Author: Scott McAndless

Sermon video:

https://youtu.be/4Pic7qETS78

Hespeler, 21 June, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1-11, Matthew 10:24-39

The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. Why, when he paused to think of it for even a moment, it practically made him sick to his stomach. He hadn’t been able to sleep all night thinking about it and early in the morning, while it was still dark, he finally gave up even trying and got out of bed.

He went to the kitchen tent. The servants, as they were supposed to be, were already at work on the day’s baking and he quickly grabbed the first loaf out of the oven. It was warm and had a firm crust – made with the better flour that would normally be reserved for Sarah and him and for their honoured guests, but he thought that, maybe, this time he could make an exception. He thrust the bread in his bag. Then he took a water skin – a good one that he was sure would not leak – and went to fill it from the well.

Abraham’s African slaves lived in a group of tents a little separate from the main camp. He did not visit that neighbourhood often. And as he walked between the tents, you could not help but notice that many of them were shabby. The skins were all patched. They were, no doubt, quite leaky and had a bad smell. It was very distressing to Abraham to think that these poor slaves of his only ever got to use the hand-me-down tents when people like him were finished with them. It was just so maddening that that was how things were.

He found the tent of Hagar the Egyptian, the mother of his son Ishmael, and called softly for her. She came, very much surprised to see him at her door. It was very distressing to Abraham to think of how little time he had ever spent with her, how little he even knew her. But there was no time for that now. He told her that the decision had been made – that she and her son would both have to leave. They would have to go out into the desolate wastelands of Beersheba with nothing to sustain them but the bread and water that he had brought. “It is all very distressing to me on account of my son,” Abraham said. “But I’m afraid that there is no choice. This is just the way that it has to be.”

Hagar, strangely, seemed to have little sympathy for Abraham’s distress. She was selfishly far more concerned with questions about how she and Ishmael might survive the harrowing journey that was being forced upon them. But then again, hadn’t it always been so with Hagar? Even back when she had been sent into Abraham by her mistress, she had hardly seemed concerned at all with the suffering that Sarah had gone through – the anguish of not being able to have a child. She hadn’t been concerned with the urgent matter of supplying Abraham with a son who could be his heir. Instead she got all worked up over how Abraham was raping her.

That… incident had been very distressing to Abraham as well, but it had been unavoidable. It was just what you did when your wife couldn’t have a child for you and there was a lovely young slave girl available. I mean, what was he supposed to do, allow Hagar to have control over her own body? The next thing you knew, she would want to be able to claim Ishmael as her own son! If you started to allow things like that to happen, before you knew it the very foundations of society would begin to collapse. The economy would crater, there would be fear and insecurity everywhere as people who didn’t know their place demanded all sorts of change. Abraham shuddered at the very thought

As he lay awake in bed that night, Abraham had turned the question over and over in his head. He had wondered if this was really the right thing to do. He was supposed to be different from other people, after all. Yahweh, the Lord, blessed be his name, had chosen him specially and set him apart from all of the people of the other tribes who surrounded him. God would build a great nation out of him, that was the promise.

And, true, the promise was that his new son, Isaac, would be the one through whom that would happen, not Ishmael. But was it really auspicious to begin such a new nation by sending Hagar and the boy out into the desert with nothing but a water skin and a bag of bread? Did the supremacy of one nation really have to be built upon the repression of another? Something just seemed wrong with that and Abraham had wrestled with it all night long. Was it really what Yahweh wanted?

But finally, just before he rose, he did make peace with the idea. God had made him a promise, after all. Surely that promise extended even to Ishmael and God would take care of the boy so that Abraham didn’t have to. Yes, yes, Abraham would just take care of the water skin and the bread – it was the least he could do. Abraham would do the very least and leave the rest up to God. Surely Yahweh didn’t want Abraham to stay distressed after all.

The wilderness of Beersheba was extremely desolate in those days. There were no settlements and nomadic bands were very few and far between. Hagar and the young Ishmael had no clear direction to go and they stumbled onwards towards the south. They saw not one single human being all day and the scattered wildlife stayed far away from them.

Ishmael was 14 years old at that time. He was old enough to understand exactly how dire their situation was. He watched carefully as the bread in the bag grew less and less and with great alarm as the water skin grew thinner and thinner. But most of all his eyes turned to his mother. She was obviously concerned with the challenge that they were facing, but he did not see in her face the terror that he might have expected to find there. He took comfort from that, of course, but still it puzzled him. Finally, he had to ask her. “Mother,” he said, “is there something that you know that I don’t know? Why are you not afraid when we are facing such an enormous challenge?”

Hagar had, by that time, told her boy very little of his own story. She had not told him the story of how Abraham had become his father. She had known that it would have disturbed him and estranged him from the father that she had hoped might give him a better inheritance than a bag of bread and a skin of water. But now, that didn’t seem to matter so much. As they walked on, she told him the whole story of the worst night of her life and how she had felt so powerless in the bed of that vile old man.

She did not dwell on that part of the story, though, for that did not explain the hope that she carried with her now. She focussed, instead, on what happened afterwards. When Ishmael started to grow inside her, Sarah had been so jealous that Hagar had done what she could not and had been able to conceive. In her wrath, Sarah was so cruel towards her that Hagar felt as if she had no choice but to run away. Then she had not been able to take anything with her – not even a bag of bread and a skin of water. She had been truly terrified that she would die.

She had wandered until the hunger and the thirst began to make her see things.Ah, but what had she seen! There, in the midst of her delirium, she saw Yahweh, the God of Abraham, of all gods! Except it wasn’t the God that old Abe had always spoken of. That God, at least when Abraham spoke of him, had only been concerned with how many cattle and goats Abraham had and, of course, whether he would have a son.

But when Hagar saw Yahweh, she noticed something very different. She saw a God who saw her, who saw all of the anguish and pain that she suffered and who loved her. On that day, Yahweh promised her that she would have a son and that he would become a great nation. It was a promise for her, not for Abraham. And, in return, Hagar named the God that she met in the desert. She called him El-roi, the God who sees. And on the strength of that vision, Hagar was able to go back and return to her mistress to find that Sarah had repented, somewhat, of her cruelty.

Hagar told Ishmael that the reason she was not afraid was because she knew that El-roi was still her God and still saw – that he saw the powerless and the persecuted and knowing that she was seen was enough.

The water skin ran out the next day. Hagar squeezed the last few drops into her son’s mouth. When he looked at her, imploringly, she could only shake her head. Ishmael didn’t say anything; there was nothing to be said. He wandered off to find the shade of some bush. He would sleep; if something didn’t happen soon, he might not wake up.

Hagar had given more water to the boy than she had taken for herself and so she was, perhaps, in a worse state than him. Indeed, she could already feel the delirium coming upon her, the familiar delirium that had been there when she fled fourteen years ago. But, instead of seeing this as a reason to despair, this time she felt it was a sign of hope.

A strange light began to flash on the edge of her vision. She turned towards it and followed it. It led her on for a few more steps until it finally came to rest upon a flat rock on the floor of the desert. It was just a rock. It did not look much different from many of the other rocks that surrounded her. But the flashing light remained on it and did not shift and she fell to her knees before it. With the last of her fainting strength, she pushed against it and, to her surprise, it shifted just a little bit. There was a cavity underneath it and she immediately detected a dampness and a smell of water. She called out to her son.

