Author: Scott McAndless

https://youtu.be/rUcCvcqxDgA

Hespeler, 13 December 2020 © Scott McAndless – Advent 3
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Luke 1:46-55, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, John 1:6-8, 19-28

So, a vaccine – or rather a few vaccines at this point – have been created. Distribution in Ontario will begin in a matter of days and, if all of the research and testing turn out to be correct, we may soon get to the place where our entire lives are no longer dominated by a tiny little thing called a coronavirus. This is good news, and I realize that it’s probably a little bit premature to celebrate too much – certainly far too premature to celebrate with large maskless gatherings – but maybe it is time to at least start thinking about what comes next.

I am sure that some people are expecting that, on the day when it’s finally done, the day when enough people are vaccinated and herd immunity is attained, that the crisis will just be over. Everyone will just get up in the morning and go back to living their lives the way that they used to. That is what everyone who lives through a crisis dreams of and it is understandable. Sometimes when you’re living through a crisis, the only thing that keeps you going is the thought of getting back to life the way you used to know it. And yet, I think we all realize on some level that that is not all that realistic. Because of the direct and indirect effects of this crisis, there are many things that will simply not go back to the way they were.

We have no idea how many yet, but we can be sure that, when this is over, there will have been many businesses that have long been important parts of our local and national economies that will simply no longer exist. People’s savings will have been decimated and their debts will be that much more unmanageable. People will lose their homes or be thrown out of their apartments. People will continue to struggle to find good jobs for some time to come. Women, in particular, seem to have fallen out of the workforce and will face many struggles to get back in.

Oh, the end of the crisis will go just fine for some people: the fortunate few. That is almost always what happens in the aftermath of a crisis. In fact, for those who have the resources and are willing to ruthlessly take advantage of the misery of others, there is a very good chance that they will make enormous profits out of the whole situation. Chances are, when this is all over, there will be a small group that finds themselves greatly richer and there will be a very large group that have simply fallen through the cracks of society and the economy. And the simple fact of the matter is that, when that is the situation, it makes an economic recovery for everyone that much harder. But, that is where we will likely find ourselves in the coming months.

But, of course, we are not the first people in history to face such a situation. In fact, it is the kind of thing that happens just about every time a society faces a major crisis and then has to recover. Take, for example, the great crisis of the exile for the ancient people of Judah. When their country was destroyed and all the leading citizens were taken away into exile by the Babylonians, well you can just imagine the kind of devastation that caused.

But when that crisis finally came to an end, and the people were able to return from that exile and start all over again, their troubles were hardly over. The country had been ruined. The economy was in shambles. They were trying to rebuild and they had almost no resources to do so.

And, under those circumstances, it was the poorest folk who struggled most of all. They had no savings and they went deep into debt. Meanwhile, the few wealthy people who had returned were in a great position to benefit from the misery of these others. They loaned them money, and then, when they were unable to repay, they seized their lands, if they had any, and then they seized the people themselves and turned them into slaves.

And given that that was the kind of thing that was going on, the economy only got worse and the whole thing was a real mess. As a very few people got very rich and the great mass of the people fell into poverty and slavery, the recovery was looking like a complete disaster.

But then, a prophet came along. And he came along with a stunning message. “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me;” he cried out in the ruined city. “He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, To bind up the broken-hearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” And this was not just the ranting of a crazy person, it was actually a plan – a plan for a real recovery.

You see, there was an ancient law in Israel. Every fifty years, all debts had to be forgiven, all lands that had been foreclosed on had to be returned and all debt slaves released. It was called the year of Jubilee. It was a way – admittedly a radical and very disruptive way – but a way of making sure that people didn’t fall into permanent poverty and that the richest people were not able to exploit their misery, at least not forever.

Now, I do hear all of the objections that you are thinking about this idea of a year of Jubilee. I mean, can you imagine the havoc it would wreak in our economy if all debts were forgiven and all sales of land were undone? It is something that is quite unthinkable under our present economic system, though it may have made a bit more sense in the ancient agrarian economy of Israel.

But, even back then, it was likely problematic. So perhaps, many have suggested, the Jubilee was not practiced, at least not on a regular basis. Sure, it was a law, part of the law of Moses, but you can well imagine that it would have taken a strong will on the part of the authorities to make sure that such a law was actually implemented and you can also well imagine that there must have been times when that will was lacking.

And so, in the aftermath of the exile while the people were trying to rebuild their lives in the city of Jerusalem, it had probably been a very long time since there had been the will to hold a year of Jubilee. And there were almost certainly no authorities who would be inclined to implement the ancient law at that moment. And so, guess what happened. A prophet stood up and declared that he didn’t care that there was no king or priest or other authority who was going to implement a year of Jubilee.

Why didn’t he care? Because the Spirit of the Lord God was upon him. He might have been nobody, he might have had no power at all, but he had God’s Spirit and that was enough. And so he would speak up and demand that the Jubilee be proclaimed. And there is no doubt that a Jubilee is what he means when he speaks of, “good news to the oppressed. . . liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.” It is clearly what he means when he proclaims “the year of the Lord’s favour.”

And I have a lot of respect for that prophet for having the courage to do such a thing. I don’t think I’m the only one. You are probably aware that, according to the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus began his public ministry in his own hometown of Nazareth, he did it by taking this very same passage of scripture and applying it to himself, basically saying that he was the fulfillment of the prophecy.

That is to say that Jesus came at a moment in history when the people were facing the same kind of crisis of a country and an economy that were falling apart, this time mostly due to the greed of the Romans. And so, Jesus declared that he would be the embodiment of the same call of the ancient prophet. Though he also had no earthly power to do so, his presence in the world would bring about a new Jubilee.

But it is not something that is just there when Jesus announces it at the beginning of his ministry – it is something that runs through the entire Gospel of Luke, as we see in our reading from the Magnificat this morning. You see Mary doesn’t have to wait until Jesus returns to Nazareth to speak in synagogue to know that his mere presence in the world means that the impossible Jubilee is now possible. As soon as she can sense that she is pregnant she sings it: “He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

The mere presence of Jesus in the womb of his mother is enough – the fact that he is coming into the world means that the reality of the world and how it works is being turned upside down and the rich and the powerful are losing their place and the poor, the neglected and the forgotten have taken that exalted place. The unthinkable is happening.

I worry about the recovery after this pandemic, I really do – not because I doubt the ability of medical science and research to come up with a vaccine that will get us out of this mess. I have no worries about that. But I do have worries about human nature and especially that our greed and our selfishness will mean that whatever wealth is available will stop circulating and remain in the hands of a few and so the recovery will be much less than it could possibly be and that it will leave far too many people behind. I worry because I suspect that our leaders, who, after all, owe so much to the rich and powerful, will not be able to oppose them.

But maybe, if I listen to the Old Testament prophet, if I listen to the mother of Jesus as her hands clutch the life that is just beginning to grow inside her, and if I listen to her son as he stands before the people in Nazareth, I will realize that we don’t necessarily need to wait for our leaders to wake up and realize what is actually needed. All it takes is someone who has the Spirit of the Lord upon them. And, my friends, that is and can be any of us.

When you think about it, it is kind of amazing to hear some of the voices that are being raised right now, voices of people who are essentially powerless and who, under normal circumstances, would never be listened to, and yet, those voices are being heard right now even though they are saying things that were previously unthinkable.

I’m talking about people who are saying that maybe it is time to forgive student loan debt. I’m talking about people who are saying, let’s take some of that money that has been used to militarize the police and instead redirect it towards mental health and housing and building up social capital. I’m talking about people who are daring to suggest radical ideas like a universal basic income. These words are not coming from the powerful and the influential, and yet they are being heard. I wonder, is it maybe because somehow the spirit of the Lord is behind such ideas right now because that is what is needed?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how much merit is in some of those ideas and whether they will work or not. But I absolutely welcome such voices being heard because I know that we will never get anywhere if we quench the voice of the Spirit of the Lord.

