Author: Scott McAndless

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      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.

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

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      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.

      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.

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      “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.

      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.

Hespeler, 10 February, 2019 © Scott McAndless

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      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.”

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Hespeler, 20 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless

Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11

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.

      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.

Hespeler, 13 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless

Isaiah 43:1-7, Psalm 29:1-11, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-22

t is kind of amazing the difference that one little word can make. Our reading this morning from the Book of Isaiah begins with a pretty amazing promise. “Do not fear,” God says through the prophet, “for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Can you even imagine what is being said here? The eternal creator, the ruler of the cosmos and the King of all kings reaches out to a people who are lost, confused and distressed and God chooses them.

      And it is not just in that passage; it is a theme that runs through all of our lectionary readings this morning. Why are the people flocking to John the Baptist out in the wilderness? They are there because they are filled with expectation. God is doing something and they are being baptised because they want to be part of it. In that baptism, they are experiencing the same thing – God’s redemption, calling them by name and claiming them. This is made even more explicit in the case of Jesus who is claimed by God in spectacular fashion after his baptism with the words, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

      This is good news, right? This is a wonderful promise. Think of all the benefits of having the creator of the universe choose you specially and call you by name. No more worries, no more fears. With a patron as big as the Creator, it’s bound to be smooth sailing from here, right? Surely if there is any trouble, God will get me out of it right away.

      But there’s that little word” if. That should be the next thing that the prophet talks about, right? If anything goes wrong. If I have to pass through a difficult thing, then God will bail me out. But is that what the prophet says? Oh, he goes on to talk about trouble, but he doesn’t use that little word: if. Here is what the prophet says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

      Hold on a minute here God, I thought you redeemed me, I thought you called me by name and were even willing to pay a hefty ransom for me, what do you mean when? It’s like you’re threatening me with dangerous river crossings and passing through fiery infernos. What exactly are you planning for me to do?

      And here is where we actually get to the point that is being made in these passages. Does God call people, redeem them and make them his own? Yes, absolutely. But that calling and redeeming, though it always comes out of the gracious and giving spirit of God, also always has a purpose. God has something for his chosen ones to do. In this specific passage in the Book of Isaiah, the thing that God is calling his people to do is the very difficult task of bringing a nation together out of exile, of carrying out a dangerous journey through a deserted place. So clearly the issue is not that they might face dangerous situations on that journey. It is a certainty that they will. So the prophet doesn’t talk about if; he talks about when.

      It is the same thing in our New Testament readings as well. These words resounding from heaven after Jesus’ baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” are a high point in the recognition of Jesus as God’s anointed one, but we all know where that is heading, don’t we? It is heading to the cross and a long and difficult journey to get there. Whatever the benefits of being God’s chosen one, a trouble-free journey is not one of them. And that is not just true of Jesus; it is also true of all those who follow Jesus through baptism.

      I often think that this is the main thing that we miss in the church today. The Christian Church has an important message – a message of redemption and hope and love that has the potential to transform the world. It is a fantastic message that the world definitely needs. So if people aren’t coming and choosing to be part of sharing in such a message, it is certainly not the fault of the message.

      And if people aren’t coming in droves, like they did when John the Baptist proclaimed the message, it is clearly not the fault of God. God is committed, it says, “I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth.’”

      So, if the message is still valid and God is that committed to gathering God’s people in, why don’t we always see that happening? What did John the Baptist (who apparently attracted “all the people”) have that we don’t?

      Well, I think that one of the problems is that we have become “if” Christians instead of “when” Christians. We appreciate our Christian faith and the message of the gospel that we have received and we especially appreciate it if we face hard times. If we have to pass through fire or flood, it is good to know that we have a God who is committed to us, a Christian community that will support us and love us and a message of good news that will comfort our hearts.

      And, in a sense, there is nothing wrong with that. It is a very good thing to be able to draw on that support if tragedy should befall us and it is a blessing to have that assurance. But if Christians are not necessarily the Christians who are going to change the world. For that you need when Christians.

