Author: Scott McAndless

40 Weeks: Labour

Posted by on Sunday, December 23rd, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 23 December 2018 © Scott McAndless
Romans 8:18-25, Luke 2:1-7, Psalm 80:1-7
T
he Gospel of Luke is the only one to give us any sort of description at all of what it was like. But I am afraid that it just doesn’t answer many of the questions that I wonder about. Luke says that they made a long trip – and I mean a very long trip. It is over 100 km from Nazareth to Bethlehem and with ancient modes of transport and political and physical barriers, it would have taken weeks to travel so far. He also seems to say that they arrived there when M ary was just about ready to deliver her baby – at least, they did not have the time or the means to arrange anything like proper accommodations and Mary was forced to lay her newborn in a feeding trough.
      We all know that story, but it has always raised lots of questions for me – questions like, how on earth did Mary (who must have been somewhere between eight and nine months pregnant) manage such a long, arduous and dangerous journey in such a state? I know that Christian tradition, concerned for Mary’s safety and comfort, has very helpfully supplied her with a donkey to ride. That is nice, though I’m not sure that I would say that the back of a donkey makes for the most comfortable and smooth ride.
      But I would note that, while tradition was thoughtful enough to supply a donkey, the author of the gospel, didn’t give any thought to what Mary might have needed in order to make such a journey. He mentions nothing at all about a donkey. In fact, he kind of gives me the impression that he thought Mary walked the whole way. But however she travelled, on foot or on donkey back, I can’t imagine it being easy. How did she manage the extra weight, the nutritional requirements of “eating for two” and the early contractions? On these issues, Luke is completely silent.
      And there would have been an even bigger question that weighed upon her during all that time: what about the birth? This was Mary’s first child and having a child – especially a first child – was about the most dangerous moment in any ancient woman’s life. An unthinkable number of women just didn’t survive it. And yet, here she was, coming to a place where she had no family support, where she wouldn’t have even known who the local midwives were, and she was about to go into labour in what definitely don’t seem to be sanitary conditions. Was she fright­en­ed – terrified? And yet Luke says nothing about her state of mind or body.
      But what else would you expect? This gospel was written by a man – a man who is totally oblivious to the concerns of the only female character in his birth narrative. But maybe that is a bit unfair to poor old Luke. I mean, ancient men in general didn’t care about the trials and tribulations of women. Why should we expect Luke to be any different?
      But is that fair to ancient men? Were they all as ignorant as that about the struggles that women went through? Well, apparently not. Take the Apostle Paul for example. He, by all accounts, never seems to have married and never had any children. He, of all people, should be completely ignorant about the dangers that women faced in childbirth. But apparently he was not. In fact, in our reading this morning from his letter to the Romans he speaks of such things in very direct terms.
      He is speaking about what he calls, “the sufferings of this present time.” and even if he’s talking about the troubles of his own particular time, I think that is something that we can all relate to. You see, the promise of Christmas – the promise of Emmanuel – is that God is actually involved in this world. God has chosen not to remain some distant observer looking down upon us from a safe heaven, but has actually entered into the troubles of this world in the person of Jesus Christ.
      But, if that is true, then you might expect that that should change things in the here and now. The world should become a better place, a place where people are dealt with in justice and kindness. But people looked around in Paul’s day and found that things were not so much better. It had been decades – decades mind you – since Christ had died and been raised from the dead and still the world was filled with far too much evil, hatred, injustice and suffering.
      And if they were discouraged, how discouraged should we be? It has not been decades for us, it has been centuries – even millennia – for us and still we look around at the state of the world and are often discouraged. Where is the evidence that the coming of the messiah, the birth of Emmanuel, has changed anything?
      That is the question that Paul is struggling with in our reading this morning from his letter. And what is Paul’s response to that? “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now,” is what he says. He compares the troubles and trials of the present age with the pain and trouble that comes with a woman’s labour when she is bearing a child. And I realize that this is something quite odd for someone like Paul to be saying. I mean, what does he know about labour pains? But that is what he says.
      But let’s just say that Paul did have a way of knowing about the reality that many women face. Let’s take what he is saying here very seriously for a minute. What can the pain of labour teach us about the problems that the world faces and the hope that can be found in the face of them? And, since Christmas is coming, let us think of that in terms of the mother-to-be who is on all of our minds in these days.
     
      Mary’s entire body shuddered as she let out a low and plaintive moan. She wasn’t sure how she was doing it, how she was even staying on her feet while her husband went to the door and begged whoever was there (Mary no longer cared who it was) to give them a place to stay for the night. At this point, she was beyond caring. It didn’t matter where they ended up. If she had to lay her newborn baby in a manger someplace, she would make that work. All she knew was that this baby was going to come and that it was going to hurt a whole lot before it got there.
      She could have been feeling sorry for herself. She could have been blaming God for putting her through all of this because, apparently, if she was to believe what that stranger had said nine months ago, this had all been God’s idea. Oh, you can bet that she had a few choice phrases to scream out to God every time the contractions hit her. Yes, the pain was terrible, but at least she knew that it had a purpose to it. She knew that it would bring forth something good and beautiful – not only for her and for Joseph but even for the whole world. She just knew that it was true. And because there was a purpose to it, she knew that she would be able to withstand a great deal.
      Mary’s thoughts turned to the other pains of her world that she knew ran deep. She thought of the people in her own village of Nazareth who lived in terrible poverty, of the children who had died the previous dry season simply because there had not been enough food. She thought of the colony of lepers that they had passed in the hills on their journey – their bodies breaking down and their spirits long destroyed. They had seen Roman soldiers laughing about the women that they had raped and officials demanding bribes from travellers like them. All of it was painful in its own way; all of it was just plain wrong. And many times, while they travelled, Mary had cried out to God against the pain that she observed even as she cried out in this moment as she felt another contraction building inside her.
      Mary was learning, through this, her first experience of labour, the truth of something that her mother had once taught her. When the pain struck, there was no point in trying to keep it inside – no point in pretending to be stronger than it by keeping silent. Sometimes you just had to call out and it actually helped to do so. It made it possible to go on.
      She now suspected that the same was true about her reaction to the pain and evil that she observed in the world. It didn’t hurt and it actually helped to cry out against God for these things. There was a good reason why the psalms of her people included many songs of complaint and lament. God wasn’t harmed when people shared what they honestly felt; God could take it and was glad to take it for the sake of the healing of his people.
      But crying out in her labour pains was only one part of how she was learning to deal with them. The other part was the perspective she had gained – the knowledge that, as painful as they were, they were leading to something that had a purpose. And, in her case, that purpose was not just the joy of a new child for her but also a child of hope for the whole world.
      But, she was wondering, was that also part of the answer to dealing with the pain of the world. Was there a possible purpose in that? As painful as it was, was it leading to something that, when you looked back on it after the fact, would maybe not exactly make it worthwhile but would at least give some meaning to it all? Was it possible that, yes, “the creation was subjected to futility,” but that this happened for a purpose? Creation was subjected “not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it.” But why? Why would God do such a thing? There could be only one reason good enough; it had to be for hope. God had to do it “in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
      Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that that cannot be good enough. There is so much pain, so much that goes wrong in this world, that it doesn’t really matter what good might come out of it in the long run. To try and justify it away in that way is really just to dismiss the real pain that people suffer from.
      I’m not going to argue with that. I’m not saying that anyone has to buy this explanation. But I do think that Paul, who certainly did experience a great deal of pain for standing up for what he believed was right, came to accept it. I do think that Mary, who not only suffered great pain just to bring Jesus into the world but also suffered a great deal of pain by virtue of being the mother of the man to whom terrible things would happen – I think that Mary came to accept it too.
      And the reason why is not because the exchange is fair. It’s not fair to exchange pain now for the promise of some goodness or freedom later. This isn’t about fairness. But it is about trust. Mary and Paul may not have understood the purpose to be found in the suffering of this present life, but they did learn to place their trust in the God with whom the future lay.
      That trust was all that Mary had left as she waited, in full labour, while Joseph tried to find someplace – anyplace – where the couple could lay down their belongings. She didn’t know what the future held. She didn’t even know if she would live through the night. (The statistics were not on her side.) But she knew in whose hands she was and in whose hands her son’s life was. And that was enough. It might just be always enough.

