Author: Scott McAndless

One desert evening

Posted by on Sunday, March 17th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 17 March 2019 © Scott McAndless – 2nd Lent
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18, Psalm 27, Philippians 3:17 - 4:1, Luke 13:31-35
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uring the season of Lent this year, I have noticed, a lot of our scripture readings take us into desert places. Last week we spent forty days and forty nights with Jesus in the wilderness as he was tempted. And I think you will find over the coming weeks that many other readings take us into the desert as well. The desert is a hard place to be, of course. With no food and water, you quickly become desperate. It is also far from human society and culture and that can be very hard for some. But there is also no question that the desert can be a profoundly spiritual place – a place where God seems nearer.
      In our reading from Genesis this morning, the person we find in a desert place is none other than Abraham, the great father of our faith tradition. (In this text he is actually called Abram, but, since the story of how he changed his name really doesn’t have much to do with this particular passage, I’m going to ignore that and just call him by the name that we are used to.) But it is not just that Abraham is in a literal desert in this passage. I mean, he is. He seems to have pitched his tent in a very isolated place where there is nothing to interfere with him seeing all the stars in the sky and there are vultures and other things that prey upon dead things around him. But more than a literal desert, Abraham seems to have found himself in a spiritual desert.
      How can I tell that? Well, look at how Abraham reacts when God comes to him and, in a vision, gives him an extraordinary promise. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” I mean, that’s a pretty amazing thing for anyone to hear. The great creator of the universe comes to you and says that he has an enormous reward just for you! But how does Abraham react? The Book of Genesis puts his reaction kind of nicely, I mean, Abraham is one of the heroes of the Bible after all. “You have given me no offspring,” he says, “and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But Abraham’s reaction is basically to say, “God, don’t talk to me about rewards. What good are your rewards if I don’t have any future?”
      That is a pretty bleak place to be. Abraham is declaring that rewards, blessings and protection are absolutely meaningless to him because of something going on in his life. I mean, if I had friends who said that to me, I would be worried about them. That sounds like depression. And what has pushed Abraham into this spiritual desert? He actually has a great deal at this point. He is a very wealthy man according to the standards of his time and place. He has honour and respect from the people around him which, in that world, counted for even more. There were many who would have looked at Abraham and said that he had it all. So where does this discouragement come from? It comes from the simple fact that he sees no future.
      Abraham sees no future because he has no children of his own. But his feelings are not just unique to him, I feel, nor even just to people who have dealt with the problem of infertility. I think a lot of people today are feeling that despair for the future. The current and ongoing environmental crisis certainly makes many people feel that way. The nuclear arms race has certainly had that effect on many as well. You can understand the feeling – what is the point of anything that I achieve or amass if there is not going to be anyone around in the future who can appreciate it?
      Honestly, the church is feeling much the same thing in many places these days. The church has so much – such a powerful legacy that it has received from the past and so many vibrant ministries and beautiful buildings. But the church – and this is something that is true almost entirely across the board – is worried about the future. Every single denomination in Canada has suffered loss of membership in recent decades and, by far, the greatest loss has taken place in the youngest generations. The church is afraid that it’s losing its children and youth. That’s just the reality and everyone is talking about it. So, I think that Abraham could sympathize perfectly with the church today; we too are asking the question, what good are God’s promises and blessings if we don’t have children or youth to pass them onto?
      Now, I would like you to note that all these dark and depressing thoughts that Abraham is having seem to happen in a particular place. He is inside. We only know that because at some point we are told that he goes outside but I think that his location is significant. It doesn’t say what he is inside, but I think it’s fair to assume, based on the rest of the story, that he is in a tent. So we have poor little Abraham, sitting in his tent in the desert feeling sorry for himself. He is surrounded, I’m assuming, by all his flocks and cattle, all the symbols of his great wealth and success, but, as he thinks of all that success, he cannot help but feel that it is meaningless because he has no children – because the future is dead and empty to him.
      Often, honestly, that is exactly where the church is these days too – sitting inside our churches, surrounded by many blessings, but feeling sorry for ourselves because the future seems a bit bleak.
      But then something prompts Abraham to go outside. In fact, not just something but someone. It says, “He brought him outside.” “He” refers, of course, to God. And, in many ways, I think that is the most significant thing that God does for Abraham in this whole passage. God takes him outside. And what is outside? Well, the desert is outside. Ah, but it is the desert at night that is outside the tent.
      I wonder, have you ever been there – in a desert, far from civilization, in the middle of the night? I know that there aren’t too many deserts in Canada, but if you’ve been out in the Canadian wilderness someplace far from civilization – say in the middle of a Muskoka lake or in a clearing in Algonquin Park – you might have some sense of it. There, far from any artificial lights, there is only darkness. The only light comes from the stars and that light will completely blow you away. If you’ve only seen the stars in the city, I’m afraid that you have no idea. It’s not just the sight of those stars, it is the sheer uncountable abundance of them and the unfathomable space that they fill.
      I don’t think that anyone has a simple response to such a sight. It doesn’t just send information to your eyes it speaks to your soul. You may be someone who has decided, based on logic and reason, that there is no God, but when you are staring at such a sight, you cannot just respond to it with logic and reason. It speaks to the heart and what it tells you is that there are things in the universe that are far beyond your logic and understanding.
      So I, for one am not surprised that, when poor despondent Abraham lifted his eyes to the blazing glory that hung above that desolate place as he left his tent that night, God spoke to him – and Abraham received that as a much more hopeful word than he had heard inside. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4) That was the voice that Abraham heard that night in the desert and it was the voice of God.
      Now, the particular word of hope that Abraham received when he went outside was that God would grant him a child that would come from inside his own body. The incredible overhead display made that promise undeniable. The God who could arrange for such an incredible sight could surely not only grant Abraham just one heir – could grant as many as those uncountable stars that filled the sky. That was the particular message that Abraham received when he looked up, but I don’t think that is necessarily the entire message nor that that voice has since been silenced.
      It makes me think of many people in the world today who are a lot like Abraham – people who have received many significant blessings and even protection from God but for whom those blessings mean little and may even be a reason for despair because they see no future. I have seen reports that the upcoming millennial generation in North America is, to an unprecedented degree, opting out of having children because they despair for the future given the promise of climate change and environmental destruction. They seem to have lost hope for the future. In these discouraging times, they are not alone.
      And then there is the church which, as I said, seems to have a lot in common with Abraham as we contemplate the future. Yes, we have many blessings and even riches. Many flocks and herds surround our tent on every side, but we cannot help but ask the question, what does all this mean if we do not have a future, especially a future that includes a healthy population of children and young people?
      Abraham’s story is extremely relevant today. And what do you think that God would say to us when we are feeling that way? I think that God would say, “Why don’t you go outside?” To the church, sitting inside of its magnificent buildings, God would say, “Go outside, I want to show you something.”
      In many ways, that is what I think God is saying. God is telling the church, for one thing, that if we think we can just wait around inside our tent – just doing the things that are familiar and comforting to ourselves – and that eventually a younger generation is going to just show up, we are deluding ourselves. Can a younger generation show up in the church? Absolutely! But I will tell you that it is far more likely to happen when the church sets out from what is familiar and what feels safe and steps into the world outside the church in mission. But if we’re just sitting in our tents feeling sorry for our lack of future, why would God make that happen?
      But even more important than that, stepping out of the tent means being willing to trust God enough to be people of faith in the big bad world. We’re told that when Abraham looked up and read the promise of God in the stars, “He believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” God is looking for that kind of faith from us as well and will always reward it when he finds it in us.

      Is there a future for humanity? For the planet? For the church? Do our fears concerning that future suck the meaning and joy out of the blessings of the present? If ever they do, remember that the future is and always has been in the benevolent hands of God. And God would not have us sitting inside our tents paralyzed and demoralized by fear of the future. God is inviting us outside, to consider the wonders of creation and the heavenly hosts. He is inviting us outside to trust him as we do the new thing, the risky thing, that we are called to do in the name of Christ Jesus.
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A Lament (Inspired by Psalm 79 and the events in Christchurch)

Posted by on Saturday, March 16th, 2019 in Minister

So here we are, once again, struggling in the aftermath of a terrible tragedy and outrage. White supremacists have attacked and killed peaceful Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I always struggle with the question of how to respond, as a leader in a Christian church, in the aftermath of such events.

We may well pray in intercession -- pray for healing for the wounded and aggrieved and for a better world.

We may well pray in confession -- confessing the ways in which we participate in systems of oppression and exclusion of those who are different.

We should do these things, of course. But I believe that, in the immediate aftermath, we are not really able to do them with a whole heart.

Our first need, I believe, is simply to express to God our feelings, our desires and our disappointments. We need to complain. This is a legitimate response and a very biblical one. Therefore, for worship in the aftermath of the events in Christchurch, this is the prayer that I have written for my congregation:

A Lament (Inspired by Psalm 79)



L: O God, the wicked have entered into a sacred place. They have defiled two mosques sacred to many and thus sacred to you. That have left hundreds of lives in ruins. They have slain many people who you created and who you love. They have poured out their blood like water all around Christchurch.

P: They have spread their hatred far and wide through social media. They have made Muslims – our neighbours, our friends and fellow people of faith – feel unsafe at worship even here in Canada on the opposite end of the world.

L: How long, O Lord? Will you endure such wickedness forever? Will you let zealous wrath burn like fire?

P: Pour out your wrath on evildoers and those who support them for they have devoured people at prayer and laid waste to their mosques.

L: Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.

P: Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?”

