sing, there is always, always a sense that when you put us all together the whole is inexplicably greater than just the sum of the parts. Pentecost can’t just be about the Spirit. It also has to be about these bodies gathered together.

Back to Babel

And yet, at the same time, the gathering alone is not enough. People have long noticed that there is a connection between the story of Pentecost in the Book of Acts and the story of the tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. The author of the Book of Acts clearly chose to write his story as a kind of parallel to the story in Genesis. The languages get confused in Genesis and then they get unconfused in Acts. And it is important to note that the story in Genesis also begins with people coming together. “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.”

So there, too, we have bodies coming together in a certain place at a certain time. And as a result of that gathering, they too feel the impulse and the ability to reach for something that is greater than just the sum of the parts. They even see in their uniting a possibility to reach a higher spiritual plane, which is represented by this idea of building a tower to heaven.

But, of course, in Genesis that impulse is a negative thing. The story illustrates that the simple fact of us coming together does not always lead to positive outcomes. Sometimes we just come together because we each think that we can build our own tower, our own way to heaven. But when that is all we are doing, it is only going to break down in fighting with each other and starting to speak our own languages because we’re only focused on our own needs. That just ends in division, just like happened on that plain in Shinar.

Pentecost Repairs Babel

But when we pair that coming together in body with an openness to the power of God’s Spirit, we are able to open ourselves to embrace something bigger than just our own ambition. We can learn to put aside our own agendas so that we can embrace the possibility of what God would like to do among us and through us.

I realize that the world has changed in some very important ways over the past two and a half years. I understand that we have learned new ways of interacting with one another without necessarily being together in the same space. Some of those lessons have been very good. I understand that the world is not going to just go back to the way it was, nor do I think that it ought to. But let us not be afraid to take some time to grieve what we have lost. And let us make the effort, starting today, to retake what we can.

Every one of us needs to judge for ourselves. Only you know all of the various issues of safety and protection of others that is necessary in your case. Only you can decide what will maintain the proper balance in your life, but I would challenge you to find some places in your life where you embrace the power that is present in that simple act of being together in one place. I would encourage you to make it a priority to gather with believers in one place, ideally in this place. I would encourage you to find ways to pray in the presence of others and to enter into some experience of worship. There is power in being able to do that.

Open to the Spirit

Yet, at the same time, since it is Pentecost and we are celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, a gift that brought the church into being, let me also encourage us all to do this with an openness to the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. Let us not make the mistake that was made on the plain of Shinar and become so obsessed with our own agendas and accomplishing our selfcentred goals. The true power of being able to come together comes to us when we are able to set aside all of that and to embrace the possibility that God is calling us, in unity, to create something bigger than any one of us as individuals.

But let us find ways to come together as God’s people. Do it online, sure, there will be times when we get a lot of meaning out of doing that. But let us also not forsake joining together because, when we do, we have a God who can do some pretty amazing and surprising things. We have a God so amazing that God hid a message for us today in a text written centuries upon centuries ago.

https://youtu.be/6ljImpizdHM

Hespeler, 29 May 2022 © Scott McAndless
Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21, John 17:20-26

If there is one word that, above all others, people are disagreeing over and fighting over in our days, that word has got to be freedom. We are just hearing a whole lot about freedom. It was the cry on the lips of the people who forced their way into the United States capital on January 6^th over a year ago. It was the resounding cry of trucker convoy protesters who occupied the heart of Ottawa earlier this year. It continues to be heard all over the place in protests against pandemic mandates that are mostly no longer in place.

And how many candidates in the ongoing Ontario election have been dogged by protesters shouting about this very thing? Meanwhile, the people of Ukraine are fighting for their freedom while the Russian president proclaims that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in order to bring those people freedom.

No one is Anti-Freedom

The word has never had more currency, it seems. But, of course, while we are doing all this fighting over freedom, there is nobody who will stand up and claim to be on the opposing side. No one is going to claim the title of being anti-freedom and indeed almost everyone claims to be fighting for it. So, it actually turns out that what we are fighting over is not freedom itself but actually the definition of freedom. That was why I was so interested when I first looked at our reading this morning from the Book of Acts. The word freedom doesn’t actually appear in the story – not even once – and yet this story is all about the meaning and practice of liberty.

An Enslaved Woman

The story opens with a woman who is the absolute opposite of free. She is identified as a female slave which means she has no freedom in this world. She is also possessed by a “spirit of divination,” which was understood to mean that she would lose control of her mind in ways that forced her to foretell the future.

Of course, we might be inclined to diagnose her, if we encountered her today, as having some sort of mental health issue while they spoke of her condition in purely spiritual terms but, however you understand it, she pretty clearly does not have conscious control over what she says and does. That is a particularly devastating kind of slavery.

The Enslaved Men

The next people we meet in the story – the actual main characters – are also not free. It is the female slave herself who points this out when she cries out for anyone to hear, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” And I don’t think that it is an accident that these two men are described using the very same term that is used for the female slave. They also need to be understood as being not free. But, pretty clearly, their slavery seems to be a little different from hers.

These two slaves of the Most High God, Paul and Silas, do have an objection to what this female slave says about them. Paul becomes annoyed with her. This is not because what she is saying is untrue, but simply because he doesn’t like all of the attention that that is putting on him. And so, he sets her free from this condition that has enslaved her mind and spirit.

The Only Free People

It is at this point that we meet the only literally free people in the story. They are the people who own the female slave. And I would draw your attention to the fact that it is these people, the only free people, who are the ones who complain about the loss of their freedom. They are upset with Paul because they believe that he has infringed upon their freedom of commerce. They made lots of money by means of the oracles of this female slave, and their complaint is that Paul has now deprived them of their freedom to profit.

Two Imprisoned Slaves

As a result of this, Paul and Silas, these slaves of the Most High God, are deprived of their freedom. They are thrown into prison and their legs are locked into the stocks. And then what happens? God intervenes in the story to set Paul and Silas free. So, do you see what I mean when I say that this story is all about the meaning of freedom. And, as I look at this story, I really do think that it could help us a lot as we try and sort out the really big arguments we are having about freedom these days.

Of course, the freedom that is at stake in most of this story is not really something that we have direct experience of. We are very fortunate, of course, that none of us has experienced firsthand the scourge of slavery, either as slaves or as owners. Perhaps more of us have some experience with mental health issues, either our own or those of the people we care about, but I know of few who have had to deal with issues that resulted in the loss of the freedom of their minds. And, of course, most of us are fortunate not to have had any experience of either just or unjust incarceration.

Think of the Poor Owners!

So, what is the closest point of contact to the question of freedom that we have in this story? Well, I would say that the kind of freedom we hear most talked about these days is the freedom of the owners that gets disrupted. So let’s just focus in on that for a few minutes.

Indeed, let us just try to have a little bit of sympathy for these poor owners. First of all, let us note, that “owners” is plural. This female slave doesn’t just belong to one master. And it is is not just some mom and pop operation that purchased her either. No, she belongs to a corporation. A bunch of people formed a corporation in order to buy up slaves who had special skills like this young woman. They invested their money with the expectation that they would be able to exploit their property without limit. They’ve got stockholders to think about. Can’t somebody think about the poor stockholders?

What of the Freedom to Exploit?

So, it is these corporate owners who scream loudest about their freedom and who manage to get powerful people to act on their behalf. It seems to me that this is something that still happens. When it comes to the freedom of corporations to exploit their workers, to manipulate their markets or to protect their profits, such freedom seems to be near absolute still today.

But it goes much further than that because, not only are the owners a corporation, they are also part of a privileged class in that society. And people who are particularly privileged for any reason, often simply cannot see how their exercise of privilege might impinge upon the freedom of others. These owners simply cannot see how much damage they are doing as they profit off of the exploitation of a young woman who is deep, deep in bondage.

The Freedom of Paul and Silas

So, that is one ideal of freedom that we see in this passage and, I don’t know about you, but I don’t find it particularly inspiring. But there is another idea of freedom in the story. Paul and Silas do not have freedom as the world defines it. They are the slaves of the Most High God and then they are thrown in prison and clapped in stocks.

And yet then, when they are at their most unfree, they do not act like it, do they? They start singing hymns of praise to their master even in their confinement. And then the story takes a strange twist when their master, the Most High God, intervenes to grant them their freedom. There is an earthquake, and they suddenly are freed from their bonds while the doors of their prison are flung wide open.