The chances of stumbling on a well that has been dug in the desert and then hidden with a rock by a band of nomads have got to be infinitesimal. This was no accident; Hagar knew that her God, El-roi had seen her again. Hagar and Ishmael drank. They filled the skin. They lived and continued to wander deeper into the wilderness. And, as Ishmael grew and came into his full strength and maturity, he did well and went on to become the father of a great nation. And as for Abraham, well, did I mention that he was very distressed about the whole affair?

Hagar is a fascinating character in the Bible. She is totally powerless – a woman and a slave who is impregnated without anyone even thinking to ask what she thought about the whole matter. And yet, she is one of the few women in the Bible to receive a promise from God and the only woman who is given the incredible honour of giving a name to God. But I actually don’t think that I have told the story of Hagar in this sermon. Other people, women in particular, have told her story better then I probably ever could. No, I set out to tell the story of the one person in the passage that I could identify with and that most of the people that I know could identify with. I said I want to tell the story of the person who has privilege – who has been given every opportunity to build and find control over his own life and who has been deeply blessed because of the way in which his society is structured. I set out to tell the story of the person who feels distressed when he notices the ways in which certain people have to live with systemic injustice and disadvantage and yet who feels quite powerless to do anything to change the system. I set out to tell the story from Abraham’s point of view, which is the point of view of the Bible.

But even if the Bible does often take the point of view of the privileged and chosen one, I think there is still much in this story that should point out to us that our distress at how things are is not enough and that the God we are coming to know as various people in this world who have suffered from systemic injustice stand up and demand change, does not take the side of the poor, the forgotten and the outcasts simply in order that we might feel better in our distress about how things are. This story should push us to ask more of ourselves than that we feel a little bit of distress.

Scott's message for June 14

Our message for this Sunday.

https://youtu.be/MHwql-9ezaw

If the above embedded video doesn't work, click this link: https://youtu.be/MHwql-9ezaw

Hespeler, 31 May, 2020 © Scott McAndless – Pentecost
Numbers 11:24-30, Psalm 104:24-35, Acts 2:1-21, John 7:37-39

The summons was sent out through all the Israelite camp. Moses had called for the elders of all the tribes to come and assemble at the tent of meeting. Each of the twelve tribes was to send six elders and the word was that it was all very important. They would be meeting not only with Moses but also with Yahweh, the God who dwelt within the tent, who sat enthroned upon the cherubim upon the ark of the covenant. And so, all of the very important men in each of the tribes quickly donned their finest robes and hurried away to the very important meeting. And so it was that, later that same afternoon seventy men gathered around the tent, standing around it on every side evenly spaced two metres apart as if they were people living in the time of covid-19. It all looked oh so very formal and ceremonial.

Except… wait a minute… something is not quite right here. Let’s see… six elders times twelve tribes… carry the one… Math was never really my strong suit but I’m pretty sure that six times twelve is supposed to be seventy-two. There are two elders missing! Oh no, this is a disaster! Who could have possibly ditched such a high-level meeting? What an insult! What an affront to the authority of Moses among the people to not show up when summoned! Who would do such a thing?

Oh wait, never mind. Don’t tell me. It was Eldad and Medad, wasn’t it?

Yes indeed, while the seventy elders were all holding hands and singing “kumbaya” as they stood around the tent of meeting, where were Eldad and Medad? They were in the camp in a tent not far from the place where the weekly market was held. And it was not, by the way, because they hadn’t received the summons to the meeting. They had received it alright. In fact, they were talking about it at that very moment – talking to each other about why they felt so utterly justified to have not bothered to go.

“Can you believe that Moses,” said Eldad to Medad. “Every time he comes up with a new idea or receives a new revelation from Yahweh, he has to summon all of the people and turn it into some big event. And then, you know how it goes, he starts complaining about how he’s carrying this heavy burden and trying to do the right thing and protecting the people and how nobody ever listens to him and does what he says. He goes on and on about this great big burden he has to carry.

“Now, I recognize what Moses has done for us. He brought us out of Egypt. He did what everyone thought was impossible and managed to get us away from the pursuing Egyptian chariots even if he had to take us through the Red Sea to do it. And I’ll grant you that we Israelites can be pretty stubborn and stiff-necked when we put our mind to it. But why do we have to constantly put up with Moses’ bellyaching about all of it. Why doesn’t he do something? Why doesn’t he let somebody else help out with the load of leadership?”

“I hear you,” replied Medad to Eldad. “But I’m telling you that it’s just not going to happen. Moses just likes complaining and controlling too much. He’s never going to let go of any part of his leadership or his ability to complain about it.”

But as it turned out, that was exactly what was going on around the tabernacle at that very moment. The reason why Moses had summoned the elders was in order to do the very thing that he had resisted for so very long. He had finally decided that he couldn’t make every decision or control every person’s action. Most of all, he had finally learned something. He had thought that the power of God’s Spirit that had been given to him, that thing that gave direction and meaning to everything that he did was a rare and precious thing. He had thought that it was something to hoard to himself and only exercise after much deliberation and care. He had finally come to understand that the Spirit of God did not work like that. In fact, like love, the more that it was shared the more of it there was to go around.

And so the elders had been called in to receive a portion of the spirit. As they stood around the tent, they could feel the excitement and the anticipation. It was as if the air was filled with electricity. Something was happening.

Perhaps the men gathered around the tent of meeting had been given some warning, some inkling that they were about to have a very strange experience. But Eldad and Medad never knew what hit them. People wonder what it is like to be suddenly filled with the Spirit of God. Is it a sudden strange feeling of ecstasy? Is it a way of feeling connected to the people who surround you in a strange unusual way? Is it just a calm assurance of God’s presence with you?

Well it can certainly be all of those things. Everyone experiences it very differently because the action of the Spirit of God very much depends on your own make up and personality. Let’s just say that Eldad and Medad were particular kinds of people. You know the kind of person who doesn’t show up for a scheduled meeting. The kind of person who sits in the back row and grumbles about the person running the meeting. You have that type of person in mind? Well, there’s your picture of Eldad and Medad.

The excitement spread throughout the Hebrew camp. The people were somewhat aware that there was something going on around the tent of meeting with the leadership of the tribes, but they weren’t expecting anything to happen where the people were camped out. So there was quite a stir when, all of a sudden, they heard a great deal of shouting emanating from one of the plazas between the tents. It had been a quiet day and so the people quickly began to gather. It was, of course, Eldad and Medad.

The two men were prophesying. I know how people usually understand that. When most people hear the word prophesy, they assume that someone is foretelling events in the future. They assume that Eldad and Medad were revealing things like, “Your lucky number for the draw is 77694.” or, “In the year 2020 ad a terrible pandemic will ravage the globe.” You know, that kind of thing.

But the fact of the matter is that, in biblical times, prophecy was not primarily a matter of foretelling future events. The job of a prophet was to proclaim the word that the Lord was speaking to the people at that moment based on what their situation was and what they were struggling with. It is about truth-telling more than it is about future telling and that is what makes it so dangerous because often the truth is the last thing that people want to hear.

