Author: Scott McAndless

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hen we pray to God and call God, “Our Father,” you all get that that is a metaphor, right? I mean, we all understand that we don’t mean that literally. We’re not saying that God is our literal or biological or even foster father, but that, in some meaningful ways, God is like a good human father. It’s a metaphor. And it is, in many ways, a good metaphor – a metaphor that genuinely helps lots of people to see God in a helpful way. But we also understand that, like most metaphors, you cannot push it too far. You should not take that metaphor as an indication that God is human or male or likes to smoke a pipe and read the Sport’s Section even if every father you have ever known has been human, male, a pipe-smoker and a sports fan.

      What’s more, I think we can all recognize that it is a metaphor that doesn’t work as well for some people as it does for others. Some people, frankly, don’t really have the best experience with human fathers. Some children don’t grow up even knowing a father or have been abandoned by him at a very early age. You can well imagine that, for such a person, calling God Father doesn’t necessarily help them to engender the warmest feelings for God. You could hardly blame such a person if their image of a Father God is someone distant or absent. And, of course, I hardly need to say that if someone had an abuser, an addict or a criminal as a father they would naturally have a very warped view of any God they called Father. That is the thing with metaphors. They are very powerful, but they are sometimes too powerful – so powerful that that they lead people down false paths instead of towards the truth.

      But here is something that you may not have thought of before: when we call God Father, we have all kinds of ideas and images that we associate with that metaphor, some of them helpful and some of them not so helpful. But what if I were to tell you that the ideas that we associate with that metaphor are not exactly the same ones that Jesus, his disciples and the people who wrote the Bible had? I mean, we all realize that on some level that the Bible was written in a very different world from the one where we find ourselves. But one thing that means is that words didn’t mean exactly the same thing back then as they do now.

      The Bible was written in a patriarchal society. And I know that we often use that word “patriarchy” today to refer to the power that men hold in society in general. But the word actually means something much more specific than that. The word literally means “father-rule” and it means that the most basic and fundamental organising principle of that kind of society is the father. It means that everyone in the entire society belongs, in some sense, to a family and that each family is under the control of one powerful male individual. Fathers rule in the sense that absolutely everyone in society must answer to a father somewhere.

      And, as you have probably already imagined, there can be a downside to that sort of a structure in society, at least for those who don’t get to be the fathers. Fathers are given near absolute power. They can tell any member of their family what to do, who to marry, control most every aspect of their lives and even have the power of life or death with few limitations. The father, in such a society is an absolute dictator and you can easily imagine that many fathers could and did abuse that kind of power.

      But there was also a bright side to this structure – after all, how could it endure so long if people didn’t see some benefits. There was also a clear understanding that this amazing amount of power and authority given to a father could only be used to one purpose: to ensure that every member of the household had what they needed to survive and to thrive. The system wasn’t there in order to serve the fathers, at least not in theory. It was there to protect, support and bless the entire family.

      And that family could include an awful lot of people. It wasn’t just what we call a family today – the basic family unit of parents and offspring living together under one roof. It was an extended family that might include multiple generations and various degrees of relation. A family also included slaves, servants and hired workers on the farm and it even included livestock and working animals. The father was responsible for all of those people and not merely responsible to keep them alive and fed, but responsible to see that each and every one of them had what they needed to meet their highest potential.

      Now, if that sounds like way too heavy a burden for any individual to bear, it absolutely is. How could one person know enough about every individual in his household to know exactly what each one needs to thrive? And how could he find the means and resources to make that happen?

      The evidence seems to indicate that fathers suffered a great deal in order to meet such impossible expectations. They had a terrible life expectancy; they worked themselves to death. And the stress of the job manifested in many other ways. I am sure that many of the men that Jesus healed in his ministry – the so-called demon possessed, the paralytics, the hysterically blind – were men who had been overwhelmed by all the expectations that were put upon them and upset at their failure to meet those expectations in the midst of an economic crises that had been caused by Roman greed. The stresses on them were so extreme that they had started to manifest in physical ailments; their bodies literally began to shut down.

      But there didn’t seem to be any escaping it; it was just the way that the world worked. Fathers were given an extraordinary amount of power, but not really enough power if they were going to live up to everything that was expected of them.

      But then, we’re told, Jesus came along. And Jesus spoke about a different way of doing things – of a kingdom that belonged to God rather than to any human power or authority – including fathers. (Jesus even once explicitly said that there should be no “fathers” in his entire movement.) And perhaps the greatest indication of the radical newness of this kingdom that Jesus spoke of was the way that he talked about God. Jesus, you see, called God his father and he taught his disciples to pray and do likewise.

      Now, Jesus wasn’t the first person to ever think of calling God a father. That is indeed a very ancient idea – that, just like a father ruled over a family, maybe God ruled over the whole world. In other words, they took their understanding of how the world worked below (where fathers ruled with iron hands) and mapped that onto heaven.