What’s more, I believe that we, as people of faith, really ought to be those who are most open to such things because it is right there in the scriptures that we profess to believe. And it is especially there in the story of the incarnation, in the meaning of Jesus coming into the world in the first place, into the body of his mother and into that synagogue at Nazareth. If the spirit of the Lord God is speaking through somebody in the world today, we ought to be the first to rejoice in that.

https://youtu.be/g1DZl3rskMQ

Hespeler, 6 December 2020 © Scott McAndless – Communion
Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13, 2 Peter 3:8-15, Mark 1:1-8 (Click to read)

Good morning. It is Monday, November 9, 2020, and we take you now live to the headquarters of international drug companies, Pfizer and BioNTech for an announcement that that world has been waiting for:

Good morning, Scott, I am standing outside of the building where a stunning announcement has been made. The chief executive officers of Pfizer and BioNTech just came out to announce, and I quote, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says the corporation. “Speak tenderly to the world, and cry to it that it has served its term, that its penalty is paid, that it has already received from the deadly coronavirus a double portion of suffering.

“For unto us, a vaccine has been born and an inoculation has been given. And behold, it’s efficacy shall be established at 90%.”

That is the announcement, Scott, though I would note that there is a little bit of fine print. There are a few steps yet to be accomplished. The vaccine will have to receive final approval and, of course it will have to be manufactured in significant quantities. But that’s not even the most complicated part. The companies say that, in its original form, the vaccine will have to be stored at -80 degrees Celsius, which will definitely complicate distribution. There is also the thorny necessity of convincing the vast majority of a population that, over the last little while, has discovered that it has some reasons to be wary of political authorities and medical experts, to actually take a vaccine that might make them feel sick for a short time.

And so, between now and the time when a sufficient portion of the population can be vaccinated and herd immunity be attained, there is a whole lot of work to be done. Basically, to get from here to there, we’re going to have to build a distribution highway. And you know how you build a highway: “Every valley shall be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; The uneven ground shall become level, And the rough places a plain.” And I know that that sounds like a lot of work and that it’s going to take a lot of time, but, my friends, this really is still good news. Our salvation has arrived! Take comfort, O my people.

I have said it many times during this difficult year of 2020. Again and again as I open the scriptures during this year, I read familiar passages that I thought I understood and I see them in an entirely different light. And that is true yet again on this second Sunday in Advent. Every year around this time, the church traditionally reads from the fortieth chapter of the Book of Isaiah. We not only read it, but we also sing it or hear it sung as one of the most favorite arias of Handel’s Messiah. The passage is so powerful that you would think that it could not more deeply affect me this year than it has in the past, but it has.

This part of the Book of Isaiah was originally written to people facing a very difficult historical struggle. It is addressed to the people of Israel who have, for far too long, been living in exile in the land of Babylon. Forcibly taken from homes, they have been made to live in a strange land surrounded by strange gods and strange customs. It has been extremely hard for them. But, in this passage, the prophet comes to them with some exciting, good news.

Babylon has fallen (or maybe it’s just clear that it’s about to fall) and the Persian Empire is about to take over its territories. And that might not seem like a big deal, I mean, who cares if you exchange one overlord for another, but actually it is. The thing that makes that good news is that Cyrus, the king of the Persians, has a different policy about exiles. As far as he is concerned, if they want to go back home, they can. Yes, the good news of the moment is that the people of Israel can finally go back home.

And it is in that context that the prophet says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” He is announcing that the exile is over by saying that God has decided that the people have suffered enough.

But, like I say, I really found those words sounded very different to me this year after we have seen our society struggling with an extended period of suffering caused by a pandemic. And when that announcement of a vaccine came, it certainly seemed like the very same kind of announcement of comfort to a people.

So, the words of the prophet certainly hit me on a different emotional level this year, but there was also something else that really struck me, something that I hadn’t seen before. When these words of comfort appear, it’s like a sudden announcement that everything is going to change for the better. The announcement of the vaccine sounded like that too. But, after that initial euphoria, there comes a let’s-get-down-to-earth moment when we realize that there is still a long way to go before we get there, that the road is going to be difficult and that it might even get worse before it gets better. I think we’ve all been feeling that as well.

Well, the same thing happens in this prophecy from the Book of Isaiah. Because, you see, no sooner did the prophet announce this incredible, wonderful news that the exile was over, than the people had to deal with a huge realization. The people were in Babylon, and Babylon was a long, long way from Jerusalem. I mean, not only was it about a thousand kilometers in an age where most people travelled on foot, but it was a thousand kilometers across the biggest, most uncrossable terrain in the entire world – a vast desert.

So, immediately after announcing this enormous comfort, the prophet goes on to announce a gigantic work project: “A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” It was a highway for the people to return home and a very difficult highway to build: “Every valley shall be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; The uneven ground shall become level, And the rough places a plain.” That’s right, we need to bring in the bulldozers and level the whole terrain, and that’s all before you can even start to lay down the asphalt!

Now, to be clear here, this passage is not describing the construction of an actual highway to take the people home. This is poetry – a poetic way of saying that it’s going to be a long and difficult process that takes a lot of work to get the people home. But it is still a stunning change of tone from the original promise – we go from supernatural comfort to a major public works project that has to be completed before the promise is fulfilled.

But that is how life often goes. We are told that we get to go home, but then we have to build the highway to get there; the vaccine gets announced but there is all this other work to be done before its promise is realized. This is the kind of thing that keeps on happening and so this passage is forever new – forever speaking to the hopes and the frustrations of delays that people have to live with.

Which is, of course, why, when the author of the Gospel of Mark was trying to capture the mood in Galilee just before Jesus appeared on the scene, he turned to this very same passage in the Book of Isaiah. He describes John the Baptizer as, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

Now, on the surface, it might seem that what has happened here is that Mark has just misunderstood the original meaning of the Book of Isaiah. The original prophecy said, “A voice cries, ‘Prepare the way in the wilderness.’” And Mark has changed that to “A voice in the wilderness cries, “Prepare the way.” That is pretty close, but it is not exactly the same thing and Mark makes that change because Mark does see John himself as the voice that is crying in the wilderness because John preached out in the wilderness.

But I do not think that this is simply a mistaken interpretation on the part of the gospel writer. It is rather his way of saying that the ministry of John the Baptizer was a fulfillment of what had been anticipated in the prophecy in Isaiah, not literally in the sense that John was building a highway out there, but certainly in the sense that John’s call had so much in common with that of the ancient prophet.

In fact, I think we should greet the message of John the Baptizer today in almost exactly the same way that the ancient exiles in Babylon greeted the ancient prophet’s message – which is to say, much like how we received the news of the successful vaccine trials.

When John announces, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals,” how should we react? We should greet that news – the news that God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ to show us the power of God’s love and salvation – with joy because that means that the end of the story is written. God will bring us home. Because of Jesus we can know for sure that God’s purposes will not be thwarted and that our destiny and indeed the destiny of the whole world is safe in God’s hands.

And yet at the same time we cannot help but recognize that there is still some highway building to do before we get from here to there. And now especially, during this season of Advent, we are living in that tension between the promise of the coming of Christ, a promise that is sure and certain, and the simple reality that we are not quite there yet.

Because of Jesus because of his incarnation, because of his extraordinary teaching and example, because of his death and his resurrection, God has accomplished it all. The world is reconciled to God in Christ. The kingdom of God is established in the face of all the powers, principalities and rulers of this world. And we are forgiven, renewed and reconciled to God. That work is all done. As Jesus said on the cross at the very last, “It is finished,” which could also be translated as, “It has all been accomplished.”

And yet we are still in that waiting place. That is, by the way, what the season of Advent is all about; it is about life in the waiting place. Because, while everything is in place for all of that salvation to play out, we are still stuck here preparing for it all to be rolled out, for the highway to be built through the desert, for the vaccine to be approved and manufactured and safely distributed. That salvation is there, we can almost taste it, it is in the sights in the smells of this season of wonder, but there is still that sense of not quite yet.