      When Christians are the ones who understand that the gospel message is not just there to support us in those difficult times that may happen. They understand that following Christ and being faithful to his gospel will, sooner or later, lead us into situations that are not exactly comfortable. Following the example of Christ with integrity will sometimes mean standing up for the forgotten, the despised and the oppressed. And when you do that, you will find that it is not possible without displeasing many people. It means that sometimes people won’t like you and that can feel like you are passing through fire and flood.

      When Christians understand that the gospel message is a message of salvation by grace through faith. God’s love and forgiveness and hope come to us as gifts that we can only receive with thanks – that we cannot earn. But we do receive those gifts through faith and faith means trust. It means that we need to learn to trust God for our most important needs. And, guess what, that doesn’t come easily to us. We would rather be in control of our own lives and not to have to rely on somebody else (even if it be the Creator of the universe). Giving up that control is hard – for some of us it can feel as hard as passing through fire or flood.

      When Christians know that the Christian life is not intended to be lived out alone – that we are actually called to live it out in a community – to love and support one another. And that is a blessing in so many ways – it makes life that much richer. But, guess what, other people (even when they are Christians – maybe especially when they are Christians) are not perfect. We sometimes don’t agree or see things in the same way. That diversity, when we work through it, is meant to enrich us, but sometimes working through it can be hard and we may hurt one another and tear each other down. We may need to forgive each other to make it work. And that is hard. In other words, there will be times when living together as the church will be like passing through fire or flood.

      When Christians also understand that this message of the gospel is not just good news for you, it is not just something to hold onto and cherish for the benefits that it gives you. It is a message that demands that it be shared. And I don’t necessarily mean by that that you need to be constantly going up to people and asking them questions like, “Have you been saved?” “Have you been born again?” Actually, I think that kind of in-your-face approach tends to have quite the opposite effect – it gets in the way of effective sharing of the gospel. No I am talking about a real mutual kind of sharing, where you are actually interested in what other people think and feel and believe and are also willing to share your own faith when the opportunities arise.

      Many of us don’t do that – would never even tell someone else what you did on a Sunday morning or what God is doing in your life. I understand the hesitation, of course I do. Such genuine sharing can make you feel very vulnerable. It can feel as scary as having to pass through fire or flood, but taking those kinds of risks are also what it means to follow in the way of Christ.

      When Christians understand that trouble is an inevitable part of the Christian life. They don’t seek out conflict or trouble, of course. They don’t stir it up for fun. But they expect that their walk with Christ will lead them through fire or flood at some point. They don’t complain when it comes because they expect it. Neither do they worry or fear when it happens because they remember God’s promise: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” They know that fire and flood are not things to avoid at all costs; they are not an if, they are a when.

      And I think that this is what we often miss and it gets in the way of the church being all that it is meant to be. We think of fire and flood as things that might happen. They are ifs for us. And if they are ifs, well, then they can be avoided and so we spend so much of our energy avoiding conflict, avoiding anything that might make somebody not like us, avoiding anything makes us feel vulnerable. If we understood that fire and flood are things that will happen, sooner or later, in the Christian walk, maybe we could draw on God’s promises and pass through them to new strengths and new beginnings.

      It doesn’t seem to make sense. We assume that if you tell people the road is going to be difficult, they will stay away, but John found the opposite. We, on the other hand, try to make the Christian life as easy as possible and often find that people aren’t particularly attracted to that.

      Why did John’s approach work so well? First of all, because he was telling the truth and people could tell. The life of faith will lead through fire and flood sometimes. Secondly, he told them that the promises of God could be trusted: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” But most of all, he showed them that the path, though difficult, was worthwhile – that going through the fire and flood meant something. It led to hope, life and new beginnings. Yes, I think we could learn a lot from John.

Hespeler, 6 January 2019 © Scott McAndless

Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12

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 understand why King Herod is frightened. I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. Here a bunch of foreigners show up in one of his grand palaces. They’ve traveled from a distant country far in the east and they certainly come across as rather wise individuals. They are looking, they say, for one who is born the king of the Jews. Yes, Herod is not going to like that.