So what was it that Eldad and Medad were crying out in the middle of the camp? Whatever it was, it was something that was explosive enough that it made somebody freak out and go running off to tattle against Eldad and Medad to Moses where he was gathered with the elders of the people. What could have been so frightening and offensive? I’ll tell you what I think Eldad and Medad were saying:

“Hey man,” cried Eldad, “don’t you all know that this whole thing is a scam? You don’t need Moses. You don’t need all of the trappings of the Tent of Meeting and the careful sacrifices performed by the priests. You don’t even need laws and rules that lay out all of the proper ways for you to act. They want you to think that you need them but you don’t. All you need is love, man. If you love your neighbour, you’re not going to covet his stuff. You’re not going to murder or steal or lie. If you love Yahweh, you’re not going to go off and find some other god to worship.”

“That’s right,” Medad took up the diatribe, “all you need to know is that ‘the Lord is nigh to those in distress.’ All you need is God.”

When the message of the disruptive prophecies of Eldad and Medad was reported to Moses, Joshua, Moses’ assistant and his designated successor, was frantic. “We cannot tolerate this sort of insubordination,” he cried. “My lord Moses, stop them!”

But Moses had come a long way since taking on God’s plan to free his people from slavery. He had begun to realize, not only that he could not bear all of the weight of leadership himself, but that also this was not about his personal status or leadership at all. He knew that Joshua would have to learn that lesson for himself, but he could not help but point out what he knew was a weakness that Joshua bore.  “Are you jealous for my sake – or maybe for your own future privilege?” he asked. “Do you really think that the only way for us to experience the power of God is to keep it only in the hands of the chosen few so that we can control the message. That is just not how the spirit of Yahweh works.

“I used to think like you, Joshua. I used to think that it was all about my control and my authority. But do you know what I say today? I say, ‘Would that all Yahweh’s people were prophets, and that Yahweh would put his spirit on them!’”

And so, to the surprise of everybody – and of Eldad and Medad most of all – there were no punishments inflicted upon the slacker prophets. Their words were allowed to stand and the memory of what they had said was passed down.

That didn’t mean that the people always actually lived by the word that they had proclaimed. There is something about human community that always seems to pull us back into conformity and we find a great deal of comfort from things like ritual and putting our trust in people who exercise authority.

Old patterns die hard. But the message of Eldad and Medad didn’t just disappear. Down through many centuries there were other prophets who were also not sanctioned by the authorities in charge. They were great men and women. Some are famous, like Elijah and Amos and Jeremiah. They spoke a word of the Lord that was not popular, but somehow their oracles endured and some hearts in some places began to move. In time there would even come to be an entire movement of people centered around the idea of the transformative power of the spirit of God, but that is, perhaps, a story for another time.

According to the Book of Acts, the Christian Church came into being in an event that was very similar to the story of the seventy elders and of Eldad and Medad. All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, the Christian believers were filled with the spirit of God and began to speak the word of the Lord. This cements the idea that the power of the spirit of God was absolutely central to the foundation of the Christian church and has been essential to its life ever since.

But ever since, it seems, the church has been in a struggle between those, like Joshua, who believe that the action of the Spirit must always be ordered and under proper authority and those, like Eldad and Medad, who hear the spirit calling us to freedom and disruption. I believe that we need both kinds of people, both approaches to the Spirit, to thrive. There is a danger, when we cut ourselves off from the disruptive potential of God’s Spirit because we’re afraid of it, that we may also be robbing ourselves of the real transformative power that is available to us.

https://youtu.be/k3oVjeLFWco

Hespeler, 24 May, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Acts 1:3-14, Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35, 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11, John 17:1-11

If you were to ask people today how long it has been since everything shut down for this pandemic, what sort of answer might you expect? Someone might give you the literally correct answer, of course, and say that we have been locked down in Ontario now for 68 days. But really, most people wouldn’t have that number at their fingertips and, short of somebody stopping and taking out a calendar and counting, I would not really expect that answer

What somebody might say is, “It’s been umpteen days,” or “a bajillion days” or “a zillion days.” Everyone would understand that answer and I suspect that many people would see it as an answer that is about as accurate as 68 days. Umpteen days would probably better capture how many people feel about the extent of time than any specific number.

Words like that – a jillion, umpteen, a bazillion – are what are called fictitious numbers. They do not refer to specific quantities or amounts but are rather a way of expressing a large, perhaps overwhelming amount. In that sense, it is pretty accurate to say that we’ve been under lockdown for umpteen days.

Those are English fictitious numbers, of course, but many other languages have their own ways of expressing the same kinds of ideas. Some use actual numbers as fictitious numbers. In Latin, for example, the word sescenti literally meant 600, but it was commonly used to mean a lot.

Ancient Near Eastern languages also had a number that they used in the same way; that number was forty. That is the reason why the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” has forty thieves in it. I hope this is not a shock to you, but nobody actually counted the thieves in that story, they didn’t need to, they just knew there were a lot of them so they said forty.

That is probably also why the number forty comes up a lot in the Bible – 40 days of rain during Noah’s flood, 40 years in the wilderness for the children of Israel, 40 days of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by the devil – the people in that culture understood whenever they heard that number 40, that the number didn’t need to be precise. It just meant a long time.

With all of that in mind, I’ve always wondered how we are supposed to read the beginning of the book of Acts when it says, “After his suffering [Jesus] presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” Is Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, referring to a very specific period of time when he says forty days or is he basically saying that Jesus was with them for umpteen days?

Ah, but you might say that hanging around with Jesus following the resurrection is not at all like living through a pandemic. That is a joyful thing, not something that’s going to seem like it’s lasting forever, is it? Why would it seem like it was umpteen days long? But, you see, it is not just negative events that can seem interminable. Sometimes it feels that way when you are anticipating something and that seems to be the case here.

We’re told that, during those umpteen days, Jesus was incessantly speaking to them about “the kingdom of God.” That was indeed one of Jesus’ favourite topics of conversation and an exiting idea, but maybe – just maybe – the disciples were feeling as if they had listened to Jesus’ talk about the kingdom long enough and it was time for them to see some action.

In fact, that is exactly what they say: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” In other words, “Enough with the talk! We’ve heard all of the parables and the sayings. We remember the time when you said ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ It’s time for less talk and more showing: show us the kingdom now!”

And I’m going to be completely honest here. I am kind of with the disciples on this one. And that is especially true right now after umpteen days in lockdown. Now, I will admit that I probably don’t mean it in exactly the same way that the disciples meant it. It seems, from what they said, that they had a very particular idea of what the kingdom of God looked like and that they were assuming that it had to include the restoration of Judean sovereignty over what had once been the Kingdom of Judea. It meant, in other words, kicking the Romans out. But, if that is what they were expecting, they really weren’t listening all that closely the parables of Jesus. The kingdom that he announced did not require a particular political resolution.

But even if I don’t see the kingdom of God in exactly the same terms that they were imagining, I’ve got to say that I am feeling very impatient for the kingdom of God that I understand Jesus was talking about. Why can’t we see it now?

Jesus spoke of a kingdom where “the first would be last and the last would be first,” where, in other words, the ordinary social and economic order would be completely disrupted and overturned and where the poorest and the weakest came out on top. He spoke of a kingdom where the outcasts were included and the neglected and forgotten were given a place at the table and where God demanded justice for all. These are the kinds of themes that come out consistently in everything that Jesus said about the kingdom of God. And I have long felt as if the world has been in great need of some of that. But, I will confess, since all of this crisis began umpteen days ago, I, like the disciples, have been feeling all the more impatient for the kingdom to be established.