L: Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations before our eyes.

P: Let the groans of the aggrieved and wounded come before you; according to your great power preserve those in danger of death.

L: And let those who are afraid, who are wounded and surrounded by hatred know blessings sevenfold in repayment of the taunts with which they have endured, O Lord!

P: For you are our God. You are the hope of all nations. You are the hope of peace.
 
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Desert Days

Posted by on Sunday, March 10th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 10 March, 2019 © Scott McAndless – 1st Lent
Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16, Romans 10:8b-13, Luke 4:1-13
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oday is the first Sunday in Lent. And on the first Sunday in Lent, if you follow the lectionary, which we have chosen to do this year at St. Andrew’s Hespeler, you always read the same story from the gospels. You read the story of the temptation of Jesus in the desert.
      That can be a bit of a problem for a preacher like me, reading the same story each year at the same time. I mean, who likes reruns? It is one reason why I decided, several years ago, to set aside the lectionary for a time and exercise my freedom to choose the passages that I felt God was calling me to preach on each Sunday, even during Lent. That was fine and one way to deal with it, but I am finding it kind of interesting this year to come back to the lectionary and to live within that discipline of visiting the same old familiar stories. There is a value and even a power in repetition.
      So today I find myself looking at this familiar story and asking myself what is special and what is unique about the way that the Gospel of Luke chooses to tell this story. And the answer to that question, honestly, is not that much. Luke’s account of the temptation in the wilderness is almost identical to Matthew’s.
      But there is one difference in the way that Luke tells the story. And actually, it is a key difference that you have to notice when you compare Matthew and Luke. It is the last phrase. Luke, and Luke alone, ends his account of the temptation in the wilderness with these specific words: “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.”
       Now, when you end a story like that, you immediately make your readers ask a question, don’t you? You read that, and you have to ask the question when? When will be that opportune time when the devil steps back into the story of Jesus? That’s going to be a particularly meaningful moment, isn’t it? And so, as you continue to read the Gospel of Luke from this point on, you should be looking for the devil to reappear. That will be the indication that the “opportune time” has come. And, guess what? The devil does not reappear as a character in the Gospel of Luke throughout the entire ministry of Jesus. Jesus does it all, the preaching, the miracles, the incredible parables, and never once does the devil show up in the narrative.
      He does not step into the story again until 18 chapters later in Chapter 22, verse 3: “Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them.” Oh yes, it seems that the devil has finally found his opportune time and the opportune person through whom to carry out his design.
      That is the way that Luke chooses to tell his story of the ministry of Jesus. It is bookended by the action of the devil, who is active in the temptation at the beginning and is active through the passion at the end, but the middle – the entire ministry of Jesus – rolls out in a devil-free zone. Now, why does Luke choose to tell the story in that way?
      I believe that it is symbolic. Luke is trying to teach us about creating the kind of ministry that Jesus had – the kind of ministry that transforms the world, because that’s why he wrote this Gospel, to teach us how to do exactly that. That gives the story of Jesus in the desert particular significance. Jesus clearly has to go through that ordeal; he is led there by the Holy Spirit. The message seems to be that the decisions that he makes in the desert are all about setting Jesus up to have the kind of effective ministry that he has been called to have. By dealing with all of the temptations that may arise and lead his ministry astray in the desert, Jesus effectively banishes the devil from interfering throughout his earthly ministry.
      And surely that is also a lesson for us. The things that tempted Jesus in the desert, the things that he rejected, will surely be the very things that will easily derail our ministry; we are being warned against them. So let us take a look at those three temptations in the desert. Is there some way in which the church today find itself facing the same temptations, though perhaps in somewhat different form?
      The first temptation is fairly straightforward. After fasting for many days, Jesus is understandably hungry and is tempted to use his power to provide bread for sustenance. Now, what is wrong with doing that? When the devil tells Jesus that he has the power to provide bread for himself, he is surely not lying. If Jesus is who he says he is, he must have such power. What’s more, we are told in the same Gospel that Jesus actually did a very similar thing. He had four thousand people in a secluded place, five thousand on another occasion, and yet bread and even fish were miraculously provided at Jesus’ command. He provided bread then, what’s wrong with doing it now?
      The answer, I suspect, has nothing to do with how the bread is provided, but rather the question of for whom. Jesus might provide bread for others by such means, but he will not provide it for himself. He justifies this refusal by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, “one does not live by bread alone.” That quote comes from a longer passage where Moses is talking about God’s provision for the people of Israel and how God gave them manna to eat while they wandered in the desert. The meaning seems to be that God did this as a way of teaching them that they should trust in God first, and not in their ability to provide for themselves.
      So how do we take this temptation and apply it to the life of the church today. I believe that the same power offered to Jesus is still available to the church today. We are given the ability to produce sustenance. Oh, we may not do it in as powerful a way as Jesus did it with the five thousand in the wilderness. We certainly don’t produce bread out of stones. But I have seen that miracle occur in this place. It has occurred when enough food to produce one of our famous Thursday Night Supper and Socials just appeared when it is needed most – when somebody maybe dropped off some food that they didn’t need or gave generously in another way.
      I’ve seen the same miracle happen (though not with food) in the Hope Clothing room when someone has come in with a particular need for a certain item and we discover that the perfect item had been dropped off minutes earlier by some random donor. That kind of things happens once or twice and you just sort of shrug your shoulders and say, “That’s quite a coincidence.” But when it keeps happening, you start to suspect that something special is going on.
      So, I absolutely believe that God can provide bread and other basic needs in stunning ways. Jesus trusted in that too. The temptation in the desert, however, is all about taking that awesome power that God has bestowed upon us and using it merely to take care of our own needs. That is not why that power is given. And this is frankly a temptation that the church often gives into.
      Whenever we start to feel that resources are getting scarce in the church – when we are going through a desert experience – churches always seem to retract – to say that we cannot be involved in ministry to others because we have to use everything that we’ve got just to survive. I’ve seen it time and time again. When a church enters into that kind of survival mode, concentrating on bread for itself, it can so quickly lose sight of what it is meant to be. So Jesus dispenses with that temptation at the very beginning. So should the church do if we want to banish the influence of the devil from our ongoing ministry.
      The second temptation that Christ faces in the desert is also one that the church continues to face today. The devil offers Jesus power and influence over the authorities of this world. “Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority.’” Can churches do that – sacrifice their mission and identity in the quest for political power and influence? Absolutely! The most powerful demonstration of that temptation we’ve seen in recent times is the powerful alliance that has been made between the white Evangelical Church and the Republican Party in the United States. They seem to have pledged near unconditional support in the quest to achieve certain policy and judicial goals.
      The problem with that is not necessarily that there is something wrong with those political goals (though I realize, of course, that not every Christian would agree with their goals). The problem with that is what it does to the church – it takes us away from our true identity, our true calling. The church may see some short-term benefit, of course. Such power and influence is intoxicating. But the long-term effect will definitely be to turn people sour as they recognize the cynicism with which the church interacts with the world. We are willing to set aside what matters most for the sake of gain in this world. “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:36)
      So, the first temptation seems to be about using the power that God has given us to merely take care of our own needs. The second one is about using our power and position to gain political influence. I think you can already see a pattern here; it is all about taking care of ourselves first as a church and as a Christian movement. I think you will find that the third temptation takes us even further down the road.
      In the third temptation, the devil takes Jesus to the top of the highest building anywhere in the world, and he says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” That is exactly what it sounds like: an invitation to commit very public suicide. Now, you may ask, how would that be something at all tempting to the church today? We are just trying to survive as an institution, why would we be attracted to suicide?
      But, of course, it’s not actual suicide that the devil is talking about. He wants Jesus to put himself in such a position precisely so that God might save him. In other words, he wants Jesus to make it all about nothing but his own survival. And that is something that I see churches doing a lot these days. Churches are scared, I know that. The world has changed and the place of the church in it is no longer as clear as it once was. When things get desperate, there is this temptation that churches find themselves dealing with. They decide that it is all about survival. The only purpose of the church becomes the continued existence of the church. We are so busy with survival that there is nothing left for ministry, mission, learning or growth in grace.
      It is just like what happens when someone flings themselves from the top of a high building. In that moment every other concern is reduced to one question: will I survive or will I not. Churches go into that mode and they pray and expect that God will save them. And the issue at that point is not whether or not God can save them. The issue is not even whether or not God will save them. The issue is that we are testing God by once again making it all about us and our survival instead of questions about what God has called us to do and be in the world.