What they do with their Freedom

But here is the really fascinating part of the story. They react to this new freedom of theirs in almost the exact opposite way of the slave owners. You see, they realize something that the masters clearly do not. They recognize that their exercise of freedom will negatively affect the freedom and safety of others. You see, it was common practice for guards who permitted a prisoner to escape to be severely punished and even put to death for their failure.

Yes, the guard who was over that prison was just as unfree as Paul and Silas were in many ways. When he sees the aftermath of the earthquake and concludes, without even needing to bother and check, that the prisoners must have all escaped, the guard is ready to fall upon his own sword to escape such punishment and dishonour. But Paul, though he has been granted freedom by God, has actually not chosen to use that freedom in a way that will impact the life of the guard. He and Silas, and indeed all of the prisoners, have not escaped and so Paul shouts out to the guard, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”

The Reaction to Such Freedom

Do you realize that what Paul and Silas do in the story is precisely the thing that gets people labeled as sheep (which is a short form for accusing people of not being free) these days? People go around loudly proclaiming that, because they are free, they do not have to do things for the sake of the safety and well-being of others. They mock and criticize people who make the choice to curtail their own freedoms for the sake of vulnerable people or for the larger community. That is indeed a version of freedom, but I find it to be a lot more like the freedom of the slave owners than the freedom experienced by Paul and Silas.

A Desire to Experience More Freedom

Paul and Silas have been set free by God, but they make a choice to express that freedom by prioritizing something else. They choose instead to value the salvation of the guard. And I mean by that that they literally save him from death at his own hands or the hands of his masters. But then the guard, having been given a taste of true salvation is not satisfied. He needs more. “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” he cries out.

He immediately assumes that these people, who have chosen to value his salvation above their own freedom, can also save him in ways that go deeper and further. He is, of course, correct in this assumption. They answer him, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They tell him that he will find, in this Jesus, salvation so powerful that it extends even to his entire household.

Lessons on Freedom

So, then, what does this story teach us about freedom in this moment when it is such a volatile concept? It certainly shows us that freedom is an incredibly valuable thing. We certainly ought to prize the freedoms that we have. We should not let them be eroded away and should do our very best to make sure that more people should have such precious freedom.

But I also think that this story is telling us that freedom is not an end in itself. Freedom that is used to exploit the minds and the bodies of others in the pursuit of our own goals is not an inspiring form of freedom and is not one that we should aspire to.

Freedom we Choose not to Use

The freedom that is truly valuable is the freedom that we sometimes choose not to exercise because we care about others. And when we do that, when we choose to lay down our freedom because it may save somebody else, the promise seems to be that such salvation, so dearly bought, is so powerful that it may just spread far beyond our one little act of care and compassion for others. And that is how the good news and the message of hope will spread in this world.

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, I cannot help but wonder if he was thinking of incidents like this one when he penned this: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:13 -14)

Paul was clearly someone who understood a few things about freedom that still seem to elude us today. But I’m hoping that maybe we might be able to learn something from him.

https://youtu.be/K5Wkx5yBozI

Hespeler, 15 May, 2022 © Scott McAndless
Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 148, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35

In 1985 there was a movie that swept the awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It won eight Oscars including best picture, best director, best actor and best writer. So, I am pretty sure that you have heard of this movie. And I wanted to remind you of it today because I think that it contains a perfect illustration of the scandal behind our reading this morning from the Book of Acts.

Beloved of God

In fact, the film zeroes in on the central dispute of our reading so perfectly that it is right there in the title. The movie was called, in case you haven’t guessed yet, Amadeus. Amadeus is a Latin word that means beloved of God. And the scandalous nature of the love of God is at the centre of the story. The titular character is, of course, none other than the great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but the main character in the story is the Italian composer, Antonio Salieri. The plot centres around a kind of obsession.

Salieri is jealous of Mozart because of his musical genius. But it’s about more than jealousy. Salieri is angry at Mozart for being so talented, but he is actually even more angry at God. At one point he declares this, speaking directly to Jesus in the form of a crucifix on the wall: “From now on, we are enemies – you and I. Because you choose for your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because you are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block you, I swear it. I will hinder (and remember that word, hinder) I will hinder and harm your creature as far as I am able. I will ruin your incarnation.”

Salieri’s Complaint

He recognizes, and I believe he recognizes correctly, that there is divine inspiration behind what Mozart is able to produce. It is a gift of God. But he is scandalized that God should give such a gift to a person like Mozart. He doesn’t work hard to produce it because he doesn’t need to. But, even worse, he does not live a virtuous life as Salieri defines virtue. He is licentious, vulgar and silly. Meanwhile, Salieri has worked and works so hard and lives a life of extreme piety and virtue, and yet the only music that he can produce reeks of mediocrity.

Salieri finds the very idea that God could give such good things to a person so unworthy so objectionable that it drives him to do awful things. It drives him to theft, corruption, attempted murder and ultimately to madness. Now, I think I ought to say in defense of Salieri that the film, though based on historical characters, is mostly fictional. The two composers seem to have actually had a pretty good relationship. But at the same time, there is something that is fundamentally true about the story of the film. There really is something very objectionable about the love of God and the gifts that it gives, something that we need to come to terms with.

Peter Visits the Wrong People

In our reading this morning, the Apostle Peter gets into a lot of trouble with the leaders of the church over this very issue. He has just come back from a visit to the home of a man named Cornelius where he ate and drank with the household, preached the gospel to them and shared with them the gift of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. When he returns, however, the people in the Church of Jerusalem are very upset with him. The thing that bothers them is not that he has been preaching the gospel or sharing the love of God or even the gift of the Spirit. This is exactly what the church has been doing ever since the beginning and Peter has done no differently.

No, the only thing that is wrong about what Peter has done is who he did it for. He did it for people who everyone in the Jerusalem church agrees are just the wrong kind of people. They eat the wrong kind of food. They don’t follow the right laws. They’re not even circumcised! They just don’t deserve hearing the good news and they certainly do not belong in the community of the church.

A Personal Question

And I know that we often think of this as a one-time, very special controversy in the life of the early church. It was this important question about whether Gentiles and people who did not follow the Jewish law could have a place in the church. But, as this particular story makes very clear, at the level where this actually touched and affected people’s lives, this was not a theological question. This was a very personal question. It was all about God’s love and grace being lavished on a group of people who simply did not deserve it because of who they were and how they lived their lives. The Jewish Christians in Jerusalem were upset with God for the very same reason that Salieri was upset concerning Mozart. God was just loving the wrong sort of people.

And, given that this is a controversy that arises again and again throughout the history of the church, I think it is worth taking a good look at how Simon Peter responds to the objections of the church in Jerusalem. He responds to them by telling the story. He tells the story that illustrates that God, despite their limited understanding of what God can do, has clearly decided to love these people anyways by giving to them one of God’s greatest gifts, the gift of the Spirit. And then he ends his story with a statement that I believe should be engraved upon the heart of every believer, should be posted as a sign upon every one of our churches. He says, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

Who is Peter?

Think of that. Here we have the man who is generally thought to be the first great leader of the church, the one that Jesus called The Rock and perhaps the man who knew Jesus best, and yet he is saying, “who am I to hinder God?” And, given the context, what he is especially saying is, “Who am I to hinder God giving God’s love, gifts or grace to anyone?” And yet I see all the time people who seem to believe that they are exactly the kind of people who can hinder God in that way. That’s why I think that we need to learn, with Peter, to ask ourselves that question: who am I to hinder?

How we Hinder

I do believe that that kind of hindering happens all the time in the church. You know, every time we look at somebody who comes into contact with the church and we decide that they don’t really belong and so don’t make them feel particularly welcome, we are hindering God doing God’s work in their life. If you decide that somebody isn’t dressed well enough and communicate that to them even in a subtle way, are you not hindering them from being recipients of the grace and gifts that God is giving through the church? And it’s the same if you decide that based on race, on class or wealth or age or orientation or gender identity or whatever other criterion you can come up with.

I’m not saying that we do it intentionally, because sometimes we’re often not aware of the subtle ways in which we make people feel like they do not belong. Sometimes it’s just a matter of not taking their ideas or opinions seriously. Sometimes it’s not even considering including them in our little circle of friends. But, make no mistake, we all do it sometimes. And we need to ask, who am I to hinder what God wants to do in their life through the church?