And as Christians we are called to live into that promise. We are called to offer hope to people, to let them know that God has done the work and it is completed. And we are also called to live as if it were already so, and, in so doing we will make it so. That is our job. That is how we build the highway through the desert.

https://youtu.be/H-5OVQFQ-zM

Hespeler, 29 November 2020 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:14-37 (click to read)

I’m going to ask you to use your imaginations here for a little bit. I want you to imagine a year, an entire year, that just went really badly. A year during which just about everything you could possibly think of to go wrong went wrong and a bunch of other things that you would never think of in a million years also went wrong. Say that that year began with terrible, almost apocalyptic bushfires in the far distant continent of Australia killing or displacing an unimaginable number of animals, something like 3 billion. And then say that, only weeks later, a terrible pandemic began to sweep across the globe shutting down ordinary life and leading, ultimately, to tens of millions of cases and well over a million deaths.

And then throw a few other things into this imaginary year – cases of what clearly appear to be racially motivated police violence leading to massive protests and in some cases rioting and violence. Throw in a sharply divisive election and a transition of power wrought with confusion and fear. Hey, while you’re at it, why not throw in a few murder hornets? You know just a wildly unrealistic awful, horrible, no good, very bad year.

And imagine that you were coming to the close of that year with some hope, of course, that maybe the next year would be a lot better but, at the same time, a fair bit of worry that it might just be a whole lot worse. So, say it was around the end of November of that year. What do you suppose the mood of people would be? And given that mood, that I suspect you can probably imagine, what do you suppose that somebody might write that could actually reach people, catch their attention and speak to them exactly where they were?

I ask that question today because it is the First Sunday of Advent which the church counts as the beginning of the year. And, as it is the beginning of the year, we turn, on this Sunday to a new part of the Sunday lectionary. Last year, our gospel readings were mostly taken from the Gospel according to Matthew. Starting today, we are going to turn to a new gospel: the Gospel of Mark.

And what an introduction to the Gospel of Mark we have in our reading this morning: the sun darkened, the moon dimmed and the stars falling from heaven and, indeed, heaven and earth entirely passing away. Now, I know that this passage in the Gospel of Mark is not necessarily everybody’s favourite, but I think that it is actually a very good thing that this very passage is actually our introduction to the entire book in our readings for this year.

Most scholars today believe that of all the gospels in the Bible, the Gospel of Mark is the oldest; it was the first one written. Now the reasons why scholars believe this are rather complicated and I’d be happy to get into the details at some other time, but for the moment, let’s just say that sometime around 70 AD, that is about four decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus, somebody first came up with the idea of writing down the story of Jesus’ life and death, and this gospel was the result.

That immediately raises some questions – questions like, why then? Why, at that moment in the history of church, did someone finally feel compelled (or inspired by the Spirit) to write down the story of Jesus? Did it have something to do with the fact that the first generation of believers was, at that point, passing away and they felt a certain urgency to collect and write down their witness? That may have been part of it, but I am not sure that it was the main part.

No, I suspect that it had more to do with what was going on in the world at that moment in time. Because, as I said, the consensus is that Gospel of Mark was written sometime around 70 AD. And 70 AD was an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year. What’s more, 70 AD was only one in the midst of a number of awful, horrible, no good, very bad years from about 66 to 74 AD. So it actually doesn’t matter what exact year the Gospel of Mark was written, we can be pretty sure that it was written during an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year.

Let me just give you some sense of all the horrible things that happened during that period of time. It started in Judea when somebody made fun of the local Roman governor but, when the governor tried to find the people who’d made fun of him, they’d gone missing and so he just grabbed a whole bunch of people at random and crucified them which led to a bloody general uprising. During this period of time, the reign of the worst Roman Emperor ever, Nero, finally came to an end, but it led to the worst and most violent succession crisis that you can possibly imagine. Does that sound familiar?

During that crisis, one prominent Jew looked at one of the people fighting to be the next emperor (who happened to be in Judea killing Judeans at the time) and said, “Look, there is the messiah!” Now, can you imagine that? A powerful political leader hailed as the true messiah? Well, it happened.

And then, the whole countryside of Judea and Galilee blew up an open revolt against Rome which was brutally defeated by the son of the new emperor at the cost of thousands of lives and the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem.

During one of these horrible years, it is said the Christian church that was in Jerusalem was so alarmed by the whole situation that they up and ran, leaving everything behind them to escape the city – an episode that is likely referred to in our reading when Jesus says, “When you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter.”

That is the kind of thing that was going on while this gospel was being written. And again, I ask you the question, why, at that kind of moment, did someone decide to write this book. Do you suppose that it might have been because somebody decided that just such a book as this was exactly what was needed at such a moment as that? I suspect that this is exactly what happened. The Gospel of Mark was not written merely to record what happened to Jesus during his life, though it certainly did that, but it was also written to give comfort and guidance to some people who had just lived through an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year.

I think that is true of the entire Gospel of Mark, but it is maybe especially true of the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel which we read from today because it most directly references some of the very things that were going on when this book was written. So what was the message that the writer of the Gospel of Mark was trying to give to people who were living through such times?

Well, one thing is especially clear in this chapter. He wrote it to tell people that this had all been foreseen. In this chapter, he particularly highlights the very things that Jesus predicted would happen and that were now coming to pass. Jesus did predict the destruction of the temple and much of the strife that surrounded it. And so Mark underlines that prediction and, I suspect, doesn’t hesitate to add a few details from the things that he and his fellow Christians have recently lived through.

Now, what would be the point in doing that? How is that supposed to help people deal with all they are going through? Well one thing it tells people is that nothing that has happened is as random as it might seem – that it has all been foreseen.

Now, I don’t think that that is the same thing as saying that every bad thing that happens is a direct result of the will of God. I personally do not believe that God wills that bad or tragic things happen to anyone. But tragedy is an inevitable part of life in this world and our loving God is never far removed from the struggles that people are living through. And, yes, I do think that this was exactly the kind of message that people needed to hear when this book was written.

Think of that in terms of some of the things we’ve been living through. Does the mere fact that a lot of what we have been living through was actually predicted seem like a comforting thought to you? Because it is largely true. We have been warned very clearly for a number of years now that a devastating global pandemic was bound to come sooner or later. We have been clearly warned that the effects of global warming would lead to worse and worse hurricane seasons and worse and worse forest fire seasons and we have just lived through the worst of all recorded times in both cases. Certainly, the post-election strife in the United States that we are living through right now has been predicted over and over again over the last four years.

It has all been predicted, but does that make us feel any better about any of it? Not necessarily. But maybe it does give us an imperative to listen to those who make such predictions next time and to do what we can to prepare a whole lot better. It may not give us comfort but it gives us a sense of agency, of something we can do, and that is maybe the kind of thing we need right now. I think the Gospel of Mark provided something like that for its audience.

And, if there was a comfort to be found, it was to be found in the knowledge that somewhere above and beyond the troubles of an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year, there was someone who had a plan that looked beyond the troubles of the moment to something bigger, to the redemption of a troubled world and its ultimate healing. That also was a comfort to them and I think it can also be for us.

I suspect that there is a reason why God is leading us, through the Revised Common Lectionary, towards reflecting on the Gospel of Mark as an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year comes to a close and a new year begins. I suspect this gospel has some really important things to say to us exactly where we are right now.

I pray that, in the year to come, this gospel might give us some perspective on the difficult things that we have had to live through this year and that might linger in the year to come. Like I say, I don’t believe that it is God’s desire that bad things happen to us, but that does not change the fact that we have a God who oversees the events of this world, who cares and who is determined to bring some good out of the most troubling developments.