Sermon Video:

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Forty Weeks: Quickening

Posted by on Monday, December 17th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler 16 December 2018 © Scott McAndless
Luke 1:39-45, Luke 1:46-55
I
t usually happens somewhere between 13 and 16 weeks into a pregnancy. I’ve not experienced it myself, for pretty obvious reasons, but I understand that, at first, it is just like a little fluttering sensation in your belly. Sometimes you might not even be sure exactly what it is and wonder if it might just be gas or something. But, when you first do figure out what it really is, it changes everything. It is traditionally called the quickening.
      I think that for many mothers when they first feel that – first feel their baby moving within them, it is a great sign. You see, up until then, they have known that they were expecting. They have known that everything happening within them was leading to a baby being born, but that is just head knowledge. In many cases, it just doesn’t seem real. For many mothers, the moment when that happens is when they feel that movement inside them, movement inside their body that is not them. A new ultimately independent life is forming within. And all of a sudden it becomes very real: their life is about to change in ways that they can hardly even imagine. It is a clear sign of a new beginning.
      This morning we read the story of the time when Mary, the mother of Jesus, met Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist. And, when that happened, something happened inside of Elizabeth. Her baby moved within her. And, on the one hand, it was an entirely ordinary thing. It was the kind of thing that happens to virtually every mother somewhere between 13 and 16 weeks. Except it isn’t really ordinary, is it? Every mother knows that it is always extraordinary when that first happens. Every mother knows that it is a sign and Elizabeth knew that it was a sign.

      But Elizabeth, the new prophet, declared the meaning of her sign and what she declared was a sign unlike any other: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?”
      According to the Gospel of Luke, Elizabeth, with those words, became the first human being to actually announce that the Messiah was coming into the world. And I cannot help but dwell on this idea for a little while this week before Christmas. Elizabeth had something happen inside her body, something that was really only part of a natural human process, an extra­ordinary event that happens ordinarily to every human mother, and yet she recognized it as a sign that God was about to break through into human history in an unprecedented and unique way. What an incredible moment! And is it not a moment that we really need in the world right now?
      I think that many of us these days look around at the world and see so much that is going wrong. There is so much hatred. Despite everything that we have learned, there is so much racism. The social divide between rich and poor only seems to grow greater and to become more toxic. We are looking for a better world – for a sign that the world can even be a better place. That was the sign that Elizabeth felt within her at a moment that seemed just about as hopeless.
      But think about that for a moment. The sign that Elizabeth felt was inside her. It was, at once, both ordinary and extraordinary. It was an everyday thing, something that any doctor would tell you happens all the time. And yet Elizabeth correctly interpreted that sign as the beginning of a new world and of new hope. My question is this: was that just a one-time thing? I mean, is that the one time in the history of the world when the ordinary quickening event in the middle of somebody’s pregnancy turned out to be a sign that God was about to do something truly extraordinary in the world? Is Elizabeth an exception?
      Or is this something that God just does? Does God speak often to us through such signs and wonders that happen around us or even within us? Is the problem not that God doesn’t speak, is the problem that we fail to recognize the signs of what it is that God is saying and doing?
      About 2,000 years ago, the Gospel of Luke tells us, two women met, both of them expecting a child, in a village somewhere in Judea. And in the womb of one of those women, a baby moved. A child kicked within his mother’s belly, and the entire world changed. That is what our story says this morning.

      And I happen to believe that God still is involved in that kind of thing. God would still like to make the world move. God would still love to reveal the presence of his Emmanuel in this time and in this place and he would like to use you to do it. Pay attention to the signs. God is doing something inside you or maybe inside your neighbour. God is calling you to do some justice that needs to be done. God is calling you to speak a word of comfort or of encouragement to someone who is lost right now. Pay attention to the signs even if they are inside you. They are real and God is in them.
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The children were nestled

Posted by on Monday, December 10th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 9 December, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Matthew 1:18-25, Psalm 10:12-18

Note: this was a dialogue with children, not a preached message. The following only approximates the conversation.

T
was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap...
     
      But wait a minute; I’m having trouble sleeping, aren’t you? I’m tossing and I’m turning. Do you ever have trouble sleeping? What can sometimes cause that? When you’re worried about something, or when something is wrong and it is really bothering you, or sometimes when you are sick or uncomfortable in some way.
      Well, let me describe a situation that might give you trouble sleeping at night. Have any of you ever known somebody who was different in some way? Now there is nothing wrong with being different, is there? Sometimes people come from a different background or they look different. Sometimes people are affected by certain medical conditions or they have certain limitations in what they can or cannot do. In fact, there are all kinds of ways in which people can be different and that is fine. In fact, I would even say that that is just how God has created us sometimes and it is all good.
      But not everybody sees it that way. And sometimes they are not very nice to people who are different. And what do they do? They tease them, maybe laugh at them or bully them. It’s not right. I’m sure it is against the rules at your school to do that, isn’t it, but that doesn’t mean that it never happens.

      So let’s say that you are facing a situation like that. There is somebody you know who is being teased or laughed at or bullied and you just really feel bad about it because you know that it isn’t right. Is that something that maybe might make it hard to go to sleep at night?
      I mean, when you see something like that, you might want to get up and tell those other people to stop it, that they shouldn’t do things like that, but it’s not always so easy to do that, is it? You might want to go and tell someone – like maybe a teacher – that all of this is going on so that the teacher will make it stop, but, I don’t know about you, but I don’t always find that to be the easy thing to do. So, can you imagine that dealing with a situation like that might be something that would keep you awake at night?
      But let’s say that it’s even worse than that. Let’s say that it’s not just everybody else who is teasing or bullying someone because of something that is out of their control, let’s say that they are expecting you to do the same. In fact, they’re not just expecting it, they are demanding it. They let you know, in no uncertain terms, that, if you don’t pile on that person with them, they are going to make your life miserable too.
      I mean, people may not exactly say that in so many words. They may not say, “if you don’t insult her, we’re never going to play with you again.” But they can usually find some way to make it clear to you that they are expecting you to be just as mean to this person as they are. Have you ever been in a situation like that?
      You see, when people do that – when they are mean to someone just because they are not fitting in – they always know (somewhere deep down inside) that they are wrong. They know that they shouldn’t do that. They also know, though they hate to admit it, that, under other circumstances, if things were different, it might be somebody else who is making fun of them. So actually when people do that, when they are mean to someone like that, they’re actually afraid that someone is going to see through what they are doing. So if they can persuade anybody else to join them in the bad behavior, well then that makes them feel good and much less afraid. So, by joining in with them, you are actually encouraging the bad behavior.
      But when people are doing that to you, when they are encouraging you to join in the bad behavior, it is hard to resist. Everyone wants to fit in. Everyone wants to belong. So yeah, if you’re dealing with something like that it can be hard to sleep.
      With that in mind, Mr. Paddock going to start reading our Bible passage for this morning.
     