Other Ways of Excluding

But do not only think of this in terms of the kind of grace that usually comes to mind in the life of the church. This is something that we do in many other circumstances as well. How often do we write somebody off – do not consider them for a job, or we write off their thoughts and ideas or any potential contribution they could make – for reasons that simply do not matter? You just never know what God might have in mind to do for that person or through that person and yet because of some prejudgment on your part you can hinder that from happening.

Who Can be Saved?

This also applies to our talk and thought about salvation. Christians have a long history of having a very narrow understanding of who is worthy of being saved by God. We confess, of course, that salvation is by grace through faith, but we often have a very narrow understanding of what that faith has to look like.

In particular, we expect it to look like the faith that we have professed. So, if someone believes differently or puts more emphasis on how they live out their faith than on believing all the same things that we believe, we might easily come to the conclusion that they are not worthy of being saved. I don’t think we realize how, when we do that, what we are really doing is putting limits on the love of God. We are deciding that we are the ones who can hinder what God wants to do in people’s lives.

Who Does it Hurt?

When, in the movie at least, Salieri decides to hinder God’s decision to be gracious to someone that he did not think deserved it, he did not hurt God. The message of the movie, in the end, is that he really only hurt himself – ultimately driving himself to madness. And that is the true tragedy that comes when we seek to hinder the grace of God from being shown in somebody else’s life. We will not stop God from being gracious. Thank heavens that we do not have that power. We will only hurt ourselves. For know this above all, God loves those who love amadeus, who loves those who, however unworthy in our eyes, are beloved of God. And, what's more, I honestly believe that the more we embrace this truth, the more that we will understand for ourselves how truly beloved we are to God.

https://youtu.be/dOVDb5-54Lk

Hespeler, 8 May 2022 © Scott McAndless
Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30

Our Bible story from the Book of Acts this morning is really a very uplifting story, isn’t it? We have this woman, Dorcas, and she is a simply wonderful woman. Everybody loves her. She makes all of her friends these beautiful clothes that they treasure. And yes, she gets sick and dies and that is so very sad. But then Simon Peter shows up, he prays and he raises her from the dead and basically everyone lives happily ever after. It is just so beautiful. It reminds us of the power of the resurrection of Jesus to renew our own lives and to give us the hope for a life beyond this one.

A Few Questions

So, it is absolutely a feel-good story. And yet, at the same time, it is also the kind of story that, when you look at it closely, is going to make you ask a few questions. We’ve talked about prayer, and it certainly makes you ask a few questions about prayer.

Questions like, what if Simon Peter hadn’t been in a nearby town so they could ask him to come and pray for her? Would God have just left her dead simply because there wasn’t a good enough prayer around? And what about all of the other really nice women who made beautiful clothes that didn’t have Peter to pray for them? Why wouldn’t God care enough to raise those women?

And then there is an even more delicate question about prayer in general. Why is it necessary? I mean, apparently God had already decided that he was going to raise Dorcas. The story ends by telling us, “This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.”

Why Would Prayer Change Anything?

That seems to be the point of it. God wants the message to spread and raising somebody from the dead is definitely a public relations coup! So, if God had already decided to do it, why did he need Peter to ask? And if God didn’t want to do it, why should the almighty Creator of the universe be persuaded to change plans just because this one guy asked God to do it?

In short, the question is, why pray for these things? If God already knows what we want, then why do we need to ask? If God is really in charge, why should we think that God might change course on something just because we ask? These are all really good questions, and they deserve answers.

Transactional Prayer

The root problem, I think, is this. We just don’t understand prayer the way that God does. We tend to think of it, like we do most things, as a transaction. You go into the candy store, you slam down your toonie down on the counter and the cashier gives you a box of Reece’s Pieces^®. That’s a transaction. And we think of prayer that way – we do an act of devotion for God, or we ask in just the right way in just the right words, and God gives us the thing that we want in return.

Based on a Certain View of God

The biggest problem with that way of thinking about prayer is the picture of God it is based on. It presumes that God is somewhere “out there,” and that prayer is the post office or the email server that we can use to contact God in that distant place. But here is the thing, God is not “out there.” God is certainly not just up there in the sky looking down. If God is truly God, then God is right here. God is right beside you, perhaps closer than anyone has ever been. Come to think of it, if God is God, then God must be in some sense already within you.

So, of course, when you think to pray and ask for something, God already knows that you need it. God is a part of that need. When you worry and pray for someone who is sick or in danger, God already feels your sorrow, anxiety and fear for that person. Prayer is not a transaction, it is participation. It is God participating in what you need or in what you are feeling. It is you participating with God in the ongoing work of creation.

A Master Dancer Seeking a Partner

On one level, yes, I would affirm that God does not need us to pray in order for God to do whatever needs to be done. But, on another level, I would say that God acting without us entering into that conversation of prayer would be kind of like a master dancer who was able to do all of the steps absolutely perfectly and flawlessly. But the problem with that is that the best Tango dancer in the world cannot dance the Tango without a partner.

God wants you to be that partner. It’s not because you have to say the right thing or do it in the right way. It’s not even because you know all of the steps of the dance. God wants a partner. God wants to give you the privilege of being part of the dance.

Or think of prayer as a song. When you pray, you get to put your concerns into words, however imperfectly, so that God can take up your melody and sing the perfect harmony. That’s what prayer is, not a transaction. It’s a dance, it’s a song, it is an exercise in making that eternal connection between the human and divine perceptible, even if only for a moment. So, yes, let us pray!

https://youtu.be/aKRRiDwTZRw

Hespeler, May 1, 2022 © Scott McAndless
Acts 9:1-20, Psalm 30, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19

I would like to begin by saying that I am very much on Ananias’ side in our reading from the Book of Acts this morning. Ananias receives a vision in which Jesus himself appears to him with some very specific instructions: “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.”

It is a wonderful thing, of course, to be on the receiving end of such a vision, but Ananias hesitates. “But Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’” And I just want to pause here and affirm just how very wise Ananias is to hesitate here.

Hesitation is Good

Ananias is completely right (and the Lord does not contradict him) that Saul has been an extremely violent, abusive and angry individual. His mistreatment of the followers of Christ has been so egregious that the reports of it have spread far and wide. He is feared in Damascus because of things he has done almost 300 kilometers away. The point that Ananias is making is that abusive and violent people don’t just change and I feel that I need to underline the simple fact that he has a point. At the very least, we need to be very skeptical when they profess that they have.  

A Common Pattern

For example, anyone who has ever experienced domestic abuse (or has counselled people who have) would definitely be with Ananias at this point. There is a familiar pattern that emerges in many cases of domestic abuse. The abuser (often but certainly not always a man) has a tendency when frustrated, thwarted, intoxicated or otherwise affected to lash out with verbal or physical violence. The victim may tolerate a certain level of this abuse – not because they should, of course, but because it is just human to want to maintain an important and meaningful relationship.

But the abuser will eventually go too far – will do something that scandalizes even themselves or that threatens to expose them for who they are because of the visible damage that they have done. At this point, the abuser will often have an intensely powerful experience of repentance. They will express intense sorrow and regret. They will, above all, loudly proclaim that they have changed, that they have learned their lesson and they will never behave so abominably again. At this point the victim may well forgive them because, as I say, people often feel that they have to maintain the relationship at all costs.

A Honeymoon and the Disappointment

What then follows is a period of time that might be called a honeymoon. Oh, the abuser becomes extremely respectful and caring towards the victim. It is the best of times. But here is the problem, when that is the pattern, the honeymoon never lasts. Sooner or later, something triggers the abuser and the whole cycle begins all over again.

So, if you have ever experienced abuse or you love someone who has, you can certainly be forgiven for being dubious when abusers proclaim that this time is different, that this time they have changed. In fact, by the time most victims finally get to the place where they choose to save themselves and the other people they love by escaping, they have been through that cycle so many times that it’s quite understandable that they then have a very hard time trusting anybody who says that change is even possible.

Also in Race and Group Relations

And I would also note that this is something that we see, not only in personal relationships, but in relationships between groups. How many times have we seen incidents of racial violence against minority groups where the majority were so appalled that they made these incredible promises that everything was going to change, and how many times have those promises been broken?