Of course, the other thing that the Gospel of Mark gives us is a picture of Jesus. As the first Gospel written (or at least the first one written that was not lost), Mark shows us who Jesus is in the midst of the struggles of this life. And the picture we get is of the Son of God but also of one who is not removed from the struggles of this world, who entered into them willingly and freely, who knows our difficulties and comforts us in them. Because, you see, Mark was determined to present the kind of saviour that people who have lived through an awful, horrible, no good, very bad year really need to meet.

https://youtu.be/N4fvQO5LYEU

Hespeler, 22 November 2020 © Scott McAndless
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Psalm 95:1-7a, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46

Salvation is by grace through faith. That is perhaps the most central teaching of protestant Christianity. And, in many ways, every sermon I preach, every study I lead is ultimately trying to explain what that teaching really means. The bottom line seems to be this: none of us are going to be able to earn God’s favour by being good enough. God is rather looking for us to place our trust in God and in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And that makes the parable that we read this morning from the Gospel of Matthew a bit of minefield for a good old-fashioned Protestant preacher. I have privately heard Christian preachers and teachers suggest that they really don’t like this parable and that they kind of wish that Jesus never told it because, of course, this parable depicts the final judgment. And when the people are divided and judged as to whether they have pleased God, there seems to be only one criterion that matters: those who have behaved in the right way are blessed and those who have behaved in the wrong way are condemned. It seems to be a textbook example of salvation by works and not by faith.

And, yes, the actions that are celebrated in this parable are all really good. I would absolutely love to see people welcoming strangers, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting those who need it. And obviously those are precisely the kinds of actions that do please God. But, at the same time, I do not believe that we, as people, can become more pleasing to God by our frequency or quality of such actions. So, what am I to do with this parable? How am I supposed to relate it to some of my central theological convictions?

Let me first say something about the whole notion of salvation. In the minds of modern Christians, we often make an easy connection between the notion of salvation and the whole question of who gets into heaven. For too many Christians, that is all that salvation means, a ticket to heaven someday after we die. But I just feel I need to say that this parable is not actually about who gets into heaven or into the afterlife and who doesn’t. It is a parable about who is already in the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven, in the Gospel of Matthew, is very clearly more about a present reality that people can live in right now than it is about what happens to people after they die. The key point is that those who do the things described in the parable are already in the reality of the kingdom of heaven and those who don’t aren’t. That is not to say that the kingdom of heaven does not have a reality or fulfilment beyond this present world. And I do believe that, in this world, we are meant to prepare for that ultimate reality, but the focus of this parable is on this present world.

So, that is one thing I always keep in mind as I read this parable. But there is also a second assumption about this parable that we easily make that I think needs to be challenged. On the surface, yes, this parable seems to be all about works, about what we do. The word faith is not mentioned. But I would like to suggest that, actually, this parable is all about faith.

Here is what I noticed on this time reading it through. When the Son of Man comes, and all his holy angels with him, and he separates the sheep from the goats, he addresses both groups in terms of what they have done. “I was this, and you did that” or “I was this and you failed to do that.” And there seems to be no discussion when it comes to what the sheep and the goats have done. The sheep do not push back against the Son of Man and say, “Wait, we didn’t do that kind of thing.” Nor do the goats push back and say, “Oh yes we did.”

No, the pushback all seems to be over one particular question and that question has to do with seeing. Both the sheep and the goats respond by asking, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison. . .” But here’s the thing: the Son of Man never asked them if they saw him. He only spoke of what they had done for him. He was not concerned at all about sight or recognition. And this is a significant point because the Bible has a lot to say about the relationship between faith and sight.

For example, in 2 Corinthians, Paul writes, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” (5:7) And the eleventh chapter of Hebrews begins like this: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Clearly, seeing is not necessary to faith. It even sometimes seems to get in the way of faith. And yet these sheep and goats seem to be fixated only on what they can or cannot see, as we all often are.

So why does this parable shift from the Son of Man’s focus on doing the right thing to the sheep and goats’ focus on seeing? Because this story is actually more about faith than we realize.

What is the real difference between the sheep and the goats in this parable? The two groups actually have far more in common than we usually realize. You see, apparently, according to this story, Jesus is constantly present in this world. He is particularly present in the poorest of the poor, in the hungry, in the sick, the forgotten and the prisoners.

Now, the heart of God has always been with such people. Throughout the scripture we see God prioritizing reaching out and taking care of the most marginalized people in society. But apparently something new and something unique has happened because of Jesus, because of the incarnation.

Because somehow, in Jesus of Nazareth, God entered into the human experience not just in some kind of sympathetic understanding but actually in the form of a human body that could understand human suffering, there is a sense in which Jesus remains uniquely present in this world in the persons of those who struggle or suffer the most. I can’t explain that. I can’t even really claim to understand it, but I know that it is the truth.

But here is what we see in this parable, though Jesus continues to be bodily present in this world, nobody can see it. The sheep, those who intentionally set out to take care of those who live on the margins, confess that they did not see it. And the goats, those who did nothing, did not see it either. So both the sheep and the goats have their blindness to this reality in common. And the Bible tells us that, when there is not sight, that is when there is a great opportunity for faith. And it is in what these two groups do with this opportunity that we see their paths diverge.

And let’s focus in on the goats for a moment. What do they do with their opportunity for faith? They do not see the reality that Christ is present in the marginalized, but what do they do with that? They continue to insist upon relying on their flawed sight. They look at the people who are living on the margins of their society, and what do they see? They see, first of all, people who are not like them. They may belong to other racial or ethnic groups. They may not talk like them or dress like them, and so they conclude that they have less value.

Or perhaps they look at them and can only see the short term. They see how costly in the short term it is to provide income support or addiction rehabilitation or health care or shelter for them. They see all of that and they conclude that such a high cost cannot be justified.

And, of course, they completely fail to see that, over the long term, there are costs that are even greater. They do not see the cost of lost potential and how people who are given a little bit of support now can contribute enormously to the society down the road. They do not see how entrapping people into conditions where they feel they have no hope and no prospects for the future is bound to create even more costly problems down the road. None of that is particularly visible and they do not see it.

They, not seeing the truth that Christ is somehow alive and present in this world, become caught up only in what they can see. And so they have no faith whatsoever. They have completely missed the incredible gift that has been given by Christ, his presence with them in this world.

The sheep, on the other hand, also have failed to perceive the presence of Christ in those that they have encountered. The only difference is that for them, this failure to see the truth has not mattered. Whether they have seen it or not, they continue to act as if every person that crosses their path, every person for whom they can make a difference for the good, is an opportunity to serve the Lord that they love. They, lacking sight, have continued to walk forward in faith and in so doing they have embraced the reality of the kingdom of heaven because they are living in the reality of it.

Salvation is by grace through faith. What that means is that God saves us. God saves us from whatever we need saving from. Salvation comes in the form of healing, of hope, of redemption and forgiveness and, yes, it also comes in the form of defeating death which is the ultimate enemy. God gives all such salvation as a free gift with absolutely no strings attached. That’s what grace is. But we access that through faith. And faith, in that context, does not mean that we have to believe a bunch of things about God or about Jesus. Faith is not about intellectually accepting certain tenants of belief. It is about trusting in God’s grace and salvation and it is about especially exercising that trust even though we cannot see it.

And so, if you want to experience God’s salvation now, you need to start living in the reality of the kingdom of heaven. You need to start living in that reality even if you cannot see it and even if you cannot feel it. It is hard for us to do that, I know, because we are so dependent on our senses. But God’s reality is God’s reality and the only way we can learn to trust that is by exercising our faith. We live as if it is so, and in time we will begin to experience it. That is what those sheep were doing, they were living in the reality of the kingdom of heaven even though they could not see it.

And, yes, there is an ultimate reality of the kingdom that comes on the other side of death. I cannot pretend to be able to describe that reality or what we will experience there. And I do believe that our entrance into that reality is in the loving and gracious hands of God alone – the God who has opened our way to that reality in Jesus Christ. My personal belief is that God is willing to accept any level of trust to grant us access to that reality.