      This was how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. His mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, she found out that she was going to have a baby by the Holy Spirit. Joseph was a man who always did what was right, but he did not want to disgrace Mary publicly; so he made plans to break the engagement privately. While he was thinking about this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.
     
      So I want to imagine you’re Joseph for a moment. Everybody is being mean to Mary. They’re being mean to her because something has happened to her that everyone in that society thought wasn’t allowed. She was going to have a baby, even though she wasn’t married. And, what’s more, the story tells us that this wasn’t even something she had chosen to do. It had just happened to her. Somehow it was God’s doing. People didn’t care about that though, and they were being terrible to Mary.
      But it was worse than that. They have let Joseph know that if he doesn’t join in, if he isn’t even meaner to Mary, they will be mean to him too. So, do you think that Joseph’s having trouble sleeping? You bet he is.
      Now we let’s read the next part of the story.
     
      While he was thinking about this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, descendant of David, do not be afraid to take Mary to be your wife. For it is by the Holy Spirit that she has conceived. She will have a son, and you will name him Jesus—because he will save his people from their sins.”
      Now all this happened in order to make come true what the Lord had said through the prophet, “A virgin will become pregnant and have a son, and he will be called Immanuel” (which means, “God is with us”).
      So when Joseph woke up, he married Mary, as the angel of the Lord had told him to.
     
      Now, what happened here? Joseph, with the help of a message that came in a dream from an angel, did the right thing. He didn’t let Mary down. He didn’t treat her the way that everyone else wanted him to treat her. It probably cost him, it cost him a lot. He lost friends. He lost the respect of the mean people, but he did the right thing.
      And do you want to know what the best part of this is? The best part of it is that, because Joseph was brave, because he did the right thing no matter what it cost him, we got Christmas. Because of Joseph’s bravery, when Jesus came into the world he came into a safe place, into a family that loved him.

      I wanted to tell you this story, I guess it’s a bedtime story, because you know what, there are times when we all have to do the right thing and when we have to stand up for someone who’s been mistreated because it’s the right thing to do. It’s always hard. I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t. But I’m going to promise you that just like God was able to bring incredible good out of the brave thing that Joseph did, God will do the same thing when you stand up for what is right and you do it with trust in God like Joseph did.
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Forty Weeks: First Trimester

Posted by on Sunday, December 2nd, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 2 December, 2018 © Scott McAndless – Advent 1
Galatians 4:1-7, Luke 1:26-38, Psalm 25
I
’m going to start off this morning with a little quiz, just a little bit of Bible trivia. Let’s see if you can answer these questions:
      During Noah’s flood, how many days and nights did it rain?
      How many years did the people of Israel wander in the wilderness?
      How many days was Moses up on Mount Sinai receiving the law from God?
      For how many days was Jesus tempted in the wilderness?
      When Jonah was preaching in Nineveh, how many days did he give them before the city would be destroyed?
      According to the Book of Acts, how many days did Jesus hang around with the disciples after the resurrection?
     
Yep, that is about the easiest Bible quiz that you will ever have. The answer to all of those questions is 40. And if you are at all like me you have wondered about that – about why that particular number keeps on coming up when you read the Bible. I have learned that there are very few numbers that are featured in the Bible by accident, and this is one of them.
      Why does the number 40 come up so often in the Bible? Part of it, undoubtedly, has to do with ancient Hebrew habits of speaking. The ancient Hebrews likely used that number, forty, as a way of saying a really long time. But the number itself also had meaning beyond being a significant amount of time, the number was also used symbolically to represent a probationary period of time.
      You know what a probation is, I’m not just talking about the probation that people sometimes have when they get out of jail, I’m talking about any period of time when you’re not quite sure how someone is going to be in a new job or a task or a position and you just want to try them out for a while to see how it goes. That’s what a probation is and for the Hebrews, forty was considered to be a good amount of time for a probation.
      And that is likely another reason why that number comes up so often in the Bible. It’s not just a long period of time, it is specifically a time of testing and preparation before God begins to do something very new with his people. After all, isn’t that what Noah’s flood represents, and the giving of the Commandments on Mount Sinai, the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in the wilderness and on and on. It is about preparing the people for something exciting and new that God is about to do.
      Okay, I’ve got one more quiz question for you. Can you answer this one? How many weeks was Mary pregnant with her child, Jesus? How many weeks? The answer is forty because, whatever else Jesus was, he came into this world, we are told, as a fully human being and fully human beings take about forty weeks to gestate.
      Forty weeks! Think about that. Is it, too, not just a really long period of time? (And, yes, I am quite sure that every woman who goes through it finds it to be a very long period of time.) Is it also a time of probation? Probation for whom? For us? For humanity? For Mary? For God about to enter some new phase in relationship with humanity? Perhaps that is something that we can ponder with Mary.
     