This is something that seems particularly poignant in Canada in the wake of finding so many secret burial sites at residential schools. Do you remember the promises that were made in the wake of that scandal? Do you remember the pledges that have been made about nation-to-nation relations, on ratifying the terms of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of getting potable water in Indigenous communities? How many times have we said that this time it is going to be different? Every time we do that then don’t really follow through, it just becomes harder for anyone to believe it.

And Yet Change is Possible

So, yes, Ananias raises a very important issue in the midst of his vision of the Lord Jesus. But, as much as I appreciate him raising it, I do not want to fall into complete cynicism. Yes, people who have been abused or endangered by others are understandably reluctant to believe that people can really change. And yet, it is important to say that it is not impossible. People do change.

Saul, who came to be known as the Apostle Paul, certainly did change. He changed radically. And if we are not going to give up belief in humanity altogether, we need to believe that he is not the only one in the history of the world to do so. So how do we know when change is really possible? And how can we tell when an abusive person is just starting the old cycle of abuse all over again? Maybe that is the question that Ananias is really asking.

A Focus on Intense Experience

When people try to convince us that they have really changed, what do they tell us? They usually try to persuade us by speaking about the intensity of their regret or sorrow. They talk about how deeply it affected them when they realized what they had done was wrong. Can’t you just see an abusive domestic partner beating their breast and proclaiming their depth of feelings? Or remember how deeply we all felt our regret about the discovered residential school remains? Why we flew our flags at half mast for months so badly did we feel it!

But are such powerful experiences and expressions of deep emotion truly a sign that great change is coming? Well, certainly the experience that Saul had on the road to Damascus was powerful and emotional. It was powerful enough to knock Saul off of his horse, affecting enough to strike him blind. But there is a strange thing that I noticed.

How the Lord Convinces Ananias

When, in the midst of his vision, Ananias asks for something that will convince him that Saul could have changed, the Lord does not refer to any of that. The Lord does not say, “Don’t worry, Ananias, of course Saul has changed completely because I totally blew him away with my special effects budget.” Nor does he say, “You’ve got to understand that Saul feels really, really sorry for everything he did in the past.” Those are the kinds of things that serial abusers appeal to in order to prove they’ve changed and, as I said, it doesn’t actually inspire that confidence that we think it does.

So, what assurance does Ananias actually receive? “But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel;I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.’” So what is it that God thinks should convince Ananias that Saul really has changed? Not his powerful experience, not how sorry he feels, only one thing – the fact that God has given Saul a job to do.

A Sense of Purpose

You see, when God truly wants to bring about change in somebody’s life, that is how God works. What God does is offer people a sense of purpose; God gives them a job to do. This is very clearly signaled in the Book of Acts, particularly in this key story of Saul. Now, if you read very carefully the story of Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus that we read this morning, you do not actually get a strong sense that Jesus is giving him some task to do. The emphasis in the exchange between Jesus and Saul is only on the matter of Saul persecuting Jesus because of the ways in which he has been persecuting the church.

There is little more than a rather vague sense that there is a task being given when Jesus says to the blinded Saul lying on the ground, “But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” Jesus instead tells Ananias what he wants Saul to do, that he has been specially chosen to bring the gospel to the Gentiles.

The Three Conversion Stories

The interesting thing is that this is something that becomes increasingly clear to Saul as he goes forward. The story of his experience on the road to Damascus is actually told three times in the Book of Acts. And each time, there are significant differences between the stories. Since the entire book was written by the same person, this cannot be something that just happened by accident. The author seems to be trying to reflect Saul’s (or as he eventually comes to call him Paul’s) growing understanding of what had happened to him. At first, yes, it might have all been about the powerful experience. But, by the third time Paul tells the story, he apparently remembers that Jesus said a little bit more than just, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”

The third time the story is told, Paul recalls that Jesus went on to say, “But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

Saul’s Increasing Understanding of his Calling

This is told this way in order to indicate Paul’s growing understanding of what it was that truly changed his life. Yes, the light that he had seen had been so bright, I mean literally blindingly bright. Yes, the experience that he had had of the presence of the risen Jesus had been so very real and it had remained with him ever since. But, the more he thought about it over time, the more he realized that these were not the things that changed him. Maybe they had gotten his attention, but it was something else that had actually changed the course of his life. It was the simple fact that he realized that there was something he could do – something his Lord was calling him to do and that he alone could do – that drove the actual change of his life.

Understanding for People who have been Hurt

Can a person change? The answer to that question is yes. And yet, I completely understand those who have experienced abuse at the hands of others and how they can be skeptical when they hear claims that any abuser has changed. I would especially counsel anyone who has experienced abuse to be very cautious when their partner comes along claiming that they have changed because of some powerful experience, realization or feeling of sorrow.

You are not necessarily required to trust someone just because they say such things. Trust is a very difficult thing. It can take years to build up and then can be broken in just a moment. Once broken, the task of rebuilding it becomes even harder and will likely take longer.

How to pursue Genuine Change

And yet change is possible. If you are looking to bring about significant change in your life or in your relationship, I would suggest that you should look beyond powerful experiences or even powerful feelings of regret. Real change will come when you embrace a new sense of purpose in your life and when you come to understand how God is calling you to create new possibilities and new beginnings for the world.

When things have gone wrong in relationships, whether in personal relationships or in larger relationships like that between a nation like Canada and its indigenous peoples, it is far too easy for us to focus on what the other person needs to do, how they need to forgive or how they need to get over it and trust us again.

That is not where real change will be found. But when we can get past expressions of regret and sorrow and take on a single-minded purpose towards changing the situation for everyone, we will find that God is able to bring about change both in us and through us.

https://youtu.be/9syns2Nk9jo

Hespeler, 24 April 2022 © Scott McAndless
Acts 5:27-32, Psalm 118:14-29, Revelation 1:4-8, John 20:19-31 (click to read)

This morning I would like to tell you about two gospels that we know were very popular and widely read in the early church. One of them you are very familiar with. It is a gospel attributed to someone who is only identified as the beloved disciple of Jesus, but tradition decided a long time ago that that disciple was named John. That does not necessarily mean that the book was literally written by that disciple, but it probably means that it was produced in a church that traced its stories and traditions about Jesus to a particular apostle, possibly John.

The Gospel of John, as it is known, is rather unique among the gospels in the Bible. Jesus is presented somewhat differently than in Matthew, Mark or Luke. He doesn’t tell parables, for example, but instead gives these long discourses in which he explains many things to his disciples. In particular, the Gospel of John makes it clear that Jesus came to present a number of signs – seven are highlighted – that would convince everyone that he was the Messiah.

A Missing Gospel Found

But there is another gospel that you are maybe less familiar with that was also very popular in the early church. This gospel doesn’t quite say who wrote it either, but it does say that the traditions in it also come from one of the disciples – specifically the one called Judas Thomas the Twin. And so, it is called the Gospel of Thomas.

We knew for centuries about this gospel. It is mentioned by a number of very early historical sources who even sometimes quote a few lines from it. But for hundreds of years, we could not read it. It did not make it into the New Testament. At some point it seems as if all of the copies of it were rounded up and destroyed. It was sad, but there was nothing that anyone could do about it.

That is until 1898 when a huge trove of papyrus fragments was found in an ancient garbage heap in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. Three of those fragments contained text from the ancient Greek Gospel of Thomas. But we didn’t actually know what had been found until 1945 when an entire library of books was discovered at a place called Nag Hammadi in Egypt. One of those books was a translation into Coptic of the Gospel of Thomas. So, amazingly, we can now read this ancient lost gospel that was so well known and loved in the early church.

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is very different from any other Biblical gospel. It is more a collection of sayings than it is a narrative of Jesus’ life. It shows no particular interest in Jesus’ death or resurrection, but rather focuses on his teaching and especially on super secret teachings that it claims to have preserved. Let me read you a short passage to give you an idea of what it is like:

Jesus said to his disciples, “Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like.”

Simon Peter said to him, “You are like a righteous messenger.”

Matthew said to him, “You are like a wise philosopher.”

Thomas said to him, “Master, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.”

Jesus said, “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended.”

And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him.

When Thomas came back to his companions, they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?”

Thomas said to them, “If I tell you even one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me. Then fire will come forth from the rocks and devour you.”

