Author: Scott McAndless

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

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/6v3byk04ivA

Hespeler, 4 October, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:7-15, Philippians 3:4b-14, Matthew 21:33-46 (Click to read passages)

In three of our readings today – in Isaiah, Psalms and the Gospel of Matthew we find the very same very powerful image being used. The nation and people of Israel are described as a vineyard that has been intentionally planted and maintained by a very careful vintner.

Vineyards are a rather interesting kind of farm. Grapes themselves are not really all that hard to grow. They grow wild in many climates and the vines spread easily and spontaneously. Growing good grapes – and especially grapes that make good wine – is another matter. For that you have to have just the right strain, the right soil and even small variations in the microclimate can make or break your batch.

So, the vintner in our Bible passages is very careful indeed, selecting just the right vine – even importing it from Egypt at great personal cost. He carefully roots all of the other strains of grapes out of his garden so that they will not contaminate his precious vine and, of course, he protects his investment by building walls to keep out invasive foragers and a watchtower to guard against bigger threats. This is all to show how valued the vineyard is to the vintner – how much he is looking forward to tasting his excellent vintage.

You can understand, therefore, why the people of Israel liked to think of themselves as a vineyard. It made them feel valued and protected. So, when the Prophet Isaiah and the psalmist and Jesus of Nazareth pulled out this image, I am quite sure that the people in the crowd smiled because they thought that was a pretty nice way to describe themselves.

Of course, we should probably note that it was not an image without its problems. It is one thing to cultivate grapes by carefully eliminating variant strains, but when you do that with a nation and with a people, that is called eugenics. And it’s often a short trip from eugenics to ethnic cleansing and genocide. When, according to the Book of Joshua, God brought the people of Israel from Egypt and “planted” them in the Promised Land, driving out the nations to plant that vine is described in terms of the people of Israel slaughtering whole cities and tribes. But, of course, the people didn’t really like to dwell on that part of the story but rather on that sense of security and importance that they gained from living inside what felt like a well built and protected vineyard.

And I think that we as Canadians can definitely understand that sentiment. In fact, it is kind of the same story that we have told ourselves for so long. We are like a vine that God has brought to live in this place. I know that we didn’t all come from the same place. Some, however many generations ago, were transplanted from England, Scotland or Ireland. Many were transplanted from Germany, the Netherlands or from many places far beyond. And, yes, that transplanting involved the displacement of peoples and nations that were here before and a lot of that went very poorly for the people who were displaced.

But, of course, we don’t really like to dwell on that part of the story because we know that we have enjoyed so many blessings in this place. It has been, for us, like a well-protected vineyard with sturdy walls surrounding us from danger and a high watchtower to guard our safety. We have prospered in this land and, in that prosperity, we have been able to spread out and fill the land from sea to sea to another sea in the north. And we have been grateful for that.

Oh yes, we do like to do a fair bit of complaining. We complain against this government or that one. We love to complain about our neighbours in the vineyard to the south and how they have to make everything about them. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t complain sometimes. But we have felt truly blessed and grateful to be able to live in this wonderful vineyard.

That is where all three of our readings start this morning, with a well protected and prosperous vineyard. But actually, the well protected and prosperous vineyard is not the actual topic of any of these readings. In all three cases, we see the wall broken down and strangers coming in and laying ruin to the vineyard. We see the guard tower abandoned so that enemies might have a free hand. You see, all of these passages were written in the aftermath of national catastrophes – three different catastrophes as a matter of fact because these kinds of things keep happening throughout history.

The passage in Isaiah was written after an Assyrian invasion, the psalm was likely written after a Babylonian destruction and the gospel passage was written after the Romans destroyed the nation and city of Jerusalem. So these were three very different disasters but they sought to understand and interpret them with this powerful image of a broken down and wasted vineyard.

It is not a coincidence that we were given these three readings this morning. I don’t think that, if we had had these readings a year ago, we would have heard them in quite the same way. For we had no reason to think that the walls of our vineyard and the protections we thought we had would be broken down. We saw no real reason to think that our long-term prosperity would, in any way, be interrupted.

But today I don’t think I really have to tell you why all kinds of people are not feeling as if this vineyard is so safe and prosperous anymore. The amazing thing is that it really didn’t seem to take all that much to make it feel like that. It took something really small, a virus so tiny that you need a very powerful microscope even to see it. It took little bit of political chaos in the vineyard to the south of us as a number of political norms seem to be fading away.