But I believe that this parable, the parable of the sheep and the goats, is about how we live in that reality as much as we possibly can in this present world. And the bottom line is that we live in that reality and we experience the real presence of Jesus Christ with us here and now when we live our lives like those sheep, depending not on what we can see but on the promises of God who has so graciously extended salvation to all of God’s children.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/ew62R5RBabw

Hespeler, 15 November 2020 © Scott McAndless
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Psalm 90, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30

I have a simple question to ask you today. What is a talent? When you read that passage that we read this morning, Jesus’ famous Parable of the Talents, and you read about the master giving to his servants a number of talents, what are you thinking about? I suspect that, a lot of the time, what people do think about is talents – I mean, the English word talents.

That’s understandable, of course. We are reading the Bible in an English translation and we come across a word that is an obvious English word that we use all the time, the word talents, and of course that is what we think of. So, I suspect in many of our imaginations, we are seeing this master go up to one of his slaves and saying, “Here you go, I am going to give to you five talents. Here is a talent for playing the guitar. Here is a talent for break dancing, a talent for baking cakes, for doing tricks with a yoyo and for doing this really weird thing with your eyes. There you go, five talents.” And then, in the same way the master gives two talents to do things to someone else, and one to another.

I think it’s kind of inevitable that we, as English speakers, are going to read that kind of thing into the story. And so you will often get people interpreting and applying this parable to the whole matter of how we use whatever talents, skills and gifts we have as we go through life and maybe especially in the life of the church. We lament people who have talent and waste it. And sometimes I’ve even heard people use this parable to shame people into volunteering to do work or serve on committees in our churches.

And if that is what that word means, that would pretty much have to be exactly how we would read and apply this parable. But here is the thing, the word that appears in the Gospel of Matthew in this parable does not mean that. There is absolutely no sense in which, when Jesus said talent, he was referring to what we would call a talent. That word, talent, in the gospel is simply a Greek word that has been transliterated as talent in English. It is actually a huge coincidence that the ancient word that Jesus used sounded exactly like our modern English word talent.

A talent, in the ancient world, was simply a unit of money. Nothing more and nothing less. Just like we have dimes and quarters and loonies, they had shekels and drachma and talents. So the very first thing we need to realize as we read this parable, is that Jesus is talking about money. Now, that does not mean that the way we often read this parable as applying to the question of how we make use of our talents, skills and abilities is totally illegitimate. I do believe that we will see that it can also apply to that. But any interpretation that we make of this parable really ought to take into account that it has to do with money.

But just knowing that a talent is money is really only the beginning of what you need to understand about this parable. You also need to know just how much money a talent was. If you were to read the footnote in your Bible, you will find a very helpful note. The footnote tells you that a talent was, in that world at that time, about the amount of money that an average worker could expect to earn over a period of 15 years. That is an enormous amount of money. Statistics Canada tells me that the average annual income for Canadians in 2019 was about $54,000. Some earned more, some earned less, but if you average it out it works out to about that.

So, if an average Canadian worker took all of their pay for 15 years, gross pay before taxes, how much money would they have? Just over $800,000. So basically, in this parable, Jesus was telling a story about a man who gave out solid metal coins to a bunch of his servants and each one was worth about $800,000.

And to one of his servants, apparently, this man gave five talents. How much money in today’s terms would that be? Just about $4 million. Now, let me ask you, when was the last time you had somebody come up to you and hand you a check for $4 million and say to you, “Take this money and do something with it?” I don’t know about you, but that has never happened to me.

And that also raises the question, who has that kind of money to throw around, to give to other people and tell them to do something with it? The man in this parable clearly represents the very upper crust of people in that society, the kind of people that the people listening to Jesus tell the story would probably never even meet. And, what’s more, I’m not even sure that it’s the kind of person that you would want to meet because look how one of his servants describes him: “Master,” he says, “I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” This is not a nice person!

He is obviously filthy rich, but how did he get rich? Is he one of those people that we often like to admire? Is he a self-made millionaire, someone who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, who worked hard and so, in some sense, seems very deserving of having such wealth? Clearly not. No, he got where he was by taking advantage of whoever he could as much as he possibly could. This is not even your John D. Rockefeller or Jeff Bezos kind of millionaire who, even if he is kind of greedy, at least is creating something that people in the community value. No, he is more of a Pablo Escobar, a man who is ruthlessly exploiting other people for the sole purpose of becoming obscenely wealthy.

So, once you understand what a talent is, you have to come to terms with the story that Jesus actually told. He told the story of an extremely wealthy and not very likable man – maybe a drug lord or a crime kingpin – who gives to his minions extraordinary amounts of money and expects them, without even bothering to pay them, to use that money and double it for the sole purpose of pleasing and enriching the boss.

And the punchline of the parable, the point that Jesus goes out of his way to underline, is this: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” Which is to say, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class disappears, which is basically a commentary on the way that the economy works when everything is run by the Pablo Escobars and the Jeff Bezoses of this world.

That is the story that Jesus told and the kind of amazing thing is that he seems to have told it with the expectation that by reflecting on that story we would somehow find in it the meaning of the kingdom of heaven.

I’ll tell you where I don’t think the kingdom of heaven is found in this parable. I don’t think it is found in the figure of the cruel and exploitative master. I know that people have often assumed that that master is supposed to represent God, but I’m sorry, the God that I have come to know through Jesus Christ, is the very opposite of “a harsh man, reaping where [he] did not sow, and gathering where [he] did not scatter seed.”

Nor do I think that the kingdom of heaven is to be found in a system where “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” That’s not the kingdom of heaven, that’s simply how this world generally works with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

So, if we can’t find the kingdom of heaven in those things, where can it be found? The only answer that I can suggest these days is to say that it is found in how we choose to live in this flawed world with its exploitative systems. A talent may be a unit of money but the story isn’t really about how to get more money. The Prophet Zephaniah says, “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath.” Money, in the ultimate reckoning, has no value, so I think it’s safe to assume that the parable is not really about how to make more money.

Jesus has this strange habit of looking at how people – even bad people or foolish people – behave within the flawed systems of this world and finding even in them something that can teach us about the kingdom of heaven and I think that that is exactly what he is doing in this parable.

With that understood, I believe that the thing that sets the slave who receives the single talent apart from those who receive more has to do with fear. He, knowing that the world is unpredictable, knowing that powerful people (like his master) are only out to exploit him, knowing that “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away,” he responds out of fear. He can only think of holding onto and hiding whatever he has and not taking any risks with it.

There is a place for careful saving. There is a place for acting prudently and not taking unnecessary risks. He is, in my estimation, not condemned for any of those things but for simply being overtaken and acting solely out of fear.

The other servants took a chance. Yes, they did run the risk of losing everything, but at least they were willing to try something. They had just as much reason to be afraid as the servant with the one talent, maybe even more because they had more to lose. And make no mistake, their master would have punished them severely for that! But, whatever else they may have done wrong, they had at least not allowed fear to be their master.

And that is the lesson that I think we should all take from this parable. Yes, there is a place for prudence and safety, but if all our actions are controlled by fear, we will never discover the true power of the kingdom of heaven. That is a lesson that I would like all of us to seek to apply in this week that we begin together.

We all encounter fear as we go through life. And yes, there are some situations that we will wisely avoid because we are afraid. For example, when your fear tells you not to jump out of the airplane with a chute that doesn’t work, a wise person listens. But fear should be more of a wise and faithful counsellor than a master. You need to have power over it so that it does not control you.

The kingdom of heaven is not built here on earth by those who always play it safe and never step out of their comfort zone. It will be built by those who take thoughtful risks. So this week, step out of that comfort zone of yours in some small way. Speak up in a situation where your fear tells you to keep silent. Make a contact that feels a bit risky to you. Put something on the line for the sake of something that really matters to you. And, yes, if you have a talent that God has given you that you have not used because you have been afraid of how people might react, by all means use that talent! We need to be willing to do those kinds of things both individually and as a church together. That is, I believe, how we will find the signs of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus was trying to show us by telling this parable.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/SgaDSPC3vqk

Hespeler, 8 November, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Amos 5:18-24, Psalm 70, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13

Do you remember the last time you got invited to a wedding? I realize, of course, that it’s been a while now since things like weddings have been celebrated in a normal way so you may have to cast your memory a long way back, but surely you remember.