Two Distinct Communities

There was probably an early Christian community for whom the Gospel of John was their most important document. It contained their best recollection of the person of Jesus and what he had done. These were traditions and teachings that they had carefully cultivated and passed on until it eventually got written down.

But there was also an early Christian community for whom the Gospel of Thomas was that kind of document. These communities seem to have been able to live alongside each other because the gospels they used seem to have been aware of each other. Sure, they didn’t agree about everything, but they respected and honoured the teaching and the portrayal of Jesus that each one had preserved. That does not mean, however, that there was not some rivalry between them.

Imagine it this way. There are two churches in a town. On this side of town, the Church of St. John and on the other the Church of St. Thomas. The churches get along fine with each other. They have a long-standing basketball rivalry between their men’s teams. They also often cooperate in doing good works for the people of the city because they both want to live as their master did. But they still cannot stop from noticing how differently they approach the Christian life.

A Celebration of the Resurrection

The people of the Church of St. John are gathered. They are celebrating the day that is, for them, the most important day of the year. They call it the Pascha; we would call it Easter of course. It is the annual celebration of the day when their Lord Jesus rose from the dead. People of the church have been anticipating this day for a long time. They have prepared themselves by fasting and praying. But now that the day has arrived, they gather with great rejoicing and the place where they meet is decorated with banners and flowers. They greet one another with the good news. “He is risen!” one calls out only to be answered with, “He is risen indeed!”

After a while, they settle down and join in a shared feast. Then they sit and listen while some of the elders share the stories of Jesus that have been handed down to them, traditions that they believe go back to the most beloved disciple of Jesus. One of the elders begins a favourite story.

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

“On the day when our Lord rose from the dead, that very evening, the disciples were gathered even as we are gathered on this same day. They, like us, knew that they had many enemies in that city, and so the doors of the house were shut and locked. And yet, despite that, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

She pauses then and waits while the gathered church emulates the disciples with their own shouts of joy and sighs of contentment. But, even as she does so, she notices one young boy sitting nearby who seems a little bit troubled. And so, once everyone has settled down, she turns to him to ask what it is that he is concerned about.

What about the Other Church?

“Oh, nothing, I was just wondering,” he says. “As I came to our Pascha celebration today, I passed by the Church of St. Thomas on the other side of town. And I noticed that it wasn’t decorated for the festival, and they didn’t even seem to be gathering today. Why is it that they don’t celebrate the resurrection like we do? Do they not believe that Jesus rose from the dead?”

“Well,” the elder replies, “of course they believe in the resurrection. That is the basis of all our faith as followers of Christ. But they do think about these things differently from how we do.”

Johannine Traditions about Thomas

She pauses and thinks for a moment. She remembers that the stories of Jesus that have been passed down in her church say a few things about the disciple Thomas – things that she is convinced illustrate the character of the people in the church of St. Thomas. She knows that, when Jesus had first suggested that the group should go down to the Jerusalem near the end despite the clear danger to him, it had been Thomas who had said to the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16) And, indeed, the Thomasites have proven themselves to be extraordinarily brave in the way they live out their faith in the city.  The people in the Church of St. John cannot help but admire that.

They also tell the story of the time when Jesus said to the disciples, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” And Thomas had had been the one who piped up immediately to say, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (John 14:4-5) They know that that has always been something that obsesses the people of his church. They always want to be in the know about everything and nothing disturbs them more than the thought that there might be some secret piece of knowledge out there that they don’t have. Indeed, all the leaders of Thomas’ Church pride themselves on the secret knowledge that they have accumulated.

A Different Focus

The people of this church don’t see things that way. They think it is enough to be aware of all the things that Jesus did openly to show the whole world who he was. They celebrate how Jesus healed the blind man to show the whole world that he was the light of the world, how he gave the bread to the people because he was the bread of life.

The people of John’s Church have always known these things about the believers on the other side of town. They don’t pretend to understand them completely, but they still value them as sisters and brothers who share in a common cause. But this issue does trouble the elder somewhat. The belief that Jesus rose from the dead is so central to everything at the church of John that it is really hard to imagine anyone seeing it any other way. How can she explain how little attention the other church pays to that?

A New Tradition?

But at that point the elder remembers something – a tradition that must have been passed down or that may have come to her in a dream one day. She immediately picks up the story. “On the day when our Lord was raised from the dead and when he first appeared to all of the disciples, there was one who was not present. Thomas was not there.”

This declaration certainly causes a stir among the people of the congregation. How could one of the twelve not have been present, especially on that day of all days? Even on this day, this anniversary so many years later, there is not one of them who could imagine being anywhere else than with their fellow believers.

That Thomas should not have been there seems to imply that he put little importance on the truth that Jesus had been raised from the dead. And yet, as they think about it, it does seem to make sense. Did not those who revered the Gospel of Thomas betray much the same attitude. Is that not why they have not bothered to even meet on this day?

Thomas is Convinced

But the elder has not finished her story. She goes on to relate Thomas’ foolishness – how he refused to believe even when the others had shared with him their experience of the resurrected Christ. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side,” he had said, “I will not believe.” It was his way of saying that whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead didn’t matter to him. Instead, he only sought after the secret knowledge that Jesus could offer him.

“But even Thomas learned better in the end,” she concludes. “For Jesus did return the next week, and when Thomas was confronted with the reality that the risen Christ stood in front of him, all of his secret knowledge was not enough to prevent him from falling upon his knees and crying out, “My Lord and my God,” as he realized that he stood before the risen one.”

Many Different Understandings

We are often given the impression upon reading the New Testament that early Christianity was unanimous in it’s understanding of who Jesus was and what his resurrection had accomplished. This was simply not the case. We have uncovered a great deal of evidence that there was a great diversity of belief among early Christians. Many early Christians did put a great deal of emphasis upon the resurrection. But there seems to have been others, like the communities that greatly valued the Gospel of Thomas, who were less interested in the resurrection and much more interested in amassing special secret knowledge.

It is kind of interesting to wonder how the differences between these churches and the discussions that took place amongst them may have influenced the ways that people remembered the stories of Jesus and how they eventually came to write them down.

John’s Criticism of Thomas

I’ve often thought that poor Thomas got a bit of a bad rap in Christian tradition. The only thing that people know about him, apparently, is that he doubted the resurrection. But I suspect that that story has less to do with anything that the historical Thomas did than it has to do with the attitude held towards those who revered the Gospel of Thomas by the people who revered the Gospel of John.

Yes, they probably were puzzled and maybe even disturbed by the failure of the Thomasites to understand the importance of the resurrection as they did. But really, in the history of the church, such differences in emphasis are hardly unique. Presbyterians and Baptists, Roman Catholics and Anglicans, Lutherans and Pentecostals, we are all in our different churches because we have different perspectives on various aspects of the Christian faith and we have clashed over these things both in the past and in the present.

But I would like us to know one thing. The people who preserved the Gospel of John did struggle, I think it is plain, with the people in that other church and how they approached the Christian life. But, even as they criticized Thomas and those whom Thomas represents in the gospel, as doubters who did not bother to be around on the day of resurrection, they still knew that they had a shared mission and that they had one Lord. They understood that Thomas did fall to his knees before his risen Lord just as they did, that he did cry out, “My lord and my God,” together with them. And that was enough.

I hope that that is something that we can keep in mind as we do our best to live out our Christian faith alongside other believers who have different priorities and understandings but still have the same risen Lord.

https://youtu.be/yd_SP-BsMzI

Hespeler, 17 April 2022 © Scott McAndless – Easter
Isaiah 65:17-25, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, 1 Corinthians 15:19-26, Luke 24:1-12

The Gospel of Luke tells us about a very particular group of women who went out to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. They were “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women.” But here is the interesting thing. This is not just a random bunch of women that the gospel writer is talking about at this point. Luke actually went out of his way, to introduce these women at an earlier point in his story. And here is what he says about one of them back in chapter eight. He tells us that she was Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza. (Luke 8:3)

Chuza’s Wife?

And I know that, at first glance, that might not seem to mean anything at all, but think about it for a minute. This was a woman who was married and yet she was apparently traveling all over the Galilean countryside with a bunch of men to whom she was not related. I know that, if that were to happen today, it might hardly raise any eyebrows, but think about what that meant for a woman back then. Back then, that would have been considered wildly inappropriate conduct for any woman at best. All sorts of sordid accusations would have certainly been made.

