Author: Scott McAndless

Is faith incompatible with science?

Posted by on Sunday, January 14th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 14 January, 2018 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 1:26-2:3, 2 Chronicles 4:2, Hebrews 11:1-3, Psalm 111:1-10
I
n the third century before the birth of Christ, one of the most brilliant people on the face of the earth was Archimedes of Syracuse. An inventor, mathematician and scientist, he accomplished many great things. He is the guy who is famous for discovering a process for calculating the volume of something that so amazed him that he jumped out of his bath and went running through the city naked shouting “Eureka.” You know, typical genius behaviour.
      One of Archimedes’ greatest contributions to science, however, didn’t really draw a crowd like that. He was the first person to calculate the value of pi to any degree of accuracy. Pi, a s you may recall from your high school days, is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is an extremely important number – foundational to many fields of science including geometry and physics. It is also used constantly in design and engineering. And thanks to the efforts of people like Archimedes we know that the value of pi is approximately 3.141592654. Archimedes calculated pi by using the work of a brilliant predecessor named Pythagoras. He employed the Pythagorean Theorem and extensive proofs and calculations to come up with a number for pi.
      But couldn’t Archimedes have saved all of that work and effort? Isn’t there a much easier way to come up with a value for pi? Christians believe, after all, that there is another source of truth apart from science and reason. We believe in revelation and many believe that the Bible is an excellent place to go to find the revelation from God. So if the Bible were to tell us the value of pi, then we wouldn’t need all of those theorems and proofs and calculations would we?
      And here is the thing: the Bible does give us a value for pi. It says in the Second Book of Chronicles that there was a great molten sea in the Temple of Solomon – basically a giant basin made out of bronze – and that it was round. The Bible gives us the dimensions of that round bowl, saying that “it was ten cubits from rim to rim, and five cubits high. A line of thirty cubits would encircle it completely.” So, in other words, the Bible is saying that there was a circle with a diameter of ten units and a circumference of thirty units. Well, if that is true, then all we have to do is divide the circumference by the diameter. Thirty divided by ten is 3. Pi is 3 according to the Bible! So Archimedes didn’t need to do all that work; it had been written in the Book of Chronicles about a hundred years before his time. He could have just agreed with what revelation said and declared that the value of pi to be three.
      There, in the simplest terms possible, is laid out for you the great conflict that still bedevils people to this day: the clash between faith and science. Science tells us that pi is 3.141 and so on; the Bible says that it is three. And I know that there really isn’t anybody who, based on this scripture, has insisted that the number for pi should be 3. But could you imagine what it would be like if people did? There would be faith-based geometry, architecture, engineering and physics. Every calculation made with pi would be off. All circles would look strange. It would probably be a disaster with buildings collapsing and airplanes falling out of the sky.
      And, though people don’t actually argue over faith-based versus science-based values for pi, they do argue over other differences of opinion between faith and science – things like evolution, the age of the earth, for some, even the shape of the earth. So, as people of faith, we really do have to figure out how we are going to sort out what is true and reliable when faith says one thing and science says something very different. So I am going to use a discussion of the value of pi as a way to look at how we approach that entire question.
      The Catechism of the Presbyterian Church in Canada answers the question of whether science and faith are incompatible with a clear no. “We believe that God created a universe with its own order which we can explore by scientific investigation,” it explains. We believe that, because God created the world, not in some haphazard way but in a way that conforms to consistent order, that it is absolutely legitimate to explore that order on its own terms and that we can learn many things about the universe and about its Creator by doing so. I think that is something that we all understand to a certain degree.
      We may believe in miracles, but we definitely do not attribute everyday events like the rising of the sun or the shifting of the wind to supernatural forces. Ancient people might have done so but we are children of the Enlightenment and have recognized that enormous advances have been made in knowledge and technology by making the assumption that the universe will always behave in predictable ways. So we are able to function without feeling as if we have to live in some eternal conflict between faith and science.
      But the Catechism goes on from there to make a point that I think we can easily miss when we ponder this question. “Yet scientific investigation and the Christian faith differ,” it says, “in their goals and approaches.” The mistake we most often make is not to misunderstand the conclusions or proclamations of science or faith but to fail to see that they are seeking to do very different things for different reasons in different ways. When Archimedes calculates the value of pi, his goals and methods require a certain rigour and accuracy, especially when that number will be used to further scientific understanding in various ways. When the author of Chronicles gives the dimensions of a round basin, both his goals and method are quite different and the accuracy of the numbers don’t matter in the same way for that reason. He is trying to say important things about the glory of God and the ways in which, he believed, the Ancient Israelites rightly worshipped God.
      So actually to use the number of pi you get from 2 Chronicles in calculations or engineering would be to misuse that passage because you have failed to understand its purpose. Again, I realize that people don’t actually make that error when it comes to the value of pi, but some do make it, for example, when they use other passages to calculate things like the age of the earth or to explain the origins of human life on this planet.
      The Letter to the Hebrews declares that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” That immediately sets faith apart from science. Science is entirely based on what is seen. The only way you can do it is by gathering observations, measuring and calculating results. And there is no question that science and its advances and understandings have been astounding. We have all benefitted and continue to benefit every day from all of what science has given us.
      It doesn’t mean that science is always right. In fact, the very fact that science is based on what can be seen means that it must continually remain open to the possibility that new observations, new experiments and new ways of interpreting data will mean that science will have to change its mind. This is not an indication of the weakness of science but rather one of its greatest strengths.
      Nevertheless, when scientists come together in peer-reviewed papers to a strong consensus on some understandings – as they have on such matters as evolution, the age of the universe, climate change and a host of other things – I believe that it is foolishness to disregard those conclusions. What’s more, to do so is not to abandon faith.
      Faith, as the Letter of Hebrews makes clear, has a very different basis than science because it is based on what is not seen. It is not established through observation or experimentation. This may limit the usefulness of faith when seeking to understand the observed universe (you don’t need much faith to calculate the value of pi for example) but that is not where the strength or purpose of faith lies. Faith is particularly useful in understanding and valuing what cannot be seen and that includes not only God but also such essential things as justice, beauty, love and peace.
      This is something, however, that we often fail to appreciate. Because we are thoroughly modern people, our view of the world has been largely shaped by scientific assumptions. We assume, for example, that the only things that are true are those things that are factual – that can be verified by observation. That is the modern bias towards reality – that facts are the only things that are true. There is a big problem with this because facts are only one kind of truth and an exclusive focus on facts can often hide deeper truths. Nevertheless, we all have bought into this assumption to a certain degree.
      For this reason, some people will reject all faith and the Bible too. They will look at the truths that the Bible proclaims and declare that, since those truths cannot be verified in some demonstrable way, that they must therefore be lies, falsehoods and fictions. This is one response to faith that has become common in the world today because of the modern scientific assumption about truth.
      But there is another response to the challenge of modern thinking and this idea that only what is factual is true that has become common over the last century or so. There have been many who have sought to defend faith and the Bible by insisting that everything that the Bible says is true and (since for them whatever is true must be factual) everything that the Bible says must be factual. Therefore, for example, if the Bible says that the world was created a little over 6000 years ago by God in six twenty-four hour long days of creative work, they will feel that they must defend this as objective fact. What’s more, they will put themselves in a position where, if they just admit that it might not all be completely factual, the very foundation of their faith will be shattered.
      This is the approach to Christian faith that is called fundamentalism. It is, to be clear, a thoroughly modern approach to faith – an approach invented a little over a century ago in response to the growing success of scientific enquiry because it was seen as a threat to faith. But the problem with this approach is that it buys into a flawed modern assumption: that facts are the only truths that matter. It basically acknowledges that science is the only source of truth.
      That is why it is important for us to remember the message that is there in the letter of the Hebrews and that is laid out in the Catechism: “Yet scientific investigation and the Christian faith differ in their goals and approaches. While science proceeds by theorizing about and testing the universe, the Christian faith is primarily concerned with knowing God who exists above and beyond the creation.” Recognizing the different goals and approaches of science and faith means that one of these sources of truth does not have to be elevated over the other one. We can acknowledge them both as valid.
      The good news is that faith and science do not need to sort that out through violence and anger. They are allies together in the great quest to find all truth. I absolutely agree with the catechism that there need be no conflict between faith and science. We actually need both and are all stronger when we are able to use the strengths of both. The Christian faith must value all efforts to understand the universe that God has made because we are guided in all things by the conviction that all truth comes from God. 
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Made for joy in knowing God