And do you remember the part of the wedding when there were a bunch of virgins (I know that the word that is used in the New Revised Standard Version is “bridesmaids,” but the Gospel text actually only says virgins in the original language) – a bunch of virgins whose job it was to wait around at the bridegroom’s house for him to bring his new bride home and, well, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, you know what I mean? And they were supposed to greet the couple with bright lamps and happy smiles.

And do you know how it sometimes used to happen that the bride and the groom got delayed for hours with all the feasting and drinking and well-wishing and some of the virgins who hadn’t planned ahead and brought some extra oil for their lamps would run out and how funny it would be when they had to leave and go buy some more oil and they weren’t there when the couple actually arrived and ended up missing the whole party? Oh, remember how we used to laugh when that happened? Oh, foolish, foolish virgins!

What, you don’t remember that? Oh man, I’m glad. I thought I was losing it! I thought that this pandemic had been going on so long that I’d completely forgotten what a normal wedding looked like. So I am not the only one who is really struggling to make sense of that parable from the Gospel of Matthew about the ten virgins at the wedding? I mean, obviously Jesus was trying to make a point by telling that parable. But the wedding customs that he referred to – customs that all of the people in the crowd who heard him tell that parable could understand without thinking about it – are just plain weird to us.

So it seems to me that I have two options if I want to help people understand this parable of Jesus. I could spend a lot of time explaining ancient wedding customs so we could get the point. The only problem with that is that I can’t really say that I understand what the customs were. I’m not sure anybody can because the wedding customs of ancient peasants are not generally the kind of thing that get written down in ancient sources.

So I’m going to take another option. I’m going to try and see if I can retell Jesus’ parable within a system and some customs that we already understand.

It was election night and the ten voters settled down in front of their television to watch the election results. They were, all of them, first time voters. They had never voted in an election before but, in each case, something had made them resolve to actually participate in the process this year. So I guess that you might call them ten political virgins.

And five of these political virgins were completely naïve about the whole election process. They figured that this whole process of counting the ballots and declaring the winners couldn’t possibly take much time at all. If the local polling place closed at 9:00 p.m., then surely everything would be settled by, what, 9:05? Surely 9:30 or 10:00 on the outside! So these foolish voters didn’t exactly plan for a long night. A bag of chips and one can of coke was all they brought to get them through the night.

And, of course, they had brought their phones with which they expected to live tweet all of their reactions to the fast-breaking developments as they happened. And, just to make sure, they had charged their phones all the way up until the batteries were almost like three quarters full.

But the other five voters, even if it was their first time, were at least well versed in election processes and informed about how things were supposed to work. They knew about the intricacies of the electoral college. They had informed themselves and knew that a lot of people had voted differently this year and that it would likely take longer to count all of the mail in and the absentee ballots and even, in some places, the early votes.

They also knew that, though it might soon be very clear who had won the popular vote, that actually didn’t matter at all. So, having been warned that things might be close in some places and that it might take a very long time for anyone to know who actually won, they were ready to be in it for the long haul.

So what did they bring? What didn’t they bring? They had chips and cheezies and popcorn of all flavours. There were coffee and energy drinks to keep them going through the slow times. They had also brought some special drinks that they were going to use for a drinking game they had designed. You know, “Every time somebody mentions voter fraud, take a drink. Every time somebody mentions voter intimidation take another. Another for every lawsuit and so on.” And that, really, was only just the beginning. These people had brought so many supplies and such a wealth of snacks and comfort food that it was piled high upon the coffee table.

And as for their cell phones, they had not only charged them all the way to the top, they had brought dozens and dozens of power banks ready to plug in as needed. Oh, they had so much that it was almost ridiculous. And, yes, the foolish virgins did indeed laugh at these wise ones who had brought so much to sustain them. But the wise ones smiled and shrugged and said, “Let’s just wait and see who looks foolish when all is said and done.”

Now, I don’t mean to get into talking about how, exactly, these ten virgins chose to vote. That is their business. They had not all voted the same way. Let’s just say that about four and a half of them voted one way and five and a half the other. And let’s say that there were wise and foolish who voted both ways, for they voted for their own reasons and according to their own understanding. But let us also note that they all, in their virgin political innocence, believed in the importance of what they had participated in. They believed, in fact, that the future of their country, of democracy and perhaps of civilization itself was riding on the results that they were now waiting to hear. So they were understandably impatient to hear what the results would be.

And so they waited and watched. It was a long evening which was then followed by what seemed to be an even longer night and then a day that was simply interminable. And even then – after many a moment of hope followed by a new depth of despair, peppered with many bursts of anger and frustration – after all of that, it seemed that nothing was really resolved.

Eventually, the five foolish voters looked up. Their one bag of chips lay empty on the floor and their can of coke, long drained had been crumpled in disgust by someone who had been completed scandalized by something that some talking head had said on a panel. They had twitted and tweeted until their thumbs were blistered, but now their phones were languishing at 3% charge. They were hungry, exhausted and strung out. They were done.

And so the five foolish voters went to the five wise voters and said, “You guys have so much. You have snacks and drinks and you still have lots of full power banks. Maybe if you would just share a little bit from all of this bounty that you have, maybe we will be able to hold on until we learn the news that will save us all.” But the wise virgins said no. They said that if they were to give what they had prudently brought to carry themselves through until the results were known, there would not be enough for everybody.

Now this angered the foolish virgin voters more than anything that had happened yet. And they stood up and said, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore. Let’s just put an end to this right now. If we were just to stop counting the votes, this never-ending nightmare could be over.” And so they went out and went to the Supreme Court and argued with them saying, “It doesn’t matter if they haven’t finished counting the votes of people who voted in certain ways, we just can’t stand waiting anymore. Make it all stop and give us an answer now.” And so they argued and argued and argued and time continued to pass.

Meanwhile, back in front of the television, the wise virgin voters continued to wait for something to happen – something that would indicate to them that there was some reason to hope that their lives could mean more than a mere scramble to survive in a covid infected, largely dysfunctional world.

And then, at some point, while those foolish virgins were off making their arguments, it happened. What happened? Well, there were some developments towards identifying a winner, but it was not really that. There were some close races that began to resolve, but it was not that. No, it was rather that, as these things were going on, the wise voters began to realize that if the kingdom of heaven was going to come, it was going to have to come in them. And they went into an inner room and shut the door. They began to plan, whether or not they had the support of this party or that party, this leader or that one, they would see that kingdom come.

And while they were there in that inner room with the doors locked, the foolish voters who thought that the only thing that mattered was who won and who lost, returned. And they cried out to the wise virgins locked in the inner room and they asked to be part of what they were doing, but those in the inner room cried out and said, “Go away for you would not understand the commitment we have made.” And so the foolish voters remained in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and everyone is perpetually condemned to wait and think that maybe, in the next election, there will finally be salvation.

Jesus’ Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins is one of many he seems to have told to encourage people to wait and to be prepared. He says that, by reflecting on this story, we should be able to find out what the kingdom of heaven is. I love these parables, but I struggle to understand exactly what it is that we are supposed to be waiting for and what it actually means to be prepared.

It is hard enough, of course, when you have a parable like this one that makes cultural assumptions that we really know nothing about. But, in recent American political events, we saw a situation unroll where there was a great need for patience and anticipatory waiting in which we could perhaps finally understand how hard waiting can be.