      The temptations of Christ in the wilderness are not just about Jesus and what he had to deal with for our sakes. They are about us and the real issues that we continue to face. They are about banishing the devil – this very influence of evil upon the lives of our churches – so that we might get on with the business of becoming what we were called to be.
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In the fading afterglow

Posted by on Sunday, March 3rd, 2019 in Minister

Readings, March 3, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Exodus 34:29-35, Psalm 99:1-9, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-36
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 have been there. There have been moments in my life when I can truly say that I went where Moses went – into the very presence of God. Oh, not literally the same place that Moses went and maybe not in the presence of God in exactly the same way but, yes, there are moments that I can point to when I had absolutely no doubt and no other way to explain it than to say that I had just experienced God. Sometimes it has happened in subtle ways that nobody would have even noticed who was around me. Sometimes it has come while interpreting scripture and when I saw a special connection or deeper understanding that I knew I could not have found by myself – the spirit of God must have been operating within me.
      Other moments have been more dramatic. I will never forget the time, for example, when I was literally out of money. I didn’t tell anyone but I didn’t know how I was going to get my next meal. And yet, in that moment, I impulsively chose to make a donation of my last five dollars to a worthy offering that was being taken. It was an act of faith and trust that was perhaps foolish, but I did it. I still do not know to this day how a twenty dollar bill ended up in my mailbox the following morning. Surely God had given someone a little nudge.
      And yes, of course, there have also been those moments of greatest drama when, in the midst of worship or in the midst of a crisis I just knew. Every fibre of my being just reoriented to the certainty that I was in the presence of someone far beyond my understanding.
      I have experienced the presence of God. I imagine that many of you have had such moments as well. Now, since such things are personal experiences, they are usually not shared. For that reason, I cannot really use my personal experiences to prove to you that God exists. Spiritual experience is not about proof. It does, however, play an important part in the formation and forms of human religion.
      The model for how that works is demonstrated in how the Book of Exodus tells us that Moses gave spiritual leadership to the people of Israel. He would go into the tabernacle – a portable sanctuary that the Israelites would carry with them – and there he would have an experience of the presence of God. What that experience was – how exactly God was there for Moses in the tent – we do not know. We cannot know because it was Moses’ own personal experience. Nobody else could share in it and you could not prove that God was there in the tent to anybody but Moses.
      Nevertheless, on the basis of his own personal experience, while the afterglow of that experience was still on him and slowly fading, Moses would speak to his people and give insights and commandments to them based on what he had experienced. But, after a time, that afterglow faded, the experience became less potent in his mind, and so the time of sharing based on it would come to an end. Moses would cover his face with a veil and for a time, they would only have the wisdom given in the afterglow to fall back on until it was time for Moses to have another personal experience of God in the tabernacle.
      Now, in Exodus, this is all told in quite literal fashion. Moses’ face glows with a real and frightening light which slowly fades away. He then literally covers his face with a veil during the interim time. But I would say that this is how spiritual experience always works if you set aside the literal details. Whenever a spiritual leader has a powerful experience, there is a time when he or she is able to give great wisdom and insight in the fading afterglow of that experience. But then that afterglow wisdom gets codified and even turned into law to guide the community through the period of the veil – the time when no particular guidance comes through spiritual experience.
      That is how it has always worked in many faiths, not just our own. It is a fairly natural way for human beings to respond to experiences of the divine. We see the very same pattern, for example, in our gospel reading this morning. Peter, James and John go up a high mountain where they have an experience of God in Jesus Christ – a powerful experience marked, once again, by glowing white light. Peter’s response, in the fading afterglow of that powerful experience, is to want to codify it. “Let us make three dwellings,” he says, “one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He wants to set up religious buildings where they can process the experience and turn it into commandments and regulations, just like Moses did when he came out of the tabernacle. He wants to do this so that the experience might sustain them through the long period of the veil when there is no dramatic God experience.
      So that is the pattern. And it is a good pattern that human beings have developed to deal with the fact that people do sometimes have incredible spiritual experiences of God, the power of that experience fades and then we tend to go through long periods of veil time when there is no revelation. In many ways, you might say that that’s what religion is. It is the institutional structures that we build in the fading afterglow of experiences of the divine – structures that are designed to get us through the veil time.
      But, while that is a natural human thing and while it is what Moses did, you probably picked up a little note in our reading from the gospel this morning – a note that seemed to indicate that Simon Peter didn’t actually respond in the right way. Jesus doesn’t say anything, but what happens immediately afterwards – the encompassing cloud, the mindless terror and the words, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” booming from heaven, all seem to indicate that Peter didn’t quite get his response right. But what did he do wrong? What is inappropriate in what he says?
      That brings us, finally, to our reading this morning from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. In this letter, Paul is talking specifically about the very passage we’ve been discussing – about the whole description of Moses having these face-to-face experiences with God, giving laws and rules and commandments in the fading afterglow, and then putting on the veil to signify the time when that direct experience of God is completely absent. Paul understands where this comes from, but he also explains what is wrong with this model of relating to God.
      Paul writes this: “Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.” The problem, Paul says, is the veil. And what does the veil represent? It represents that long period of time when the direct experience of God is absent. In fact, it represents the fear of God’s continued absence. We are afraid, having had these extraordinary experiences of God at some point, that it will never happen again. And so we set ourselves up to try and make it through that long period of the veil. That is what the fading afterglow time is all about. We try to codify, to reduce the experience down to laws and rules, so that they may continue to guide us when the experience of God is absent.
      The problem with all of that, from Paul’s point of view, is that it’s all motivated by fear. Having had an experience of God’s presence, we are afraid of the absence of that experience. In many ways that is the history of religion. It is the story of people who had extraordinary experiences of God and then created a religion to guide people in the absence of that experience. Now, Paul does not deny the power of those kinds of experiences. He had some of his own. They were very important and formative to him. But Paul actually resists using the fading afterglow of his experiences of the risen Christ, to give laws and rules. For him, laws and rules are the problem, not the solution.
      For him, the point of whatever experience of Christ you have is not to give you rules to live by. It is to transform you. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
      What, then, does all this mean? How should we apply it to the way that we live out our faith in Jesus Christ? The fact of the matter is that we are only here, we are only the church, because, at some point there were people who experienced the presence of God. It started, of course, with the apostles who, a matter of days after the death of their Lord Jesus, experienced his presence with them alive again. But they are not the only ones. The Presbyterian Church and Reformed tradition came into being because of the experiences of reformers like John Knox and John Calvin. The people who built this church did so because, in small ways and large, they had experienced God at work in their lives. The people who, down through the years, preached in this pulpit and who led in the session and in other ways in this church had their own experiences of the presence of God. None of this would have happened without such experiences.
      But the temptation, Paul is saying, is to leave it at that. To take those experiences, those extraordinary experiences, and say that that is it. That the gospels were written, the church was given its structure and doctrines, this church building was erected in the fading afterglow of those extraordinary experiences. The temptation is to live out our Christian life and faith under the veil – living under the legacy left behind by those experiences. “Let’s build three dwellings,” we say with Peter, “one for the reformers, one for the people who built this beautiful church, one for the leaders who went before and that will be enough.”
      To that, Paul says no. To that, Paul says, it is not enough. We must not be merely conformed to the rules and expectations of those who have gone before. We ourselves are to be transformed daily into the image of Christ Jesus – brought to a place where we don’t need those rules and expectations because we are already becoming new beings in Christ.
      These spiritual experiences – our own and those of people who have gone before us – are wonderful and beautiful – but when they become the basis of religion – when we put them under the veil – they become sterile and lifeless. Paul wants us to live under a different pattern. As a daily discipline – through prayer, scripture reading, meditation and contemplation – we are to continually reflect on the very presence of Jesus among us. Our purpose is not to build dwellings, or create rules and commandments and expectations for others to follow. Our purpose is to become what we contemplate, the living Christ, moving and acting through us in the world.
      Paul is calling us to something higher here – higher than religion, higher than ethics and commandments, higher than building sacred memorials to our experiences. He is calling us to become the very embodiment of Jesus in this world.
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On the other cheek…

Posted by on Sunday, February 24th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 24 February 2019 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 45:3-11, Ps 37:1-11, 39, 40; 1 Cor 15:35-38, 42-50, Luke 6:27-38
A
 little while ago I had a conversation with a woman who had been in an abusive marriage. We were talking about how you know when to intervene, what the signs are that somebody might be being abused and that you might need, at the very least, to ask them some questions. Of course, one of the signs that the literature often suggests that you should look for is bruises and scars. A black eye or a bruised cheek, they say, should be taken as a significant warning sign.
      And I suppose that is true enough, but I will not soon forget what my friend said to me. “You know,” she said, “I never had a black eye or a mark on my face. My husband was calculating enough to know not to hit me where anyone would see it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hit me in other places.”
      And that conversation came back very powerfully to me when I first turned to our gospel reading this morning. To think of that cold, cruel and calculating violence being inflicted on a weaker victim is all that more disturbing when you hold it up against this advice of Jesus: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”