Posted by on Sunday, January 7th, 2018 in Minister

Hespeler, 7 January, 2018 © Scott McAndless
John 16:20-22, Philippians 4:4-9, Psalm 40:1-9, 15-17
D
id you know the oldest dog whose age was ever reliably recorded was an Australian Cattle Dog named “Bluey.” Bluey lived to the almost unthinkable age, for a dog of 29 years and five months. But here is the really surprising part. You might think that the reason why Bluey lived so long was because she was pampered and well cared-for, that she got nothing but the best of foods and medical treatment. But that is not true. She was, by all accounts a well-loved and fairly treated dog, but she hardly had an easy life. She spent 20 straight years of her long life working at an extremely difficult and physically demanding job, herding cattle.
      Bluey was an exceptional animal, of course, but in some ways, it is not that surprising that a hard-working dog should be the longest living. I believe that if you made an extensive search through the statistics concerning dogs, you would find that it was consistently the hardest working dogs who have the longest lifespans and, what’s more, that such dogs were generally happier and better adjusted than the average. This includes several canine professions, at least when those professions keep them in regular contact with other animals or human beings (because dogs are extremely social animals). Obviously, this would exclude dogs that perform very dangerous jobs such as those who work in war zones.
      Why should this be? Well, one thing that we should always remember is that dogs are not natural animals. They are the descendants of wolves but, in every case, they have been selected and designed by human breeders through a long process over many generations to perform very particular tasks. Some were designed to hunt various animals in various situations, others to herd sheep or cattle or even birds, some to retrieve, some as guard dogs. They were designed, in other words, to achieve a certain purpose. And, generally speaking, when they are able to fulfill that purpose, they are content, well-adjusted and tend to be healthier. But if a dog is put into a position of doing some work it wasn’t designed to do or is deprived from meaningful work, it is less likely to be so.
      Now I realize that it is not quite as simple as what I am saying here, that human breeding is far from perfect and that some breeds of dogs have flaws in their genetics that cause certain problems that plague that breed. I also know that, overall, dogs are such social animals that the best indication of a dog’s wellbeing is that it is loved. But I would still stand by my main point, that dogs do extremely well when they get to do the kind of work that they were bred for.
      And I would invite you to remember this truth about dogs when you consider our first reading from A Catechism for Today this morning. The Catechism is a teaching tool that is set up in the format of questions and answers. Now this format has sometimes led to a profound misunderstanding of how Christians are supposed to live out their faith. It seems to imply that there are only certain questions that are allowed to be asked and that the supplied answers are the only acceptable answers. But that is not correct. You should rather understand that these are questions that the church has discovered through long practice to be particularly meaningful. The answers are answers that the church has found to be helpful, but they are hardly final and complete answers. They are rather answers that can form a starting point to further discussion.
      The very first question in the Catechism is, “What is God’s purpose for our lives?” It is a very good place to start. It is the question that just about everyone struggles with in some form. “Why am I here?” “What is the meaning of life?” and that basic existential angst – that basic “Why?” that sometimes cries out within us and that we can’t quite put into words are all forms of the same question.
      But the way the catechism asks the question is significant because we usually ask the question relative to our own selves – “Why am I here?” “What is my purpose?” But the catechism assumes that there is something better to base that sense of purpose on than yourself. It assumes that the God who created you has a better sense of what your purpose might be than you do. It is an assumption, to tell the truth, that is at odds with everything that people usually bring to that whole discussion about purpose in life and it means that the answer to the question will also be at odds with many of the answers that this world usually comes up with.
      The short and simple answer is this: “We have been made for joy.” It is an answer that is probably a surprise to many people who have long assumed that they know what the Christian faith is about. I’m not sure that there are that many people (maybe not even too many Christians) for whom the first word they think of when they think of Christians is joy. In fact, we kind of have a bit of a reputation, in some circles, for being dour, serious, even kind of negative and judgemental. Some people seem to derive a sense of being right out of their faith, maybe even a sense of being better than others, but how many get into Christianity because they expect to find joy?
      What’s more, if you asked most people where they would go to find joy, you might get a variety of answers – to an amusement park, to a favourite restaurant, maybe to a club – but I somehow suspect that “to church” would not be a top answer among many. So why would Christians see joy as something essential to our purpose as human beings?
      Well, part of the answer is that the kind of joy we are talking about here is not the kind of joy you usually find in an amusement park, a restaurant or a club. Oh, there is no denying that it can be quite enjoyable to go to such places or to just do whatever gives you pleasure. And there isn’t anything wrong with that. (We all need to just have fun from time to time.) But the joy that is found in such things is not really what we are talking about here.
      This is a joy that is related to your purpose – specifically what your Maker designed you to be and do. It is similar to what I was talking about with working dogs. Of course there are many things that dogs seem to enjoy – cookies and treats, a good bone, curling up in front of the fireplace – but there is also deep satisfaction that a dog seems to find in doing the kind of work that it was bred to do. If that is true when you talk about the imperfect science of human breeding of dogs, how much more would it be true when we talk about a Creator who knew exactly what he was doing when he designed you to carry out certain purposes in your life?
      And what are those purposes? The catechism elaborates them like this: “We have been made for joy: joy in knowing, loving and serving God, joy in knowing, loving and serving one another, joy in the wonder of all God’s works.” The purpose is defined in terms of knowing, loving and serving and in terms of taking wonder. That is what we are here for and the promise is that we will find abiding joy as we do these things.
      The biggest question that arises when we are told that we have been made for joy is why is it that so many people do not experience that joy. What is it that gets in the way of us fulfilling that purpose? One of the biggest problems is that it is easy to get sidetracked from these basic purposes that we have been given.
      When people do that – when they forget that they were supposed to find their joy in knowing, loving, serving and taking wonder – that drive to find a sense of purpose doesn’t disappear. It instead gets diverted into other things like the pursuit of wealth or possessions, the pursuit of power or the pursuit of particular experiences. The reason why people pursue such things in our world today so ruthlessly is because they are standing in for the drive towards a true sense of purpose that God has built into us. The reason that these things do not entirely satisfy on their own and the joy that they produce proves fleeting is because they are not the ultimate purposes that we were designed to pursue.
      Knowing that you were made for joy and that you can find that joy in the pursuit of knowing, loving and serving God and others and in finding wonder in creation is a transformative thing to know. Over time it can indeed help you to learn to find your joy in fulfilling your true purpose. But there are things that you can do to help that process along. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul instructs us by saying, Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” He is saying that joy isn’t just something that happens but that it is something that you can choose to do. It is up to you to decide in what you will take your joy and the first thing you can choose to do is to delight in the Lord.
      We do that, Paul goes on to explain by training our thoughts in certain directions. “Finally, beloved,” he says, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” It is so easy to fill your thoughts with unworthy things and, when you do, you forget what your true purpose is.
      When you think about whatever is true, you are remembering the truth that you are created by God and that your God knows better than you what your purpose is.
      When you think on what is honourable you remember the nobility of service to others and that, even when it is difficult, it fills a big hole inside you with the sense that you matter.
      When you think of what is just, you remind yourself that there are some causes worth standing up for – worth putting yourself on the line for and it is a blessing to be able to stand up for what you know is right.
      When you think on what is pleasing, you take pleasure in whatever might come your way, knowing that it is a gift from your maker.
      When you think of what is commendable, you learn to see yourself as your Maker sees you for he knows your worth and your motivations and is happy to celebrate these things in you.
      When you think of what is excellent and what is worthy of praise, your heart will eventually be drawn to the God who created you, who made the world in such beauty and filled it with such wonder.
      You were made for joy. That is indeed the first thing you ought to know about yourself. I pray that you find that joy and that you find it in ways that endure and satisfy over the long term. I promise you that such joy will come as you grow in knowledge, love and service and in wonder.

     

Sermon Video: 


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#MakeHerodGreatAgain

Posted by on Sunday, December 31st, 2017 in Minister

Hespeler, 31 December, 2017 © Scott McAndless
Matthew 2:1-18, Isaiah 2:11-17, Isaiah 60:1-6
W
e are used to hearing the Christmas story from certain viewpoints. We see it through Mary’s eyes or Joseph’s or maybe the shepherds. These are all valid ways to hear the story of the birth of the Messiah, of course, but sometimes it is not a bad idea to give a little bit of space to hear a dissenting voice. Not everyone was entirely happy with what happened that first Christmas. Why should the perspective of those people not be heard?
      For example, what if I were to tell you that archeologists working in the Holy Land recently made a stunning discovery at the ancient site of the Herodium, a massive complex built by Herod the Great about five kilometres outside of Bethlehem as a luxurious palace and also, it is believed, to be his burial place. And let’s just say that somewhere in the depths of the ruins of the Herodium these archeologists found a huge cache of documents recorde d on small cuneiform tablets. They are very short documents, most of them less than 140 characters long, but they are important because they record the very inmost thoughts of a powerful king.
      Now, is that true? Has it actually happened? Well, no. But just imagine if it did. Wouldn’t that be something! It would be like we were able to look directly into the head of one of the most hated and despised kings who ever ruled over the people of Judea. I mean it would almost be as if King Herod the Great had been able to use Twitter to share his take on the meaning of the entire Christmas story.
      So let us review the (admittedly imaginary) tweets of a king from over two millennia ago. What might we discover? They might give us a great deal of insight into the character of the man. Take this tweet for example:

I am the Greatest King who ever ruled over the Kingdom of Israel (with the possible exception of David). My hope is to use this twitter feed to Make Herod Great Again #MakeHerodGreatAgain.
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 30, 2017

      Now there is a great indication of what is going on in Herod’s psyche. There were many things that did make Herod great, of course. He was a powerful Roman client king, he accomplished a great deal throughout his reign, but there seems to be a deep underlying insecurity in the man. He seems to be constantly trying to convince everybody about just how great he is. One of the ways in which we see this is in his building projects. Here is a series of tweets in which he simply lists his building projects.

Here is a list of the building projects I carried out. I build great things. That's why they call me great!!
Herod's Palace in Jerusalem
Herod's Temple
Antonia Fortress
Royal Stoa (Jerusalem)
Roman public facilities, Jerusalem (1st century BC)
/1
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 18, 2017

Theater, amphitheater, hippodrome
Renovation of the Pool of Siloam
Jerusalem water channel
Jerusalem pilgrim road
The Royal Complex at Herodium (Last quarter, 1st century BC)
The Palace-fortress
The Lower Herodium complex
Herod's Tomb
The palace-fortress at Masada (37-15 BC)
/2
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 18, 2017

Machaerus, Hasmonean fortress rebuilt
Antipatris,
Cypros Palace near Jericho
Alexandrium, a Hasmonean palace which I rebuilt lavishly.
Caesarea Maritima with its palace and harboir (25–13 BC)
Cave of the Patriarchs
/3
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 18, 2017

Sebaste, now Sebastia at Nablus, which I restored and expanded
Three Winter Palaces, Jericho (starting 36 BC)
Three temples dedicated to Augustus (at Sebaste, Caesarea, and Panias)
/4
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 18, 2017
      But it is not just the volume of projects. Everything that he built seems to have been calculated to impress. If you tour his ancient buildings, the first thing that you will notice is the massive size of the individual stones. They kind of make you wonder what Herod was trying to say with such a construction method, as he almost seems to acknowledge in this tweet:

I always built everything bigly with massive stones. I know that some people suggest that I was overcompensating for something -- that if the stones were so big, something else must have been small. Believe me, there is no problem in that department. No problem at all! pic.twitter.com/PiaPinSIxf
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 18, 2017


      But, whatever the massive blocks meant, there is no question that everything he built was intended to impress and overawe. Here is what he tweets about his biggest project, the temple in Jerusalem.