            M
ary had been struggling with the nausea of late. It was particularly bad in the morning. She would barely be up and out of bed and she would be running to the privy outback. The nausea made it hard to eat often and there were mornings when she could eat little more then a few scraps of bread and a little bit of dried fish.
      But the physical struggles that she was going through were nothing in comparison to the tumult in her spirit. She found herself going over and over again the strange words spoken to her by that amazing visitor. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” he had said, “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.
      What did such words mean to a woman such as Mary? You need to understand, for one thing, that people didn’t really think of such matters back then as they do today. All of the things that you learned about the human reproductive system in your biology classes and in health, Mary didn’t know any of that. Back in the first century, they didn’t think of conception in terms of fertilized eggs or implanted fetuses. In fact, the metaphor that they used to talk about the creation of new human beings came from agriculture. For them, making a baby was like planting a seed in a farm field. In that analogy, the mother was the field. She was considered to be little more than a passive carrier of the life that was entrusted to her by the father of her baby.
      That is what the official understanding was at that time but, of course, the official understanding was what had been maintained and written down. But here’s the thing: there was one particular group that was doing the maintaining and writing down: men. And let’s just say that there is a long-standing tradition among men in thinking that they are the most important part of any process and of dismissing the importance of women in general. So it is actually quite possible that women didn’t really think of it in the same way that was officially taught by first century philosophers and teachers.
      So how did Mary think of that little child who was growing in her womb? I think she clearly understood that it was her child. I really have no clue what she understood about how that child came to be there. Honestly that is something that the author of the Gospel of Luke is not really interested in commenting on. The angel’s words simply refer to the power of God overshadowing Mary. It’s a way of saying that it doesn’t matter how it came to be biologically speaking because God is powerful enough to do anything. “For nothing will be impossible with God,” are Gabriel’s departing words.
      So, yes, this child would be the son of God in a very unique and special way. But he would also be the son of Mary. That is how he is actually referred to in the oldest written gospel, the Gospel of Mark.
      And what did Jesus take from Mary? As a woman, and undoubtedly as a very young woman, living in her time, Mary would have been someone who had meekness and humility drilled into her day after day. She would have been told that she was there to be seen but not heard. And, on the surface, that seems to be the way that Mary behaves in this story of her encounter with Gabriel. After all, what are her final words? “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” They are words that seem to speak of humility and service, and indeed they do. But they are also words that have a touch of defiance in them.
      You see, for Mary to say “I am the servant of the Lord,” was actually a rather dangerous and subversive act. Mary lived in the world where she was meant to serve everybody else. She existed, it was assumed, to serve her father and, when she was married, to serve her husband, Joseph. She was there to serve her local village leadership and she was there to serve King Herod and whatever he might demand of her and ultimately she lived in service to the Roman Empire and its desires.
      Because that was the reality of Mary’s life, for her to declare herself a servant of the Lord was actually a subversive act and she knew it. Essentially what Mary is doing here is she is taking the meekness and the humility that has been drilled into her for her entire life and turning it into a tool against her oppressors. “Oh, I’m supposed to serve am I, that is my role in life? Well then I shall serve, but I will not serve who you tell me I ought to serve. I will serve the Lord and to him only will I submit.” That is Mary’s defiant response to the angel’s shocking news.
      That is what I mean when I say that whatever else Jesus was, he was also the son of Mary. He clearly inherited from her that same defiance and resolve. Jesus would grow up and turn obedience and servitude into something extremely powerful and subversive. He would teach his followers and say, if you want to be the kind of ruler who changes the world, what you need to do is submit to and serve others. He would teach them that when they were attacked and oppressed, that they could actually turn the tables on their oppressors by turning the other cheek when struck and by going a second mile with the one who forced them to go a first.
      Above all, he would take obedience and service to a new level by being willing to go even to the cross. That one act would deliver a death blow to the powers that rule in this world – the power of death, the power of sin and the power of hate.
      At Christmas we celebrate a great mystery, the mystery of the incarnation. Somehow, we believe, in a man named Jesus from Nazareth, God entered into the human experience. He wasn’t just God taking a tourist trip to this world. He wasn’t just pretending to be human while holding onto all of the perks of divinity. No, he entered fully and completely into everything that it means to be human. He experienced the limitations of knowledge and understanding. He experienced temptations like we experienced them.
      If that were not so, then Jesus couldn’t really do anything for us. If Jesus had not become completely human, he could not have related to us in any meaningful way.
      I don’t pretend to be able to understand how such a thing could be possible – how the infinite nature of God could somehow be contained within the finite flesh of one human being. I don’t understand the mechanism of such a conception or gestation. But that is okay, we don’t need to understand it or explain it.
      Mary just knew it, as she felt that life grow within her. It was a miracle; it is always a miracle. And by putting herself wholly into that process, she made it possible. She chose to serve God and God alone.
      The story of the incarnation changes something. Because, you see, if Mary could do it, why can’t we. Mary, simply by being willing to serve and by defiantly choosing to serve God and none of the others who demanded her service, opened the door to the incarnation. We can do the same. God is still seeking to break through into the world and we, by choosing to serve can make that happen.
      Mary waited patiently for forty weeks to see true change enter the world. That probationary period was necessary. And God may be putting you through some probationary period as well. Be patient and willing to serve. God is still bringing wonders into this world. 
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The real story of two copper coins