I don’t know about you, but for me this particular crisis has made me think a whole lot about who is first and who is last. And the people we used to think of as being first, the millionaires and the celebrities for example, it’s been amazing to see how irrelevant they have become – how little they seem to deserve to command vast amounts of wealth while the people who were near the bottom of society, the lowly people who laboured away in the service industry and in the supply chain and who produced and connected us to our food supplies, how very important they have become. I’ve got to say that it has made me think that it is well past time for the first to become last and the last to become first.

The long-term care crisis in Canada in particular has really pointed out many of the shortcomings of our ways of operating. Do you realize that, over the past several weeks, long-term care facilities across this country have seen infection rates from covid-19 that are roughly the same whether those facilities are government-run, nonprofit or for-profit. But here is the huge difference between those different types of facilities. Once an infection has made its way into a long-term care facility, residents are four times more likely to die if they live in a for-profit facility.

It is not all that hard to see why this has happened. For-profit facilities receive the same amount of funding as other facilities but they need to generate profits to pay dividends to their investors. Because of this, they need to save money someplace and generally do that by paying as little as possible to their workers and saving as much as possible on equipment. The result is that these facilities are understaffed and staff are under equipped. That calculation – placing profits over people – has proved to be especially dangerous and deadly in the age of covid-19.

This pandemic has been a tragedy in so many ways but it would be a double tragedy if we failed to learn anything from it. What I find myself yearning for us to learn is some of the basics of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached. So I stand with the disciples in their demand: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” But I guess that I, like them, would be wise to listen closely to Jesus’ answer.

“It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” Of course, that’s not really the answer I would like to hear. I, like you, am kind of tired of waiting around for somebody else to tell me that it’s time to exit the present state of emergency. But I think we’ve all come to appreciate the wisdom of listening when it comes to such important matters.

What Jesus is saying here is that the times are not merely in the hands of chief medical officers of health or politicians but ultimately in the hands of God and that is a good place for them to be. As hard as that may be to hear, we are going to have to trust in God for the establishment of the kingdom of God and the justice that comes with it. If we were to seek to bring it about on our own it could easily devolve into violence or worse injustice as those who have attempted to set up utopian societies in the past have often discovered.

But just because it is not up to us to create the kingdom of God whole cloth, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a part to play in its establishment on earth. Jesus goes on from there to say, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” We do indeed have a part to play, and that part is to be witnesses to Jesus. And that means that we must bear witness to everything about Jesus – to his birth, his life, his death and resurrection and what that has meant to us for new hope and healing and salvation.

It also means bearing witness to his teaching including all of the teaching 2about the kingdom of God. What might such witness look like in our present situation? It might mean that we are to point out what we see going on in our society and the need for change and the reasons why the first might need to be last and the last first right now. Bearing witness to Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God might be extremely unpopular at times like this, but Jesus calls on us to do it anyways.

But just in case that all seems a little bit overwhelming, don’t worry that is not the entirety of Jesus’ message because, before he says, “you will be my witnesses” he gives this promise, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” My friends, do not be afraid because not only has Jesus given to you a message that can challenge and change this world by turning it upside down, Jesus has also given to you the power you will need to bear that witness even when things are hard and no one wants to hear it. That power is made available to you in God’s Holy Spirit.

Next week is Pentecost Sunday and on Pentecost we will turn our minds to the exploration of the power of God’s Spirit and how it gives us what we need to be those witnesses in the world. But know for now that that power is real and it is transformative. It is the power that was at work in creating this world and it is available to us. It is the power that brought the church into existence and it is available to us. It is the power of God to transform the world and it is available to us.

I can’t promise to you that the kingdom of God is about to be established because such timing is in God’s hands. But you have a part to play and you can be bold to speak, to act and to challenge – maybe especially at such times as these.

Here is a new link for a meeting at 10:15

Zoom Worship
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89805396934?pwd=MU5ZRGhyVjlxS2NvR2YrQWZyTUgzQT09

Meeting ID: 898 0539 6934
Password: 774394

Sermon video:

https://youtu.be/_IpwDYSIIRQ

Hespeler, 17 May, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:8-20, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21

When the Apostle Paul first arrived in the city of Athens, according to the book of Acts, he was really just kind of killing time. He was waiting for some of his friends to catch up with him and, until they got there, he did what you do in a place like Athens. He started behaving like a tourist. And there was a lot to visit. The city had once been the centre of a great empire. Upon its Acropolis were some of the most celebrated buildings and temples in the entire world.  And that was just the beginning; it was a city of temples. There were also theatres that were not only places where some of the greatest plays of all times had first been staged but that were the stages upon which the thespian art itself was invented.

And then there was agora, the legendary marketplace in the city to the north of the Acropolis. There, the very idea of democracy, the rule of the people by the people, had been born. And there, among the stalls, great thinkers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had walked and talked and argued.

But here was the thing, when Paul arrived in the city, all of that was ancient history. It had been about four hundred years since Athens had been the centre of anything. But here is a tip for you, you’d better not tell the Athenians that. As far as the Athenians were concerned, they were still the greatest people on the face of the earth and they judged everyone else accordingly.

And so, when the Apostle Paul had finished visiting all of the tourist sites in Athens and taken all his snapshots and sent his postcards (or whatever tourists did back then), he started talking to people in the legendary Athenian agora, talking about their gods and ideas in ways that seemed to challenge the notion that they knew everything. The Athenians they were not very impressed. They called him, according to the Book of Acts, a babbler. At least that is how it is translated in the NRSV Bible. What they literally called him was a scavenger, a seed-picker and a gossiper. They hauled him off to court to be judged.

Now, the court they took him to was called the Areopagus and the Areopagus has once been a real happening place. Oh yes, five hundred years ago, the men of the Areopagus had ruled Athens as elder statesmen. But the Areopagus was no longer the institution it had once been. It was still a court – sort of – a court where they discussed violations of religious protocol. Yeah, I know, that doesn’t sound too powerful, and it wasn’t. But I am sure that some of those areopagites thought that their inquest there was actually really important. They were there to judge this babbler and seed picker and they looked down their noses at him and waited for him to embarrass himself. It is an extraordinary moment as the dying embers of what had once been the greatest civilization on the face of the earth face down the rising star of this crude new thing called Christianity.

It’s all the more extraordinary because I realize that it might just be the moment we are living in right now. Because I feel like I and many others have been walking around the marketplace of Athens lately (except, of course, that we’re not actually allowed to walk around the marketplace these days and have to engage with it from within the safety of our own homes), but many things that we’ve seen of the world lately have led us to call into question the assumptions that our world makes.

To put it bluntly, this pandemic crisis has shown up so many of the cracks and weak points of our society. We have been shown so clearly the flaws and the problems in our long-term care system. We have seen how short-sighted it was to allow the concentration of so much wealth into the hands of a very tiny portion of our population. We have seen how foolish it was to look down on and distain the low-wage workers who provided for us the very basic needs of life. These are just a few examples, of course, but these together with other things have led us to think that maybe our society and the way it functioned was not really as successful and secure as we once believed that it was. Maybe it was not strong at all. Maybe it was all just an illusion.