      These are, of course some of the most familiar words of Jesus. But they are words that we often treat in rather vague and symbolic terms. “Turning the other cheek,” has become a proverb, sometimes even a joke. We don’t usually talk about it in cases of actual physical violence. We don’t usually talk about it in practical terms at all. But I think it’s important to realize that when Jesus said it, he meant it practically. When he said it, there were people, both men and women, in the crowd listening who knew what it felt like to be struck and struck hard on the cheek and in many other places. If we cannot understand these words in very practical terms, I’m not sure how useful they are to us.
      And there is, indeed, something in me that very strongly wants to reject these words of Jesus for use in practical terms because, let me tell you, if I ever had a woman who came to me and confessed to me that she was being physically abused, my advice to her would never be that she should respond to that abuse by inviting further abuse in any way. In fact, I would feel it to be my duty to do what I could to get her out of her situation if there was any chance of ongoing abuse.
      I also know that passages like this one have been used by abusers to protect themselves and to keep their victims trapped in endless cycles of violence – to make the victims feel like they are obliged to accept it and not protest. And that is just not right.
      But despite all of that, I do believe these words of Jesus are powerful and true and that they can apply in cases of abuse and, indeed, in the face of many other injustices. You do need to understand who Jesus was speaking to, though, and what he was really saying.
      The people in the crowd that Jesus was preaching to that day – and indeed on most days – were mostly the lowest of the low. They were the people that, as we said last week, Jesus addressed directly as poor, hungry, weeping and oppressed. If they were abused, and they were regularly abused, they had no recourse and no one who would help them. For a slave, or a peasant, or a woman to be struck in that world was not considered to be illegal. It was just considered to be normal. And, while Jesus knew that what was happening to them was wrong, he could not promise that any human authority would help them. So this is what he did: he told them to respond to their abuse in such a way as to shame their abusers.
      Ancient Mediterranean society was a culture that had shame and pride at its foundation. In every encounter, everything that happened, people in that society were continually judged as either honourable or ashamed. If they were judged as honorable their standing in society would be raised. But if they were judged shamefully, that could be a disaster for them and their families. Jesus told the poor and abused folks who were listening to him that, while they might not have any power to challenge the people who abused them, there were ways they could shame them.
      That is whole point of Jesus’ teaching about turning the other cheek. Poor people, slaves and women were regularly struck on the face in that society, but they were struck in a particular way. The way you hit a slave was with the back of your hand, your right hand, because it would be considered shameful to touch anyone with your left hand because the left hand was considered to be unclean – something that I, as a left handed person find personally rather offensive. But that was how it was. That meant that abused people were regularly struck on the right cheek with the back of the right hand. (And, by the way, in the version of this saying that you will find in the gospel of Matthew Jesus actually specifies to the people “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek” because that was how they were always struck.) Everyone in the crowd would have known that. Just about everyone in the crowd would have been struck many times in their lives on the right cheek with the back of a hand.
      So then, what is Jesus saying when he tells the people that if they are struck on the one cheek they should offer the other? They are actually putting their oppressor in a very difficult spot if they do that. Their oppressor might be only too happy to strike them one more time, but not on the other cheek. To do so, would mean either to strike them with the back of the left hand which, as I said would be shameful, or to give a front handed blow with the right hand, either a slap or a fist. To put someone in that kind of position in that society was to say there were equal to a slave or a woman and thus to bring shame upon them. I know that doesn’t make much sense to us but that was how things worked in that society.
      Jesus next piece of advice essentially accomplishes the same thing. “From anyone who takes away your coat,” Jesus says, “do not withhold even your shirt.” There are also cultural considerations at work in that piece of advice. In that world, everybody basically only wore two pieces of clothing. There was a tunic worn against the body and a cloak worn over top. To make that something more that we could relate to, it was translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “shirt” and “coat.” The only problem with that translation is that if you or I were to take off our shirts and our coats, We would still be wearing pants or skirts at least and probably a bit more. Well, they didn’t wear pants. Pants hadn’t been invented yet. And everybody in the crowd would have immediately understood what it meant to take off your tunic and cloak in public. It would have meant that you were entirely exposed and naked.
      Now, for you and for I to strip down in public, would be seen, probably by most of us as putting ourselves in a very shameful position. But here is another way in which their shame and honour society was different from ours. For them, when somebody appeared naked in public, it might be a very embarrassing situation, but it wasn’t necessarily seen as a shameful situation for the person who is stripped. It was seen as shameful for the person who caused them to become so. I could explain to you why this was so, there were certain legal realities and customs that came into play, but the bottom line is that this was just a very different culture that looked on these things in a very different way.
      So really, a lot of the advice that Jesus was giving in these two pieces of wisdom was very much conditioned on the customs of his time and place. To simply take what he says and apply it directly to a very different culture doesn’t really make much sense. So what we need to do is extract from what Jesus says the underlying principles and then figure out how to apply them in our very different culture. So, what are the principles?
      One thing that Jesus is saying is very clearly: do not answer violence or oppression with more violence. I know that not everyone will buy that nonviolent approach, but it was truly fundamental to Jesus’ approach to finding justice. He believed, and I personally agree, that more violence is not the solution to an injustice, and generally only makes things worse. In his case, he knew that the peasants and slaves who surrounded him would have only been slaughtered if they had dared to lift their hands against their oppressors. But Jesus seems to have been willing to extend that to just about any situation. Maybe there are some exceptions. Maybe there are some circumstances where violence can be part of the answer, but if he thought there were, Jesus never mentioned them.
      But, though he rejects violence as a means of making things better, that does not necessarily mean that Jesus intends to leave his listeners simply at the mercy of powerful and evil people. He is asking them to rely (as he did in all things) upon God as their helper. And the actions that he suggests would have used the mechanisms of that society and culture – particularly the mechanism of shame – to take power away from abusers. Shaming their oppressors was one of the only ways that oppressed people could actually damage and expose the people who were harming them.
      So what am I saying? Am I saying that when people are being abused, they should find ways to shame their abusers? No, not exactly. There are cases where that can still work. In many ways, the non-violent campaigns of Gandhi in India or the Civil Rights campaigns led by Martin Luther King Jr. did seek to expose the sins of their oppressors by bringing them public shame. But those were very similar situations where you had completely powerless people and shame was about the only tool that they had.
      But generally speaking, I think, our goal is not to use shame to expose injustice. Our society is not structured around honour and shame like the society of Jesus was. (And I actually believe that that is a very good thing – such a structure had some horrible effects.) What I am saying is that a proper application of Jesus’ teaching to our modern society would be to say that if, say, a woman is being abused in her relationship, she must not simply seek to endure that abuse by continually turning another cheek and hoping that will change something. It will not. What she must do is follow the spirit of Jesus’ teaching and use whatever non-violent avenues are available to her to expose the evil in her abuser. And fortunately, our society has provided many very excellent avenues to do so including talking to friends, officials, police, seeking shelter and more. What Jesus was suggesting had, at its bottom line, the exposing of the evil that was in the oppressors and abusers as a part of the path to God’s salvation.
      If you have suffered abuse in your life, the good news that Jesus has for you today is that you were not meant to suffer such a thing and Jesus wants to set you free from any remains of that abuse that continue to weigh you down. Do not be afraid to talk to somebody you trust if any of that is true of you. If you have someone in your life that you worry may be suffering abuse, the good news that Jesus has for you today is that God has put you there to support your friend and to give you the strength and wisdom to act should your friend choose to confide in you.

      My friend who I spoke of at the beginning, she is strong today – amazingly strong. Her act of turning the other cheek was not that literal act – not just because her husband was too calculating to hit her in a visible place, but also because that is not an effective application of Jesus’ true teaching in such a situation today. She followed Jesus’ teaching by seeking help, by getting out and getting safe. She did it by finding healing in the power of God. Her journey is not over – such journeys rarely go quickly – but it is amazing to see God at work in such a life.
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Jesus on the mountain; Jesus on the level place