Here was my original plan for the temple in Jerusalem but a bunch of losers said that people would be offended if I put HEROD up in gold letters. SAD! pic.twitter.com/uRKR4zOOEC
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 29, 2017
       He couldn’t put his name up on that building in big gold letters, but he did the next best thing with another project:
People don't know this but I also built this place. Basically I chopped off the top of a mountain to build a massive palace. I did brand this one, there were no giant gold letters but I made sure that everyone called it the Herodium. pic.twitter.com/WEfUs7gk9Q
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 19, 2017

      So there really is no question that Herod’s ego was huge, but it seemed to hide an underlying insecurity. He was not, in too many people’s eyes, the real King of the Jews. This was partly because he wasn’t even Jewish. He was an Idumean. This alone meant that he would never be accepted by the people that he ruled and how that must have irritated him! I’m sure he even would have gladly denied his foreign origins as we see in this tweet:
The #fakemedia gospels would have you believe that I am not a real Jewish king, that I am Idumean. I want to set the record straight since they are here. That is #FakeNews. One of my lawyers is a Jew. I have many Jewish friends and even Rabbis that I fellowship with. #MHGA !
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 16, 2017
      One of the things that Herod tried to do to shore up that claim to the throne was to marry into the previous Jewish kingly dynasty. His second wife was named Mariamne and she belonged to the Hasmonean family that had ruled Judea before the Romans came along. She was a beautiful princess, well beloved by all the people and Herod probably hoped that some of her popularity would rub off on him. Here he tweets about her to the kingdom:
This is Mariamne, our great and very hard working First Lady, and my second wife. She truly loves what she is doing, always thought that “if you run, you will be king.” pic.twitter.com/306RWgpqqo
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 23, 2017

      But the marriage with Mariamne didn’t work out very well. He ended up in a situation where people saw his wife and the children he had with her as having a better claim to the throne than he did. Herod’s jealousy and anger flew into high gear and eventually he had both his sons and later his wife put to death for plotting against him. As you can imagine, this hardly endeared him to the people so the whole second marriage plan really backfired. But, of course, it is not as if he didn’t try to explain it all away:

I had to put Mariamne (and her sons) to death. I hated to do it but (after I threated her life several times) she was extremely #disloyal to me. SAD! Herod cannot tolerate disloyalty. #MHGA pic.twitter.com/L5CZ6yCsok
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 23, 2017

      The other thing that made him less than a real Jewish king was the fact that he was a Roman client and his position depended entirely on the Roman Emperor Augustus. He was at the beck and call of the Romans. They would often call him to appear before them and he could never refuse and he would never know if he would be able to come back. Makes you wonder, did he try to hide the Romans who propped him up with tweets like this?

Despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the Evangelists have been unable to show any collusion with Rome - so now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who claim to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 21, 2017

      That brings us, of course, to the whole question of the role of Herod in Matthew’s nativity story. The specific actions of Herod that Matthew reports – him receiving the Magi at his palace, his consultation about the birth of the messiah, his slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem – these events are only recorded in the gospel and are found nowhere else in the historical record. On that basis, Herod probably would have been only too happy to declare that Matthew’s account was fake news.

Matthew's Gospel is a total FAKE NEWS account. I never colluded with any wise men. The whole Bethlehem slaughter thing is a fabrication. Most of all there was only ever one "King of the Jews," ME!
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 29, 2017

      But is that true? Is the gospel account a Christian “fake news” attempt to slander Herod – an attempt to boost their own messiah by bringing down the greatness of another king?
      Well, although there is no evidence for these events outside of the Bible, I would not necessarily call them fake news. At the very least, what Matthew describes in his Gospel certainly fits with what we know of Herod’s character. He is certainly the kind of man whose ego was so fragile that he would have been frightened – though he also wouldn’t have wanted to admit it:

I just heard that #failing Evangelist Matthew says I was afraid when the so-called wise men showed up looking for a king. FAKE NEWS. When will these gospel writers treat Herod fairly?
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 23, 2017

      Matthew also says that “all Jerusalem” was afraid along with the king in his reaction to the wise men. That also seems to make sense based on what we know of him. He seems to have been exactly the kind of guy to fly off the handle when upset and the people around him would have known that. They would have been afraid of his reaction, as much as Herod might deny it:

When the so-called Wise Men showed up in Jerusalem looking for a King of the Jews who was NOT me, all my advisors around me started getting jumpy. I don't know what they were afraid of (I wasn't afraid) I always act responsibly, I never fly off the handle - well, almost never...
— Make Herod Great Again (@MakeHerodGreat) December 23, 2017

      Whatever Matthew was doing when he wrote his gospel story of the birth of Jesus, he was not just doing a fake news takedown of Herod the Great. The story itself can’t be verified apart from what we read in this one gospel, and how you read the gospel is up to you. But the point of the story was never about King Herod himself and what pathological narcissism and horrible crimes he was admittedly very capable of. Herod, in the gospel story, was never just one man. He was a type. Matthew chose to tell his story in a way that clearly echoes the story of the birth of Moses in the Book of Exodus. Herod in the gospel behaves exactly like Pharaoh does in the story of Moses. The Pharaoh, like Herod, was afraid of a deliverer who might arise among his Jewish slaves and, like Herod, ordered the wholesale slaughter of all Jewish boys under a certain age.
      By echoing the story of Pharaoh in the story of the birth of Jesus, Matthew was saying something very important. He was saying that Herod and Pharaoh are not exceptions. They are the model of what has happened again and again down through history. I’m not just talking about leaders who would actually commit atrocities like the slaughter of innocent children, though, Lord knows, there have certainly been far too many of those throughout human history. I am talking about people who ascend to positions of power and authority but who have a deep flaw in them in that they have an underlying insecurity. They know, somewhere deep down inside, that they have no right to wield the power that they do and that makes them afraid. The evil and foolish things that they do stem from that fear.
      What does it mean that Matthew included a compelling portrait of exactly that kind of leader in his story of the birth of Christ? It stands, for one thing, as a warning that such leaders will come and we need to expect them and do what we can to limit their impact. But the other thing that stands out in Matthew’s Christmas story is this: Herod’s plans fail. There is a new king born in the story and he is a king who is not just better than Herod. He is a king who challenges the very foundations of Herod’s flawed kingdom. It is an assurance for us from God that we are not alone to face the evil that comes into this world, that God has another way, another kind of kingdom and another kind of leadership and that it will triumph in the end.
      I don’t know about you, but some of the political events in our country and in other countries in 2017 have left me discouraged, disillusioned and disengaged. Some of the leaders in whom I placed some hope have disappointed me. Some, from whom I feared the worst, have delivered in spades. Matthew’s Christmas story is there to give you and me hope that God is at work, even in disturbing leaders and events. God will not abandon us or leave us without a way through.
      The underlying message of Matthew’s Christmas story is found in one word that appears in the opening passage: Emmanuel which means God is with us. It means that God hasn’t abandoned us to the whims and the fears of the Herods of this world. It means Herod’s reign, though seemingly endless, has already been destroyed at the roots.

Sermon Video:

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Episode 1.11 A Journey Reimagined

Posted by on Wednesday, December 20th, 2017 in Minister

The 11th Episode of the Podcast "Retelling the Bible" and the final episode of the first season came out earlier today

During the first season of his podcast, storyteller, W. Scott McAndless is retelling the story of the nativity of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, trying to help us to look beyond a literalistic interpretation and see how the author is using historical and biblical references. We hope this helps you to hear the story more as the author may have intended.

In this closing episode of the first season, our storyteller, W. Scott McAndless offers a new picture of Mary and Joseph walking down the road to Bethlehem given some new possibilities for understanding the journey that we have discovered in the first season of the podcast. Merry Christmas everyone!

I encourage you to subscribe and to listen via one of these popular Podcasting apps. Each of the links below will take you to a page where you can subscribe:

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Christmas through Many Voices

Posted by on Monday, December 18th, 2017 in Minister

The centrepiece of our service on December 17, 2017 was a fantastic musical presentation by our choir and musical ensembles called "Christmas Through Many Voices." It was amazing and I am so very thankful to everyone who made it happen and to our Music Director Corey Linforth. As a part of the program, I contributed a few musings from the perspectives of minor characters in the Christmas Story.

Luke 1:26-27
      26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
           
Some Reflections from the point of view of Gabriel:
      People think that I came to visit her all decked out in my full kit. You know, the wings, the glowing halo, the bleached white robes. I know that’s what people think; I have seen the pictures. But it really couldn’t be further from the truth and you’d realize it if you thought about it for a little bit. I was sent by God as a messenger – to bring a message that it was my greatest joy to bring. But nothing in my orders said that I had to look like an angel. I came as a wanderer, a vagabond. I knocked on her door looking for a little bit of food and some shelter. And I knew that I had come to the right place when she opened her door so readily and begged me to come in.
      Don’t you see, that is really what the story is about – it is about how we treat the strangers and outsiders who come among us. Everyone remembers the part at the end – when Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem as outsiders and strangers. They were in dire need of someone who would welcome them and offer them a little bit of hospitality. But there was no place for them, but not because there was a lack of space. What there was was a lack of kindness and of hospitality. The strangers were shut out.
      But what was lacking at the end of the story, was definitely present at the beginning when I knocked on Mary’s door. I knew she didn’t care where I came from, what I looked like or what I had done. She took me as I was and shared food and shelter on behalf of her family. So when I said, “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you,” it was because I truly felt that way. We angels have feelings too, you know, and it is good to have someone accept you as you are.
      Say, here’s an idea, if you want to celebrate Christmas in a way that truly honours the Christ who came and the mother who bore him, try doing what Mary did. Don’t reject someone because they are different from you – because they don’t say Merry Christmas or celebrate the way you do at this time of year for example. Treat a stranger or an outsider as a friend and just see if something amazing doesn’t happen as a result. It certainly did for Mary.
     