Well, that is what Paul saw in Athens, he saw all of the cracks and shortcomings of Athenian society. And when he was put on the spot and was expected to react to the apparent impressiveness of the Areopagus by folding up and bowing before Athens’ greatness, he didn’t do that. He stood up to them and called them out for what they were. “Athenians,” he said, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” And yes, they took that as flattery. They puffed up their chests at the thought of all of their fine religious traditions.

But Paul had actually noticed a certain hollowness to their religious beliefs. He had seen it, in particular, when he found an altar dedicated to an unknown god. That seemed to indicate that, though they honoured the traditions of their ancestors, there was a sense in which their religion was just a question of covering all the bases and pleasing all the powers. Their religion was just going through the motions and had no real depth to it.

So Paul began to introduce to them the God that he knew – that he had come to know through Jesus. “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth.” But as he spoke to them about this God, he said something – something that I fear we often miss in this passage but that was a very important challenge to those people in Athens: “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.”

What Paul is talking about here is an aspect of the rule of God in this world that we don’t often think about. He is describing this notion that God rules over the peoples and the nations of this world in a very particular way. This is an idea that is highlighted many times in the Bible, maybe especially in the Book of Daniel, but that we don’t tend to talk about very much because it’s not really a very comfortable idea.

You see, the ancient people of Israel watched from their unique observation post right in the middle of the ancient Near East as the empires and cultures that surrounded them rose and fell. They saw the rise and fall of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Persia. They saw Alexander the Great and the Greeks rise and fall and then the rise of Roman civilization.

They noticed something. Every empire and every civilization thought that they were the final word and that they would last forever. But every single one of them was wrong. Empires, no matter how powerful they were, all came to an end sooner or later; civilizations, no matter how civilized, never lasted. And the prophets of Israel developed this controversial idea that all of this was actually part of God’s plan. That God was the one who set limitations and boundaries on the great empires and civilizations.

So what was Paul saying as he stood before the Areopagus? He was announcing that God had decided that their civilization – the great Greco-Roman civilization – had run its course. It had had a good run; it had accomplished great things. God had blessed it, which was why it had been able to accomplish what it did, but its time was almost up!

That was a pretty gutsy thing for Paul to say, but amazingly the Athenians let him get away with it. They were even interested in having him come back so they could continue their conversation with him at another time. They did it, I suspect, because they knew deep down that there was truth in what Paul was saying.

And here is where I see this incident in Paul’s life really speaking to us where we are right now. I realize that, in the midst of this pandemic crisis, a lot of people are focusing on their desire to resume life as it was before all of this started. I understand that. In the midst of all this uncertainty it is natural for people to grasp onto the last thing that felt normal: the world as it was a few months ago. And so, if anyone suggests that maybe the way things were a few months ago wasn’t so great and maybe we shouldn’t just want to go back to that, they are going to have people pushing back at them.

But a prophetic word like what Paul said in the Areopagus may be in order. God “allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.” Who are we to think that the civilization that we had built up until February of 2020 was going to last forever? Who are we to think that it can just resume as it was after a brief pause to deal with a pandemic crisis? Everyone assumes that their way of life is just going to continue on unchanged forever but everyone who has ever assumed that has been wrong. The future of any civilization is in God’s hand and always has been and we are foolish to think otherwise.

That is a very disturbing thought, of course, because it means that our future might have a lot of uncertainty in it. And I am not, by the way, trying to imply that the whole of Western civilization is about to fall. I think it’s got a little bit more resilience in it than that. But I do suspect that we might, in short order, see some enormous changes in the order of our world.

It could be, for example, that we are going to see the end of the American Empire. (I know we are not supposed to call it an empire, but that is the closest biblical term to the kind of power the US has exercised in the world. And the Bible is also very clear that empires do not last forever.) I also suspect that we’re going to see some serious disruptions in the economic order of our world as people can’t help but notice how unessential the billionaires are to us in times of crisis while the essentialness of the people who toil at the bottom of the economy has only been highlighted. Of course, I don’t claim to be a prophet and my particular predictions may be completely off base, but I think I am right about one thing. Nothing is going to just go back to the way it was before. We are in for some very serious change.

This kind of change is unsettling and scary, and it will definitely impact people’s lives. But I think that what Paul would say to us is what he was trying to say to the people in Athens. Our comfort and our reassurance should not be taken from a promise that everything’s just going to be the same or go back to the way that it was before. Nobody, not even God is going to promise you that. That is why our comfort needs to be taken in the Lord our God in whom “we live and move and have our being.”

Sermon Video:

https://youtu.be/qkr6QzZCEq8

Hespeler, 10 May, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Acts 7:55-60, Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16, 1 Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14

The First Letter of Peter begins like this: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” That makes it pretty clear that this letter was written to a group of churches in various parts of what we call Asia Minor today. In fact, all of those territories are today a part of the country called Turkey. So it seems pretty clear that this letter was written for some very particular Christians living in some very particular areas. But apart from that, we really don’t know anything about them. What were they dealing with? What were their struggles, their dreams, their aspirations? We really don’t know.

Biblical scholars will argue over exactly when this letter was written and even over who wrote it. Many scholars have expressed great doubts about whether it could have been written by Peter. It is just written in Greek that is far too good and using rhetoric that seems far too educated to imagine that it could have been written by a fisherman from Galilee.

But whether it was written by Peter himself or it was written, perhaps, by one of Peter’s disciples who sought to honour him, it is clearly a letter written to Christians who are struggling to figure out what it means to follow Christ in their time and place. The big clue that we do have to the situation of the people who are addressed is found in that cryptic phrase, “To the exiles of the Dispersion.” Whoever these people are, they are people who see themselves as part of a dispersion – of a people who have been scattered far and wide.

The word that is used here is actually the same word as diaspora, a word that is often associated with Jewish history. The long history of Jews living outside of the land of Israel – a history that began two and a half millennia ago with the Babylonian exile – is generally referred to as the Jewish Diaspora and many Jews around the world still see themselves as part of that diaspora to this very day.

So, whoever these Christians were who had settled in these various parts of Asia Minor, they really didn’t feel as if they belonged there. They came from someplace else – someplace where they had put down roots and where they knew how to be the church. But then they had been spread far and wide from the places where they did feel as if they belonged. Perhaps there had been some sort of persecution that they had fled. Perhaps, if they were Jews (and of course most early Christians were Jews), they were refugees from the war that had been fought between the Jews and the Romans in Judea between 66 and 70 ad. But however they came to be there, they recognized – and everyone else around them recognized – that they didn’t quite belong and they were trying to figure out how to be the church in this new place to which they had been spread. This letter was clearly written to help them to figure that out.

A dispersion or a diaspora… in many ways wouldn’t that be a good term for the situation where we find ourselves as Christians today? We had it all pretty well figured out, you see. We had settled down and put down our Christian roots in a certain place, in a building. And we knew how to be the church in that place. We had practices and rituals and traditions that we had set in place that were all very comforting and that built us up in many ways.