Posted by on Sunday, February 17th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 17 February 2019 © Scott McAndless
Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1:1-6, 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, Luke 6:17-26
(From the high pulpit)
T
he blessed evangelist, Saint Matthew, has to us written that on a particular occasion, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ did go up into a high mountain and, when he was set, his disciples came even unto him and he looked upon them and opened his mouth and he spoke some of the most enduring words of all history:
      “How blessed are those who are poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. How blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted and the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. How blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
      And you know those words; they are justly famous. What’s more, how perfectly apt it is that they should have been spoken from a mountaintop – you might even call it a Sermon on the Mount. After all, have mountaintops not always been seen as unique places – as places where heaven is both literally and figuratively near. Almost all ancient peoples, including the people of Israel, imagined the dwelling places of their gods on top of mountains: Olympus, Machu Picchu or Mount Sinai.
      Even more important, mountains are places that are separated from the mundane of this world, literally raised above our everyday concerns. How fitting, then, to have such a soaring sermon preached from a mountaintop, for these words of Jesus also seem to take us out of everyday concerns and encourage us to think only of heavenly things. The poor in spirit inheriting the kingdom of God; those hungering and thirsting after righteousness being filled! I don’t know about you, but, for me, when I meditate on those words, I’m not always sure what exactly they mean but they do give me a shiver and they lift me up and place me above all of the troubles and struggles that so often weigh me down in this world.
      So it really matters that those words were spoken on the top of a mountain. But how did the gospel writer know that that was where Jesus said all of those incredible words? Was he there? Was he listening and did he remember the setting? Well, probably not. Remember that we don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Matthew; it was written anonymously, and it was only church tradition that later decided that it must have been written by the Apostle Matthew. But most scholars who have looked at it have concluded that it wasn’t written by an eyewitness. It was written by somebody who had taken sources, likely written sources that had been circulating in the church, and compiled them into his own account of the life of Jesus.
      And those written sources had the words that Jesus had spoken, but they did not have the setting. The author of this gospel decided that Jesus must have said them on the mountain, probably because he saw Jesus as a new Moses bringing down a new law from God on a mountaintop. But that mountaintop setting influenced the way the gospel writer heard those words.
            (From the congregation)
      How do I know that? Because there was somebody else who imagined those words being spoken in a rather different setting and, in that other setting, they sounded a bit different. The Gospel of Luke had those same words of Jesus, but when Luke (whoever he was because, of course, that gospel was also written anonymously) tells us (and tells us accurately) what Jesus said, he says they were spoken on a level place. And here is where we can see the wonderous power of Jesus’ teachings because those words that were so soaring and uplifting on the mountaintop are still just as powerful down on the level place, but their power definitely strikes you in a very different way.
      What did Jesus say down on that level place? He turned his eyes, not heavenward, but clearly towards the eyes of the people who stood around him and he said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” It is no longer, “those who are poor,” because Jesus is obviously very aware that the poor ones that he is concerned with are the poor ones who are standing right there in front of him as he looks them in the eyes with compassion and love.
      Nor, on the level place, does Jesus say, “poor in spirit.” Sure, I think that what he says is meant to include those who have embraced poverty of spirit – who have are not merely financially poor but have given thought to the deeper spiritual meaning of the poverty that exists in this world. But down here on the level place, poverty isn’t just a spiritual concept or idea. It is a hard reality. In fact, the word that Jesus uses there, the word that is translated as poor, goes a little bit farther than what we would normally consider to be poverty. A more accurate translation would probably be something like, blessed are you who are destitute, you who are totally without resource. Down here on the level place, you cannot escape the worst realities of human existence.
      And so it goes with all of the other sayings of Jesus down on the level place. Up on top of the mountain, it was blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And blessed indeed are such people – where would we be if we didn’t have those who pursued what is right at all cost. But down on the level place, Jesus simply looks into people’s eyes and he says blessed are you who are hungry, just plain hungry, because that is what people are struggling with down on the level place of our world right now. And again, I want to state clearly that I don’t think that one of these gospel writers got Jesus’ words right and the other one got it wrong. What Jesus said encompassed both of these meanings. It’s just that the different meanings come out based on whether you’re up on the mountaintop or down on the level place.
      There is something else that is significantly different about Luke’s account of what Jesus said on the level place. Jesus started with the blessings, just as we hear up on the mountaintop, but on the level place he doesn’t stop there. On the level place, after Jesus blesses and congratulates and tells how fortunate are those people that everyone else has long concluded are the most miserable people on the face of the Earth – the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the persecuted – Jesus goes on from there. And he turns to those people that everyone else considers to be fortunate and blessed. I don’t imagine there were too many of them, but Jesus turned and he looked straight into the eyes of the fat and well-dressed people in the crowd and he said, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you.”
      And I have no doubt, by the way, that Jesus did exactly that. That he had the audacity to look the prosperous people right in the eye and tell them that they were cursed. It fits perfectly well with everything that he has said up until that point. Even with the version of what he said on the mountaintop, it makes sense that he would have gone on in the same way. This was exactly how the ancient prophets spoke. We have the pattern laid out for us in our reading from the Old Testament this morning. First you give the blessings, but you are not done until you have also given the curses. People would have expected Jesus to do as much.
      But, you see, when you’re up on the mountaintop and when you’re detached from the realities of this world, I guess it’s just easier to forget about the curses and to focus only on the blessings. It seems right to do so, and I think that Matthew is right to do so. But down on the level place, you simply cannot ignore the reality that inequality and poverty are not just the problems of the poor – they belong to all of us and we all have our part to play in solving them. So, yes, Jesus did speak boldly to the rich and well fed – far more boldly and harshly than I know I would ever dare to. But maybe that is why he is Jesus and I am not.
      So it is a wonderful and beautiful thing that we have here in these two gospels, Matthew and Luke: two very different accounts of the same sermon that Jesus gave. They are remarkable in how the two versions are similar, but also quite remarkable in how they are different. And down through the centuries, the church has had to deal with the fact that we have two different versions of this same sermon that Jesus gave. Usually the way that we have dealt with that is by choosing one version and putting it over the other. We have chosen one of the two sermons and decided that it was the correct one, the superior version. And usually, by the way, it is the one that was preached on the mountaintop that wins out. There’s a reason why everyone has heard of The Sermon on the Mount but no one has heard of the sermon on the level place. And I get why The Sermon on the Mount wins. It is beautiful and it is true and absolutely it is what Jesus meant to say. But I think it is important to recognize that it is not all that Jesus meant to say.
      Sometimes, by the way, you will hear people put it the other way around. They will say that what Jesus actually said was basically what you will find in the sermon on the level place in the Gospel of Luke and that Matthew got a hold of it and spiritualized the sermon by adding words like “poor in spirit” and “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” to make the actual words of Jesus a little bit less offensive to rich people who might read his gospel. There is something to that, but I don’t think that is quite right either. The fact of the matter is that we have been given both versions in both of the gospels and we have to assume that we were given them both for a reason. It is only by struggling with both versions of what Jesus said that we will come to terms with what Jesus’ message was all about.
      The temptation throughout Christian history, however, has been to want to safely confine those radical words of Jesus to the mountaintop. They seem safer up there. They are more at a distance from the real struggles that people sometimes go through in this life. But, while I will always defend the words heard on the mountaintop as the true message of Jesus, I don’t think they are ever going to be complete on their own. For how can we understand what it means to be poor in spirit if we do not grapple with the real problems of poverty that real people struggle with down in the level place. A Christianity and a Christian message that is only confined to the mountaintop, that is only concerned with heavenly things without getting messed up with the real misery of people’s lives, is never going to be enough.
      And I believe that the real mission of the church today is in fact to bring the message of Jesus down from the mountaintop and into the level place. It is wonderful to have a message that lifts us up to mountaintops – that makes our spirits soar above the mundane concerns of this world. We need that. But there is also a great need for a gospel that addresses people where they are. If you do not have a gospel that is good news for the actual poor, the truly hungry, the deeply oppressed and sorrowful – and even better, that offers criticism to the oppressive rich and the people who are consuming the best that this world has to the detriment of others – then is that gospel truly a gospel? The gospel we need must speak to both and challenge us to aspire to both. We need to hear Jesus on the mountaintop but also on the level place.
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But look how clean our nets are!

Posted by on Sunday, February 10th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 10 February, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 138:1-8, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11
I
f there is one thing that these fishers knew, it was that you have got to wash your nets. It doesn’t matter how tired you are, how hard you have been working, your shift isn’t over until those nets are completely clean. A net is designed to fall swiftly through the water and to fall invisibly over the fish so that they are not frightened away. And after you have been fishing for a few hours (even if you haven’t caught a thing, as they hadn’t) the net will have scraped the bottom countless times and picked up enough sand and seaweed and shells and bits of dead things that it no longer glides invisibly to the bottom.
      Also, they knew from long experience, that a dirty net will not only stink up the whole boat and anyplace you dock it, the filth and gunk will also make the ropes rot and then, before long, you have a tear and a much bigger repair job in front of you. No, they knew that they had to keep their heads down and get the job done. Sure their fingernails hurt from picking the seaweed out of the knots. Yes, they could hardly keep their eyes open, but they had no choice.
      When they heard the noise of a large crowd just a little bit up the shoreline – something that just never gathered around these parts – they barely even looked up from their work. But, of course, when somebody began to call out to them, they had to take note. They recognized who it was, of course. It was the man who had been gathering crowds and performing miracles and wonders all over Galilee in recent weeks. They had heard the stories and descriptions more than a few times. But when the man approached, Simon only looked up from his work for a few moments. The man apparently wanted to borrow one of their boats – just for a little while. He wanted Simon to take him out just a little bit from the shore so that he could address the crowd and they could all hear him. Simon shrugged, grunted and quickly did as he had been asked before wading back to shore to crouch again to his work.
      And thus we find ourselves in the rather absurd picture that is painted for us in the opening scene of our gospel reading this morning. Jesus of Nazareth, who we know as the Christ and the Son of the living God, is standing in the bow of a boat and speaking words that I think any one of us would give just about anything to be able to hear firsthand. These are words of life and hope, the very words that will launch a movement that will transform the entire world. Perhaps he is saying things and telling parables that were not ever recorded and passed down (after all, none of his disciples are listening) and so they are words that have been lost to all history. This is a momentous event. And where are Simon Peter, James and John – the three people who we all know will form the innermost nucleus of this thing that will come to be called the Christian church? They are a little bit down the shore, not really listening; washing their nets.
      “Yes, Scott, that is what they are doing,” you will say to me, “but didn’t you just explain to us how important it is to keep your nets clean? Good net hygiene is really important, and you simply cannot stay in business as a fisher without it. You just have to take care of your equipment. They were doing a good thing.” Ah yes, they were doing a good thing. But were they doing the best thing?
      I don’t ask that question this morning for the sake of Simon Peter, James and John alone. This story isn’t about them, not really. The symbolism of this story in the Gospel of Luke is quite clear; they are meant to represent the church. And, in many ways, they are an excellent representation of what we often see in the church. I believe that we do spend a lot of time and energy in the church today – and I’m talking about all the churches here, not just this one – we spend a lot of time cleaning and maintaining our nets.
      In the church we are called to be fishers of people. That is the original call that Jesus gives to his disciples in this passage and it is still his call to the church today. But I often get the impression that we put more effort into cleaning our nets – into maintaining our buildings, our programs and our administration. Oh, we are good at holding meetings and forming committees to keep things in place. But I sometimes wonder if while we are so busy cleaning our nets, we might just be missing the very important things that Jesus is saying to the world just a little bit up the beach…
      “Hey, how’s it going Simon.” The big fisherman looked up to see a figure looking down upon him – the westering sun behind his head. Simon had been staring so closely at the knots of his net that it took a while for his tired eyes to focus and see that it was the preacher from Nazareth speaking to him again. He looked around to notice that the impromptu lecture by the lake was over and that the crowd had started to move on. Simon assumed that the man had just come back to offer his thanks for the use of the boat so he just muttered a quick “you’re welcome,” and turned immediately back to the piece of seaweed that he just couldn’t get out.
      But the man didn’t take the hint. “Hey,” he said, “what do you say we put out into the deeps and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Great, another landlubber who thinks he knows more about fishing than the professionals. He’s going to want to go out and cast the nets a few times and get them all dirty while we catch nothing and then we’ll have to clean them all over again before we can go home. “Master,” he said, “we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” But then he caught the strange look in the man’s eye. He clearly didn’t fully understand what this fellow had in mind, but he was filled with a strange desire to find out. “Yet if you say so,” Simon said, “I will let down the nets.”
      But once again, this isn’t just a story about a little fishing expedition that happened with a few men and Jesus one day a long time ago. This is a story about the church. The main characters are the people who will form the core of the early church. The activity of fishing is a common metaphor for the chief work of the church in sharing the gospel. And Jesus even specifically invites Simon to cast his net into “the deep” (that is what the original Greek text literally says) and the deep is a mythological term for the primordial chaos that God is constantly trying to save this world from. This is intended to be a story about our work as the church.
      What Jesus is saying to us in the story is, don’t you think it’s time that you got around to doing the work that I called you to do? And what is our response? “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” Haven’t you heard, Jesus? We’ve been going about the work of the church for a very long time. We have been here on Queen Street down through the generations. And we have preached the word of God and we have shared God’s love in practical ways, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sending missionaries out into the world. We have worked hard, Lord, and now we’re tired. In fact, our old fishing methods don’t seem to work so well anymore. It feels like we’ve been working hard all night long with no results. Can’t you just let us wash up our nets and go home? Yes, there’s a pretty good picture of how we often feel in the church in this story.
      But there’s something else going on here – something that I think we really need to pay attention to. What have Peter, James and John been doing all of this time? They have been cleaning and maintaining their nets. They have been taking care of the tools that fishermen use. Jesus wants them to use their nets; they are really only interested in maintaining them. In fact, they recognize that what Jesus is asking them to do represents a risk to their beautiful nets – and so it proves. Do you think that it is just a coincidence that by the end of this story their precious nets are all ripped and torn and their beautiful boats are swamped and just about ready to sink? It is no coincidence; it is kind of the point.
      In the church, we not only spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning and maintaining our nets; we also spend a whole lot of time worrying about them getting dirty or damaged. “Yes, Scott,” you will say to me, “but didn’t you just explain to us how important it was to keep your nets clean? Good net hygiene is really important and you simply cannot stay in business as a fisher without it. You just have to take care of your equipment.” Yes, that is true, but I think that Jesus would say that if maintaining your nets has become more important than fishing for people, you have a problem. I think he would say, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch,” even if your nets might tear and get dirty again.”
      You know that an enormous amount of ministry to our community happens in and through this building. The hungry are fed and given food to take home to their families. Literally hundreds of pounds of clothing are brought in, sorted and then given out to people who need them. The distressed are counselled. Children are taught about the love of Jesus and given tools for growing in Christ. All of it – all of it creates mess and clutter. All of it, sooner or later, will lead to something being broken or chipped or stained. And every so often somebody will say to me (or maybe to you), don’t you think it is terrible that there is so much ministry going on here that our nets are beginning to break and our boat is beginning to swamp? Well, they don’t put it exactly like that. They say, “isn’t it terrible that this church isn’t always tidy and clean?” But it actually means the same thing. And I get that keeping your nets clean is really important, but Jesus didn’t say, “Simon, let’s keep those nets squeaky clean.” Jesus said, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
      By all means, let us take care of our nets. We have inherited them from the people who have gone before us and they are a wonderful gift. But we’ve received them for a reason, and that reason is not merely so that they might be clean and tidy. We have been given them so that they might be risked in the deep water of this world. We have been given them so that they might be used to pull people out of those deeps and so that they might have the chance to truly experience the love of Christ in word and in deed. We have been given them to fish for people. Simon, get up off of your knees, stop worrying so much about your nets and let’s go!