Isaiah 7:14
      14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.
           
Some Reflections from the point of view of Isaiah:
      I’ll tell you a secret. It is true that the book that you call the Old Testament is full of passages that point to the coming of Jesus – prophecies of a coming Messiah that Jesus did fulfill. But if you think that we prophets knew all about it ahead of time, you have another think coming. In fact, most of the time when we spoke the “Word of the Lord,” we were speaking on God’s behalf about current events – about what God was doing in the world right then and how God wanted us to respond.
      Like, for example, when I spoke to the king about the young woman who was going to conceive and have a son and name him Immanuel, I was talking about the sign that God was going to give to the king at that particular moment of national crisis. You should have seen the look on my face, though, when, centuries later, I heard that that prophesy also perfectly anticipated what the coming of the Messiah in Jesus Christ meant! It was so wild!
      But that is how prophecy really works, you see. You don’t get some magical view into far future events that won’t make any sense to anybody until centuries later. That kind of prophecy would be so totally useless that no one would remember it much less write it down. Prophecy – speaking God’s word – is something anyone can do who becomes aware of what God is doing in the world right now and is bold enough to announce it. It is God who takes it from there and continues to make it relevant for many generations on into the future.
      Your job is simply to speak God’s word for right now. Leave the rest to God.
     
Luke 2:20
      20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
           
Some Reflections from the point of view of the sun that rose on Christmas Day:
      The part of the story that they won’t tell you is that, while that was going on – while the shepherds made their way back from their visit to the manger – I looked down on them and on the whole earth with joy. It was Christmas morning, but somehow the world I was looking down on was different from the one that I had set on the night before.
      What was different? Well, despite the good work that I did, there were still many corners of darkness to be found upon that earth (that will always be true until I shine on it no more) but there was now a light that can shine out even in the midst of the darkness and the darkness will never quench it.
      The world I had set on was a world beautifully and wonderfully made by a Creator who cared for every bird and every blade of grass, but it was a world apart from its Creator who had never been able to experience the pain, passion, despair and abandonment that took place within that sphere. The earth I rose over now had a Creator and a God who had willingly entered into its life as a creature.

      But most of all, the world that had said goodbye to me the night before was a world where death ruled, where it had always had the final word and where its power had never been challenged. As I came up that Christmas morning and the sound of a child wailing for his mother to feed him echoed far across the hills around Bethlehem, the first cracks in death’s regime were beginning to appear. Death’s brave face would be shattered once and for all once I had risen only another ten thousand times.
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Episode 10: A Name

Posted by on Wednesday, December 13th, 2017 in Minister

The 10th Episode of the Podcast "Retelling the Bible" came out earlier today

During the first season of his podcast, storyteller, W. Scott McAndless is retelling the story of the nativity of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, trying to help us to look beyond a literalistic interpretation and see how the author is using historical and biblical references. We hope this helps you to hear the story more as the author may have intended.

In today's episode, Joseph ponders many things as Mary catches some sleep lying on the ground near the manger. He wonders about the strange report he heard from some shepherds earlier this evening and the meaning of the birth of his son and of the name that both he and Mary have chosen to give to him.

I encourage you to subscribe and to listen via one of these popular Podcasting apps. Each of the links below will take you to a page where you can subscribe:

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If you use a different podcasting app, try searching for "Retelling the Bible" in the app. Please tell me if you don't find it!

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Why we really need to stop harmonizing the two stories of the birth of Jesus.

Posted by on Sunday, December 10th, 2017 in Minister

Copyright © 2013 by W. Scott McAndless

      The Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew have a great deal in common. They share much of the same material on the life and sayings of Jesus though they organize it somewhat differently. As far as we can understand from a study of the two texts, both Gospels were written independently (with neither making any reference to, nor apparently even having any knowledge of, the other) towards the end of the first century ce or perhaps even later.
      Both gospels were written anonymously—with no names attached. It didn’t take the church very long to decide that they must have been written respectively by Matthew, one of Jesus’s twelve apostles, and Luke, an associate of Paul. But that is just tradition. The truth of the matter is that we really have no idea who might have written these books. All we have to help us to understand the interests, concerns and theological agendas of these two authors is what we find in the words they wrote, and it is better not to read anything into what they have written based on church tradition. I will continue to refer to these authors using the names that tradition gave them for the sake of convenience, but please keep in mind that the Matthew and Luke I am talking about are, in fact, figures of mystery whose true identities we may never know.
      A deep study of the two gospels has led to a significant scholarly consensus that they shared common literary sources for much of their material. In particular, the theory has been put forward and generally accepted that they both used the Gospel of Mark (or perhaps an early version of it) as a source and that they also shared another major source that no longer exists apart from its traces in these two gospels. This other theoretical source is commonly called the “Q Gospel.”[1]
      Because of these shared sources, parallels abound in the texts of these two gospels. But the birth narratives are quite different. Only these two authors attempted any sort of account of the birth of Jesus. (Of course, there are other non-canonical accounts of the birth of Jesus, such as The Infancy Gospel of James, but they were written later and were undoubtedly dependant on these two gospels.)[2] When Matthew and Luke came to write their gospels, their primary source materials likely made no more than passing references to the birth of Jesus, if they said anything at all. Both of them felt the need to include a story of the birth of Jesus anyway.
      This would have made perfect sense to them. They naturally assumed that anyone as extraordinary as Jesus who had done and said such remarkable things and who had sparked such a powerful movement must have had an extraordinary birth. This was a common way of thinking in the ancient world. Once individuals, such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus, rose to great prominence, people naturally began to think and speculate on the extraordinary conceptions and births that they must have had.
      But a fascination with Jesus’s birth must have developed relatively late. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have been a point of interest at all in the earliest Christians writings such as the letters of the Apostle Paul. The Gospel of Mark also says nothing about it. So when Matthew and Luke began their accounts of the nativity, they could only draw from very sketchy source material at best. This seems evident from the fact that they actually only agree on a few select details in their narratives while they actually differ substantially in other matters.

Points of Agreement

      There are three main points of agreement between the two stories: the location of Jesus’s birth, the names of his parents and the virginal state of his mother.

Place of Birth

      Both gospels agree that Jesus was born at Bethlehem in Judea. This is actually quite extraordinary given that, when they were written, anyone who knew anything about Jesus knew that he was actually from the village of Nazareth in far distant Galilee. The other gospels and earliest Christian writings betray no knowledge that Jesus was from Bethlehem. The Gospel of John even makes a point of insisting on Jesus’s origins from Nazareth despite the fact that this appears to be a very negative thing:
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”[3]
      Later on, this same gospel records a significant controversy over Jesus’s origins from Galilee:
When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But some asked, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So there was a division in the crowd because of him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.[4]
      As it recounts such stories, the Gospel of John has a perfect opportunity to address the readers directly (as it does in other places)[5] and explain that, though Jesus grew up in Nazareth, he had actually been born in Bethlehem, which would surely answer both Nathaniel’s and the crowd’s objections to Jesus. The fact that it does not do so is a strong indication that any story about a birth in Bethlehem was not well known, if known at all, in the early church. Or it could even mean that, if there was such a tradition and John was aware of it, he was actively disputing its accuracy.
      So it is rather interesting that both Matthew and Luke seem to have independently come to believe that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Nevertheless, it is really not very hard to explain how that could have happened. There is a very clear Old Testament prophecy (explicitly cited in Matthew 2:6 and likely also in mind in the above passage from the Gospel of John) which had created an expectation in some quarters that the Messiah, when he came, would come from Bethlehem because it was the city where King David had been born:
    But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
    who are one of the little clans of Judah,
    from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to rule in Israel,
    whose origin is from of old,
    from ancient days.[6]
      Because of this clear prophecy, it is quite likely that both evangelists would have believed that Jesus must have come from Bethlehem whether or not they had any evidence that he had been born there. This agreement is easily explained, therefore, despite the fact that there is no indication that either evangelist had any reference to a birth in Bethlehem in his source material.