And then there is the question of who Joanna was married to. She was married to Chuza who was a very important official of King Herod – that is Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee. Herod is someone who we are told was literally trying to kill Jesus at one point in this gospel (Luke 13:31). So, do you really think that Herod’s top official, Chuza, was good with the idea that his wife was wandering all over the Galilean countryside with a guy that his boss wanted to kill? Somehow, I do not think so! So, what was Joanna’s story?

The Women Go to the Tomb

As she made her way towards the place where he had been buried together with Mary Magdalene, the other Mary and the other women, Joanna was undoubtedly the one who wept the loudest and was the most inconsolable. Jesus had done so much for each one of them. Mary had had such a huge number of problems that it had been said of her that she had been beset by seven demons. But, of all of them, Joanna had been the one who had felt the most unsafe and alone until Jesus had reached out to her.

A Bad Marriage

Joanna had been given to her husband, Chuza, at a very young age by her parents. Chuza was at least two decades older than her and he had already been married twice before. Joanna was never told what had happened to the other wives, why they had died so young, but once she had gotten to know her new husband a bit, she began to have her suspicions.

Chuza was very wealthy and a very powerful official in the king’s court. Much to her surprise, Joanna found herself the mistress of a very prosperous household, with many servants at her beck and call. She had jewels and fine clothes, and she tried to do her best to be kind to all the people of the household.

But Chuza was also a very cruel and demanding man. I will not tell you all of the ways that he mistreated his wife and most of the people of the household. I will just tell you that Joanna quickly found her life to be filled with fear and dread. So hard was her life, that her health began to fail, and it was as if she was fading away.

Sympathetic Servants

But then, one day, the servants decided that they simply could not allow this to go on anymore. They had already watched as two mistresses had faded and died under their watch. They came together and made a plan to save this one who had been so kind to them.

Servants, it turns out, know a great deal about their masters. These ones knew enough about Chuza and, in particular, about how he managed the affairs of his master, King Herod, to cause him a few problems. There were secretaries who kept his accounts for him and other slaves who managed the king’s storehouses on his behalf. They had known for some time that the steward had been embezzling from Herod.

The Servant’s Plan

The plot was fairly simple. The proofs of Chuza’s deceptions were assembled and sent to the king anonymously by means of the trusted slave of another lord who was the distant relation of one of the secretaries. Of course, Herod was furious when he received it! Soon, a summons from the king arrived at the house—a summons that could neither be ignored nor refused. He fretted and complained, but Chuza had no choice. He packed up immediately and headed off to Herod’s court. He would not be able to return for weeks.

Once he had left, the servants went and explained everything to their poor mistress. It was not easy, but they persuaded her that she needed to escape and save her own life. She did not leave empty-handed but took with her some jewels and fine fabrics—not because she desired these things, but because she knew that they could be exchanged for money. It also felt as if she was at least getting some revenge on her husband by taking these things from him.

A Harrowing Journey

Two servants went with her—personal slaves who were very devoted to her and to whom she had grown very close. They were debt slaves from the region north of the Sea of Galilee and their task was to conduct her safely to Capernaum at the northern tip of the lake. The route was very carefully planned, and the travelers were hosted in the slave quarters of many prominent houses without the masters of those households even being aware.

When they arrived at Capernaum, Joanna gave the two slaves their freedom (a small thing for her to give them in exchange for taking such a risk for her sake) and they left her with many tears and cries of blessing, clutching manumission papers in their hands.

Alone in Capernaum

As she watched them go, Joanna realized how alone she was now. She had no friends and no family. No one would dare to help her. She had the precious things that she had brought with her but could not safely sell or trade them for what she needed. She might easily have ended up robbed and beaten to death on the side of some road, or perhaps forced to ply the trade of a prostitute just to survive, if no one had come to protect her. All the same, she could not regret having chosen to live, for a little while at least, free of the tyranny of her husband.

No one should have helped her. To assist a woman who had fled from her husband—and especially a husband as powerful as Chuza—would have been madness for anyone.

A Rescue

That is exactly what the followers of Jesus told him when he heard about her. Peter actually tried to forbid Jesus from even approaching her. But Jesus said to him, “Simon, if I had been governed by fear I would never have even begun.” With that, Jesus simply pushed his way past the Rock that stood in his path and moved directly towards the woman who looked so very lost in the town square. From that day on, Joanna was part of the group, and no one ever questioned it again.

What his Death Meant to her

So perhaps you can understand why Joanna was so distraught on that early morning of the third day after his crucifixion. When she had been at her worst, most lost and alone, he had seen her for who she was. Everyone else had seen her as a problem, a risk. As a woman who was on the run from her husband, she was damaged goods because she would never be able to escape her husband’s power and influence.

But Jesus had seen none of that. He had only seen a beloved child of God. His open embrace of her was the bravest thing she had ever seen anyone do, and yet he done it without fear and without hesitation. The very idea that such a brave man could even live in the world had given her enough hope to go on living and to actually find the first true joy she had ever known in her life in this community of women who had come with him to Jerusalem.

But now his lack of fear, his willingness to do the right thing no matter what the cost, had brought him to this. If the world could destroy such perfect love as was found in him, what would happen to her?

The Incident at the Tomb

The women came to the place where he had been buried. You have all heard about what happened next. The tomb was open. They immediately feared that it had been plundered or, worse, that wild animals had gotten to the remains. Their worse fears seemed to be confirmed when they discovered that his body was gone.

But then, even while they were still in shock, trying to understand what they were seeing, two strangers appeared seemingly from nowhere. They were dressed all in white and their sudden appearance was overwhelming. Already struggling with grief and confusion, they now found themselves filled with fear and terror.

But then the men began to speak, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” said one. “He is not here, but has risen,” added the other. And then they began to speak to them of some of the things that Jesus had said about what was to happen when he went to Jerusalem. And then they were gone—disappeared so quickly that the women were left wondering if they had imagined the whole thing or if it had been a vision.

Joanna Makes Sense of it

The women stood in confusion for some time. It was not immediately clear to them what all of this meant. But it was Joanna that was the first to start to make sense of it all. For suddenly, in the midst of all of the darkness that had been overwhelming her, she could see the possibility of a little bit of light.

When she had been utterly defeated and alone, as good as dead, he had brought her back to life by giving her a place where she belonged. Now he had been defeated in turn. But what if his defeat were able to be turned into a new victory beyond hope and beyond reason. Even the possibility seemed to change her perspective on everything.

What the Resurrection Means

On this day we celebrate that Jesus, once killed, was raised up to new life. And we talk about what that means. We talk about forgiveness, how we can be forgiven for our failures, shortcomings and defaults because of his suffering and his resurrection.

We talk about reconciliation as Jesus brings together all of the warring parties of the earth and demonstrates to us all that violence and power do not bring victory, but his submission does.

Sometimes we talk about how his rising means that we also may be raised and that gives us the hope of heaven. But we mostly think about it in terms of what Jesus’ resurrection accomplishes for us and for people like us.

Raised for Joanna

But we need to realize that Jesus was raised for Joanna who escaped an abusive marriage. He was raised for Mary Magdalene who had been so damaged by the suffering of her life that it had been said of her that she had had seven demons before she met him. Jesus was raised, above all, for the broken ones of this world.

He did it because he was often the only one who was brave enough and loving enough to reach out to them when no one else dared. Throughout his ministry, he had already put his life on the line many times by standing up for people who had no one else to help them. So, of course, when the time came, he was willing to literally lay down his life for them because he knew that no one else would.

Jesus came back for the Joannas and Marys because no one else would. That is how much Jesus cares for those who have been broken by this world. If we want to know the true power of his resurrection, then I would suggest that the best way to do that is to take up that same task—to stand up for the rejected and scorned of this world. As we come alongside them, I promise you that we will see such power in action.

https://youtu.be/jzdZOgBoh-s

Hespeler, 10 April 2022 © Scott McAndless – Passion Sunday, Baptism
Isaiah 50:4-9, Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 22:14-30

Nicole and Charles, I just have to begin this morning by thanking you for sharing such an important event in the life of your family with us today. It really means a lot to me and to us that you should have invited us into this very meaningful moment. And yet, while I greatly appreciate you, I cannot help but acknowledge that you have given me an enormous challenge today precisely because you’ve given us such a wonderful opportunity to celebrate a joyful event.