We are at our own wasted vineyard moment and I believe that God has sent us these three passages today to help us deal with where we are right now. And I know that some people might say to me that I shouldn’t sound defeatist here and imagine that our present problems are going to be permanent. And I agree, I think that it is important to remember that there is going to come a day when a lot of these present troubles are forgotten. But, at the same time, I do believe that there is a need to understand where we are right now and to learn whatever lessons God may have for us in this moment.

And there are lessons to be learned. In fact, in each of our readings this morning I see a different lesson. First of all, we have the psalm this morning. And the interesting thing about the psalm is that it doesn’t actually call for the people to do anything in response to the disaster. Psalm 80 is what we call a psalm of lament. It is basically one long complaint in which the people tell God all the ways that they feel disappointed and let down by what has happened.

But this is actually, I think, an important and necessary response in a tragedy. When things go wrong, I think we often don’t give ourselves the permission we need to just say how bad it is, to complain and tell the honest truth about how we are feeling. I realize that it can be dangerous to let those kind of emotions out sometimes and that there are times when it’s just not appropriate and people with whom we just can’t do it, but we still need to give an outlet to these feelings. One thing that this Psalm is telling us is that it is okay to do that with God. No matter what you may be feeling about the current crises, know that you can take it to the Lord in prayer. Your anger, your fear, your exasperation will be met by the abundant grace of God.

So that is one response, just taking your emotions to God. But our reading from Isaiah takes us to another conclusion, tells us that God is looking for another response from us as well. The prophecy from Isaiah concludes like this: “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”

That lays before us a significant challenge. We have a God who is deeply committed to justice – to seeing a society where there is respect and opportunity for every person, no matter who they may be. God is particularly committed to finding such justice for the poorest and most marginalized in our society. So, as people of faith, we are constantly called to be at work for such justice in this world. I believe that this call for justice is particularly highlighted in this passage in Isaiah because, when we are going through times like this – when we are feeling like our nice secure and stable vineyard has been broken down and we’re in crisis mode, we often assume that this is not the time to work on the bigger issues of societal justice – we’re kind of concentrating on just surviving.

But Isaiah reminds us that this is the very time when such efforts are more important than ever. There is a certain phenomenon that comes into play in situations like this. It is called disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein called it the shock doctrine. Basically, there are people who see any sort of disaster or breakdown in society as an incredible opportunity to enrich themselves.

And we have absolutely seen that in this present crisis as the richest people in North America have seen their wealth grow remarkably during this time even as those who are on the lower end of the economic scale have found themselves slipping even further. While we have all been distracted dealing with the crisis, economic disparity has only grown. So, yes, this is the time to be thinking about and working towards justice for everyone and that’s going to have to include a more just economic system, addressing racial inequalities and a whole host of other issues. This, Isaiah makes it clear, is part of the important work we must be doing when the vineyard is in crisis.

So we have one response in the psalm, another in the prophet Isaiah, and then we come to the parable of the vineyard in the Gospel of Matthew. And, I’m going to warn you, this is a very difficult parable to understand and interpret. I could probably spend many sermons trying to understand exactly what Jesus was trying to communicate in it. It’s a troubling parable in many ways. And I think it’s actually a key to understanding the whole approach taken by the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. So I’m not really going to try and come up with a definitive application of this parable to the situation we find ourselves in today.

What I’m going to do is pick out one element that I definitely think applies to the situation where we find ourselves. The key moment in this parable comes, I think, with the appearance of the landowner’s son. “Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”

And it is pretty clear how we are intended to read that part of the parable. The son seems intended to be 2a reference to Jesus himself – the eternal Son sent from the Father above. And the great tragedy in this story seems to be a failure to recognize what God has done in sending his son. Whatever has gone before, whatever justification the tenants may have had for failing to pay their rents, this is when it all crosses the line – when they fail to recognize that God has somehow stepped into their story.

Does that have an application to the particular moment in which we find ourselves today in this broken vineyard? I think it does. Whatever else we do during this time, we need to keep ourselves open to what it is that God is about to do in this world. We need to believe that God is alive and at work, perhaps surprising ways and, when we recognize what God is doing, we need to be ready to get on board.