Posted by on Sunday, November 25th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 25 November, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Mark 12:41-13:2, 2 Corinthians 9:6-9, Psalm 24:1-10
A
s you have already heard, this coming Tuesday is Giving Tuesday – a day to celebrate generosity and a day to consider giving generously and in perhaps unusual ways. So I thought a lot about what I should preach on such a day. What does the Bible have to say about giving and giving in extraordinary and even generous ways ?
      My thoughts were drawn, like so many other preachers before me, to the famous story in the Gospel of Mark. The people are in the temple making their contributions to the temple treasury and Jesus sits down to watch. All of the wealthy people put in enormous amounts of money, but Jesus doesn’t much notice that because they are merely putting in a relatively small portion of their total wealth. But then this widow comes along and she contributes such a small amount, just two copper coins, and at this Jesus sits up and notices. “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury,” he says. “For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
      The message seems clear enough: Jesus notices when we give, especially when we give generously and sacrificially. So let’s all be like that widow when we support the church. Here endeth the sermon.
      But what if I were to tell you that that is not what that story in the gospel is really about. Oh, Jesus was clearly speaking up in favour of that widow; there’s no mistake about that. And Jesus was also clearly in favour of the practice of extreme generosity. He said it often. But that is not quite what this particular story is about. You see, there is one key thing that people miss in the story and that is what Jesus’ mood was.
      Jesus was from Galilee and we just happen to know a fair bit about what the mood towards the temple was in Galilee in his time. The Galileans, you see, were being bled dry in Jesus’ day. There were three main culprits. First, there were the rents and fees that the people had to pay to their landlords and masters. Second were the exorbitant taxes imposed by the Romans and by King Herod. But a close third was definitely the Jerusalem temple complex. Jewish Galileans were taxed mercilessly (and some have suggested even more heavily than the Judeans) to support the temple, the lavish lifestyle of the powerful high priests and the ongoing major building projects that continu­ed throughout the lifetime of Jesus. And this taxing (or tithing) was anything but voluntary.
      So what do you suppose that Jesus’ mood was as he watched the people place their money in the temple treasury – as he watched a poor old widow put in her very last two coins? I’ll tell you what his mood was, he was mad. So you need to understand that Jesus didn’t say (all sweetly), “Aw, look at that. Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.” No, he said, (angrily) “Would you look at that! Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury!”
      How mad was he? Well, there is another thing that we usually miss in this story. This story comes at the very end of a chapter so we tend to stop reading and put our Bibles down as soon as it is over. But here is a secret that I don’t know if anyone has ever told you before: the verse and chapter divisions were never part of the original text. They weren’t added until centuries later. So the Gospel writer never intended you to stop reading there. The story continues from there.
      And what happens next in the story? If you continue into the next chapter, you find Jesus turning around and walking out of the temple. He leaves. This is significant. Jesus is so mad here that he has actually just turned his back on the whole thing. What’s more his disciples all know it because look at how they react. They run after him even as he is leaving and try to stop him. They are worried about his anger. “Look, Teacher,” they say, “what large stones and what large buildings!”
      “Come back,” they’re saying, “don’t walk out on the temple, can’t you see how beautiful it is, how big the stones are? I mean, yeah, maybe the cost of running this temple is bleeding the people dry – it’s bleeding that poor widow dry – but isn’t it worth it because… stones?” and what does Jesus say in response to that? “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” Not one stone!
      How devastating is that? Not only is Jesus saying that the temple institution has taken every last penny from this poor woman to prop up the institution of the temple, he is also announcing that it is a doomed institution. This woman’s contribution has actually been wasted. And, of course, Jesus was absolutely right. About forty years after Jesus said this, in the year 70 AD, and only a few years after all the work on the temple complex had finally been completed, the temple in Jerusalem was completely destroyed.
      So, I would suggest to you, that the way we have traditionally read this story of the widow in the temple is actually wrong. And I realize that this might seem like an inconvenient time for me to explain this long-standing error in interpretation – on a day when we are about to launch Giving Tuesday and at a time of the year when, frankly, there is a great need to shore up the financing of this congregation through our giving. It would certainly be easier if today I were able to come out and just encourage us to be that poor widow giving our last two pennies and leave it at that. But, I’m sorry, I am someone who takes the Bible and what it says very seriously. I cannot ignore Jesus’ intended meaning and mood.
      But, do you know what? I think we actually have a great need to pay attention to Jesus’ mood in this passage today, because it shows us why it is that we sometimes struggle with money in the church. I would suggest to you that the stewardship message in the church is often exactly the same message that Jesus is reacting to in this passage in the gospel.
      How do we often encourage financial stewardship in the church? Well, honestly, our message is often this: the institution is in trouble. I mean look at this beautiful institution, look at these beautiful stones piled up one on top of the other. What about the stones!? And when I say stones, I’m not just talking about this beautiful building, though that is part of it. I’m talking about the entire structure of our church – physical, institutional, and organizational. And our pitch is this: friends, these stones are crumbling. They are in danger of coming down but, with your generous gift of two copper coins or whatever you got, we can shore these stones up for a little while at least. And, friends I don’t think that message is working like it once did.
      I don’t say that because I’m trying to repeat Jesus’ dire prophecy, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” I am not predicting the end of the institutional church; I don’t pretend to have that kind of prophetic insight. Yes, these are times of great change for the church as we have known it, but I do have faith that God will show us the way through and that the Christian gospel and the church that embodies it will continue to go out into the world.
      But what I think we are realizing these days in the church is that that was what the mission of the church always was: to embody the gospel. And we have often gotten confused down through the centuries and thought that it was something else – that it was about building institutions (setting beautiful stones one on top of the other). This gospel story has been given to us today to remind us of that.
      My prayer and my desire for you today is that you participate in Giving Tuesday. I think it is important that you do so, according to your ability and according to how God has blessed you, because we all need it. The annual orgy of materialism has now begun. The people flocked in their thousands to the malls and stores on Black Friday, often fighting with each other to get what they see as the best deals. Tomorrow, on Cyber Monday, that orgy will continue with online purchases. And that is all good for the retailers and the manufacturers. But how good is it for our society? I suggest that, come Tuesday, it is time for something different – something that is truly good for society: a practice of generosity.
      Now, I may hope that you choose to exercise that generosity in the support of this church, but that is not the point of what I’m saying here. Honestly, if God has laid another need on your heart and is directing you to give your generosity in that direction, I rejoice in that and I hope that we can all respond to it by saying, praise the Lord. Of course, I also rejoice if you do give to the church but I also want to say that I don’t want you to give for the reasons we usually offer. I don’t want you to give because we’re behind on our budget. I don’t want you to give because if we don’t get the money to do this or to do that we won’t be able to continue on. I don’t want you to give in order to keep big beautiful stones one on top of the other. All that stuff may be true. We are behind and we always do have needs to fulfil if we are going to keep going, but that is not why I want you to engage in some extra, beyond your regular commitments, giving on this Tuesday or in the weeks to come.
      I want you to do it because there is a wonderful opportunity here. You can be a part of something amazing. It may be one of our best kept secrets, but did you know that God is actually present and doing amazing things among all these people here? Here, on a regular basis, they happen. The hungry are fed and parents who have few resources are given food that they can take home to their children. Here, on a regular basis, people who have no decent or warm clothes, are given something to wear and to take to other members of their families. Here troubled people are counselled and encouraged, sometimes by me and sometimes by Sasha who comes in on Tuesdays and works with the Cambridge and North Dumfries counseling service (which charges according to what people can afford to pay). Here people who are lost or discouraged come to hear a word of hope or wisdom or direction and have their spirit lifted through music or through word. Here, on a regular basis, wonderful and even miraculous things do happen. I have people who can tell you stories.
      And, yes, I understand that we wouldn’t be able to do all of that and more without maintaining a building and other organizational structures and programs. I understand that we can’t do that without money, I’m just saying that I hope your attitude in giving is that you want to be part of what God is doing and that we not be focussed just on maintaining those structures.
      Because you have a remarkable opportunity: you can be part of all that. You can be part of it when you give of your time and talent and your treasure. That’s what Giving Tuesday’s about. It is about being part of something much bigger than yourself – something that God is doing. Don’t give for the sake of stones – whatever those stones may be – give because God is alive and at work. That is what can change the world. 
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Why pray?

Posted by on Monday, November 19th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 18 November, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Matthew 6:5-8, James 2:14-17, Psalm 138
W
hy pray? That seems to be a question that people ask with increasing urgency these days. We are living in a time when “thoughts and prayers” have become a very unfortunate cliché. Every time there is a tragedy, every time a gunman walks into a school and opens fire or a man walks into a synagogue and starts mowing people down, it has become a part of the national liturgy.
     Political leaders, celebrities and religious officials send out their Facebook messages and tweets: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims.” And people have caught on. They have recognized that “thoughts and prayers” has become a kind of a code – a code that seems to mean, “Let’s not do anything and, for God’s sake let’s not change anything just because some tragedy has occurred. Instead let us say something that makes it seem like we care.” It is amazing to see, but we are to be living in a time when praying for something, for many people, has become a synonym for doing nothing. And so, yes, people are asking, “Well then, why pray?”
   