Parents

      Matthew and Luke also agree on the identity of Jesus’s parents: Mary and Joseph. They would have had Mary’s name from their common source, the Gospel of Mark, where she is named, along with Jesus’s brothers but, strangely, without any mention of a father:
            On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.[7]
      So it is not at all surprising that the two evangelists should agree on the name of Jesus’s mother, but their agreement on the name of the father is a little harder to explain since he is not mentioned in Mark and likely not in the Q Gospel either. I would suggest that these two Gospel writers shared another source or tradition that identified Jesus’s father as Joseph. This does not seem unlikely because, even though Mark does not name a father, the Gospel of John, which was likely written somewhat later than Matthew and Luke, but that also used some of its own separate source material, does give Jesus’s name as “Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”[8]

Mary’s Virginity

      In the Gospel of Matthew, it is made abundantly clear that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived and that she continued in that state until she gave birth to him. The Lucan story seems to affirm the same thing, though not so clearly. J. A. Fitzmyer has argued that, “When [Luke’s] account is read in and for itself—without the overtones of the Matthean annunciation to Joseph—every detail of it could be understood of a child to be born to Mary in the usual way.”[9] But most scholars who have looked at the question have come to the conclusion that the underlying assumption of a virginal conception is there in Luke as well.[10]
      So I would not hesitate to say that Matthew and Luke agree on the virginity of Mary. This is a remarkable agreement because it is an idea that is unlikely to have come from their primary source material. It is not even a question that comes up in the Gospel of Mark unless it is a concern that could be read into Mark’s failure to name a father for Jesus, which seems unlikely. And, unlike the matter of the Messiah being born in Bethlehem, there is no clear Old Testament prophecy that requires that the Messiah be born of a virgin.
      Matthew relates the virgin birth to a passage from the prophet Isaiah (which he cites in the Septuagint translation that contains the keyword virgin):
     All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
    “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
    and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.”[11]
      Matthew uses this passage to explain why Jesus had to be born of a virgin—because it had been prophesied. It helps him to come to a deeper understanding of the meaning of the incarnation of the Christ which he sees as a way in which “God is with us.”
      Many would argue today that Matthew has misinterpreted that prophecy in Isaiah by taking it out of context and relying on a defective Greek translation. They would suggest that, in the context of the original passage in the original language, the prophet was actually speaking about a child that would be born to a young woman in the king’s household in his own day. But that matters little to Matthew, who obviously believes that much of what he reads in the Old Testament refers directly to the life and acts of Jesus.
      Luke, when he grapples with the meaning of the virgin birth, doesn’t seem to have the Isaiah passage in mind at all. He certainly doesn’t mention it. He seems to be drawing rather on the stories from Genesis of Abraham and Sarah and their struggle to conceive a child despite Sarah’s infertility. When Mary is told by the angel Gabriel that she will conceive, her reaction is to say, “How will this be… since I am a virgin?”[12] Her response is reminiscent of the response of Sarah who is told in the Book of Genesis that she will conceive and have a child despite the fact that she is very old and post-menopausal.[13] Sarah also expresses incredulity in the face of a prediction of a conception that seems impossible, although the particular reason for the impossibility in her case is quite different.
      Luke also seeks inspiration from the story of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel—another woman who struggled to conceive a child. Mary’s song that celebrates her expectation of the birth of her son has many parallels to the song of Hannah:

The Song of Hannah


My heart exults in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in my God.
My mouth derides my enemies,
because I rejoice in my victory.

The bows of the mighty are broken,

but the feeble gird on strength.
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.
The barren has borne seven,
but she who has many children is forlorn.
The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
he brings low, he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honour.[14]

The Song of Mary


My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.[15]

      Luke is clearly trying to come to grips with the unexpected and improbable pregnancy of Mary and he does so by reflecting on the unexpected and improbable pregnancies of women like Sarah and Hannah in the Old Testament. Of course, Mary’s case is unique because the reason why her pregnancy is unexpected is quite different from the reasons why Sarah and Hannah were not expected to have children. Sarah shouldn’t have had a child because she was too old, Hannah, because she was infertile, while Mary should not have become pregnant because she was a virgin. The reasons are different but there is a common theme of miraculous conception that runs through all three stories. Luke must have seen enough similarities between these three women to convince him that these Old Testament stories had been placed there to help him to explain a virgin birth.
      So the two evangelists turn to very different Old Testament scriptures to understand the virginity of Mary and what it means. This suggests to me that they each have a puzzling piece of information that they are trying to understand. That is to say that they both have a piece of tradition—a teaching that has been passed down to them from the earlier church—that indicates that Jesus was born of a virgin and they are trying to comprehend it.
      The New Testament writers often turned to important Old Testament stories to help them process and understand the things that happened to Jesus, and that is what Matthew and Luke do here. But they turn to quite different places: Matthew turns to the Prophet Isaiah while Luke turns to the Book of Genesis and to 1 Samuel.
      That is why I think that Matthew and Luke are indeed drawing on an established early Christian tradition regarding the virginity of Mary. This point of agreement is very significant because it indicates that the church (or at least certain parts of it) very early on accepted a view of the conception and birth of Jesus that would have been really quite shocking to Jewish sensibilities. Although the notion of gods fathering children on human mothers was quite common in Greek myths and legends, the Jews had never told such stories about their God.

Points of Disagreement

      In effect, we have three primary points on which these two evangelists agree. Obviously, these agreements are very important and meaningful, but we should not ignore the points on which they diverge. Unfortunately, these differences are not all that easy for us to see because we are in the habit of harmonizing these two accounts. Christian tradition has, for almost two thousand years, easily integrated the two birth narratives to the point that, when we think of the nativity, we automatically place Mary, Joseph and the baby at the manger surrounded by angels and shepherds (all elements from Luke’s story). We also add the Magi approaching with their gifts and the star shining overhead (from Matthew’s gospel). When we forget all those centuries of tradition and simply read Matthew’s gospel as if we’d never heard of anything that happens in Luke’s, and vice versa, we realize just how different these two stories really are. I see ten major points of divergence.

1. How the Couple Came to be in Bethlehem

      Both Matthew and Luke were faced with a problem as they wrote their birth narratives. They knew very well that Jesus was from Nazareth in Galilee. Anyone who knew anything about Jesus knew that. But they also knew that, if he was the Messiah, he had to be from Bethlehem just like it said in the Book of Micah. So they each had to explain how Jesus of Nazareth came to be born in far off Bethlehem. Both evangelists were able to deal with this problem, but they dealt with it in very different ways.
      Luke’s solution we have already discussed. Luke says that Mary and Joseph were originally from Nazareth, he calls it “their own town,”[16] and explains that they just happened to be in Bethlehem temporarily at the time of Jesus’s birth because they had travelled there to register during the census.
      Matthew’s solution is quite different. If you simply forget everything that you have ever read in the Gospel of Luke (not to mention every Christmas pageant you have ever seen) and read Matthew’s story at face value, it is quite clear that he is operating under the assumption that both Mary and Joseph are from Bethlehem. It is their hometown and they even have a house there that they share once they are married and where the Magi visit them: “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.”[17]
      Matthew has the opposite problem of Luke. He must explain why this couple who are from Bethlehem end up raising Jesus in the little village of Nazareth. This he does very handily in the following passage:
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”[18]
      As far as Matthew is concerned, Joseph isn’t from Nazareth at all. He only ends up there because it seems to be a good place to escape the notice of Archelaus, and because it was required in order to fulfil a prophecy. Matthew fails to explain why the family would have been safer under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, who was also a son of Herod the Great, in Galilee, and so his explanation is far from ideal.
      One gospel writer says that Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth and just happened to be staying temporarily in Bethlehem when Jesus was born while the other assumes they were from Bethlehem and only raised Jesus in Nazareth to establish a new life away from one of Herod’s sons. This is the first and greatest contradiction between the two nativity stories and it cannot be easily overcome. There are many more.

2. Genealogy

      Both Matthew and Luke give a list of the ancestors of Jesus. Matthew traces his lineage back to Abraham and Luke goes all the way back to Adam. They agree on the very important point that, as Messiah, Jesus is a direct descendant of King David. This information was found in their source material. The Gospel of Mark refers to Jesus as the “son of David.”[19] In addition, there seems to have been a very clear expectation among many Jews, based on Old Testament prophecy, that the Messiah, when he came, would be a descendant of David in some sense.[20]
      Although they both make this all-important connection between Jesus and David in their genealogies, they do it through different ancestors. The genealogies do not correspond at all through several generations. Here is how the two accounts differ in the crucial generations:

Line of descent according to Matthew 1:6-16:

David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asaph, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amos, Josiah, Jechoniah, Salathiel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim, Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Jacob, Joseph, Jesus

Line of descent according to Luke 3:23-32:

David, Nathan, Mattatha, Menna, Melea, Eliakim, Jonam, Joseph, Judah, Simeon, Levi, Matthat, Jorim, Eliezer, Joshua, Er, Elmadam, Cosam, Addi, Melchi, Neri, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Rhesa, Joanan, Joda, Josech, Semein, Mattathias, Maath, Naggai, Esli, Nahum, Amos, Mattathias, Joseph, Jannai, Melchi, Levi, Matthat, Heli, Joseph, Jesus
      The lists are so glaringly different that the contradictions cannot be ignored. Down through many centuries, therefore, attempts have been made at harmonizing the two genealogies. The most popular solution is to say that one gospel (usually Matthew) is giving the ancestors of Joseph while the other (usually Luke) is giving those of Mary.[21] It is not, however, a very plausible explanation. Ancient Mediterranean society was extremely patrilineal—tracing descent exclusively through males—so it seems very unlikely that either gospel writer would have departed from the normal manner of recording a genealogy without clearly indicating what he was doing.
      Arguments have been made that, when Luke writes, “[Jesus] was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli,”[22] what he actually means is “Joseph was the son in law of Heli” or, “Jesus was supposedly the son of Joseph but actually the grandson of Heli,” but neither of these translations is grammatically possible.[23]
      It is also worth noting that at no point in his gospel does Luke suggest that Mary was a descendant of David. It is Joseph who is “descended from the house and family of David.”[24] In fact, Luke even suggests that Mary is connected to a different tribe from David, who came from the tribe of Judah. At least, he says that Mary was a close relative of Elizabeth who was “a descendant of Aaron” in the tribe of Levi.[25] It seems rather unlikely, therefore, that Luke thought that Mary was a descendant of David.
      A more complex solution is to propose that the two genealogies are different because one traces direct descent while the other traces descent through adoption as was sometimes required by Hebrew law, particularly the law of levirate marriage.[26] This theory has found little support in modern times.[27] The most popular modern theory is to say that “Matthew gives the legal line of descent from David, stating who was the heir to the throne in each case, but Luke gives the actual descendants of David in the branch of the family to which Joseph belonged.”[28] This really solves little because it still leaves us with two contradictory lists that cannot be reconciled. This indicates that, if Matthew and Luke have any literary record at all beyond Old Testament genealogies, they have two different and completely contradictory lists. Any attempt to harmonize the two will be a futile exercise.
      There are more significant differences between these two genealogies than just the contradictions between specific names. The two lists are very different in terms of underlying meaning as well. The list that Matthew offers includes not only King David but also many of his royal descendants who also ruled over the Kingdom of Judah.[29] With such a list, he is making the point that Jesus is the heir to the entire royal line of Judah, not just to David. This is probably a part of Matthew’s overall effort to emphasise the kingliness of Jesus throughout his gospel.
      But Luke’s genealogy names no kings other than David. This gives his list a different tone. He seems to be recounting the history of a very different family—a fairly normal Jewish family that just happens to have one very illustrious ancestor. I suspect that Luke is thinking of Joseph as belonging to a less successful branch of David’s family. They were not the ones who went onto great things but rather the ones who stayed behind in Bethlehem and continued to live on and farm the land that they inherited from Jesse, David’s father.
      This would also be the same land that is featured in the Book of Ruth—the land on which Ruth gleans during harvest time and where she meets her future husband, Boaz, whom Luke lists as the great-grandfather of King David.[30] The family that Luke is thinking of may have lived on this famous piece of land but he still sees them as the poor rural cousins of the powerful kings who ruled in Jerusalem—forgotten and left in obscurity for generations until that line of kings had failed and their time finally came.
      So, with his genealogy, Luke places the emphasis on Jesus’s humble origins—an emphasis that certainly fits with his presentation of Jesus as a humble man, friend of the poor and lowly.