My friends, this vineyard of ours is presently in a poor state and that is troubling. We are not the first to find ourselves in such a situation nor shall we be the last. The Bible tells us that, when such situations arise, we can do well if we follow the examples that we find in these scriptures. Be open and honest with God about how you’re feeling through all of this. Be ready, especially at times like this, to stand up for what is just and right in our society. And keep your eyes open for the movement of God within our world. It will happen and, when it does, you’re going to want to be part of it. It is in this last point that I think we ought to be putting our greatest hope.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/1MGbMoV-HVY

Hespeler, 27 September 2020 © Scott McAndless
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32, Psalm 25:1-9, Philippians 2:1-13, Matthew 21:23-32

Like you, I am sure, when I was growing up I just loved my mother’s cooking. And one of my favorite things that she made was her rhubarb pie. It was just perfect. Sweet and tasty with a perfect crust on the bottom and the light lattice crust on the top. I loved it.

And my mother tells a story. I have no idea personally whether this story is true or not because I do not recall it, but the story that she tells goes like this. The first time I tried rhubarb pie was at somebody else’s house and apparently I just went to town on my piece of pie and I ate up all the filling off of the crust. The story goes that I then went to the host and asked if I could have some more rhubarb (or I probably pronounced it bubarb) – if I could have some more bubarb on my wee board.

Like I say, I don’t remember anything about that, but the one part that rings true is that I really did like rhubarb pie – still do today. And probably the first time I ever helped out in the garden was when I got recruited to pick rhubarb. I used to love that too and I especially liked the part when you cut the leaf off from the stalk sort of like you were an executioner cutting heads off of criminals.

And I remember one day, when I was picking rhubarb with my dad and he told me that, when he was little, he used to like to go out into the rhubarb patch, grab a stalk and just start eating it raw. And I just wanted to say one thing here today as a kind of public service announcement: I do not suggest that you try that.

There is a reason why rhubarb pie has so much sugar in it; rhubarb is, in fact, one of the sourest foods on the planet. And maybe not for my dad, but for most mortals the reaction to eating anything that sour is quite powerful. I understand that science doesn’t even have an explanation for how we react to sour foods, but the reaction is quite uncontrollable as we purse our lips and set our teeth on edge and make the strangest of faces. If you do not know what to expect, chowing down on a raw piece of rhubarb will really shock you.

And I was thinking about eating raw rhubarb while I was reading our Old Testament passage for this morning. In it, the prophet Ezekiel talks about a proverb that he was hearing among the people of his time. It was, to use the vocabulary of our own time, a meme that had gone viral and everyone was saying it. “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel,” Ezekiel asks, “‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’?”

Rhubarb, of course, does not grow natively in the Ancient Near East, but that doesn’t mean that the Israelites did not have experience with sour foods. And they probably all had the experience at some point in their lives of biting into some unripe fruit, like a grape, and having that reaction that is indeed common to all humanity.

But the proverb did not actually have anything to do with unripe fruit. Apparently, this proverb became so popular because it was a way for people to complain about a situation that they thought was very unfair. Ezekiel was a prophet during the time of the Babylonian invasion and exile. During his times, the Kingdom of Judah was destroyed by an invading Babylonian army and most of the leading citizens were carried off into a horrible exile. These were bad times, the kind of times that you would not wish upon your worst enemies. And so people were understandably upset to have to live through all of this. And they also naturally asked why this had happened.

And the main explanation that was offered by many people – and it is, by the way, an explanation you can also find in the Bible itself – was that it was not really the fault of the people of Ezekiel’s generation. They had actually done pretty well. They had reformed the nation, shut down sanctuaries to other gods and pledged to serve only Yahweh, the God of Israel. So God wasn’t angry with them.

God, the explanation went, was actually angry at the people of previous generations who had done bad things and served strange gods. The previous generations had eaten the sour fruit, yet it seemed as if the present generation was paying the price for that, their mouths puckered and their teeth on edge.

Now, the prophet Ezekiel brings all of this up with the people of Israel to tell them that they really shouldn’t be using this proverb, that they really don’t understand what’s actually going on. And we will, in a moment, get into how Ezekiel wants them to see things differently. But, first I want to stop and acknowledge that I have a certain amount of sympathy for the people who are saying this because we have all been there, haven’t we?