  I’ll tell you I have certainly changed my own personal reaction to tragedies. Yes, I may pray as seems appropriate, but I now certainly think twice before posting anywhere that I am doing so because people now often read that as me just brushing off the tragedy.
     Even good, practic­ing Christians, for whom prayer is an essential part of their spiritual life, can’t help but ask the question from time to time. I mean, look at what Jesus says this morning in our reading from the gospel: “When you are praying,” he says “do not heap up empty phrases… for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” How can you read that and not ask the question, “Why should I bother praying if God already knows what I need, what I’m going to say and has probably already decided what he’s going to do about it anyway? Why pray?”
     These are just a couple of the reasons why the practice of prayer seems to have fallen into some disfavour in our times. But the problem, I suspect, is not with the practice itself but with our misunderstanding of the true nature of prayer. We live in a capitalist and consumer society. For that reason, I think that we have a strong tendency to understand just about everything in those terms. That is why we tend to think of prayer as a transaction – as something that we give in order to get something in return. And so we come to God and try to butter God up with our praise and worship, we may even make some vows and promises, and then, in return, we think we can at least hope that we have made God happy enough that he will give us what we ask for. But is that what prayer is?
     Prayer, in our thinking, is like a vending machine. You put in your money (or these days you tap your credit card), push a few buttons and you hope that you get what you asked for. Of course, some of us may experience prayer as a broken vending machine – one that doesn’t always seem to get what we want right – but it is a vending machine nonetheless.
     But I don’t think that is right. I think that Jesus is telling us that that is not what prayer is because, even while he tells us that God already knows what we need before we ask it, Jesus doesn’t suggest, even for a moment, that there is no point in asking. He sees value in the activity itself and it is a value that goes beyond the transaction that we tend to think of.
     But what is there beyond that transaction? There is, I think, conversation. When I pray and bring to my God the things that are on my heart or that are on the hearts of the people I pray for, I absolutely agree with what Jesus says – that I hardly need to tell God about those things in order for God to know them. God already knows them. But I also recognize a great value in speaking these things aloud – of saying them to God even if I do not dare to say them to anyone else. I need to vocalize them, I need to put those longings into words because I honestly sometimes don’t even realize what it is that I desire before I say it.
     I mean, who among us hasn’t done that? You go to a trusted friend who you want to help you with a problem that has been bothering you and the first thing you have to do is put that problem into words and as soon as you do so, you can actually see for yourself what the solution is. For example, I once had someone come to me with an ethical problem at work. A co-worker was doing something that was actually endangering the lives of some people and he wanted to know whether he should report it – what he should do. But here is the thing, by the time he had finished describing the dilemma, it was pretty clear he knew what he needed to do. He didn’t really need to be told. He maybe needed some encouragement but the answer was clear and all he really needed to do was put it all in words for someone. I just happened to be that safe someone. Prayer sometimes works exactly like that and God is only too happy to play that role in the conversation.
     But beyond conversation is something even more essential to the practice of prayer: there is participation. Prayer is not like the vending machine. It is not a transaction. When you ask God for something in prayer, God doesn’t just give it, God is more likely to say, “Wow, what an amazing and good thing to ask for, how can we make that happen together? That is the point that James is trying to get across when he says, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
     I know that he is talking specifically about faith there, but what is prayer if it not a spoken expression of faith? God doesn’t merely grant the requests of our prayers, God enters into the journey towards the answer to that prayer. That is why the politician who sends out “thoughts and prayers” after a tragedy without having any intention of doing anything to change anything is not actually praying at all and may, in fact, have done nothing at all. It is also why prayer is a dangerous act because, when you truly pray and ask God for something good, God is only too likely to ask you to be a part of the fulfillment of that prayer.
     Why pray? There are many good reasons to pray. It is not fancy language or delivery that makes a prayer acceptable and effective. It is not length or frequency. But if we can make our prayers a conversation with God where we bring our whole selves to that conversation, if we can make our prayers a participation in what God is already doing and wants to do in the world, prayer actually can change the world. And that is why we pray.

Sermon Video:


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Reflections at the conclusion of Transform 2018

Posted by on Sunday, November 11th, 2018 in Minister

The Transform Conference in Orillia Ontario was intended to be about just that: transformation. Some useful tools were offered but the point in coming together was not to get more tools that you might use to enhance your ministry. Stories of church growth and development were told and shared, but the point in coming together was not to take an incremental step in church size or programming.

The goal was transformation and that is a pretty ambitious goal when you think about it. If such a goal were to be fully realized, wouldn’t everyone have to go home as completely different people than the ones who came? Wouldn’t they have to return to churches that were soon radically different from the churches they left?

Well, I don’t think that that is what happened during our gathering, but I do think that the seeds of true transformation were offered and if those seeds are well tended, real transformation is possible.

Our keynote speaker, Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, offered us a series of practices that could lead to transformation. Now, in some ways, that is not really anything new. I don’t know how many times I have been given a series of practices by an author or a speaker that the church ought to employ. Some of those lists have been helpful and useful, but I cannot really see that I have seen transformation come out of them.

Dr. Kim’s list is not necessarily hugely different from some others that I have seen and I can’t really say whether or not hers is the best or most exhaustive list. What is important about her approach is that she sees a sequence to them. You need to start with a particular practice and cannot successfully move on to the next one until you have entered into the first to a sufficient degree.

There seems to be a lot of wisdom in this approach, especially because the first practice that she begins with is lament – lament that is then followed by repentance and relinquishing power. I believe that she is right and one of the things that truly prevents our churches from being transformed into the image of Christ is our inadequate practice of lament.

Healing and Reconciling with Indigenous People

Let me give you one example that struck me hard during our time together.

I was blown away, yet again, by the depth of pain and suffering in the indigenous communities that are served by our church. One afternoon I had the privilege of participating in a First Nations healing circle and the pain that was expressed there was almost too much to listen to at times. I can’t imagine how people can live with it – broken down in mind, body and spirit. It was a true and deep experience of lament for those present in the circle.

I could not help but wonder why complete healing and reconciliation is so elusive, given such real pain and lamentation. In particular, why do we as settler people of European ancestry, struggle so much with being able to repent of past and present injustices and with letting go of certain power dynamics. What is lacking?

Well, Dr. Kim seems to be saying that, if we are having trouble with repentance and relinquishing power, it may be because there has not been sufficient lamentation.

But how could that be the problem? Canada’s Indigenous people have been lamenting their losses in various ways for about five centuries!

Ah, but that is just the point, what is lacking isn’t their lamentation but ours.

Our lamentation? What do we have to lament?! We had it great, we got the land, we got to be in charge and we received almost all of the benefits from the relationship between Indigenous people and settlers.

But we have to recognize that, for us even to begin the walk towards healing and reconciliation, it means giving up so many of those privileges and benefits that we have taken for granted for so very long. That is a loss – a real loss – and I don’t think we can properly process that loss without lamentation.

The problem is that most of that, most of what we enjoyed, was sinful in some way. We may not have realized it at the time, of course, but a lot of it was based on attitudes and ways of thinking that were just wrong and even evil.

And it just seems wrong to lament the loss of something that is evil. Isn’t that like former addicts lamenting the loss of that feeling of the “high” that the drugs gave them? So I think that, for this reason, we avoid such lamentation and maybe even try and pretend that we haven’t lost anything at all.

And that might just be our problem – we don’t lament, don’t acknowledge the loss, and so cannot move on to the next step in true healing and reconciliation. So here I go again. I will attempt to compose a lament for my people, the settler folk:

A Lament for the loss of the “White Man’s Burden”

O God, it was so sweet. We sailed into this place and right away we were able to take charge.

We brought our own concepts and ideas about things
     like who could own the land and how.

Our ideas won out.
     We got to set up everything in ways that were comfortable for us.


We got what we wanted: land, government, customs.
     We didn’t really even have to think about what others were losing in order for that to happen.

But that wasn't the best part; do you know what the best part was?
     We got to feel all virtuous about it.
          We were saving them.
              We were civilizing them.
                   We knew what was best for them.

And, yes, it was a lie, often an abominable lie. It was often only too obvious that it was, but we could believe it and believing it felt good – really good.

Any story you can tell yourself where you are the hero and obviously better than the others always feels good.

But God,
    It's not working anymore.

The lie ran into evidence, into reality and into people who were strong enough to stand up and object. We can't tell ourselves the fantasy anymore because deep down we know it is not true.

And we hate it. We don't think it is fair. It is like you have abandoned us, God, because we don't know how to be your people without enjoying special privileges.

We're mad, and it is getting in the way of us moving forward.

Yet you are God. In Christ, you have shown us how powerful it is
     to empty oneself
          to consider the needs of others as more important than our own
               to love.

If you are with us, maybe we can let it go.

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Transform 2018 Day 2 Reflection: Grief

Posted by on Saturday, November 10th, 2018 in Minister



Day two of the Transform 2018 Conference began with very meaningful and moving worship service that was led by the eight Canadian Presbyterian ministries that are focussed on Indigenous people and communities.

In many ways, this service set the tone for the entire day, especially as ministry after ministry talked about their experience of ongoing injustices -- things like residential schools, the sixties scoop, youth suicides, drug addiction, missing and murdered Indigenous women. The sorrow expressed was deep, but the worship that accompanied it was nevertheless beautiful as it appealed to the limitless love of God.