      King of the Jews was one of his titles and he was certainly not interested in hearing about another claimant to that throne. In fact, Herod was so self-important that he could hardly even tolerate the idea of his own sons succeeding him on the throne and had a number of them put to death. These strangers arriving with news that a new king has been born, one who is obviously not even related to Herod’s family, is bound to upset him and, given his somewhat fragile ego, to frighten him.

      But I have always wondered about the little detail that Matthew adds to Herod’s reaction. He says that all Jerusalem was frightened with him. Why would that particular piece of news frighten an entire city? We certainly know that they had no great love for Herod.

      I always understood Jerusalem’s fear in the way we often think that politics works today. When a powerful politician, like, say, the president of the United States, gets some bad news, everybody in Washington DC tends to get on edge. But this is not (perhaps especially in the present political context) because everyone in Washington loves the president. This is because they know that a frightened and upset president is an unstable president who can sometimes react in pretty dangerous ways and do things that can throw things into great chaos. (And I’m not particularly making any comments on the present political context here. This has been true of many presidents.)

      So often when powerful people get frightened, the people around them do get frightened too but not necessarily for the same reasons. So I always thought but that was what was going on in this story of the visit of the wise men. The people were nervous about Herod’s reaction.

      But today, we read this all-too-familiar story in a bit of a different way than I have for a w hile. We read it as part of a set of lectionary readings. These are readings that have been designed by some committee somewhere to speak and communicate with each other to help us to look at the stories from a bit of a different angle.

      These lessons have reminded me that today is Epiphany and that Epiphany is not just, as we often assume, the day when we celebrate the arrival of the wise men. It is an important festival and season in the life of the church in its own right and it is a season when we particularly celebrate the revelation of God’s hope and salvation and gospel to the whole world.

      The readings this morning, you may have noticed, tend to focus especially on outsiders, strangers and gentiles being exposed to the good news about the Hebrew God in various forms. This has made me think that there might be a different reason why all Jerusalem – and the particular representatives of Jerusalem who are named, the chief priests and scribes of the people – were particularly frightened and upset by the arrival of some foreigners asking a rather impertinent question…

     

      The scribes and priests had a number of reasons to be upset as they waited in the king’s antechamber. First of all, they had been summoned here on no notice from warm and comfortable beds. Secondly, the king, as usual, was making them wait, his favourite tactic for reminding people that he was the boss. But the third reason was, by far, the most disturbing. It had to do with the reason why they had been summoned. The rumor was that several foreigners, devotées of some strange Persian religion, had come to town. Word was that they thought they knew something important about the Jewish faith – that is, the faith that was presided over by these very scribes and priests. Can you imagine that? These outsiders thought that they knew more about the faith of these people than these leaders themselves did!

      They all understood that that phrase that the magi had used, “the king of the Jews,” was a code that their people used when they wanted to talk about the hope of a messiah. It was the most important hope and expectation that any Jew could hold. And these leaders were not about to be instructed on the coming of the messiah by a bunch of foreigners. Why, if there was going to be a messiah, they would make sure that it was a messiah announced by a good old-fashioned Jew, not some stranger.

      But that was not the worst part. The worst part was that the question asked by these so-called wise men had forced them to go looking in their own scriptures in order to have something to say to the king when he asked them what this was all about. And, much to their consternation, they had found something. It was a passage in the prophets and it seemed to point to the possibility that the messiah could indeed be born and that, if he was, it would probably be in Bethlehem.

      Can you imagine that? Not only had these foreigners forced them to go and read and study their own scriptures, they had prompted them to discover something they had never understood before and it turned out that the foreigners might just be right. This was intolerable! They were not about to be taught how to do their job by a bunch of outsiders! And so they decided that, when they were summoned into the presence of the king, they would present a united front. They would not admit that these magi knew anything about kings or messiahs. They would present themselves as the only experts and they would assure the king that everything was under control – their control. There was no way that they would ever learn anything important about the Jewish messiah from a bunch of foreign magi.

     

      The kings and politicians of this world are frightened by anything that threatens their hold on power. But religious leaders, and by extension the communities that they lead, are frightened by something else. They are frightened that outsiders might know more about the truths that they proclaim than they do. That is the danger that the wise men represent.