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A still more excellent way

Posted by on Monday, February 4th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 3 February, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
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f all the passages in the entire Bible, the one we read this morning has got to be one of the most famous. Almost all of the time when I meet with a couple who are planning their wedding, it is their very first choice of a passage that they want to have read. And you can certainly understand why. It offers a description of the kind of love you are going to need to support and sustain a marriage through good times and bad times. It is so perfect. It so beautifully describes what it was that brought these two people together and to the place where they are willing to commit to each other to such depths that it is almost a shame to have to explain that that is not actually what it is about.
      Oh, the description of love applies to marriage and if we really did all love each other in our marriages in the way that it describes, it would certainly help a lot to make marriages better and stronger, but that was not why the passage was written; Paul had something quite different in mind.
      In fact, what we read is not actually what Paul wrote. I mean, all of the words are his and what we read is a good translation. It is just that our lectionary reading this morning left out a few words – words that kind of change the entire meaning. You see, Paul’s great reflection on the nature of love in 1st Corinthians 13 doesn’t begin with the first verse of chapter 13. It begins with the last few words of chapter 12 which are, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

      That means that you cannot truly understand what Paul is describing in chapter 13 until you understand what it is better than. And when you understand that, you realize that the love he is talking about has a very particular purpose. Basically, what Paul is saying that love is better than is just about everything he has talked about in his letter up until this point.
      1 Corinthians is a letter written to a particular church in a particular situation. Unlike every other church in the history of the world, the church in Corinth had problems, big problems. Specifically, it had people who didn’t get along with each other because they thought that they were better or more important than others. I know it’s hard for us to imagine that sort of thing happening in a church, but it actually kind of makes sense.
      You see, in the church we deal with ultimate concerns – ideas and concepts that are more important than anything else. Let me point you at our reading this morning from the Book of Jeremiah to give you a sense of what I’m talking about. In this passage, God is calling Jeremiah to be his prophet, to announce his word to the nation of Judah and to the world. And initially Jeremiah is a little bit hesitant. He doesn’t think that he can do the job. “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy,” he says.
      But God doesn’t accept that excuse. God says, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done because I have chosen you: “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.” What is important is that Jeremiah live up to the awesome task and responsibility that he has been given. “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
      The thing that really strikes me about this passage is the awesome power and responsibility that God gives to Jeremiah despite his youth and lack of knowledge. Because God has chosen him, he can claim extraordinary authority and power. But the even more amazing thing is that Jeremiah is not the only one. I believe that every follower of Christ can claim the same authority and power. We also have been chosen by God.
      According to traditional Presbyterian teaching we were also predestined from before birth, maybe even before the beginning of time, to take our place in the kingdom of Christ even though we did not know it. I don’t think we often realize this, but it means that we are God’s special agents and, like Jeremiah, we are set apart to bring hope, goodness and justice to this world.
      I know that you might react to that idea by saying, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to do that, for I am only a kid, spiritually speaking,” but that is how God sees us and what God has called us to be. And, as such, God offers us a lot of authority and power, even if we choose not to use it. We have a lot in common with Jeremiah because we are called, in the church, to deal with matters of ultimate importance.
      But that was exactly the root of all the problems in Corinth and often in our churches too. You see, when people recognize that the matters that they are dealing with are of ultimate importance – when we are talking about what is true, what is just and what is good – that sense of awesome responsibility can have the effect of destroying our community.
      We recognize that the stakes are high, and so our natural inclination is not to back down, to be insistent on our own interpretations and understanding. It has the natural effect of making us intolerant of other understandings and approaches. This is just a natural way that we as human beings react to an understanding that we are dealing in things of ultimate importance. It is actually a reflection of the importance of the work and the proclamation of the Christian church.
      So that was what was going on in the church in Corinth that Paul was writing to. Different people had different ideas of what it meant to be a good Christian and they were putting others down who didn’t approach it in the same way. And, yes, it is something that we also do at times.
      So that is what Paul is talking about when he points the Corinthians and us towards a more excellent way. He is not denying, indeed he is strongly affirming, the importance of the things that we deal with in the life of the church. He is affirming that your understanding of ethics and morality really matters and that mine matters too, even if it’s not exactly the same as yours. He’s affirming that your experience of God is of vital importance even if your experience doesn’t jive with mine. It is all important; it is all meaningful. But it is only going to work, and we will only find the true excellence that we are called to in Christ, when we allow love to reign over all.
      What Paul is saying in this passage is that we must apply 1st Corinthians 13 to our every interaction in the life of the church. Are there two people in the church who disagree about how a certain program in the life of the church should be run? That is good. The things that we do matter a great deal and if you have a different opinion that ought to be shared. What Paul is saying is, while we have that discussion, it must always be made more excellent through love.
      Just think how excellent we could be together if, in every discussion and interaction, before you spoke or acted you were to hold up the next thing you were about to do and compare it to 1st Corinthians 13. In every interaction you would be forced to ask yourself, does what I’m about to do show patience and kindness? Is there anything behind it that comes from envy or boastfulness or arrogance? Am I being rude? Is this just about me getting own way and am I being irritable or resentful? Above all, am I finding my joy in the right things, not in wrongdoing but in what is true? Will I bear, believe, hope and endure all things?
      Now those are not easy questions for anybody to ask of themselves; they are the kinds of question that demand that you examine yourself and understand what is really driving your actions. But if every one of us asked those kinds of questions before we acted in the life of the church, I really do think that we would begin to grasp the excellence that we are called to live out.
      But often we get this all backwards. When there is a difference of opinion, when one person’s sense of what is vital to the church is different from somebody else’s, we don’t respond with love. Sometimes, of course, we just fight it out because we think that we have to win and, therefore that the other person has to lose. But the more excellent way knows that it cannot be just about winning and getting your own way. Love sees beyond winning and losing.
      Of course, we don’t always fight it out openly in the church. In fact, I often find that we are more likely to just try to avoid the subject we disagree about and not talk about it. Sometimes we pretend that it isn’t there at all. I know that that might feel like the loving thing to do because we are avoiding the conflict, but actually it is not. That is a reaction based on fear, which is the opposite of love. “Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:8) When we seek that more excellent way, we will not hesitate to engage the other person even when we are in conflict, even when we have differences, and love shows us how we can really listen to one another and find that way through.
      You see, because we deal in ultimate concerns, because the things that we talk about and work towards are the most important concerns of all for this world, the church can very easily become a pretty miserable place where everyone becomes convinced that their ways of doing the most important things and engaging in the faith and pursuing Christ are the only ways to think about such things and the only we to do them. The stakes are so high in what we do in the church that people can very easily fall into those kinds of patterns of behaviour. Basically the work of the church is so important that we can tear each other apart in our pursuit of it. That was what was going on in the church in Corinth and it can too easily happen in most any church. That is why Paul explains the more excellent way to us, why he urges us to follow in that way.
      And the good news is that we are capable of following in that way because the love that Paul describes in his letter to the Corinthians is not merely human love. It is the perfect love of God, the love that we can only grasp because it has been so powerfully demonstrated to us in the person of Jesus Christ – in his life and in his death. Because the church is the body of Christ (an idea that Paul has just finished laying out in his letter), such love is available to the church – we can love in that way because we are empowered to do so by Christ himself. God has given us the ability to walk in the more excellent way. Now, let us choose to do so.
      And I would like to leave with you and me and all of us a reminder that that is what we are called to do in all of our interactions in the church. I want each one of you to take one of these cards and refer to it often – especially when you are doing anything connected to the life of this congregation.