This worship let us directly into our first session with our speaker, Dr Grace Ji-Sun Kim, and it was what prompted her to spend some time talking about the Korean concept of Han (a concept that I had previously only encountered in an episode of The West Wing). Han, she explained, is the sadness and sorrow that is felt in response to systemic injustice. In Korean culture, Han is something that needs to be expressed and is often expressed very dramatic form, something that we often have trouble within Western cultures.

Reflections with a Mentor


This day included two mentor sessions -- break out groups for more personal discussion led by a chosen leader. Our group was particularly blessed to have Dr Grace Ji-Sun Kim as our leader (or, perhaps, did the organizers feel that we were most in need of her help?). Our discussion led me to some interesting thoughts about my own situation.

 Having spent a significant time during the day talking about grief-inducing situations in various places, I was led to reflect on my experience in my own situation. If often seems to me that one of the things that prevents our congregation from embracing the change and transformation that may be needed in our present time and place is that we are carrying too much grief.

 We grieve:

  • The church that used to be. We are hardly alone in this, but I note that many in our congregation carry a lot of grief over the way that things used to work in the church. They grieve the fact that we can no longer attract people in the ways we used to do. They grieve the loss congregational size and influence.
  • Two former ministers, both of whom recently passed away. One of those passings was particularly difficult as it was the most recent minister and he died under particularly tragic circumstances.
This grief seems to impact our present life in some powerful ways. After all, how can we possibly embrace all of the new ways the church needs to be and act if we are busy pining for the way things always used to be? How can we possibly appreciate the present leadership (especially if it is significantly different in terms of style and personality) if we can't stop missing the old leadership?

I shared these concerns with Grace and she suggested that one of the things that might help us to move through some of that grief would be a practice of lament. There does seem to be a lot of wisdom in that suggestion and it certainly suggests that my thoughts expressed in yesterday's blog post may have been on track. So I will try to follow through with her suggestion.

Here I'd like to present a first draft of a prayer of lament that I think could be particularly useful, not only to our congregation, but to many Presbyterian Congregations.

Lament for the 1970's

God, it used to be so simple.

All we had to do was put on a reasonably good quality program in a beautiful building and people would just come.

They would come because they wanted to,
     because everyone else was doing it,
          because it wasn't like they had anything else to do on a Sunday anyway.

And people used to volunteer, step forward to serve on committees,
to bake, to teach and they were happy to do so.

And, sure, maybe they had the time to do that because everyone in the household didn't need to be working at a job all the time, but it sure made finding the people to do the work of the church easier.

And people respected the church, and listened when we spoke and cared if we got upset.

God, why did you make all of that go away?
     Didn't you know that we liked it that way?
          Didn't you care?

We keep trying to bring those times back -- thinking that if only we make everything as much like things were back then as we can, everyone will just come back and it will all be good again.
We try and try but it just never seems to work.

Have you forgotten us?
     Are you angry?
          What did we do to deserve this?

Or maybe, God, just maybe, do you have a message for us in this painful thing?

Maybe you want to teach us something -- something about the new life in Christ, about faith and trust in you? We wonder.

We wonder...

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Transform 2018 Day 1 Reflection: Lament

Posted by on Thursday, November 8th, 2018 in Minister

I am at the Presbyterian Church in Canada's Transform 2018 Conference in Orillia for a few days. This is the first of what is expected to be a yearly conference with the goals of helping participants to:
  • Embrace a missional culture that encourages initiative and risk-taking
  • Discover new ways of nurturing faithful, vibrant and generous ministry
  • Encourage generous investment in the mission to which God calls us
  • Build relational connections that embody Christ’s missions
I would just like to take the opportunity while I am here to share some reflections and thoughts. Here is what struck me after only the first few hours.

This evening our keynote speaker, Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, mostly took the time to introduce herself and her story -- setting the remarks that she will make during the rest of the time in a context. She also introduced some themes that will be highlighted.

Lament


One of the themes she introduced briefly was lament, stating, as I have often thought, that lament is a practice that we need to rediscover in the church. One of the things she said was that, while you will almost always see a prayer of confession in a Presbyterian worship service, you never see a communal prayer of lament. That set me to thinking about confession:
  • Communal confession and communal lament are both part of our Biblical tradition, and yet we regularly practice one but not the other. Do not both have a place. In fact, you could even argue that lament is more important than confession in our tradition, at least if we are to judge by the numbers: there are many more psalms of lament than of confession in the Book of Psalms.
  • I have not felt good about the way we do confession in church for some time. That is not because I don't think there is a place for confession -- there is. It is just the way that communal confessions are written that bothers me. Most prayers of confession seem to be based on models and ideas of thinking about God that don't really work for me. They portray God as a somewhat distant being who is only interested in judging us. If you asked me to describe the God that I have come to know through Jesus Christ, that is not what my description would be, yet that is the God we always seem to pray to when it comes time to confess. I do sometimes try to go out of my way to write prayers of confession the introduce different ways of talking about God and our estrangement from God, but that often seems to be hard work -- going against the grain of people's expectations of what a confession should be.
  • Some people (especially young people) have communicated to me that the prayers of confession are the part of worship that most irritates them, probably because they see the hypocrisy of addressing a God in our confession that does not fit the God we are trying to describe in the rest of the service.
It also got me thinking about lament:
  • We really need to lament these days. There are so many things that are happening for which the only proper response (at least initially) is lament. When 11 worshippers are gunned down in a synagogue (for example) we want to respond in our worship, of course. And we do so in our prayers of confession ("Lord, forgive us for the anti-semitism that we hold in our hearts..."), in our prayers of intercession ("Lord, bring healing and hope to the wounded, comfort to the grieving, repentance to those so motivated by hatred..."), and in the sermon. That is all good, but we also have a real need to lament in that situation; we need to be able to say, "Lord, why did this happen, why do things like this keep happening! Why don't you stop it!! Are you there, do you care!" We need all of those responses and they are all biblical.
  • Most (though not all) biblical laments do end with an expression of hope in which the worshipper usually comes to reaffirm trust in God. This would be as essential to a communal prayer of lament in a church as an assurance of pardon is in a prayer of confession.
And so I am looking for ways to make communal lament a regular part of worship. I am willing to even lay off a bit on the prayers of confession to make room for this. I am thinking, at the moment, of alternating between prayers of confession one week and prayers of lament for whatever might have gone wrong in the world the next week. Of course, such a regular pattern might sometimes be interrupted when particularly lamentable events happen in the world, which, unfortunately, seems to happen all too frequently these days.

Anyways, I think it might be a worthwhile experiment to introduce more communal lament.

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I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God.