I mean, things go wrong in this world. That’s just a basic reality of life. Tragedy, disappointment and failure have happened again and again from the beginning of history and will continue to happen long after you and I are gone. And the impulse that we see in this passage is an impulse that we all have. We want to find someone to blame when things go wrong because that seems to make sense of it all. And, of course, we don’t want to put the blame on ourselves. Often those who have gone before us can make for convenient scapegoats.

For one thing, this is often just basic operating procedure when it comes to political leaders. Governments are generally only too happy to take all of the credit for the good things that happened while they are in power. If the stock market is up and unemployment is down, they will happily claim credit for that. But we have all heard how they react when things go wrong. “Oh, we had to make these unpopular cuts because of the out of control spending of the previous government,” they’ll say, or, “This bad economy is thanks to our predecessors’ bad trade deals.”

Sometimes they will even do that when everyone knows how utterly ridiculous it is, like, for example, “The previous administration is to blame for this covid-19 crisis because they should have come up with test for this virus that didn’t yet exist while they were in office.” The amazing thing is that it sometimes seems that the more extreme you get with these kinds of complaints, the more people just nod their heads and go along with it.

But I’m not just talking about how this kind of scapegoating is used in politics. It is something that we all do at least sometimes. When it comes to the environment, we blame the previous generation for our pollution problems and for global warming. When it comes to indigenous issues in Canada, we certainly blame so much on the decisions that were made in the past. On an individual level, children are often very quick to blame their parents for everything they feel that they lack. And on a generational level, the millennial generation is only too happy to blame the baby boomers for, well, just about everything.

And the thing is that this is not all without some merit. I mean, there is simply no denying that the events, policies and actions of the past do have an impact on the present. And, what’s more, we can’t just ignore the impact of the past events. We have seen that, for example, in Canada as we tried to deal with indigenous issues.

When the Government of Canada and organizations like the Presbyterian Church in Canada put out a formal apology for the residential school system, recognizing that the system had done generational damage to indigenous communities as well as visiting abuse of many kinds upon individual indigenous persons, a lot of people didn’t quite know what to do with that. How could we apologize for something that we ourselves had not done but that had mostly been done by our ancestors? That is a difficult question, but I think we have seen that willingly acknowledging that difficult past is a necessary part of healing and moving into a better future. So, I would not just dismiss the idea that the people before us could have eaten sour rhubarb and we are the ones who have to deal with puc2kered lips and teeth set on edge.

But Ezekiel does offer us a caution. “As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel.” That doesn’t mean that what happened in the past is meaningless or that we shouldn’t think of the consequences, but I think it does mean that we should not be using the past as an excuse. Sometimes we do that. Because, of course, what happened in the past cannot be changed, we do sometimes let it determine our present and our future. But no, Ezekiel says, we are not merely the victims of the past.

“Know that all lives are mine;” God continues through the voice of Ezekiel,“the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die.” So ultimately everyone can only answer for their own life, their own choices, their own actions. And I realize that that phrase, “it is only the person who sins that shall die,” is a little bit brutal. What it actually means is that God does take our failings and shortcomings seriously. And that death penalty thing, God has demonstrated to us through Jesus, God’s desire to forgo such deadly punishment. But none of that changes the responsibility we carry for our own actions.

And I think that all of this really matters for us today because we are still going around and saying that our ancestors ate sour grapes and that we have had our teeth set on edge. We have allowed the mistakes and missteps of the past to deform our present. The big assumptions of our ancestors – the doctrine of discovery that, our ancestors felt, gave them full right to rule over indigenous peoples, the white supremacist assumptions that were almost invisibly woven into the very fabric of so much of Western society, the exploitation of the natural environment that became the very basis of our entire economy – all of these things are a part of our past and nothing can ever change that.

But one key thing that Ezekiel was saying is that we are not prisoners of our past. We cannot change what our forbearers did, but we can take responsibility for today. We should try and make the changes that we can and, yes, we will no doubt fail and fall short, but what we build will be our responsibility.