    
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That’ll get you pushed off a ledge

Posted by on Monday, January 28th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 27 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 44:1-26; Luke 4:14-21
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n the Gospel of Mark, there is a story of Jesus’ visit to his own hometown of Nazareth. Jesus, who has already established himself in other places throughout Galilee, goes home and he speaks in the local village gathering or synagogue. But the people in Nazareth reject him saying, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3) Their reaction seems to indicate that they think they know Jesus too well and so are not willing to accept the authority that he is claiming for himself.
      What we don’t get in Mark, however, is an actual account of what Jesus said to inspire such offense. For that you need to turn to this morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke. And what you find there is a little bit surprising. You see, I know, having read the Gospel of Mark, that the people in Nazareth are going to be upset with Jesus. So, as I read through Luke’s account, I keep expecting the outrage to occur, but it just doesn’t happen when I think it’s going to happen.
      It goes down like this: Jesus comes to the gathering and participates in it by reading from the scriptures. This mig ht seem a little bit presumptuous for a hometown boy who has developed a bit of a reputation to be reading to his town elders, but you can hardly expect anyone to object to someone sharing the revered scriptures and of course nobody does.
      Next Jesus sits down, which was the traditional position of a teacher in that culture and that signals that the next thing that he will say will be his own teaching or interpretation of what he has just read. So this is it, right? Surely the people are going to be offended that this Jesus, this boy that they have known from childhood, is going to presume to teach them something about the scriptures. That is what the account from the Gospel of Mark has set us up to think. And yet, it would seem, according to the Gospel of Luke, the people do not have a negative reaction and they seem to receive it well. “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him,” Luke says.
      So what then is the offence? Well, perhaps it is what Jesus actually has to teach them. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus says. Okay, now he is going to get it. Surely the good people of Nazareth are not going to accept hearing such a thing from Jesus! Basically, he seems to have just announced that, because he is on the scene, the ancient scriptures have been fulfilled – in effect that he himself is the fulfillment of scripture. You could even understand Jesus to be announcing to the people of his hometown that he is the long-awaited Messiah. This, surely, they are not going to accept; they will be outraged at his presumption. Come on, they knew this guy when he was still in diapers!
      But no, amazingly that is not their reaction at all. In fact, they seem to be quite astounded, but in a good way. “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’” So clearly (and despite what Mark implied) the issue that the people have with Jesus is not merely that they think that he is too big for his britches.
      So, what is it? What sets them off? What gets them so mad, in fact, that by the end of our reading they are ready to throw him off the nearest cliff? It is one thing alone. Jesus just happens to mention that God’s grace and salvation might be made available to other people – people who are different from the people in Nazareth – Gentiles. He talks about a widow who was saved by the Prophet Elijah and an army commander who was saved by the Prophet Elisha, both of whom just happened to be Gentiles. He dares to point out to them that there were times when God loved and saved people who weren’t like them – people that they despised. That was what was enough to send the people of Nazareth into a murderous rage.
      Today’s sermon is a little bit different. As you know, since the beginning of the year I have been using the lectionary to guide me in my preaching. The lectionary, by the way, would have directed me to read only the first half of that passage from the Gospel of Luke. But last fall I put up today’s sermon in the auction – the winning bidder would be able to dictate the topic of today’s sermon and Joanne Waugh had the winning bid. She has asked me to answer the question, “why is it that we have so much trouble dealing with change in the church.”
      I’m sure that you’ve all heard the old riddle, “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a lightbulb?” The answer, of course, is that the old light bulb worked just fine back in the 1960s, why would you even think about changing it?
      It is true that change in general is difficult for the church, but I think that Joanne in her question recognizes that there are certain kinds of change that are a little bit easier than others. And it is kind of surprising the kinds of change we can tolerate.
      The people in Nazareth don’t seem to have too many problems with many of the radical things that Jesus says to them. They seem to take the suggestion that “the year of the Lord’s favour” has arrived and the notion that the scriptures have been fulfilled without surprise. Even the idea that this Jesus, this man they have known since childhood, could be God’s Messiah doesn’t really seem to faze them. But the change they find to be particularly troubling and that they really can’t handle – so much so that they try to shove Jesus off a cliff – is the idea that God might choose to show grace and salvation to the wrong sorts of people in their estimation.
      And I think it works the same way with us. We may disagree on certain matters of theology. You may not, for example, conceive of the Holy Trinity in exactly the same way that I do. We seem to be able to tolerate those kinds of differences without too much trouble. The disagreements that really tear us apart tend to be those disagreements about who is in and who is out. The things that get us all worked up are the questions about extending God’s grace to people who don’t seem to belong as far as we are concerned. Clearly the big question in the early years of the church had to do with whether the Gentiles were in or out. The particular in and out groups have changed over the centuries. Today our fights tend to be over how to include very different groups and how God’s grace extends to them – the biggest one today being the LGBTQ question. But whatever particular group you are talking about, it remains a question that we battle over with the greatest intensity.
      Now, Joanne is not really asking me to tell you who should be the in group and who should be excluded from the church in our present time. What she is asking is simply why these kinds of questions are so difficult for us, why they make us want to throw people off a cliff. And she wants to know how we can approach those kinds of questions in a better way – a way that is perhaps based less on emotion and fear than on thought and a spirit willing to listen to God. The good news is that I think there is a way.
      You probably noticed that we haven’t yet done our responsive reading this morning. That is because I was saving it until this time because I think it is a part of the answer to Joanne’s question. Our reading is taken from Psalm 44 this morning and so let’s pause now for a moment and read it together.

Responsive Reading: Psalm 44:1-26
   L: We have heard with our ears, O God, our ancestors have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old:
   P: you with your own hand drove out the nations,
   L: but them you planted;
   P: you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free; for not by their own sword did they win the land,
   L: nor did their own arm give them victory;
   P: but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance, for you delighted in them.
   L: You are my King and my God; you command victories for Jacob.
   P: Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down our assailants.
   L: For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.
   P: But you have saved us from our foes, and have put to confusion those who hate us. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
   L: Yet you have rejected us and abased us, and have not gone out with our armies. You made us turn back from the foe, and our enemies have gotten spoil.
   P: You have made us like sheep for slaughter, and have scattered us among the nations. You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.
   L: You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us. You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples.
   P: All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face at the words of the taunters and revilers, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.
   L: All this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten you, or been false to your covenant.
   P: Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way, 19 yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness.
   L: If we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands to a strange god, would not God discover this?
   For he knows the secrets of the heart. Because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
   L: Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
   P: Awake, do not cast us off forever!
   L: Why do you hide your face?
   P: Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
   L: For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground.
   P: Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.
     
      Now, please take a moment to consider that psalm. It is a collective prayer – the whole people have come together to pray to God – something that we still do when we gather. But it is a prayer unlike anything I have heard in a church. What do the people say to God? I would summarize the prayer basically like this: “God,” the people say, “do you remember the good old days? Things used to be so good. You used to do such great things back then.” Actually, that does sound a lot like what I hear in lots of churches – I just don’t hear people say it in prayer. “But there is a problem,” the prayer goes on. “Things aren’t so good anymore.” And it goes on from there to blame God and complain about how God is generally not doing a very job at being the God of Israel. And that is about it. It is nothing more and nothing less than a prayer of complaint against God.
      This is a kind of prayer that shows up quite frequently in the Bible. It is called a psalm of communal lament and it is essentially that: a prayer for a community that is angry with God and is not afraid to say so. It is actually rather shocking for many Christians to realize that this kind of prayer is found in the Bible. We are usually taught that you should never complain – never say anything negative about God – but the people in the Bible did it all the time.
      And I think that were wiser than us in that. Sometimes lament and complaint is exactly what you need to do. Sometimes you just cannot get over a loss, a disappointment or a grief without finding some concrete way of expressing your anger. And when you do it in prayer, it can be the most helpful and healing way to do it. You don’t hurt anybody’s feelings but God’s and, believe me, God can handle it.
      And I think that there is a helpful answer to Joanne’s difficult question in that: Why do we struggle to see God’s grace extended to new people – people who are not like us? The reason is that, when other people experience God’s grace, it feels like we are losing out, like we are not so special anymore. It feels like a loss of privilege. We were comfortable with the idea that God could love and save good Presbyterians who thought exactly like us. But it feels like a betrayal when we learn that God might love people who approach faith in a completely different way from us.
      We’re mad – mad at God – that God might choose to love and save such people. But, as good modern Western Christians, we would never think to say it. That would be wrong – maybe sinful. My feeling is that we ought to learn something from the Biblical writers and really let God have it – tell God how we really feel. Maybe it could be the beginning of us opening up to something new.
      I actually do believe that God is calling new people to salvation and hope in Christ. He must be, because it was always a part of God’s plan to draw multitudes into the great work of the church. And there just aren’t so many people who are just like us anymore. If there is going to be growth, it’s going to have to come from the outsiders – people not like us. That means change – change that will likely feel like it hurts and that feels like a loss to us. We cannot afford to get stuck in that grief and loss though. So I believe that the first thing we’re going to have to do is tell God how it really feels to lose what we thought was our special status and favour.