The Season of Lent

Here is my problem. Normally, in the church, we are only too happy to focus on the positive and promising things of life. But today is the final Sunday in the season of Lent. And Lent is a bit of a different time for the church. It is still a joyful time of the year, but it is also a season when we do feel it’s important to dwell on the simple reality that there is a lot of darkness and discouragement in the world too.

For how can we be a truly joyful people if we do not come to terms with some of the very real struggles that people have in this world? And so, during this season, we do turn towards difficult questions like what do we do about violence and poverty and hatred. How do we deal with the challenges of living with everything that life can throw at us?

A Difficult Season

And, yes, during this Lenten season we have really embraced that struggle because the situation kind of demanded it. As we entered into the third year of a global pandemic, as Canadians became more sharply divided over questions about how to deal with it and as we dealt with the reality of war in Ukraine and a less peaceful, more chaotic world, we acknowledged those realities. We have symbolized the growing darkness of this world each week by extinguishing a candle each Sunday.

In many ways, this Sunday is meant to be the moment when the darkness feels the greatest. The tradition in the church has long been to read the entire account of the suffering and the death of Jesus from one of the Gospels. I mean, how dark is the world when an innocent man is being tortured to death? And somehow, I need to find a way to connect all of that to the joyful and lovely celebration of Charlotte’s new life that we have just had.

Plans Go Astray

Let me be clear, Nichole and Charles, that I do not blame you for the timing. I know that you didn’t plan it this way. In fact, you tried to make it happen earlier in the year or even tried to make it work last week. But guess what happened to all of those plans. That same thing happened to those plans that have happened to a whole lot of plans over the last couple of years. Covid happened, together with all of the restrictions, guidelines and limitations that it brought. A whole lot of us have thrown out a lot of plans over the last couple of years, haven’t we?

But despite all of that, I am so glad that we got to do this today. I’m convinced that, even though we didn’t exactly plan it to work out this way, that God did. I’m pretty sure that God has a message for us that speaks to us right at this moment.

A Dark Moment

In our reading this morning from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus and his disciples have come to a pretty dark moment. They have come together to celebrate the Jewish Passover, which should be a moment of celebration, but it doesn’t particularly feel like one.

Ever since they came down to Jerusalem for the festival, tensions have been extremely high. The disciples are not complete idiots. They have seen just how much trouble Jesus has been getting into. They understand that he has made a number of very powerful enemies in the city. It is really looking as if this whole story is going to end very badly – maybe even on a cross. And then Jesus takes the bread and starts talking about how his body is going to be broken and then he takes the wine and talks about his blood being poured out. I don’t know about you, but this is not sounding to me like a light and happy celebration.

A Stressful Time

So, I do feel as if the disciples are in the place where we all are at the end of this season of Lent. The stress of the situation is getting to us. We are exhausted by the experience of a pandemic that just doesn’t want to end. We are frustrated by the limitations and strictures that we’ve all been putting up with for way too long. We are frightened and angry with Vladimir Putin and his decision to victimize the people of Ukraine and take the whole world to the brink of disaster. Add to that some inflation, a housing crisis and various other economic factors and you have a perfect storm. I know that some people might not want to admit it, but the simple truth is that all of this is stressing us out and we’re understandably not really handling it all that well.

And so, what do human beings do when things get that stressful? It is actually perfectly predictable. In the initial phases, as we saw at the beginning of the pandemic, people will pull together and support one another. But as the situation goes on and on, we get into another reaction. We start to turn on each other. We saw that happen during this Lent here in Canada – we literally saw it on the streets of our capital city in the supporters and opponents of the trucker convoy. That is just a very concrete example of what’s been happening in many places in our society most recently. We are cracking up under stress.

Turning on Each Other

That’s exactly what happens to the disciples too. With that whole world turning against them, instead of supporting each other, they start fighting. “A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest.” And isn’t that just typical? They don’t want to face up to the people who are actually trying to kill them and so they start making enemies of each other. What’s more, they specifically start fighting over which one of them is most important, which one gets to have his way. This is so on the nose about where we are as a society right now that it is kind of scary.

Jesus’ Response

So when Jesus – who, don’t forget, is the actual target of this entire dangerous situation – responds to what the disciples are doing, I think we ought to pay very close attention. Since they are arguing over questions of leadership, he reminds them that he came to model a very different kind of leadership than what they seem to be imagining “‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors,” he says. “But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.”

True Leadership

He is saying, first of all, that true leadership is not what the world generally assumes it is. The world assumes that it is all about power and dominance. But I suspect that Jesus is saying that that is not a reflection of true strength but rather of a deep weakness and insecurity on the part of a leader. We certainly see that on display in the world right now as everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin does to cow the world with displays of power and force only seem to convince the world of what a poor leader he really is.

But I am particularly interested today in what Jesus has to say about greatness. It is, I think, the more important issue given the challenges we are facing. I really do think that many of the failures of leadership that we have seen in the last couple of years (and I don’t think I need to convince you that there have been many, many such failures) have all come down to various leaders trying to convince themselves and the world that they matter – that they are great.

True Greatness

So what does Jesus teach us about greatness? “The greatest among you must become like the youngest.” And this is what I love about Jesus’ teaching. He doesn’t just offer a definition or explanation of greatness – he shows us something. He promises us that if we look closely at the youngest among us and seek to be like them, we will find greatness.

That is why I am so convinced that Jesus has sent Charlotte as a prophet to us today. There is no question that she is the youngest among us. What’s more, she comes among us at a moment when we have not seen a lot of young people in the sanctuary for quite a while. Jesus sent her to us to teach us about true greatness.

How We Got Here

In order to catch that lesson, we need to perhaps step back and look at the bigger picture of what brought her here. It started with a passion for excellence. Nicole, her mother, had a passion for highland dance. She wanted to be one of the best and to be able to represent her country of Canada. That dream took her to the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo where she danced in celebration of the Queen’s ninetieth birthday.

Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, Charles was pursuing excellence in his own ways – including by serving his country in the military. His distinguished service led to the prestigious position of serving in the Queen’s Guard at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo in honour of the Queen’s ninetieth birthday.

Was it just random chance that took both of them to that same place and time as they both achieved great personal accomplishments? Some would say so. But I say that God was planning to bring Charlotte here to teach us all something about true greatness. All of a sudden, their pursuit of personal excellence was transformed into a brand-new challenge – a harder one in some ways – building something in partnership.

Parents’ Hopes

I asked Nichole and Charles to share with us today what their hopes and dreams are for their little girl at this moment in time and this is what Nichole wrote to me:

“As parents, our hopes and dreams for Charlotte is for her to live a full, content and happy life. We hope she discovers her passions and hobbies and may they present her with many opportunities. We hope that she has the courage, determination and confidence to always choose the right path. We hope that she is resilient throughout all of life’s ups and downs, stays true to herself and that she shines bright wherever she goes.”

In some ways, I know, that is similar to what many parents might say, but I think you’ll agree with me when I say that those words take on special meaning when you know a little bit about the people who are saying it. You just know that they are going to let her have her own personal passions and will do it with an expectation that something very special (and perhaps surprising and unexpected) will also happen as a result of that.

Charlotte’s Message to us

So, what, then, is Charlotte teaching us about greatness today? Well, she comes among us today in great weakness. At this point in her life she is entirely dependent on others. I think she is telling us something about the true strength that is found in vulnerability.

But she also comes to us as a huge bundle of possibility. As her parents have pointed out, she could grow up to do anything. And as she comes terms with who she is and what her particular passions and talents are, it may lead to some big surprises (just like a chance encounter in Edinburgh led to big changes) but can also bring great new things into the world.

The darkness of these present times can be overwhelming – so much so that they begin to mess up our relationships. Only true leadership and greatness can lead us out of that kind of darkness. We affirm today that Jesus came to offer us that leadership and that kind of greatness. Charlotte, too, has come today to demonstrate that kind of leadership and greatness – a symbol of hope and new possibility during the challenges of a difficult time.

https://youtu.be/_5_Ng7B8Gr0

Hespeler, April 3, 2022 © Scott McAndless – Lent 5
Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8

How many people are there whose first reaction to our reading this morning from the Gospel of John is to say, “Ah hah, I knew it”?