3. The Political Climate

      As we have already noted, in Matthew’s Gospel, the political shadow of Herod the Great looms large. He seems to have absolute power of life and death over all the people. In Luke’s gospel, Herod has no influence over events at all and the only power we hear of is the power of Rome.

4. Date

      There is, I suggest, a contradiction in dating. This is a very controversial point of difference and I will look more deeply into this question in a future chapter, but I will simply posit for now that a simple, straightforward reading of each gospel without reference to the other will lead to the conclusion that they are saying that Jesus was born at a different time. The difference is about a decade.

5. Socio-Economic Status

      In Luke’s narrative, Jesus is famously born into abject poverty and laid in a manger because of a lack of adequate housing. The idea seems to be that this poverty is temporary and is a result of the extraordinary travelling associated with the census. Nevertheless, the lowly social position of Jesus at his birth has important symbolic meaning to the author of this gospel and introduces a theme that will be developed through the rest of his story of Jesus’s life and ministry.
      Matthew makes no mention of such poverty. On the contrary, the family lives in a house in Bethlehem and they receive precious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh from the magi. They have sufficient wealth (perhaps because of the gifts) to make a sudden trip to Egypt and when they return from there they have enough financial independence to make their home in Nazareth, a place of their own choosing.

6. The Birth Announcement

      In Luke’s Gospel, the news of the imminent birth of the Messiah is given exclusively to Mary by an angel who appears to her while she is awake.[31] In the Gospel of Matthew it is Joseph who receives the announcement from an angel in a dream.[32] There is, in this, a minor point of agreement, the annunciation of the birth by an angel. This agreement, together with certain similarities in the angelic message between the two gospels, has led Raymond Brown to suggest that there was a “basic pre-gospel annunciation tradition that each evangelist used in his own way.”[33] Brown is saying that he thinks there was a tradition circulating in the early church that the birth of Jesus had been announced beforehand by an angel and that Luke and Matthew both heard it independently and incorporated it into their stories in different ways.
      This is a very intriguing idea. But it does not change the fact that the two annunciation stories, as we have them, are very different. Not only is the announcement made to two different people, but it is also made at two significantly different times. According to Luke, Mary receives the news before she has even conceived the child while Matthew says that Joseph receives the news much later when the pregnancy has progressed enough to cause a public scandal and yet Joseph has apparently not heard anything from Mary or her family about the announcement that, according to Luke, had been made to Mary months earlier.[34]
      This dissimilarity between the two gospels is more than just a matter of who was told what by whom and when. It marks a major difference between how these two writers are telling their story. In his account, Matthew makes Joseph his central character. Joseph is not just the one who receives the messages but also the one who takes all of the initiative. He decides to take Mary as his wife, he takes the family to Egypt and he is the one who decides that they should settle in Nazareth after the death of Herod the Great. Mary, for her part, says nothing and does nothing in Matthew’s account apart from being pregnant and bearing a child. Joseph is the one who understands what is going on and who acts accordingly.
      All of this is fairly turned around in the Gospel of Luke where the story is much more focussed on Mary, her feelings and her decisions. She is the one who chooses to submit to God’s plan for her by saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”[35] She is the one who treasures all that is said and attends to what happens and she ponders all of it in her heart.[36]
      Joseph, in the Gospel of Luke, says nothing and does nothing except go up from Nazareth to Bethlehem because he belongs to the house and lineage of David. There is no indication at all in Luke’s account that Joseph even knows what is going on. You might well expect, given the extraordinary means by which Luke says that Mary conceived her child, that Joseph should at least ask a few questions or lodge a few complaints, but, if he did, Luke certainly shows no interest in his concerns.
      And so the existence of these two very different annunciation stories underlines the very different approaches that Matthew and Luke have taken to their accounts.

7. Marital Status

      In both Gospels, Mary and Joseph are first introduced as two people who are engaged to be married. According to Matthew’s account, the engagement lasts until the point when Mary’s pregnancy begins to show which in turn creates something of a public scandal.[37] At this point, upon receiving a message from God in a dream, Joseph takes her as his wife, but has no marital relations with her until she has borne a son.[38] It would appear that Matthew is saying the couple were married at least a few months before the birth.
      Luke tells the story a little bit differently. He introduces Mary initially as “a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph.”[39] And then, approximately nine months later, just before the birth of Jesus, he again refers to the couple not as married but as still engaged to be married: “He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.”[40] Luke gives no indication at all of when Mary and Joseph might have been married, but he strongly implies that it was not until after Jesus was born.
      This does seem to be a contradiction, though, perhaps, we need not make too much of it. It seems likely that in first century Palestine the line between engagement and marriage could be somewhat blurry at times. The engagement was likely the more serious of the two as it was the moment when pledges were given and promises made. An engagement, once established, could not be broken without it being considered a divorce, as Matthew indicates in his account of Joseph’s moral dilemma.[41] The marriage itself was more of an opportunity to celebrate the fact of the wife taking up residence in her husband’s home and the physical consummation of the union as is evidenced in a number of Jesus’s parables and sayings.[42] It is why both evangelists put the emphasis on the couple’s engagement rather than on the marriage.
      It would seem that neither evangelist is overly concerned with the date of the wedding. They are far more concerned with making it quite clear that there were no sexual relations between Mary and Joseph prior to the birth of Jesus because this is, for them, the essential theological point in the account. In fact, they both agree that the couple is betrothed and yet has not consummated its relationship. Luke works under the straightforward assumption that a betrothal that is not yet consummated is not yet a marriage, while Matthew finds it possible for the couple to be married and yet to have no marital relations. So, in effect, they are both saying the same thing but using different words because each has a different understanding of what marriage means and where the line between betrothal and marriage is drawn.
One of these things does not belong here.
      Therefore the differing descriptions of Mary and Joseph’s marital status do not necessarily constitute a contradiction between the two gospel accounts. This is a case where they could both be correct according to their own definitions. The confusion does seem to indicate, nevertheless, that there was no established tradition about the marital status of this couple when these evangelists came to write their accounts.

8. Angels, Dreams and Stars

      In both gospels the birth of Jesus is accompanied by heavenly messages. But the mode of communication differs sharply. Luke tells of angels who deliver their messages directly to Mary and, later, to a group of shepherds. Communication from God always comes directly by means of these heavenly messengers.
      In Matthew’s Gospel, however, God communicates only through dreams. Twice an angel appears to Joseph in a dream, and once the Magi receive a message in a dream.[43] This difference in modes of communication is surely not insignificant. There is a very big difference between a message received while you are awake and fully aware and a message received in your sleep. For one thing, dreams always require interpretation in the Biblical tradition which would seem to make them a less certain way of communicating.[44] That Matthew only speaks of one type of communication while Luke only speaks of the other indicates that they are approaching the event of the birth from quite different angles.
      In Matthew’s Gospel, God also communicates, though even more indirectly, through the appearance of a star. This heavenly sign, however, must also be interpreted much like a dream and apparently only the Magi are able to discern the meaning in its appearance (though, of course, the magi inadvertently pass the information on to King Herod with tragic results). The star, despite our continued insistence on placing it above the manger, does not appear and is not mentioned in Luke’s Gospel.

9. Status of the Visitors

      We certainly have two very different groups of people visiting the child Jesus in the two gospels. On the one hand, in Luke’s Gospel, we have poor shepherds. Shepherds were considered to be on the very lowest rung of society. They were dirty, unkempt and generally shunned by the rest of society. Their attendance at the manger soon after the birth certainly adds to the humbleness of the family’s circumstances and helps Luke to make clear the lowliness of the birth of the messiah.
      In the Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, the only visitors to the child who are mentioned are wise and learned Magi from a distant country. They must also be extremely wealthy men to be able to make such a long journey in response to a sign they have seen in the sky. Whatever point Matthew is trying to make by mentioning these visitors, it is certainly a very different one than Luke is making by talking about the shepherds.