Posted by on Wednesday, November 7th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 4 November, 2018 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Luke 1:8-20, Daniel 9:20-23, Psalm 91:1-16
Z
echariah was a priest – not an important one, not one of those wealthy priests who lived in the big houses in the prosperous Upper City. They had money and political connections and were famously corrupt. They were in so deep with the enemy – with the Romans – that the people had nothing but scorn for them anymore. But big important priests like that; they wouldn’t have had anything to do with Zechariah or his wife Elizabeth.
      Zechariah was just a low-level priest who would never be rich or powerful but he took his position seriously. It was his job, when his turn came around, to stand in the temple, to stand in a place where he was uniquely in the presence of God, and to carry all of the hopes and the dreams and the burdens of the people to the very throne of God. That is an awesome responsibility especially in times of great trouble, and Zechariah certainly lived in times of great trouble.
      We are told that one day when Zechariah was in the temple and making an offering of incense – a burning of sweet smoke that went straight up into heaven as an image of the prayers of all the people rising up to the very presence of God – that “the whole assembly of the people was praying outside.” Can you imagine that? This is just a low-level nobody priest offering a bit of incense and yet for this everyone seems to be there. The people have gathered, I suspect, because they know that Zechariah is a man of integrity and honour unlike most of the priestly leadership in the city. And so the people seem to have recognized that this is a unique opportunity to have the concerns that weigh on their hearts lifted up to God through this man that they can trust.
      What were they praying for? I can only imagine that they were praying for religious and spiritual renewal, for political change that would allow the people some breathing room in their own land. I’m sure they were praying for hope in a time when there seemed to be a lot of hopelessness.
      Now all of that – all of the hopes and expectations of a people – was a lot for one man like Zechariah to bear. But that was only the half of it. As is often the case with those that God calls upon to minister to his people, Zechariah was dealing with his own issues. He carried his own personal sorrow that, even after years of trying, he and his wife Elizabeth had been unable to have a child. This was a personal sorrow that no words could express and that was made even worse by the insensitive comments of people who just didn’t understand.
      Now, of course, Zechariah did not go into the temple with the intention of praying about that personal crisis. That was not what he was called to do in his position. But that sorrow was so much a part of him that there was no way he could leave it outside of the room when he offered up his prayers.
      That is the situation that we find ourselves in at the beginning of our reading this morning from the Gospel of Luke. And into that extraordinary situation comes an extraordinary presence. He appears right beside the altar of incense with these words, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.”
      Now, I will leave it to you to figure out why my mind first turned to a passage of scripture in which Gabriel appears in the Gospel of Luke on a day when we have the privilege of baptizing an infant by the name of Gabriel Lucas. But, having made that connection, I must say that I find the situation that is set up in this passage a rather compelling one for our time.
      My friends, we are living in a time when “the whole assembly of the people is praying outside the sanctuary.” We are living in a time when people are losing confidence in the religious institutions of our society, and not without some good reason. Just like in the days of Zechariah, we have seen religious leadership that has not inspired a great deal of confidence. The scandals are too many to mention. The Roman Catholic Church seems to be practically drowning in the sexual abuse scandals lately. Evangelical leaders have also seemed to be ready to sell their souls for political gain. (Take the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network who recently said that an arms deal is more important than the death of a journalist. Can you imagine that: a Christian teacher saying but the death of one man matters less than thirty pieces of silver? That goes against the very foundation of our faith!)
      Those are just a couple of examples, but the overall trend regarding the attitude towards religion is quite clear in our time. Yet, remarkably, even while people are turning their backs on religious institutions, interest in spiritual matters is only growing, as is belief in God and in the afterlife. People, in other words, are still praying in their own way, but they are praying outside the sanctuary because they are unsure whether they can trust those who are inside the sanctuary. It is at times such as this, that what we need most are people of integrity like Zechariah and Elizabeth to come forward to offer the incense of prayer and service before the Lord. It is when we need people like their son, John, who will be known as John the Baptist.
      Who are those people that God will use? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that some of them are here today. Perhaps God will use Gabriel’s parents. I do know, for one thing, that God has put a calling on his father’s life. I don’t think that he has quite figured out how and in what kind of ministry, but there is a lot of evidence that God has something for Matt to do in the church. But it is not just those who are specifically called to the ministry of the church that God needs to use at such times. All of us must ask the question: Does God have something for me to do in the work of renewal in these times of great change?
      But there is something that seems to happen as soon as someone asks that question. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done. Everyone agrees that the system is not working and that we need some real change, but they also immediately begin to think of all the reasons why they cannot be the one to bring about that change. Why? Because they’ve got their own problems – they’ve got their own stuff that they’re dealing with. Everybody can say that because everybody does. And that is an excellent explanation for why the real change that is needed often never materializes: people are just too busy dealing with their own problems.
      But here is what I see going on in our passage from the Gospel of Luke: Zechariah could have said that too. Zechariah was dealing with a terrible personal tragedy and he could very well have said, “Because I am busy carrying this terrible weight of my and my wife’s infertility, there is absolutely no way that I could possibly carry all of the hopes of the people before God. But Zechariah didn’t say that. Zechariah took all of his personal pain with him and he went and he offered up the incense before God on behalf of all the people.
      And here is the really beautiful part: Zechariah didn’t go into that temple to pray to God for his own personal pain. Though he could never hide the pain that he bore in his heart, he did not say a word about infertility as he offered the incense. He took the prayers of all the people and not his own need. But where does God meet Zechariah? Right in his personal pain. “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard,” Gabriel says. “Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.” God ministers to the minister in need.
      But here is where we discover how amazing our God is. Yes, God ministers to Zechariah in his need. Yes God answers the prayer of his heart, but in the answer to Zechariah’s prayer, we also see the seed of the answer to the prayers of the people. “You will have joy and gladness,” Gabriel begins, confirming that this is absolutely a gift for Zechariah and Elizabeth. But the blessings do not end there: “and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord... He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
      I find an incredible comfort in this part of the story. If you have ever felt that you cannot be part of what it is that God is doing in this world because you have your own problems that you are dealing with, remember the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Remember that you have a God who would love to minister to you in order that the whole world might be blessed.
      I have been blessed to know a little bit of the story and the journey of Gabriel’s parents and what brought them to this point in their life. I won’t go into it here, but I know that they have had their struggles as many of us do. And God has ministered to them in those struggles. God has brought them through all of that and then brought them together to be a blessing to each other and has now given them this extraordinary blessing in their beautiful son.
      That is their blessing and their gift from God and we wish them so much joy in it. But looking at the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, I cannot help but think that God has a plan to multiply those blessings from there. I am no Angel Gabriel; I do not stand in the presence of God and so I don’t know exactly how those blessings may come. I do suspect that God might do with them as he often does and that the very things that they have struggled with may become the seeds of their ministry. I cannot forget the calling that Matt has testified that God has put on his life and I cannot stop thinking that the very things that he has struggled with in his life may give him a unique ministry in the lives of others who struggle with similar things. I don’t know the particulars but I do know that God has an uncanny ability to find a way to make that kind of thing happen.
      We live in interesting times – times when “the whole assembly of the people” is praying outside the sanctuary. The hunger and the thirst for new life and new hope – the hope that can be found in the gospel – is there in the people, but they are also not inclined to trust the institutions of religion to help them find that hope. That might seem discouraging, but it is not. Yes, if we just continue on in the churches with business as usual and we resist all change, chances are that the whole assembly of the people will remain praying outside.

      But I don’t think God will allow that, God will call people from among us – maybe you, maybe Matt, maybe me – and God will use those people to enable us to take some bold steps. It will come. It may have already started, after all hasn’t Gabriel come to us today from standing in the presence of God. So offer up the incense of your prayers. God is alive and God ministers to all who struggle among us. In God’s ministry to each of us are the true seeds of the renewal we need.
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