The story is about, or at least it appears to be about, the whole question of whether or not we ought to give money and resources to the poor. And I suspect that there are a lot of people out there – and I’m not necessarily talking about people out there in the sanctuary this morning or people watching on zoom, I’m talking about people out there in the world at large – who do not want to see their hard-earned money going to support the poor. They don’t want to see it taken in their taxes and spent on things like welfare. They don’t want to give their money to feed or clothe or otherwise help the poor either. It’s their money; they want to keep it.

The Need for Rationalization

It is not an unusual sentiment, I suspect, but it’s also not really one that very many people want to own. Nobody wants to seem unkind or cheap or cruel towards the poor. And so, they’ve got to find a reason not to give to the poor. They need a rationalization. And our reading this morning from the Gospel of John seems to offer two really extraordinary rationalizations. In fact, I think they are the main ones that people offer. One comes to us from Judas Iscariot. The other one comes from Jesus.

So, let’s take a look at these two very biblical reasons not to give to support the poor. When Mary comes in and begins to lavish this really expensive perfume on Jesus, pouring it out so wantonly that the scent of it fills the entire room, it is Judas it brings up the topic of giving to the poor. “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” he cries out to Mary.

Bad Spokesperson

And the first problem with that is obviously the spokesperson. I mean, it doesn’t seem like a very good endorsement to put the suggestion of giving to the poor on the lips of the most vile, hateful and despicable character in the entire book. If Voldemort made the suggestion that everyone should go down to the beach in a Harry Potter book, it wouldn’t make that seem like a very good idea, would it? And if Pennywise the Clown suggested that we all go down and play in the sewers, I don’t think that would be a big endorsement. So, when we hear Judas making this suggestion, it certainly doesn’t make it seem as if giving to the poor is a good thing to do.

But, of course, it is actually even worse than that because we are also told exactly what Judas’ motivations were. “He said this not because he cared about the poor,” the gospel writer tells us, “but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.” And that has got to be the number one excuse that people offer for why they don’t want to give anything to the poor. They are pretty convinced that there must be some sort of theft involved. And this is where I see such people looking at this passage from the Gospel of John and saying, “Ah hah!”

The Assumption of Theft

This is, of course, an assumption that you run into all the time when you are involved in helping those living on the margins of society. There are always stories or suspicions about people stealing – which is to say about people getting benefits that they are not entitled to or that they don’t use in the ways that we want them to. We run into this sometimes here at St Andrew’s. There have been accusations, from time to time, of people taking more clothes than they can use and then selling them on Kijiji.

Often people make observations concerning the lifestyle of people who come. Maybe they observe that they are driving a car that seems like it’s in good shape or that would have cost too much. They also make comments when people have expensive habits like smoking. So, the argument seems to go, if there are some people who don’t look or act poor enough or they use the resources in ways we don’t like, that is stealing and it invalidates the entire exercise, even if only a small percentage of the people are doing it.

Government Programs have the Same Problem

We also see the same argument being employed on larger scale efforts to alleviate poverty. Welfare programs have often been cut back based on accusations of people using drugs or not wanting to work. In a number of jurisdictions, things like drug testing and rigorous requirements that people be searching for work have been put into place.

Now I am not saying that there should be no restrictions or regulations surrounding people accessing programs. And obviously it is not sufficient simply to provide the monetary support without giving people the tools and assistance they need to move towards supporting themselves. But the fact of the matter is that, when punitive measures have been put into place because of the perception that generosity leads to theft, they have generally failed. Programs, for example, that have required drug testing for people to receive welfare have been an enormous failure. The numbers of positive tests were ridiculously low, and the programs did not save any money, they made the whole program cost a lot more. All of that makes me feel as if this tendency to suggest that programs to help the poor are ridden with theft is not really about a concern for any theft itself, but rather a way of justifying not doing anything.

Second Rationalization

So, that is one rationalization, the accusation of theft, that we should be wary of. The second rationalization is also found in this gospel passage. What’s more, it is actually Jesus who says it this time. “Leave her alone,” Jesus says. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” And I know exactly how a lot of people will interpret that saying of Jesus. They will understand Jesus to be saying that it is okay that the money was not given to the poor because the problem of poverty is not going to go away. They would take him to mean that we shouldn’t give money to help the poor because the problem of poverty is intractable. So, this quickly becomes another excuse not to do anything for poor people and it even seems to have Jesus’ endorsement on not doing anything.

But is that really what Jesus is saying? No, he is not. One of the main reasons why we can know that for sure is because this saying does not have its origins with Jesus. What Jesus is doing here is quoting from an Old Testament passage. The passage is found in the Book of Deuteronomy 15:11 where Moses says, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.’”

The Context in Deuteronomy

When Jews did that kind of thing, when they quoted one line from their scriptures, they did it with the expectation that their fellow Jewish listeners or readers would recognize the quote and go back and read it within its larger context. So, when he quotes this passage, Jesus does not expect the disciples to take that quote alone but rather to go back and see what it was that Moses was talking about around that.

That passage in the Book of Deuteronomy is a description of a specific law in Ancient Israel known as the Sabbath Year law. It describes a series of measures that were to be taken every seven years. These measures included things like canceling debts and giving freedom to those who had been sold into slavery because of their debts. The Sabbath Year law was a series of measures, in other words, that were intended to address the systemic problems in society and in the economy that tended to push people into a state of permanent poverty that they could not find their way out of.

Addressing Systemic Problems

There is evidence to indicate that this law and others measures like it were very active in the popular imagination in Jesus’ time. They were popular because the people in general were very aware of the kind of systemic issues in society, things like inflation, income inequality and the structure of taxation that had made it quite impossible for large portions of the population to escape from endless cycles of poverty. So, essentially what Jesus was doing by directing his disciples’ attention towards this law was saying something very important about how we ought to address the problem of poverty.

Jesus was pointing out that there is a problem with focusing only on giving money or doing things like running food banks and giving away clothing. That kind of charity is obviously essential when people can’t feed or clothe their children, but it doesn’t actually solve the problem behind poverty because most of that problem comes down to the system, the way that society is set up and the economic and political policies that are in place. The ancient law of the Sabbath Year was an effort to address some of those larger systemic issues.

That is not to say that such a law is a perfect tool to address those issues or that the ancient law would actually work in our modern society and economy. I am pretty sure that it wouldn’t work and would probably make things much worse. But the principal is an important one. It is not enough to just give to the poor without addressing those larger systemic issues.

The Danger in Just Giving

I believe that we are truly blessed in this congregation and in the church in general when we are able to reach out in compassion and support people who are really struggling to get by. It is actually a privilege to be able to have that kind of ministry. But there is a danger that comes with such a ministry; we may fail to look at the bigger picture. If we really cared about the poor, we should be advocating for policies that address the systemic issues in our society. We should be involved in pressing for changes in how people are compensated and respected in their work. We should be involved in addressing income inequality.

And I do realize that some of that is a bit problematic for a church that does not want to become directly involved in partisan politics. We are not in a position where we can endorse a certain party’s policies about these things. But none of that should get in the way of us speaking out and informing ourselves as citizens because these really are systemic issues that affect the whole of society. I think it is important for us to understand that Jesus was saying that, as good as giving to the poor is, it is not the whole response that we need to be making.

Changing the Atmosphere

Perhaps a good image for what we need to be doing about poverty would be that woman, Mary, and her jar of expensive perfume. Yes, that perfume was costly, and the money could have been used to support many struggling families. But what did she do with it? I think it’s significant that the gospel writer points out something that she did accomplish with that perfume. He tells us that, “The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” He notes that she literally changed the atmosphere in that entire house. And I think that that is what we need to aspire to as we address the problem of poverty in our society. There is a need to change the atmosphere.

People will always find excuses and justification for not giving to those who are in need. The accusation of theft is often a handy excuse, but when you look at it closely you recognize that it is mostly based on misrepresentation. The excuse that poverty is an intractable problem and that meeting the needs of one poor person will not fix the systemic issues is definitely one that requires more thought on our part. If we really want to pay attention to what Jesus is saying in this passage, I believe that we need to find ways to balance the need to respond to immediate problems with the imperative of addressing the larger issues in our society and the way it is structured by actually changing the atmosphere and the way that we and others think about how the system needs to work.