So, my question is this. I think we have just lived through some events that do well illustrate the kind of waiting that Jesus was talking about in this parable. So where, in what we just lived through, is the kingdom of heaven? My personal opinion is that it is not to be found in this candidate or that one, in this party or that. But I still believe that there is a bridegroom and that, if we remain prepared in the right ways, he will come. And, as for time, it will take what it takes.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/8YO5VzDo34Q

Hespeler, 1 November, 2020 © Scott McAndless – Communion
Joshua 3:7-17, Psalm 107:1-3, 23-30, 33-37, 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, Matthew 23:1-12

For forty years, we are told, the children of Israel wandered around in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. That extraordinary period of time began with a famous water crossing – the dramatic battle of the Sea of Reeds. That crossing gets all the attention, the five star ratings and the multimillion dollar blockbusters made about it. Everyone loves that story. That may be why it is so easy for people to forget that there is another water crossing story at the end of those forty years that, in its own way, is just as remarkable: the crossing of the River Jordan.

And the mere fact that these two stories bookend the entire desert wandering saga invites us to compare and contrast them. They have much in common. Both stories are about the legitimation of leadership. The Reed Sea cements Moses’ reputation as perhaps the greatest leader of the people of Israel while the Jordan River crossing marks Joshua as his legitimate successor.

Both stories also happen to be about working through the deep-seated psychological fears of the people. The ancient people of Israel, you see, were terrified of the water. They didn’t swim. They thought that people who went out in ships were just plain crazy, as we see in the psalm that we read this morning. In their minds, the water was this place of terrifying mythological creatures like Rahab and Leviathan and they spoke of the deep as a place of terror. That’s why both of these stories, the Jordan River crossing and the Reed Sea crossing, became for them stories about how their God fought the creatures of their greatest nightmares for them.

So there are important connections between the two stories, but there is one key difference that attracts my attention today. It is just a small thing, but it marks a huge shift for the people. There are some variations in the accounts of the Reed Sea incident, but there is one thing that is quite clear in all of them. At the Sea of Reeds, the people merely had to stand and wait while God prepared the way for them. The water was removed for them and then they passed all the way through on dry ground. But the story is decidedly different when it comes time to cross the Jordan River.

In fact, this is such an important point that it is repeated twice. First, when God is giving the instructions, he says, “When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off.” And that is repeated again when it actually happens. “So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still.” So we are told twice that the people, and specifically the religious leaders of the people, had to step in and get their feet wet first before the way was cleared. I have learned to pay close attention when the Bible repeats things. There is usually something behind that.

And I know that that doesn’t really sound like much to us. I mean, what is the big deal if they had to get their feet wet before God dried up the river? But remember what I said about these people being aquaphobic. They lived with an irrational fear of large bodies of water. So maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal for you or me to get our feet wet, but it was for them. And someone may also note that, really, the Jordan River isn’t that big and imposing – that it is really not all that scary to cross. And, no, it isn’t really, but the story does make a point of telling us that the river was in flood that season and a flood – the idea that a river might overflow its set boundaries, the idea of water out of control – seems to have been something that they found particularly terrifying. So, yes, the crossing and the getting feet wet really was a big deal for them.

Think about this: in order for God to do this particular thing for them, apparently, they first had to confront their biggest, most elemental fear and then God would defeat that very thing that they were afraid of. And that is the one element that seems to have been lacking in the story of the Reed Sea.

How should we think about that? Why have these two stories been presented to us in this way so that we can’t help but notice this difference? You might think of this as just a little side note in the story of this ancient journey to the Promised Land, but I think there is something of greater symbolic importance going on here.

Perhaps we should think of the two stories as illustrations of how God prepared the people for two different but important phases in their lives as a nation. Maybe as the people entered into the time of wandering in the desert, they needed to learn something about God’s power and provision – that is the lesson that we certainly see them struggling through those wilderness years – and so maybe the Reed Sea crossing needed to be such a powerful demonstration of God’s raw power. But, honestly, I think that God only rarely works that way. And I think that the Jordan River crossing, which prepared the people for a new, more stable and settled time in their lives, may better represent how God often likes to work in our lives.

The lesson of the Jordan River seems to be simple enough. God can and will do amazing things for us. But God is also looking for something from us. God is looking for us to get our feet wet. This is not because God needs our help to get things done. Surely God is quite capable of blasting away any river that might be blocking our path. God laid the course of that river in the first place, surely God is still it’s master. But still God wants the people to do this one thing, to get their feet wet. If this is not for God’s sake, it must be for theirs.

They were about to enter into the Promised Land. And if they were going to keep that land and make it everything that God was calling for it to be, they needed to be all in. And so God was looking for something from them that indicated that they were committed and that they were going to put their trust in God as they lived in that land. And that seems to be what it meant to be willing to get their feet wet, it meant a willingness to face one of their most elemental fears – the monsters of the flood – with trust that God would make their way.

But, like I say, I don’t think that this is just a one-time thing. I think that this is exactly how God often likes to work in our lives. Yes, we look to God to remove the barriers that are lying before us. And God does remove those barriers, God delights in making the way for us. But God does also look for us to get our feet wet as an expression of our faith in God.

So, let’s think about this today not merely in terms of the actual geographical barrier that was the Jordan River. I would invite you to look at this story in terms of whatever barrier you may be facing in your own personal life, in the life of some group you belong to or in the life of somebody that you care about.

Say, for example, that you have a particular dream of something that you have felt called to do. You have wanted to do this thing, you have believed that a great deal of good will come from doing it, but there’s just been this one thing that’s always been in the way of doing it. And I don’t know what that barrier is. It could have something to do with money or maybe with somebody’s disapproval. It might be a practical barrier or maybe a mental block. But whatever it is, it is real and it is in the way. Whatever that barrier is, is between you and God, but you know that that barrier is there.

Well, I’m here to tell you today that God will remove that barrier. God specializes in removing barriers. But there is one thing, God would like you to get your feet wet. God would like you to take a step out in faith because taking that step is a way for you to express the faith that you have in God, the great barrier remover.

And I’m going to warn you, taking that step of faith might mean what it meant for the children of Israel. It might mean facing up to one of those deep elemental fears that you carry around inside you. Because here is the big secret: the barriers that we encounter in our lives, the barriers that most often prevent us from doing what we’re called to do, are usually strongly connected to our most secret and hidden fears.

In fact, I would challenge you to invite God to show you what it is that you really fear. Are you afraid of failure? Of other people judging you? Are you afraid of success, or change or rejection?

Take some time and examine those situations that you’ve lived through in your life – situations that you worked hardest to escape or avoid. Why did you do that; what were you afraid of? If you are like me, if you are like most people, you will discover a pattern and that pattern will likely point you towards your deepest fear. And I will guarantee you that, whatever barrier you are facing in your life right now, it is connected to that fear. God wants you to get your feet wet in that fear.

I want to say one thing to reassure you: God is not asking you to plunge in with both feet and start swimming. God is not seeking to overwhelm you with that thing that you most fear. God is ready to remove the Jordan River for you. He is only looking for you to get your feet wet. That is to say that he’s looking for some sign that you are willing to trust your God with the small things so that God can meet you in the big things.

God just loves small acts of faith. I think that if you just put yourself in a position where you step out into that place that just feels a little bit beyond your comfort zone, you will find that God will meet you with such incredible power that it will blast those barriers away for you. A small step of faith, getting your feet wet, will go a very long way.

So that is one way you can take this story to heart – as you face your own personal challenge. But of course, the story we read this morning was not about an individual crossing, but a community crossing. So I should also point out that you need to be open to applying this passage to the communities or groups that you belong to. Communities also have their times when they face their River Jordans – when there is a barrier that is preventing them from advancing to the next phase in their lives. It is true, for example, of churches and congregations. The good news is indeed that we have a God who specializes in removing those barriers. And, yes, in that process, God may ask us to get our feet wet and that will indeed often involve confronting what we, as a community, fear most.

It makes me wonder how, exactly, God may be asking the church to get its feet wet these days. I’ll bet it might include confronting our own reluctance to actually talk openly and honestly about deep matters of faith. It might also have something to do with our fear of change. Whatever it is, though, it is for our own blessing and benefit that God is asking us to get our feet wet because God is ready to blast some barriers away.