      And I sometimes think that we in the church today are foolish to think that we are immune to the error that those learned scribes and priests fell into. We think that we’ve got our messiah – our Jesus Christ – all figured out. I understand why we think that. After all, Christians have been thinking and talking about Jesus for centuries. If some Christian preacher or teacher hasn’t said something important about Jesus in all that time, you would think whatever it is, it is really not worth hearing.

      But actually, knowledge of the messiah doesn’t work like that. Jesus Christ, we believe is still alive and still in the process of revealing himself to his followers. What’s more, if the best resource that we have for learning about Jesus is the Bible, we might think that since we have had it for so long, we have understood everything that it has to teach us. But even the Bible doesn’t work like that. It seems that Jesus is constantly giving us new understandings, new epiphanies, and we really miss out when we don’t accept them.

      For example, back a few years ago, like around the time when I was born, good Presbyterians had decided that they understood exactly what kind of ministers Jesus wanted leading his churches. In particular, they were sure that Jesus wanted those ministers to be men. The scriptures, after all, were clear on that point. Jesus was male and so were all twelve disciples. That had to be the model intended for the church too.

      But then something happened and it didn’t really happen inside the church, not at first anyway. It was an idea that started within society in general – a movement that started without reference to what the church thought – the idea that women are essentially equal to men. And eventually these wise… people came to the church and said, “Where are the women who are called to be ministers in your churches?” And when they heard this the leaders of the churches were frightened and all the churches with them.

      And some remained there frozen in their fear of change, but others allowed this idea from the outside to send them back to their scriptures. They explored the Bible and discovered that their previous idea hadn’t been quite the obvious slam dunk that they had thought it was. They found passages that spoke of female disciples and even apostles – some of which had been neglected and a couple of which were even intentionally mistranslated for centuries.

      And so a great conversation took place in the church and it was not an easy conversation because change is never easy in venerable institutions. But, in the end, the church did agree: Christ didn’t want us to exclude women from the ministry. We had been mistaken in our understanding of Christ. And so, ever since, our churches have been greatly enriched by the ministry of many talented and gifted women. But I honestly think that that great blessing would never have happened if there had not been for some wise… people outside of the church pushing us to think in new directions.

      Today, as I said earlier, the church celebrates the festival of Epiphany. Sometimes people explain that a bit simplistically by saying that it is when we remember the arrival of the wise men to adore the young baby Jesus. It is that, but traditionally also so much more – it is not about one day when the wise men arrived but that longer period of time – the time that we celebrate as the revelation of the messiah and the message of the gospel to the gentiles.

      But what I’m realizing is that even that is not just a one-time event – not even if you expand it to include that whole period of time when the gospel was first preached to the gentiles. It is something that continues to happen. God is continually interested in revealing Godself to new people. Jesus Christ, the living Word of God is not a closed book but a constantly renewing epiphany. The gospel will continue to touch the lives of new people in new ways.

      And that is a sometimes frightening proposition to those of us who have been in the church for a while. Because when the gospel begins to touch new people in new ways, they are likely not going to be just like us. They will have different ways of thinking and approaching even fundamental ideas. They won’t want to just do things in the ways that they have always been done and so sooner or later they will push us back into our scriptures to discover new things and new ways of looking at things. They might even make us discover that we didn’t understand Jesus as well as we thought we did. And that might lead us to change and frankly we are not very good at change.

      In popular culture today, an epiphany is just a general term for a sudden life-changing realization. “I just had an epiphany,” somebody might say, “I realized that if two people on opposite ends of the earth simultaneously dropped a piece of bread, the entire earth would briefly become a sandwich.” Well, that is maybe not a great example of a life-changing realization but it is one that can really change the way you look at something. An epiphany – a real life-changing realization – sounds pretty exciting and it is. But changing how you look at everything actually is a pretty scary proposition.