And then something happened, didn’t it? Very suddenly, everything changed and we found ourselves dispersed to the winds so that on a Sunday morning, when we would normally be all gathered together and would greet each other with friendship and joy clasping hands and even sharing embraces, we are now in many different places. It makes me wonder, when this letter is addressed “to the exiles of the dispersion,” is there not a sense in which it is addressed directly to us? We, like those Christians in Asia Minor, are given the unenviable task of figuring out how to be the Church of Jesus Christ in an unfamiliar place. So I cannot help but think that perhaps some of the advice given by the Apostle to them might be very helpful to us in the situation we are dealing with today.

We didn’t read from the opening chapter of the letter this morning though. Our reading is from the second chapter, so what particular advice for diaspora Christians like us might there be in this passage we read this morning? Here is Peter’s first piece of advice for us (and let’s call the writer “Peter” for the sake of convenience despite any scholarly doubts). “Like newborn infants,” he writes, “long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.”

Now, if those words are being addressed to people like us, I’ve got to ask, aren’t they a little bit insulting? I mean, Peter seems to be implying that we are all newborn infants – babies who can’t even handle solid food. How can he say that to us or even to those first century Christians in Asia Minor? We are not new to the Christian faith. Ah, but remember that he is addressing Christians in a diaspora. We might well have long experience at being Christians in a certain place and context, but we have been dispersed into this strange new situation and the first thing we might need to recognize is that we don’t know how to be Christians in this new situation. I wonder, is it possible that that is what the Apostle is trying to teach them and us. He’s saying that it’s time to go back to the very basics. Maybe we can set aside those contentious theological debates and differences of opinion that we had with other Christians and just concentrate on being a people who are willing to trust in Christ to feed us.

And, since it is Mother’s Day, I cannot help but take note of the particular metaphor that the Apostle chooses to use here. When he says, “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good,” He is quoting from Psalm 34 – a passage that speaks of God’s gentle care for his people. We often quote that verse, for example, at the communion table. But isn’t it interesting that First Peter uses that verse just after telling us that we are all like newborn infants who are craving their mother’s milk? And if we are infants, what are we tasting? The sweetness of a mother’s milk! This is yet another time when the Bible speaks of God’s care for us as being like a mother’s care for her children.

So it would seem that the first piece of advice for us in the Christian diaspora is that it’s time for us to go back to basics and learn all over again what it means to place our trust in God like little babies in their mothers’ arms. But, of course this letter has more to say to us. One of the key problems that the Christians dispersed throughout Asia Minor had was that they didn’t have buildings. All of the other faiths and religions had amazing buildings in first century Asia Minor. The temples of the pagan gods in regions like Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia were legendary for their beauty and magnificence. But the Christians had none. If they were dispersed Jewish Christians, they were also perhaps strongly feeling the devastation of the destruction of the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, which had been reduced to rubble by the Romans in 70 ad. So they probably struggled with wondering how they were supposed to serve their God without a building. They, like most early Christians, only met in private homes or even in the open air.

We are definitely in the same boat as them when it comes to that. We have all been surprised and troubled by the need to be Christians together without a building in these days. So I’m very interested in what sort of advice the apostle has for them. Is he going to tell them to focus on getting into a building or at least building up some sort of institutional structure as soon as possible? Is he going to put into them the dream of someday being able to build a cathedral to rival the beautiful pagan temples of Asia Minor? Because honestly, that has been the program of the church ever since this letter was written as Christians have tried to build some kind of structure to rival the organizations and buildings of the non-Christian world. You can understand why Christians have done that. We have been taught that you need that kind of thing to be successful.

But First Peter has a big surprise for you if that is what you are expecting. Instead we are offered this surprising invitation: “like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Instead of calling on these dispersed Christians to aspire to have religious buildings of their own, he says that they themselves are the living stones from which a new and very different kind of temple can be built. I think that that was a very powerful message to Christians living in that particular situation, and it is also a powerful message to us living in ours.

For one thing, it meant that they didn’t need to compete with the glorious achievements of the Pagan world in order to find honour and glory for their church. Not because they couldn’t, of course. I think we all realize that the great Christian cathedrals of the western world did indeed come to eclipse the architecture of ancient temples in time, but they didn’t need to compete in that arena. The church was not meant to impress with buildings and structures of authority but rather by being living stones who lived lives so authentic, with such kindness and grace, and doing it in communion with others in such a way as to create a whole new structure made out of those living stones. People would see something like that and could not help but give all glory to God.

I think that we have missed the importance of this message in the church over the past two thousand or so years. As I look back at the history of the church, what I see is a Christian Church that has simply tried to mimic the models of success that it sees in the world around it. Not only have we done that with our buildings, but with just about every aspect of our lives together. We’ve done it in our structure and organization. Back in the middle ages, for example, when the model for success was found in the hierarchy of society, the church built a structure that was all about hierarchy with Bishops and Archbishops and Cardinals.

Today, of course, we have a tendency to define success in the church differently and we tend to find that the churches that mimic the success of the business or marketing world are what it is all about. In many ways we are still like those Christians who were dispersed in Asia Minor. We’re looking around at the magnificent Pagan buildings and aspiring to build something like them. But the Apostle says that all of that is misguided. We have a different identity and we have a different definition of success.

We are living stones and, yes, he suggests that those living stones might even look like rejects as far as the world is concerned and that we, like Jesus, are the stones that the builders rejected and just left dispersed around the work site. That is because we are not made to impress in the way the world seeks to impress. But, when we work together and we manage to support and uplift one another, we can build something truly amazing.

It is not easy to be a people dispersed, ripped away from the things that are familiar and comforting. But I guess that what First Peter is saying is that even if that is where we are right now, our God has not abandoned us and can be with us in this strange place. If we are missing that sense of presence, that is all right because these are indeed unfamiliar times. I think that if we’re going to follow the apostle’s leadership on this one, what we need to do is to go back to the basics, the mother’s milk that nourished us in our first faith as we learn to love Jesus all over again. And then we need to be willing to be those living stones and to be built into a new structure in this strange place, a new way of working together and supporting one another that maybe doesn’t quite fit the models that we’ve been used to and that may not impress in the ways that the world measures success but that God will use to do great things.

Sermon Video

https://youtu.be/vQgEZ4tYBns

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Hespeler, 3 May 2020 © Scott McAndless
Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2:19-25, John 10:1-15

The sheep huddle up close together with each other. There is a great deal of comfort in being here warm, safe and secure in the sheepfold. They are protected behind the fences and the gate. They know that the world outside of the fold can be very dangerous. Sheep are naturally skittish and timid creatures – and not without good reason, of course! When they are out in the hills and valleys, it can seem as if everything is out to get them: wolves, coyotes and lions. They can never relax. But here, in the fold it is so different, and they feel as if they can let their guard down.

So, the fold is good, but lately they have been feeling as if it has been a little bit too much of a good thing. There has been word out in the hills and dales lately of a new ravenous beast – something called a covid monster – that has been terrorizing sheep everywhere. So, the flock has been under lockdown for what seems like forever. And, as safe as it is, the fold gets a little bit tired sooner or later. Yes, the straw that has been gathered and brought in for them fills their stomachs and keeps them alive, but it is nothing like the tender grasses of the hillsides with which they long to fill their bellies. Water in the trough keeps them going but tastes nothing like the waters of a cold mountain stream.