And Ezekiel offers us one more promise that we can take comfort in. “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and” God promises through the prophet, you can “get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!” All of us, you see, carry around burdens from the past. Some of these are for mistakes, errors, sins and transgressions that we ourselves have committed or sometimes they really have been passed down to us by those who, in some sense, have gone before us. But the grace of God means this: whatever that past may be, you are not defined by it. Your life belongs to God and God gives you the freedom to establish a new heart, a new spirit, by who you choose to be today. That is the good news.

And if you want to munch on raw rhubarb, go ahead - the pursed lips and teeth on edge will just be your own.

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/IGSAvPsV5o0

Hespeler, 20 September 2020 © Scott McAndless
Exodus 16:2-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45, Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16

Jesus’ Parable of the Workers in the Field is one that everybody seems to think they know what it means. The landowner, people confidently explain, represents God and we are the workers in some sense. The money paid to the workers represents what God gives to us, whether it’s salvation or some other spiritual gift. That’s what the parable means, we say, and then we go on to interpret and apply the parable to our lives within that particular matrix.

But what if that is wrong? I mean, Jesus never says that that is how we’re supposed to read the parable. What he says is, “For the kingdom of heaven is like…” and then explains the whole scenario. It is up to us to figure out how what happens in the story is like the kingdom of God. Well, I’ve got to tell you that some of the recent events that we have lived through have made me look at this particular parable in a new light. I have a new perspective on it. What if we were meant to find the kingdom someplace else in this story?

For the kingdom of heaven is like some business owners who went out early in the morning to hire labourers to work in their grocery stores. You see, they had a bit of a problem. There was a crisis going on in society in the form of a deadly illness. Everything was getting shut down to prevent transmission and the people had been given instructions for their own safety not to go out unless it was absolutely essential. But these businesses dealt in essential things so the owners had an extraordinary opportunity. If only they could manage to get what they had out to the people, they could make lots of money!

But they needed people to work in their stores to stock the shelves, to collect the money and to keep all of the customers (who were in a bit of a fragile state) happy. And so they started with the workers that they had and they said to them, “Go out and do the work you have always done because you should be grateful to work when other people don’t even have jobs. We will pay you what we have always contracted with you to pay.

And, let me tell you, over the following weeks those business owners just cleaned up! People flooded into their stores and many of them bought up insane quantities of their products. People were literally fighting with each other to pay exorbitant prices to buy more toilet paper than they would probably need for the next year! And, as the profits came rolling in, the owners were laughing all the way to the bank.

But they had a problem. They couldn’t do any of this without the labourers who worked in their stores. In fact, in order to not miss out on even more profits, they needed more people to keep functioning and to fill a growing backlog of online orders. But the problem was that their message that people should be grateful to work when others didn’t even have jobs wasn’t quite working for them anymore.

The workers were noticing things. They were noticing, for example, that some people – people who were not considered to be essential workers – were actually being paid to stay home and keep the community safe from the virus. And they were being given an amount of money that was considered to be enough to live on. You might call it a basic income. And those people were being paid more or less the same as these essential workers. And, what’s more, the labourers were becoming more and more aware that they were dealing with the actual dangers of working at such a time while the owners weren’t risking much of anything while they got all these profits. So you can imagine that some of them were not quite feeling as if they should just be grateful to be paid anything.

And so the owners said, “Let us make sure that everyone knows that these labourers of ours are being heroic. Let us thank them and praise them. And the workers did appreciate being appreciated and, for a time, this made it easier to retain workers and even hire some new ones so that the profits could be protected.

But still it was not enough and the owners started to realize that there was more profit out there that they could seize if only they managed to maintain and expand their operations. And for that they needed to maintain and even expand their workforce. But this was a very delicate thing because they did not want to let the workers know that they needed them. They liked it far more when the workers felt like they were depending on the owners to give them a basic income – to give them what they needed to survive.

And so they came up with a plan. They would pay all of their workers more money – pay a whole extra $2 an hour. But they would be very clear in their messaging. This was hazard pay. It was hero pay and it was only because of the truly extraordinary risks of the situation. No, it was not because the owners needed the workers. It was because they were kind and generous. And they said, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

And so, for a while, the workers bore the burden of the difficult days of the pandemic and the scorching heat of the fear and anxiety that came with it until finally came the day when it was over.

Now, what was over? It wasn’t the crisis. The disease still raged on and the dangers of it spreading still existed. But suddenly, at some point, something changed. It was as if someone flicked off a switch. The owners decided that, though the dangers still existed, the danger pay was no longer necessary.