      This festival is a reminder that God does, from time to time, like to send his people an epiphany. I’m not sure what new realizations God might be sending our way, but I am pretty sure that if this church (and the church in general) is going to grow, it will only be by attracting people who are significantly different from the people who are already here. And when they come, they will ask us some awkward question that frighten us and send us back to our scriptures. That is as it should be. What we find there, and how we respond to it, may well bring us to the next great epiphany that God has for us.

      

T

hroughout 2018 we have printed a weekly selection from “A Catechism for Today” in our bulletin. It is a teaching document that was produced by the Church Doctrine Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Canada several years ago. The reason for doing this was to take an opportunity to focus on some of the essential doctrines and teachings of the church. Throughout the year, therefore, I have often drawn on the readings of the catechism for the sermons I preached (though not so much during the season of Advent, I admit). But today we come to the end of 2018 and the end of our little experiment with the catechism. Starting next week, we will begin a new adventure in another old church tradition: the lectionary.

      But as we leave behind our old friend, the catechism, it is kind of fitting that we take a little bit of time today to ask ourselves the final question. The final question in this catechism is this: “What is the meaning of the little word “amen’?” Not only is amen the last question of the catechism, it is also the last word of the Bible as we saw in one of our readings this morning and it is the last word of all of our prayers. That makes it a pretty fitting word with which to end our year.

      And it is actually a pretty good question because I’m not that sure how well any of us could answer it. And I’m not just talking about you here, I’m talking about myself. I’m not sure I could have given a good answer to that question before taking some time to look at it as I prepared for today’s sermon. Of all the words that we use in the church, amen has to be one of the most frequent, but how much do we know about why we say it and what it really means?

      Amen is a Hebrew word – one of only two ancient Hebrew words that are still in common use in the English language. The other Hebrew word, by the way, is hallelujah which means “praise the Lord.” In ancient times it was likely a word that you would use to accept a curse or a threat. For example, if I said to you, “If you cross this line, I will knock your block off,” you would respond by saying “Amen,” which would signify that you understand and accept that if you step across the line, the consequences will be severe.

      There are several pas­sages in the Bible where the word amen is used exactly in that way. If you ever want some good bedtime reading, for example, try the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuter­onomy which is nothing more than a long list of curses that are read out with the people responding to each one by saying “amen.”

      But if that is where the word started out, how did we get from there to a word that we just use to end our prayers? Well, it kind of grew out of that initial usage. If you could use it to agree that some threat or punishment was due for a transgression, then you could also use it to agree with some good things like a blessing or with words of praise and worship directed towards God. And so it was that the ancient people of Israel developed the tradition of prayer where the leader, the priest or perhaps the king, would address God with praise or requests or complaints, and then the people would call out “amen” at the end or after every phrase as a way of saying that they agreed with what was being prayed. By doing that they could make one person’s prayer the prayer of the entire community. Amen became, “and so say we all.”

      And, of course, we still sometimes use the word amen in that way. In our worship services that is our most common response to the prayers that are led by a worship leader or minister. But that does not explain how we use the word in our private and individual prayers. Why do you say amen when you are praying alone to God? I mean, what would be the point in saying it if all it meant was, “I agree with all the things I just said to God.”

      Well, it does indeed mean much more than that. When you say amen at the end of your prayer, you are actually acknowledging the true nature of prayer. Prayer is not just a monologue – not just a speech where you declare the things that are on your mind and heart. Prayer is not just talking to God, it is talking with God. It is a conversation. Now it is hard for us to remember that sometimes because, unlike in most of the conversations we participate in, we don’t get to hear another voice like ours speaking back to us, but prayer is always meant to go two ways and the amen is an explicit acknowledge­ment of that.

      When you say amen, you are acknowledging that everything that you put forward in prayer is open to the will and response of God. When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and famously asked his heavenly Father to “remove this cup from me,” asked that he be spared from the bitter experience that awaited him upon the cross, he also famously added the words, “yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

      That is what saying amen means – it means that you seek God’s agreement to what you are saying but are also open to another answer. You recognize that the wisdom and will of God exceeds your own. It means that you may not understand why God would give you something different than what you ask but that you are willing to trust God to be that father who knows how to give good gifts to his children.