And so lately there has been a lot of bleating in the flock, various sheep complaining about the shepherd and his policies. “This is ba-a-a-a-d,” they say. “The job of a shepherd is not just to keep us sa-a-a-a-fe, it’s not just to give us life. He’s supposed to give us life more abundantly. Life more abundantly includes lying down in green pastures and walking beside still waters, it means travelling down right paths with his rod and his staff to comfort us. We just can’t live that kind of abundant life if we can’t even get out of the fold. This is ba-a-a-a-a-a-h!

So, there is a lot of discontent – and not without some good reason! For it is true that sheep are not made only to shelter in the fold. Safety is good, but when you are only taking care of safety, you can never truly fulfill your purpose. But how to balance that need for green pastures with the requirement of safety in dangerous times? That is a question that the poor sheep cannot answer, and they are becoming frustrated and restless. And so perhaps it is not surprising that when the dissenting voices begin to be heard, some listen.

Where the voices are coming from, I do not know, but I have some suspicions. Maybe they are Russian wolves who are once again seeking to stir up trouble, or perhaps they are secretly funded by the corporations who know that their profits will continue to plummet so long as the sheep are not out in the fields. But wherever they are coming from, those voices are being heard within the flock.

And sheep, well, here is the thing about sheep. They are social animals. They like to think that they are rational and that they do things because they decide that they are logical and reasonable. But they mostly act in certain ways because they want to belong to the group.

Did you know there was a story from about fifteen years ago about a flock of sheep in Turkey who were left grazing near a cliff. At some point, one of those sheep apparently decided to jump off the cliff. No one knows why, maybe it was suicidal or maybe it was just a misstep, but it was only one sheep and not the end of the world. But guess what happened next. One by one, the rest of the sheep, 1,500 of them, calmly followed the leader over that cliff. Over a thousand sheep died that day and a third of them only survived because the pile of sheep at the bottom of the cliff had gotten so big that their fall wasn’t so bad.

But that is sheep for you. Their need to belong is so great that it can easily trump logic and reason. So, some in their frustration begin to listen to those strange voices. And others, out of that deep desire to belong, listen to them. There have always been thieves who have come to steal and kill and destroy. They have always been interested in using and manipulating the sheep to their own ends and to their own profits. They have gotten particularly good in recent years at manipulating the sheep to vote for certain parties and policies that hurt the sheep more than helped them.

They manipulate through social media with techniques like astroturfing – creating fake groups that make certain opinions seem more popular. Sheep are always looking for greener pastures, so they easily fall for astroturfing. Or the thieves might use clickbait – drawing people into conversations by posting stories and memes that are so intriguing people can’t help but click on them but then they get sucked into conversations where, again, they start to feel like they have to go along with some pretty crazy notions in order to fit in.

It might be true that sheep “will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” But we seem to be living in strange times where the really good thieves have been very creative about using the flocking instinct to get the sheep to listen to them anyways.

Now, I’ll be honest with you all here. I don’t speak to you today from outside of the fold. I am just another sheep who is under lockdown with the rest of you. I feel the same frustration that you do at not being able to go out and frolic in green pastures and lie down beside still waters. It is making me very discontent as well.

I will also confess that I have the same flocking instinct as all of the rest of you sheep in here. I do love to think that all of my actions and decisions are driven by my intellect, knowledge and reason. But the honest truth is that I am very much influenced by what my friends think and the particular sources of information that just feel right to me. Because of this, it is quite possible that I will not act in rational or even sensible ways. That’s where we all are right now.

But here is also the reality of our present situation: the covid monster is still ravaging the hills and dales out there. We will indeed be able to leave the safety and security of the sheepfold at some point. But it matters a great deal whose voice we listen to when it comes to being called to go out of the gate of that sheepfold. So how, in these complex times, and given our flocking instinct, will we know which voice to listen to?

There is one who is called the Good Shepherd who has the sort of voice we need to listen for. And how can we tell? What makes the good shepherd’s voice different from the voices of thieves and robbers? Good Shepherds know the sheep – know them so well that he can call each one by name. That is the first thing we sheep must look for. And I fear that many of the voices that are now calling us sheep to go out of the fold, do not know us.

Even more damning, they are not really interested in us sheep. Oh, they might be interested in our wool or our milk or our meat, they might be interested and how they will be able to profit from what we do out there in the dangerous hills and dales, but they are not interested in us – in our hopes and dreams and aspirations. They may be interested in the abundance of their own goods and possessions, but they are not interested in making sure that we have life and have it abundantly.

That is key thing about the Good Shepherd. The thief may come only to steal and kill and destroy. The Good Shepherd comes that they may have life and have it abundantly. I would suggest to you that any who are arguing that we need to trade life for abundance in terms of a stronger economy have fundamentally misjudged the needs of such a moment.

For this is how you will ultimately know the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down the shepherd’s own life for the sheep. You see, if there are any calculations to be made in terms of paying with lives for the opportunity to exit the safety of this fold, the Good Shepherd sees those calculations in a very different light. The Good Shepherd is far more willing to put his or her own life on the line for the sake of the safety of us sheep. Now, how might that make us all hear a bit differently the voices that are calling us to exit the safety of this fold?

Yes, we will leave. And we will not leave without there being a cost in terms of life. That is just the reality when you are dealing with a monster as dreadful as the covid beast. The temptation might be to sacrifice the weak and the vulnerable in order to make that transition. That is the calculation that a hired hand might make, one who has no real connection with us sheep. That is the calculation that might be made by leaders who have come to see themselves as serving whoever can pay them the most. But the Good Shepherd is different. The Good Shepherd is there to serve all of the sheep and, if there is a life calculation to be made, the Good Shepherd’s own life will be laid down first.

So listen, will you? Listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd because, the fact of the matter is, the Good Shepherd is out there and is calling.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus makes seven “I am” statements. “I am the light of the world,” “I am the bread of life,” “I am the vine,” and “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” to name some of them. Each “I am” statement is a powerful metaphor that Christians have reflected upon and meditated on down through the centuries. But I would suggest to you that, maybe, one of the most powerful “I am” statements of all is, “I am the Good Shepherd.” but I wonder sometimes if we haven’t missed some of the key meanings in that metaphor.

At least in my experience, most Christians seem to think of this saying of Jesus in terms of their own personal relationship. It’s all about me and Jesus and what Jesus does for me and how I follow Jesus. In this regard, the idea of the Good Shepherd laying down his life for the sake of his sheep certainly seems very meaningful and closely tied to the story of the death of Jesus for our sakes. That is all well and good, of course, and definitely a good part of the intended meaning of this saying.

Nevertheless, I would like us to remember that the obvious meaning of this metaphor makes us into sheep. And sheep are among the animals whose herding instinct is the strongest. Sheep, to put it bluntly, don’t act simply as individuals. And I think any interpretation of this saying of Jesus that does not take that into account is deeply impoverished.

And it just really strikes me right now, when we are in the position where we find ourselves, that when we put ourselves in the shelter of the fold waiting for the Good Shepherd to come and open the gate so we might go out into the hills and valleys and experience life more abundantly, that maybe this saying of Jesus was also intended to teach us something about the kind of leaders that we look for and settle for in times of great peril.