      So let God know how you feel. God, I’m mad that the methods of building up the church in the past don’t work anymore. I’m mad that, if we are going to attract new people into the church, we’re going to have to let them make changes. It’s not fair, God. This is my church, how can you let them define it! Don’t be afraid to let God know – it is one of the gracious ways in which God will allow you to embrace newness and change.
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Six Stone Jars

Posted by on Sunday, January 20th, 2019 in Minister

Hespeler, 20 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
T
here were six stone water jars, I mean really large water jars that each held twenty or thirty gallons. And they were just sitting there by the entrance when the mother of Jesus brought a crisis to his attention.
      They were at a wedding – a wedding that was the most important event that would take place in Cana that year. Life in Cana – life in most any Galilean village – could be pretty bleak. It was nothing but a hardscrabble existence working from dawn to dusk just to survive. By some estimates, about 90% of what they were able to produce was siphoned off in taxes, rents and fees to support the temple and religion of Judea.
      Opportunities to celebrate anything were few and far between. So when those opportunities came, they were of vital importance to everybody. A wedding feast in ancient Galilee was as close as many of these people would get to feeling that life was good. So when the wine ran out on only the third day of a wedding party that was supposed to last a week, you can bet that it was a crisis. The morale of the entire region was on the line.
      But even more than that was at stake. Jesus had come into the world as the bridegroom. Everywhere he went it was supposed to be a celebration. Once some of the religious people even came up to Jesus and asked him why it was that his disciples didn’t fast and didn’t go around with miserable faces all the time. Jesus’ answer was that it wasn’t fitting. If they were at a funeral, sure, that would make sense. But Jesus was among them as the bridegroom and when the bridegroom was present you had to celebrate.
      The presence of Jesus in the world was a sign, as it says in our Old Testament reading this morning, that “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” So can you imagine what it would be like for Jesus to show up at a wedding party at the very moment when the entire celebration fell apart because there was no wine? This was serious; the entire ministry of Jesus was at stake.
      So, as much as Jesus wanted to protest that his time had not yet arrived, as much as he did protest to his mother that for him to take action was a bit premature, there really was no question: Jesus had to do something about the wine running out. And Jesus had the power to do something; there seems to be no question about that. Why, I suppose that he could have created wine in vessels out of nothing had he chosen to do so. But he did not choose to do so. He chose to respond to the crisis in a very particular way. And there was the problem.
      You see there were six stone jars by the entrance – very large jars each holding twenty or thirty gallons. They were there for a very good reason, and that reason did not include the making of wine. They were there for the Jewish rites of purification. And you need to understand what that was and how important it was. You know how your mother always taught you that you should wash your hands before a meal because if you eat with dirty hands you might get sick and make others sick? Well, it didn’t have anything to do with that.
      They were not there for hygienic purposes but for religious purposes. They were there so that these poor provincial Galilean folks of Cana could live up to the expectations of the Judeans (who figured that they knew what God really wanted from people). They had taught the Galileans to do these water rituals in order to be acceptable to the Judeans and to God.
      And Jesus seems to have gone out of his way to use those six stone jars to supply the missing wine to keep the party going. In doing so, however, he compromised them. Wine was a drink that was created with yeast. Yeast was considered to be ritually impure. So those six stone jars were at least temporarily rendered completely useless for their only purpose. They were compromised.
      And Jesus did this without asking permission and without even telling anyone what he was doing. When the water was turned to wine and the wine taken to the steward, even he didn’t know where it came from – that it came from the six stone jars. Nobody knew.
      Oh, wait, that’s not quite right, is it? The servants who had drawn the water, it says that they knew. In fact, I’ll bet they were sniggering the whole time. What did they care about the rituals of their masters and “betters”? I’ll bet that while they passed the wine to the steward, they were thinking to themselves, “This guy doesn’t even know that this Jesus just contaminated all of his precious purification jars. Wait’ll he finds out!”
      So think of what Jesus has just done. He has defiled an essential part of a solemn and important ritual, just to keep a party going. What is more, the Gospel of John tells us that what Jesus did was a sign. There are seven signs that Jesus performs in this gospel and when you look at each one of them you see that they are not merely miracles (though they are all miraculous in their own way). Each one is clearly a way of announcing something important about who Jesus is and what he has come to do. So we are meant to read deep meaning into all of Jesus’ actions at this wedding.
      This sign means that, because Jesus has come, the party has started and that nothing should get in the way of that spirit of celebration. In particular, we should not let something like the intended use of six stone jars to get in the way.
      Of course, the real question we need to ask is how do we apply all of this to the life of the church today. If we are to take seriously this story as a sign of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I think that we need to expect that the overwhelming nature of the church should be joy. That doesn’t mean that we don’t deal with serious matters in the life of the church, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have to deal with trouble or strife but at the end of the day the keynote of our song should be joy because the church is the bride of Christ and “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
      So the question is what stands in the way of the church truly embracing its destiny in joy? I’ll tell you what stands in the way: six stone jars. I suggest to you that there are at least six things – things that we have decided are more important than the church embracing its true nature in joy – that keep us from being all that we are called to be. And like Jesus did at Cana, we may need to take some dramatic action – not to destroy those stone jars (Jesus didn’t do that) but to show that we are willing to compromise them for the sake of the greater vision.
      The first stone jar that we need to get rid of is the spirit of scarcity. Just like what happened in Cana, sometimes that keynote of joy goes missing in the church when the wine runs out – when we enter into a season of scarcity in the church. Scarcity arises in many ways in the life of the church. It tends to happen when money is short of course, but the power of scarcity to kill our joy is greater than even the actual lack of money available.
      Even when, to give a wild example, God has proven God’s faithfulness yet again by providing to a congregation a balanced budget with all expenses paid, that congregation can still often be infected by a spirit of scarcity that constrains the work it does for the kingdom of God even as it constrains its joy. The spirit of scarcity is a stone jar that needs to be compromised for the sake of the life of the church. We cannot be ruled by the fear of scarcity. That doesn’t mean that we throw away such things as financial prudence and careful planning, but if we let the spirit of scarcity rule over us we will not know the joy that God has for us.
      The second stone jar that I think that Jesus would have us compromise is formality. Formality is the habit of strongly holding onto certain forms and traditions in the life of the church. It is not that formality and tradition are completely useless, of course. A formal attitude helps to convey the seriousness and the importance of what we do. Following the rules in how we do things certainly can help us to avoid particularly bad mistakes. But when formality becomes elevated as an ideal in itself, it can become very deadly and it immediately alienates any newcomers that arrive among us and are not familiar with our forms.
      The third stone jar is our buildings. Now, again, our church buildings are good things. Many of them are beautiful (case in point) and they certainly can be useful in ministry. But what we see again and again in our Presbyterian churches these days is a tendency to elevate the importance of the building above everything else. Maintaining the building becomes more important than the mission, more important than the joy that we are called to live out. We allow our buildings to define and constrain what we do. Many congregations have become frozen in time because they cannot adapt without bringing radical change to their building, they cannot embrace some new ministry that God is calling them to because their building holds them back. When the building becomes more important than the joy of being the church, we have a problem – we have a stone jar to compromise.
      Let’s see, what is jar number four? I’m going to label that jar, “We’ve never done it that way before.” And the one beside it that looks rather like it is, “We tried that once and it didn’t work.” These stone jars represent anything in the church (and there are often many things in the church) that discourage innovation and creativity. Trying something new, branching out, taking risks is not easy and we are often frightened of it. When you try new things, you are not guaranteed success, but there is so much joy to be found in the attempt and when we quash the people who have that creative spirit we so easily destroy their joy.
      Which brings us to the sixth stone jar that needs to be compromised to find our joy in being the church today. I’m going to call that one, “The church that used to be.” Oh, how much energy do we spend on trying to create the church that we used to know – a church that can no longer exist in the present world? How much joy do we suck out of the successes and achievements of today because they just don’t seem to measure up to what happened in the past? Yes, we loved that church that used to be. Yes, great works were done in Christ name! But when our ideal of the past overshadows everything about our present and future, that stone jar has become far too important.

      Those are my six jars anyways. Perhaps you might label some of them differently, but I have no doubt that they have meaning for us today. John says that Jesus did in Cana he did as a sign – a sign that continues to speak down through the ages. If we lack in joy in our churches – if the wine has run out at our wedding feast to any extent – we need to ask what is preventing what should be part of the essential nature of the church. Jesus had to compromise some items that were strongly associated with ritual, religion and tradition in order to bring joy back to the wedding feast; we may need to do the same to restore joy in the church.

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