Watch the sermon video here

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/0Jr-HWGAgUo

Hespeler, 18 October, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Exodus 33:12-23, Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1, Matthew 22:15-22

The children of Israel had been at Mount Sinai for a very long time. According to the Book of Numbers, they were camped near the mountain for 11 months and five days. And what a year (or nearly a year) that had been! It had not all been good, of course. I mean, nobody wanted to talk about the whole golden calf incident. But it was also a place where God had been present for them like never before. The thunder and lightening had flashed from the mountain top, and many swore that they had heard a heavenly voice booming from the dark clouds. There the elders of the people had gone up the slopes of the mountain to eat a covenant meal with Yahweh, Godself.

But most of all, at Sinai, the law code that would be central to the life and identity of the people of Israel had been given to them. Down those slopes Moses had carried the two tablets upon which had been inscribed the Ten Commandments – the centrepiece of a whole body of law that was meant to guide the people into their future.

But now, apparently, it was time to leave. All of the laws and lessons of Sinai were about to be put to the test in the real world. And it is one thing to talk about such matters in theory; it is quite another to deal with living them out in cold hard reality. So can you really blame Moses for the way we see him talking at the beginning of our reading this morning?

“If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here,”Moses pleads. “For how shall it be known that I have found favour in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us?” Moses seems genuinely afraid. They are about to head off towards something new. Everything they have learned at this mountain is about to be put to the test. And Moses knows that they’re not going to make it unless this God they’ve come to know at this mountain is going to be with them.

And I’ve got to say that I certainly understand where Moses is coming from here. Anytime you do that – anytime you begin to break away from that place where you have learned so much and which has been so formative to your identity and start to head out into something new, it is natural to seek that kind of reassurance.

I remember, for example, the first summer when I didn’t go to Glen Mohr Camp. Glen Mohr is a Presbyterian Church camp that is up in Muskoka. Today it’s part of a larger group of camps collectively known as Camp Cairn. And, for so many years of my life, Glen Mohr was a huge part of my summer. First as a camper and later on as staff, I learned so much there. It cemented my Christian identity and a whole lot of my personal identity. And I remember the year when I was basically too old to go anymore. It was like I was missing something of myself. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I was fine, but I did feel lost for a time. I was looking for some reassurance.

In some ways it feels as if we are in a time like that in the church today. The Christian church has enjoyed a long and stable history in Western society. Mainline churches like the Presbyterian Church in Canada have learned so much about what it is to live as Christians within this society. We have written endless books on theology and Christian life which are classics and contain so much truth. And of course, we’ve developed these wonderful traditions that we’ve handed down through the decades.

But we seem to be leaving that time of stable learning. Things are changing rapidly for the church, not just because of covid (though there is no doubt that that presents a huge challenge) but also simply because of the rapid change of the society in which we find ourselves. It increasingly feels as if we are heading out into uncharted territory, into a place where we’re going to have to put all of these lessons to work in the midst of the challenges of the real world and it is not going to be easy!

And so I think that we would say, along with Moses, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.” And the good news I have to share with you today is that God was responsive to Moses’ request and so, I believe, God will be responsive to ours. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favour in my sight, and I know you by name.’” And God’s promises are reliable. Moses knew that, and we can know it too.

And yet, Moses knew that there was something more that he needed. He needed to know what would provide for him the reassurance of that presence as they moved on from there. He needed something big, something unmistakable. “Show me your glory, I pray,” he cried.

Now, that is what I call a big ask. The glory of the Lord is generally described in scripture as this unmistakable sign of God’s presence. In a vision, the prophet Ezekiel describes the glory of the Lord as “a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually, and in the middle of the fire, something like gleaming amber.”

Moses was clearly looking for something impressive and unmistakable. That is what we often look for as well, thinking that, such open displays from God would make it so much easier to follow God. And I believe that God understands our desire for that, but knows that things really do not work like that. “You cannot see my face;” God says, “for no one shall see me and live.”

Now, I can’t really claim that I understand this idea that humans can’t stand to see the face of God. It seems that it would be so wonderful to just have all of the answers and all of the certainty about life the universe and everything simply handed to us on a silver platter so that we never had to doubt it one bit. But I guess that the problem is that we humans don’t really handle such certainty very well. I have noticed that people who are absolutely certain about something that they believe seem to be the ones who are most likely to hurt or abuse others.

I don’t think that we, as human beings were really designed to have all the answers because we thrive in the quest to understand and to interpret the world around us. If we just knew the absolute truth, yes, I think there is a real sense in which we simply couldn’t handle it. So God says no, I’m not going to just lay it all out there for you in a way that settles everything. But God does say what he will do for Moses, and I think it is what God will also do for us.

“I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” So, God promises that he will tell Moses (and us) his name. What does that mean? It obviously means more than what you usually mean by telling somebody else what your name is. The name that God is promising to tell Moses – the name that is translated as “the Lord” is the Hebrew word Yahweh. This was considered to be the true and powerful name of God – two syllables that were considered to be so holy that a Jew would not even dare to pronounce them aloud.

But, from what it says in this passage, it is clear that this holy name was like the perfect expression of the character of God and particularly of God’s grace. By proclaiming his name, God is declaring to Moses that he is going to be gracious and merciful in his dealings with the people – not because anyone is forcing God to do that, but because that is simply what God’s true nature is.

And I think that this is something that we need to hold onto as we head out into the unknown. We may be uncertain about many things in such times, but there is one thing that we can just know. We can know that we can trust in God’s never-failing love to be there for us when we need it most because that is just who God is.

Next God says this to Moses. “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.” So here we see that not only God’s grace but also God’s glory are at work in this world, but Moses is strangely sheltered from seeing it. This is something that God does with care, as if Moses is being protected from seeing something by God’s own hand.

I believe that this reflects the simple fact that we often do not see God at work in this world while that work is ongoing. You see, when God is at work, the result can often be rather disruptive. God’s calls for justice, for example, can often lead to reactions like protests and civil disobedience. These are activities that are, in their very nature, designed to stir up chaos and make things seem very uncomfortable. This is what is sometimes necessary to bring about genuine change. But chaos and disorder have the effect of making people feel bad or nervous or upset. Nobody likes to have their lives disturbed by such things!

And this can be exactly why we often fail to recognize that God is actually at work in the world. We become focussed on the things that are making us feel uneasy and we find it so difficult to look at the bigger picture of what may really be going on. This passage in Exodus suggests to me that this might just be by design – that God is covering us over with his hand at such times to spare us the difficult transitions. For this or whatever reason, it can be particularly difficult for us to perceive the great works that God performs while they are happening. That is why God offers one more reassurance to Moses.

Once God has passed Moses by as he stands in the cleft in the rock, God promises a very special glimpse: “Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.” Now what exactly does that mean. It means that we may not always understand exactly what God is doing in this world while that work is ongoing, but we will be able to look back afterward and realize that, yes, God has indeed passed this way.

This is indeed how God most commonly reveals God’s presence with us. We will often only see where and how God has been at work after the events have passed and we can look back on them and see what has happened and what the impact of those things might be.

I think that this is a particular comfort right now with everything that is going on. As we contemplate the deadly impact of this virus, as we look at the political chaos that continually overflows in the United States, as we watch meaningful and yet disruptive protests in the streets, it is easy to get discouraged and to think that everything is only spiraling out of control and getting worse and worse.

But I suspect that the feelings of hopelessness we may have in such times are actually there because God is hiding us within a cleft in the rock. The day will come and it will come soon when what God has been working on quietly in the dark will be brought to light and the hope that results will be for all of us. We will be able to look back on these very days and recognize exactly what God has been doing. And what God does is good and bright and life affirming.

It is hard to move forward at a time like this. Everything seems so uncertain and there are no guarantees. I hope you will take comfort in knowing that sometime soon, you will be able to understand by looking back, exactly what the name of the Lord is, the one who is gracious and merciful because that is God’s very nature.

Read or watch the sermon here