Here is a video of the sermon:

https://youtu.be/OEZTnMTYmUg

Hespeler, 26 April, 2020 © Scott McAndless
Acts 2:14a, 22-32, Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19, 1 Peter 1:17-23, Luke 24:13-35

There have been many stories over the last several weeks of people who were struggling to stay alive. They were in hospital, dealing with high fevers and shortness of breath. Some were taken into intensive care and even put on respirators. Others, for various reasons, were not taken to the hospitals but struggled all the same in their home or residence. That struggle was also often made much worse by a strong sense of isolation as people could not have their loved ones with them and those who did care for them could only do so behind several layers of protection.

This struggle with death is very real and all too many have not survived it. And yet we can also celebrate the fact that the great majority who have contracted this disease have not succumbed to it and that those who have suffered even from its worst symptoms have, in the majority, survived and come out the other end. We do remember and mourn those that have been lost and that might yet be lost. But today, I want us to also spare a thought for the survivors of this pandemic, and most of us will probably be able to put ourselves in the category of survivor. What does it mean to survive such a thing is this?

The psalm that we read this morning, Psalm 116, may be uniquely able to help us answer that question. There are different kinds of psalms in the Bible, written to be used in different situations by different kinds of worshippers. Psalm 116, does seem a little bit unique. It seems to have been written for people who are dealing with a very specific situation, but a situation that arises often enough. It is pretty clearly the prayer of someone who has been seriously ill and in fear of death and yet has survived. Presumably, this was the prayer that worshipers would pray once they had recovered, probably as they came to the temple and gave an offering of thanksgiving. That much seems clear when the worshiper prays, “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, I pray, save my life!’”

Being thankful is indeed something that we all need to think about how we can practice as we look at our lives as survivors going forward. I think it will be helpful to all of us to be able to practice gratitude in small and large ways in months to come because those months will not be easy. But this psalm is not just about being thankful. Its main focus, instead, is on the life of the survivor going forward and what is going to be different.

Being a survivor, brushing close to death and yet surviving, has always had great power to transform people’s lives. This is something that the ancients understood, and it is absolutely reflected in this ancient psalm. One thing that people have a tendency to do when they are in brushes with death is to make vows and promises which is something we see in this psalm as well.

This may not be an entirely helpful impulse. One thing that people do, you see, when they are in fear of death is that they have a tendency to want to make bargains. People are afraid, of course. Fear in the face of death, even for people of faith, is a natural human response. And one human way of dealing with that fear is to try to make bargains with God or with the universe or with other key figures in your life – basically with whoever you feel might have the power to save you. This kind of bargaining is actually a way of trying to pretend that you have control over something that is ultimately uncontrollable. It is not really a healthy response, but we all have a tendency to do it anyways because we are scared.

So people will make promises to God – you know, donations, vows of chastity, promises to be a missionary, that kind of thing. It becomes an exchange; if God gives you your life, you will give this valuable thing in exchange. It is not really a good response because, first of all, God doesn’t work like that. God doesn’t make bargains for human life. As the psalmist says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.” Nothing you could offer to God has more value to God than your own life.

God doesn’t make transactions with us over our life and death, but God recognizes that facing times like that – times when you don’t know if you’re going to make it – gives you a certain perspective on your life and priorities. I think we’ve all seen something of that in recent weeks. Do you remember all of those things that we got upset over or argued about with each other or with the people we loved just a few weeks ago, they were things that seemed so very important. But this pandemic has given us all a certain perspective – those things just don’t seem to matter all that much anymore. Lots of things don’t seem to matter as much as they once did – including perfect haircuts, deodorant and pants!

So living through this kind of crisis can and should make you think very differently about many things. And when you get a good look at your priorities in that situation, it is good to respond to that by seeking some change. I like to think that that is the kind of vow that the writer is talking about keeping with God in this psalm. So I think it would be good for us to think about the kinds of vows we really ought to make coming out of this thing.

Do you think that you could promise, for example, to hold on to some of that perspective once this disaster is all over? Could you vow not to fight with other people and not to make enemies of other people over matters that really are not of ultimate importance. Could you remember what is so clear right now, that people are more important than money, than whether or not your sports team wins and than maintaining certain practices of the status quo. I honestly feel as if many things could change if we, as individuals, could make such vows.

But there is something else that we have learned through this. If we’re going to make it through this thing – and we will make it through this thing –  we will not just do that as individuals. We have to do that as a society together. I realize that that’s probably been about the hardest thing to pull off in this crisis, but we’ve also realized just how essential it is. So the question of who survives and what we learn by surviving is also a question we need to ask of society as a whole.

Our society has already done a certain amount of bargaining in this crisis. We have made the bargain that if we took some costly steps, like instituting social distancing and shuttering non-essential businesses, we would make it through and survive together. That bargain, prayerfully, will succeed. But the bigger question will be what will we learn as a society by surviving this thing? And what sort of vows moving forward do we need to make to enshrine those lessons into our recovered society.

The first lesson, clearly, is simply that, that we have to look beyond our welfare as individuals. You need to remember, moving forward, that your health is not only dependent on you. I may be healthy at the moment, but if my neighbour is not healthy or the homeless person down the street or the prisoner or the person on disability support or welfare is not healthy, then my health will be compromised.

This should absolutely prompt us all to give up on the myth that whatever success you are able to amass for yourself in this life is totally up to you. This should make us vow to look beyond the glory of individual success and discover how we can create a successful society together. Can we say, together with the psalmist, “I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.”

We have also learned through this pandemic that about $2,000 a month is apparently what an ordinary person needs to live within our society. But we have also learned that some of the people in our society, people that we have deemed essential for our survival, are routinely not paid that much. I’m talking about people like grocery store employees, warehouse workers, food delivery people, farm workers and a whole host of others who ensure that we can get the things that we need. Many of these people are paid minimum wage or less and that works out to be less than $2,000 a month.

Now, as far as I am concerned, if we do not come out of this crisis without learning something about that disconnection between somebody being deemed essential and their work being adequately compensated, we will have absolutely failed as a society. Can we say, together with the psalmist, “I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.”

What other lessons may God have for us in this pandemic? What about lessons for the church? There will be many. The church has done what many of us thought to be impossible during this time. We have learned to be the church without a building. The building is closed and locked. We cannot gather in it, nor can we use it as the base of operations. Almost everything we did before this all started was centered around that building – about attracting as many people into it as possible, using the building’s resources to feed and clothe and otherwise minister to people in the community, to fellowship together and support one another and above all to meet with God in a sacred space.

We have had none of that, and yet we have managed to continue to be the church during this time. Yes, it has not been as we would like it. And it may not always meet our needs or the needs of others in the same ways, but we have proven it is not impossible. So I think that we need to make a vow that, when the day comes and we are able to gather again in our building, we don’t just do what will feel most comfortable – we don’t just go back to being the church as we were. We need to think a whole lot more about how we are the church without the building, it will make us stronger in the building too. “I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.”

No one wants to go through a serious illness or crisis, but serious illnesses and crises are part of life in this world. We could get into some serious philosophical or theological discussions about why these things happen or why God allows them to happen, but the bottom line is we don’t actually have answers to those questions. What we do have is a God who cares about us and about what we struggle through and who is committed to walking through the worst with us. One of the big benefits of that is that there are things that we can take out of the story of our survival and that will lead us into better things going forward. So, by the grace of God, let us pay our vows to the Lord.