10. Old Testament Images

      Both Matthew and Luke make a large number of both direct and indirect Biblical references in their accounts of Jesus’s birth. Matthew tends to make the references quite overtly while Luke can be much more subtle.
      This is only to be expected because we know that the early church had a strong tendency to turn to Old Testament prophecies and narratives to understand and interpret the things that Jesus said and did. What we call the Old Testament today was the only Bible that they had. It was the place to which they naturally turned to find answers to anything that puzzled them in the traditions that came down to them. Interpretations of Old Testament passages that illustrated the life of Jesus must have been widely shared and discussed in the early church. They were used at the basis of teaching, instruction and preaching. This means that it is significant that these two gospel writers turn to quite different parts of their Bible to understand Jesus’s birth and they never turn to the same passages. This would seem to indicate that, when they came to write, there were no fixed traditions regarding which Old Testament passages applied to the birth of the Messiah.
      I won’t give an exhaustive list of all the Biblical images that are used in the two gospels, but here are a few key examples:
Old Testament Imagery in Matthew:
·        Herod’s slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem has many parallels to the story of the birth of Moses and Pharaoh’s attempts to kill him. (Exodus 2:1-10)
·        The Magi and the gifts that they bring are connected to the prophecies of Isaiah 60:1-6: “A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”
·       The appearance of the guiding star is likely connected to the “star prophecy” in Numbers 24:17: “A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.”
·       The virgin birth is explained by and connected to the promise of the coming of Emmanuel by a reference to Isaiah 7:14.
·       Joseph’s dreams and his interpretations of them are very reminiscent of the story of another Joseph, the son of Jacob, and his dreams in the Old Testament. (Genesis 37 ff.) The parallels between the two Josephs even extend to them both having the same father, Jacob.[45]
Old Testament Imagery in Luke:
·       Joseph’s return to his ancestral home is connected, I will argue, to the command to celebrate the jubilee in Leviticus 25.
·       The key role for the shepherds puts us in mind of prophecies such as the one found in Jeremiah 23:1-8
·       The virgin birth (and the birth of John the Baptist) is related to the stories of a number of women in the Old Testament who had difficulty having children—especially Sarah and Hannah. Mary’s song of praise in Luke is remarkably close to Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.
·       The story of the visit of the Angel Gabriel to Mary and his announcement that she will have a son contains many parallels to the account of the visit of three angels to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18.
     

Dealing with the Differences

      When you look at the nativity stories in this way, you begin to realize that they disagree with one another far more frequently than they agree, although, it must be acknowledged that many of these differences are not direct contradictions. Saying that the announcement of the birth of Jesus was made to Mary, for example, does not mean that an announcement could not have also been made to Joseph. Whether they are contradictions or not, there is no denying that the two evangelists tell quite different stories—different in tone, in emphasis and in content.
      What we have tended to do throughout Christian history is to try to paper over these differences. It is possible, if you really push, to overcome some of these differences and force the birth stories to harmonize with each other. For example, some will argue that you can account for the couple living in a house when the magi arrive in Matthew’s gospel by saying that a lot of time has passed (perhaps up to two years) since the birth in the manger that Luke’s gospel speaks of, and that the couple has managed to arrange for some permanent housing in the interim. Of course, such a harmonization fails to explain why the couple remained in Bethlehem after the child was born if they only went there briefly to be registered during the census.
      Nevertheless, it would seem that, if you push and twist the accounts in certain ways, you can make them harmonize to a certain extent. Perhaps that is fine for some. My problem with such harmonization attempts is this: even if you could make all of these differences go away by pushing and twisting what the individual gospel writers say, you would definitely lose something in the process. You would have distorted your original texts and made them say things that the writers never intended. To accomplish such a feat, you would need to decide that the harmonized account you are aiming for is more important than what each individual evangelist is trying to say. You would lose their distinctive voices.
      We are incredibly blessed to have these two nativity stories. They have been left for us by the early church as resources for us to use to learn what it means that Jesus of Nazareth came to live among us and to show us the true nature of the love of God. For that reason we cannot afford to diminish their power. We must be willing to read these texts just as they are and not impose some artificial harmony on them.
      For this reason, in order to truly appreciate what Luke is trying to teach us, I choose to read his text as if it were the only account. For the rest of this exploration, while reading what Luke wrote, I will do my best to forget that I ever heard of the visiting magi, the star or King Herod’s evil ways. Let’s let Luke speak for himself and tell the story on his own terms.
     

Note: The above article is taken from the book Caesar's Census, God's Jubilee, by W. Scott McAndless. The book is available from Amazon in paperback and in ebook format from many ebook sellers.

Rev. McAndless is also presently retelling the Christmas story by looking exclusively at the story as told in the Gospel of Luke in a podcast called "Retelling the Bible." You can find the podcast at the following links:


     



[1] Many books have been written on the “Two source hypothesis.” There is an excellent summary of the theory in Christopher Tuckett, Methods of Interpretation, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1987. pp.78-94.
[2] R. J. Miller, Ed. The Complete Gospels, Annotated Scholars Version, HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. pp. 380-382
[3] John 1:45-46
[4] John 7:40-44. See also John 7:52.
[5] John 19:35
[6] Micah 5:2
[7] Mark 6:2-3
[8] John 1:45
[9] Fitzmyer, J.A., “The Virginal Conception of Jesus in the New Testament,” Theological Studies, 34 (1973) pp. 566-67.
[10] Raymond Brown devotes a great deal of time examining this argument and comes to the conclusion that Luke is in fact clearly saying that Mary remained a virgin until Jesus was born. Brown, pp. 298-309.
[11] Matthew 2:22,23; quoting the Greek Septuagint of Isaiah 7:14
[12] Luke 1:34
[13] e.g. Genesis 15:1-6, 18:9-15
[14] 1 Samuel 2:1, 4-8
[15] Luke 1:46-53
[16] Luke 2:39
[17] Matthew 2:11. Emphasis added.
[18] Matthew 2:19-23
[19] Mark 10:37 and 12:45, although the latter is somewhat ambiguous.
[20] Jeremiah 23:5-6
[21] A solution first proposed by Annius of Viterbo in 1490 ce. See I. Howard Marshall, p.158.
[22] Luke 3:23
[23] I. Howard Marshall, p. 158. Raymond E. Brown, p. 89.
[24] Luke 2:3
[25] Luke 1:8, 1:36.
[26] See Deuteronomy 25:5-10, Luke 20:28.
[27] I. Howard Marshall, p. 158.
[28] Ibid.
[29] See 1 Chronicles 3:10-16. All of the names between David and Jechoniah are no doubt intended to be the names of kings who ruled in Jerusalem. Spelling variations between the Old Testament names and the names that appear in Matthew are there because Matthew is writing in Greek, not Hebrew.
[30] Ruth 2,3,4; Luke 3:31,32
[31] Luke 1:26ff
[32] Matthew 1:20
[33] Brown, p. 159 
[34] Matthew 1:18,19
[35] Luke 1:38
[36] Luke 2:19
[37] Matthew 1:18
[38] Matthew 1:24-25
[39] Luke 1:27
[40] Luke 2:5, emphasis added.
[41] Matthew 1:19
[42] E.g. Matthew 25:1-13
[43] Matthew 1:20; 2:13; 2:12.
[44] Genesis 40:1-41:36; Daniel 2:1-45. 
[45] Matthew 1:16
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Rock-a-bye Norah and I am just a Little Lamb

Posted by on Sunday, December 10th, 2017 in Minister

December 10 was a very special service at St. Andrew's Hespeler. It was Family Sunday, a service designed for kids of all ages, and we celebrated the baptism of a beautiful baby girl. There was no sermon per se, but the kids did present the following two poems.

Hespeler, 10 December, 2017 © Scott McAndless – Baptism, Family Sunday

Rock-a-bye Norah

Rock-a-bye Baby,
laid in a trough.
You are God’s chosen,
a gift from aloft.
Because of your coming,
the mighty shall fall,
The lowly be lifted
and rule over all.
Some wise men are traveling,
foll’wing a star
They’re coming to worship you
for who you are.
They’re bringing you frankincense,
gold and some Myrrh,
For you are the sort of
a king they prefer.

When you first arrived,
King Herod was mad.
He thought you would threaten
the kingdom he had.
The kingdom that you’ll preach
is better by far,
But people in this world
think it’s bizarre.

Rock-a-bye baby,
you’ll grow to be friend
To outcasts and sinners.
And the sick you will mend.
You’ll tell people good news
and show them the way
To be right with their Maker
and never to stray.

And when someone asks you
what he should do
To gain life eternal,
you’ll tell him he’s too
Attached to possessions
and must give them away.
Then he’ll be free and can
walk in your way.

Your words and your actions
all will defy
The way that the world works
and that is why
They’ll see you as only
a problem to solve.
Yes, they will eliminate
you with resolve!

Rock-a-bye Baby
up on a cross
That’s where they’ll end it
to their own loss
For when they defeat you,
it’s you who will win
Out over the power
of death and of sin.

Rock-a-bye baby,
please now don’t cry
That’s all ahead,
for now you must try
To sleep and find hope
in your Father above
Who through you pours out on
the world all his love.

Rock-a-by Norah,
we’re thankful to you
For showing us God’s love
is ever made new.
You remind us of Jesus
and how when he came
He promised us new life
and freedom from shame.

Rock-a-bye Norah,
we wish you God’s peace
And remember the one who
brought captives release.
Sleep and remember:
your Saviour loves you
And will never fail you.
He’ll always be true.

 I am just a little lamb

I am just a little lamb,
Little lamb, little lamb,
I am just a little lamb who lives near Bethlehem,

The shepherds take good care of me,
Care of me, care of me,
The shepherds take good care of me out in the fields at night.

The shepherds try to count us all
Count us all, count us all,
The shepherds try to count us and then they fall asleep.
 we know, yes we know,
t we know,
 out in the fields at night.

I saw it all that fateful night
Fateful night, fateful night.
I saw it all that fateful night there was a shining light

The heavenly angels all did sing
All did sing, all did sing,
The heavenly angels all did sing of joy and peace on earth.