You see, they understood. They understood that if they gave it to their labourers for too long, those labourers would stop seeing it as a special expression of generosity and start seeing it as something they had earned. They couldn’t have that. So, though profits were still up thanks to the ongoing emergency and the hard work of the labourers, the emergency pay was stopped.

At the same time, it was like the very idea of the heroism of the front line workers grew weaker and growing numbers of people were only to2o happy to take out their frustrations for how bad things were upon them – especially on those who asked them to behave in responsible ways and do things like wear masks. It seemed that the labourers in the grocery stores ended up more or less where they had been at the beginning.

Now this is the question I would like to ask you, where in this story are we supposed to find the kingdom of heaven?

The parable of the labourers in the field is a story that is completely steeped in the historical circumstances in which Jesus lived. He lived in an agricultural society that had been founded with the ideal that every Israelite man should have a piece of land for the support of his own family. But, by the time Jesus came along, that was no longer the case. The land had been increasingly consolidated into the hands of a few wealthy landowners and huge numbers of people had been dispossessed of their lands.

This created a strange kind of dependence. The landowners had no means to gather all of the produce of their land. That’s why the landowner in Jesus story has a real problem. He has a field full of crops, but he desperately needs labourers to gather it for him, otherwise he will lose it all. So, the landowners needed the labourers.

But the system was set up in such a way as to make sure that it was the labourers who were forced to be dependent on the landowners. Because they had no security, their only hope for survival was to be hired by a landowner. To enhance this dependency, the landowners didn’t offer stable employment. They would only hire people on a day-to-day basis. For one day’s hard work, a landless labourer would be paid one denarius. The New Revised Standard Version that we read from today translates “one denarius” as “the usual daily wage” because that was the amount of money that was considered adequate for day-to-day survival.

And I have long wondered about why Jesus would tell this parable about a landowner who desperately needed workers to pick his crops before they rotted on the vine but foolishly did not hire enough workers at the beginning of the day to get the job done (presumably because he was cheap and trying to save a few denarii). He was forced to hire more and more workers as the day went on just to get the job done.

I suspect that Jesus thought it was only fair that people be paid enough money to live on – the usual daily wage. Jesus may have recognized that landowner thought that he was being generous by choosing to pay all the workers the full amount at the end of the day, but I can’t help but wonder whether he might have been saying something important about who was really dependent on the generosity of whom.

So I do take out this parable of Jesus from time to time and puzzle over it trying to better understand where Jesus was expecting people to find the kingdom of heaven in it. The more I think about it, the less I think that the landowner is supposed to represent God – he seems, in fact, to be a perfect representation of how the world worked back then and, in many ways, of how it still works today.

Of course, recent events have given me a brand new perspective on this ancient parable. We have been on a wild ride over the last few months in our thinking about workers who do jobs that have traditionally had low wages. At first, it was as if we suddenly realized that these workers, who had always been there and to whom we had given so little thought, were actually essential to our lives and well-being. We began to celebrate them and praise them. And, yes, here in Ontario there were some employers who willingly gave them that extra boost in pay to represent just how important we were all saying they were.

But, five or six months later, I’ve got to ask, have we really learned anything from this whole experience? It’s kind of stunning to see how quickly and how willingly we have gone back to old attitudes. It is discouraging to see any extra pay or benefits so quickly taken back. It is discouraging to hear all of the stories of grocery workers and other frontline workers putting up with abuse and disrespect. And I get that people are tired of this and that their frustration and anger is coming out, but this is just not right.

I honestly do not know exactly where Jesus expected us to find the kingdom of heaven in this story that he told. I do not know exactly where he expects us to find the kingdom of heaven in the events of our own time. But I do know this, his expectation of us is that we never cease to seek for it. Maybe the kingdom of heaven will be discovered when we suddenly wake up, open our eyes and say that this is not right, that the people who own the companies and the stocks need the people who do the labour more than they realize, that all people need to be treated with respect and all sorts of work should be valued.

I think Jesus told that story to make the people in the crowd realize just how twisted the whole system was, how things could be different and maybe should be different and he might have been saying that, when we realize that, that will be when we actually discover the kingdom of God in this parable.