      This amen is what sets the activity of prayer apart from every other kind of conversation. Yes, prayer is different in that we don’t hear that other voice coming back to us in the same way. But prayer is also different in that it is a conversation based on extreme trust. By saying amen, you are saying to God, “I trust you.” You are saying, “you are trustworthy like no other that I know.”

      That is a truth that Paul brings out in our reading from 2^nd Corinthians this morning. He is talking to the Corinthians about some plans that had made to visit them. He was going to stop by for a visit on the way to Macedonia and then again on his way back. But something seems to have gone wrong with his plans. Paul doesn’t say what the problem was. Maybe his luggage went missing in the Macedonia International Airport or there was construction on the E75 Highway between Thessalonica and Thermopylae.

      But we can all understand what he is saying here because we have all experienced it. We have all made plans and then had those plans go awry because of circumstances beyond our control. That is what it is to be human: it means that our plans are subject to circumstances beyond our control. And so, as Paul says in his letter, our intentions may be “Yes and yes,” but the reality is that the best we can say is “Yes and no.” Circumstances may change my intentions.

      Paul is saying that God is different. Are circumstances beyond God’s control. Of course not. “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ… was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’ For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’” But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to link that truth about God’s nature to that word we use in prayer. “For this reason,” because God is utterly reliable and doesn’t change God’s mind, “it is through him that we say the ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God.”

      Now, does that mean that you will always receive whatever you ask for when you pray and say amen? No. That amen also still means, “yet, not what I want, but what you want,” and God’s will and response is not something that we will always understand and appreciate. Amen doesn’t mean you always get what you want, but it does place yourself in the hands of a God who understands what you really need and who is committed to you.

      In a day the year 2018 will draw to a close. And, while it has been a good year in many ways, I’ve got to say that there are parts of it that haven’t been all I would have hoped. I have found some political and international relations events to be very disturbing. There have been more than enough disasters from hurricanes to terrifying forest fires to a tsunami. As we come to the end of 2018, can we say amen? Is that a fitting coda to a year that perhaps makes us feel rather conflicted? I can’t say I agree with everything that happened during the year. I can’t say that I accept that everything was exactly as it should have been. But, again, saying amen is not just about agreeing to what I want or need. It is rather about being open to trusting in God for what is past. So let us say amen for 2018. Let us say amen for the joys and the sorrows, for the hopes fulfilled and for the disappointments that may have come.

      And, perhaps even more important, let us think of the year to come. I’ve got to admit that looking forward at 2019, I’ve got more worries than I’ve got certainties, and I have more questions than I have answers.

      2019 will see a federal election for Canada. That is a good thing and I hope we all participate. But the problem is that it seems like it’s going to take place in a political environment that seems to be very negatively charged mostly because of the way that some groups are using the internet. I’m worried about that. I also don’t really know what I think the outcome of that election ought to be for the long-time good of our country. How can I pray for 2019 if I don’t know what’s really needed?

      2019 looks to be a year of great turmoil – I mean political turmoil like we have never seen before – for our closest ally in the United States. Oh boy, do I really not understand what’s happening there and neither do I have any idea what needs to happen for the healing of that country and the world. Those are just two of my anxieties and my questions about the year ahead. Believe me there are many more. How do we pray – how do we say amen as we pray for the year that lies ahead?

      Well, once again that little word seems to be our salvation. When we say amen, we’re not saying that we have all the answers. We are not saying that we understand it all. It is an expression of trust and hope in God. Yes we will ask certain things and try to find an answer that seems to be the best, but our amen says, “You know what, God, in the end we are willing to leave it up to you. You alone can oversee it all. You alone can possibly hold the future in your hand.”

      The year 2018 is in God’s hands. As it comes to a close, we confess we still don’t understand what happened or even what should have happened. But we are here at the end of that year by God’s grace. God has seen us through and we are thankful. Can I hear an amen?

      The year 2019 is in God’s hands. Nothing has happened yet. Nothing is written and we know that many things that will happen will leave us bewildered and confused. We’re not even sure what needs to happen in some cases. But we will get through by God’s grace and for this let us be truly thankful. Can I hear an amen?