They said they’d come to bring good news
Bring good news, bring good news,
They said they’d come to bring good news about a happy birth.

Mary had a child, they said,
Child, they said, child they said,
Mary had a child they said who had been born for all.ght
cence, gold
izing long passages.
ular education, in the time of the Reformations. Catechisms wer

Go and see him. You will know
You will know, you will know
Go and see him. You will know. You’ll find him in a manger.

The shepherds went and I did too,
I did too, I did too.
The shepherds went and I did too to see the baby Jesus.

But if Jesus came for me
Little me, little me
But if Jesus came for me, he came for everybody.

I am just a little lamb,
Little lamb, little lamb
I am just a little lamb but Jesus is my saviour.

Jesus came to save you too
Save you too, save you too
Jesus came to save you too. To God be all the glory!

Hallelujah, baa, baa, baa,
Baa, baa, baa, baa, baa baa,
Hallelujah, baa, baa, baa, we praise God with all creatures!
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Episode 9: The Ram’s Horn

Posted by on Wednesday, December 6th, 2017 in Minister

The 9th Episode of the Podcast "Retelling the Bible" came out earlier today

During the first season of his podcast, storyteller, W. Scott McAndless is retelling the story of the nativity of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, trying to help us to see some of the historical and biblical references the author is making - helping us to hear the story more as the author may have intended.

In today's episode, the announcement of a Year of Jubilee comes to the small village of Nazareth. All males are called to return to their ancestral homes. Many of the villagers seem doubtful when they hear where this proclamation is coming from, but one young carpenter and his intended wife feel a stirring in their hearts.

Gabrielle M. guest stars in the role of Mary.

I encourage you to subscribe and to listen via one of these popular Podcasting apps. Each of the links below will take you to a page where you can subscribe:

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If you use a different podcasting app, try searching for "Retelling the Bible" in the app. Please tell me if you don't find it!

Please share this page with anyone you think would like to listen!

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Here is a special gift to my listeners (which you will understand after hearing today's podcast) a cutout of Judas the Galilean to add to your Nativity Scene this year.


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Christmas through many voices: Elizabeth

Posted by on Monday, December 4th, 2017 in Minister

Hespeler, 3 December, 2017 © Scott McAndless – Communion
Luke 1:13-27, 1 Samuel 1:9-18, Luke 1:41-55
T
his Christmas and Advent season, I wanted to help us get a new perspective on the same old Christmas story. And I figured that the best way to do that was by listening to the story through the voices of characters that we don’t usually get to hear and to see it through their eyes. So this morning, I want to tell the story of Christmas through Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.
      I realize, of course, that I am not necessarily the ideal person to tell her story. It might take a bit of suspension of disbelief, but I hope you just go with it. At least I am kind of dressed for the part this morning.
      So here we are, in Elizabeth’s voice:
      I used to dread it when my husband, Zechariah, went off to do his priestly duties, to serve in the great temple with the Levitical priests of his section. It wasn’t just that I missed him while he was gone, though I certainly did. I felt so alone when he wasn’t there. There were just the two of us. My only other living relative was my niece, my sister’s daughter, Mary, who lived far off in Galilee.
      Zechariah and I had had no children. It had been ten years and, for all our trying, I had just not been able to conceive. And I knew that Zechariah’s heart was broken because of this – that he longed with all his heart to have a son to teach the prayers to and who could someday take his place in the brotherhood of the priests. That was hard for him but he had no way of knowing my pain.
      For me, my failure to produce a son wasn’t just my disappointment. It was my death. It made me a nobody. No one would see me, speak to me or even acknowledge my existence. They would when Zechariah was around, of course, they had to respect him as a priest. But while he was gone, it was as if I had disappeared too. It is just the way that things are. A woman needs a man – whether it be a father, a husband or a son – to give her a place to stand in the community. I didn’t blame the others for their failure to see me. They just didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t fit into their understanding of the world. I didn’t hate them, but over the years, I convinced myself that I didn’t care what they thought and I set about doing what I could to survive until my husband returned.
      Just to make it through, sometimes, I would go and meet with others like me – the women in the area who had never carried a child. Every one of us had her own story. There were some, like me, who had just never managed to conceive, but there were others whose stories were even sadder, if that is possible.
      There was one woman, for example, who first knew a man (much older than her) when she was very young. He promised her so much – that he would love her, that he would take her away from her father who, she tells us, would beat her often. She was so young, so naïve that she didn’t know that this man was just using her for his pleasure and had no intention of keeping any of his grandiose promises. Well, of course, they were eventually caught doing something that, well, they shouldn’t have been doing. He just accused her of seducing him. She was the foul temptress, the Delilah that had defeated another Samson,  and so everyone agreed that he was not to blame. He walked away with no dishonour while she – she would carry the dishonour for the rest of her life. No one would ever marry her. Any child she might have in any sort of relationship would never be acceptable. So she was as barren as the rest of us, only for different reasons.
      There was another sister who was raped by a man in her community. It was his crime and everyone knew it, but the way it was dealt with was according to the ancient law – the man could be stoned to death, or he could pay the penalty in silver… and marry her. It wasn’t much of a choice for him, of course he married her, his third wife. She was given no choice at all! And then he resented her for it after the marriage and decided to never touch her again, so of course she had so no chance of having children either.
      They all had stories like that – so much sadness, so many tragedies. Our stories were all different but we had in common that we didn’t really belong anywhere. When my husband was away, the only time that I didn’t feel completely alone was when I was with them.
      We would encourage each other with stories – our stories, the stories that had belonged to us long before they had come into the hands of men who wrote them in their scrolls, claiming them for themselves. They were stories that mother had passed down to daughter since before anything could be written down. And, though we all knew them, it brought us great comfort to share them with each other in this way.
      There were stories about Sarah and how, even in her old age – when it was far too late for her to even dream about it – God had visited her that she might have a son. There were stories of Rebekah and how she strove mightily that she might bring her twin sons, Esau and Jacob, into the world. And, of course, there were Rachel and Leah, whose fierce competition with each other to bring children for their husband Jacob into the world created the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. And there were some who loved the story of Tamar and how she tricked Judah (who had dishonoured her) into giving her children. All of our stories were stories of women who struggled to bear and then saved the life of the nation by doing so.
      But, for me, the greatest heroine of all was Hannah. I saw myself so much in her story. She, too, suffered for so long without a child. She, like me, had a husband who loved her – who knew the scorn and the rejection that she faced but who also felt powerless to help her. But most of all, I loved her because she seemed able to find a way to express her hopes and fears and frustrations to God – did it without even speaking aloud – and she found a way to be heard by God in the anguish of her unspoken words.
      Hannah gave me hope that things could be different – oh, not for me. It seemed far too late for that and I dared not hope for it. But her story made me hope that maybe something could change for others someday.
      The thing that made me believe that was the song of praise that she sang when God finally gave her the answer to the prayer of her heart – when her son the Prophet Samuel was born. She prayed and gave thanks to God, but not like some might. She didn’t just thank God for giving her what she wanted. She knew that God had done so much more – had overturned the very order of the world. The Lord kills and brings to life;” she proclaimed, “he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour.” That was the hope that I held onto in my hours of greatest despair.
      One of the few bright spots in my life all of those years when I longed for a child was my niece, Mary. I would take care of her for weeks at a time because my sister was often sickly and later died. My favorite story – the story of Hannah – quickly became hers as well. And we would sing Hannah’s song together – our little secret and our shared hope for a different kind of world.
      I don’t think I ever really understood Hannah’s story or her song until that time when Zechariah came home from his time of service in the temple. Something was so different about him. But he would explain nothing to me – in fact he couldn’t speak at all! It didn’t really matter though because I could read so much just in the look on his face. He was so excited and he took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom and, well, there are some parts of the story that you don’t really have to hear in detail, do you? Let me just say that something went right that night that hadn’t gone right before.
      Before long I could finally believe it when I felt the flutter of new life growing strong within me. I knew my child would be no ordinary child – that he would be like Hannah’s child, Samuel, and would change the course of the history of my people. That was when I decided that I would make the same vow that Hannah did and that my son would drink no wine or strong drink his whole life long. He, like Samuel, would be devoted to God his whole life long. Later, to my wonder, when Zechariah could speak, it turned out that he had made the same vow as well, but for his own strange reasons.
      But the best part of all came when my beloved niece, Mary, came to visit. She was still so young – still only a girl in my eyes – but she brought her own story of an impossible pregnancy that amazed and frightened me at the same time. It frightened me for her, most of all, because it was so hard to believe and I knew that people have a hard time believing girls to begin with – especially when it comes to any story at all related to sex and childbearing. Somehow people are always only interested in what a man has to say on the subject.
      But I knew that my job was merely to believe her – to take her and her word as it was. Sometimes that is the most important thing that God asks us to do for anyone. And when I did believe her (which I did with my whole heart) I felt my child jump inside me – the biggest movement that had yet come from him – and I knew that he believed her too.
      It was only natural for us to fall back on the story that had always been that shared secret between us. We talked into the night of mother Hannah and how she alone could understand what we had both gone through – the scorn and rejection, the disappointment and frustration. And, because of that, she was also the only one who could feel our relief, hope and new joy. It was like she had stepped out of the history of our people and joined directly in our circle and we could not have been more happy to welcome her.
      It was then that Mary opened her mouth to sing the song that was on both of our minds. And it was Hannah’s song that she sang, but it was more truly hers now, and mine too. The words had changed somewhat but I could still hear Hannah’s voice in all she sang; "He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

      And we knew that the hope of Hannah and the hope of all forgotten women down through the history of our people was finally going to be fulfilled and that God’s messiah would indeed draw near. He would be present when vulnerable girls with troubling stories were believed. He would be present when abused and rejected survivors were given a place and a voice. He would be present when the despised like me were beloved again. And then God’s kingdom would be at hand.

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