      What is unique about Jesus isn’t just the fact that he called God father, it is the way that he did it and what he meant when he said it. The passage we read from the Sermon on the Mount this morning is perfect example of how he used the word. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

      But you can tell from the way that Jesus uses that image, that that is not what he has in mind. Instead of authority, Jesus puts his emphasis on that huge burden of care that a father bore for every person in his household. Jesus says that God, as father, takes very seriously that need to make sure that every member of his household, which encompasses the whole world, has what they need not merely to survive but to thrive. And, as father, God does not have the luxury of playing favourites. He must pour out his blessing – his rain and his sunshine – on those that the world sees as good, and those who the world sees as evil. These gifts must be for the righteous and the unrighteous alike. He must take all of them as they are and do what is best for each person to meet his or her potential.

      And that was indeed a revolutionary idea. It opened the door to so much of where the Christian faith went from there. If God was that kind of father and if the household that he was looking after was as wide as the whole world, then many of the old notions that people had about how God related to the people he had created had to be broken down. No more could hope and salvation just be restricted to one ethnic group, the Jews. Surely a loving father would not want to exclude any member of his family from salvation; and so the barrier between Jew and Gentile was broken down.

      In the same way, if God, like that ideal ancient father, was really committed to giving the best opportunities for all his children no matter who they were, then surely God’s concern for them wouldn’t be limited by social status. Rich or poor, slave or free, noble or peasant, God would seek the best for all and so the barriers between slave and free would be demolished. Nor would God care all that much about things like gender, so the barrier between male and female would fall. These were all radical ideas for the times, and yet they were reached for in the early Christian church, as we see in the writings of the New Testament. These radical ideas had their origins in the unique way in which Jesus spoke of God. The metaphor is that powerful.

      I hope that many of you were blessed, as I have been, with a good father who was involved in your life, who tried to give his very best for his family. When you have someone like that in your life, it helps you to grow up with a strong sense of who you are and of security – that everything is going to be alright. If you got that from someone who is or was a father in your life, then, when you imagine God and speak to God as a Heavenly Father, you will automatically make all of those associations with God in your own mind. It will help you to approach all of life with a strong sense of yourself and of security – a great foundation for a good life.

      Of course, if you didn’t have that kind of presence in your life, you may not get very much from the imagery of a Father God – you may even get very negative associations. That is alright. There isn’t anything wrong with you because the metaphor doesn’t help you to better know God. And if meditating on the image of a Heavenly Father doesn’t help you to grow closer to God, it is okay to find other imagery that does that for you. There is nothing wrong with speaking to God as mother, as caregiver, as friend if those images do help you towards a deeper and more positive understanding of the God who cares about you.

      So don’t underestimate the power of a metaphor. The way that Jesus could talk about God as his father actually changed the world. It offered peace and hope to people who were struggling to find their way in a very difficult time. We don’t necessarily need to be wedded to particular metaphors, but I would hope that we, like Jesus and the early church, could find the courage to speak about the God that we have come to know through Jesus and say what that God is like. Such talk still has the power to change the world.

      

Hespeler, 28 January, 2018 © Scott McAndless

Luke 17:5-6, James 2:14-26, Psalm 26:1-12

      The catechism defines the true nature of faith as it is understood in the New Testament quite well: “Belief or faith is a wholehearted trust in God.” It is about trust, not just about believing a bunch of things about God or being certain about those things. It is the same kind of trust that you might put in another person – someone that you felt that you could have confidence in because you knew that they would never let you down.

      Because it is defined as trust, we realize that the object of faith matters a great deal more than the quantity of faith. You have to put your trust in someone or something that is reliable. Say, for example, you need to take a flight to go somewhere. When you get on the plane you are placing your trust in the airplane, in the mechanics who maintain it and the pilot who flies it. If that trust is well placed – if the plane is well-built, well-maintained and well flown – how much faith do you need to have for it to get you to your destination? Not much. All you need is enough faith to get yourself on the plane because, if you have zero trust, I tell you that nothing is going to get you on that plane. But if you have enough to get on the plane (you know, small like a grain of mustard) and even if you are trembling with fear and full of doubts, your fear and your doubts won’t affect the flight of that plane, will they? That’s all up to the plane, the mechanics and the pilot. Your part in flying someplace (apart from paying for your ticket) is to chose wisely in which airline you are going to put however much or however little faith you have.

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      So this is the title that Andy gave me for today’s sermon: “School of Hard Knox; They never taught me this!” Now, when I heard that title, I knew exactly what Andy was asking for, but it might not be quite so obvious to some of you so I’ll explain. The Presbyterian Church in Canada has three colleges in which they prepare people for the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. There is one in Vancouver called the Vancouver School of Theology, one in Montreal called Presbyterian College and one in Toronto called Knox College. But Knox College in Toronto is the largest and the best known of the three so by asking about the school of “Hard Knox,” Andy was asking me to comment on how well or how poorly I feel the education I received prepared me for the reality of working as a minister that I have faced.

      It is a very good question, one that many people have been asking in recent years as we have seen the problems being faced by our clergy – problems that make people wonder if they have been adequately prepared. We are in a situation today, for example, where we are seeing high proportions of those who enter into the ministry drop out of it within a few years. Those who stay, often suffer from burnout, depression and other problems. It is well worth asking whether the preparation that they were given has let those clergy down.

      Also we have the issue of the pressure that the church in general is under – especially when we see a general decline in church attendance and membership across the board – even if there are some notable exceptions in particular churches. We surely cannot blame all of that exclusively on the clergy, but it doesn’t seem out of line to ask how the failures in educating clergy might have contributed to that.

      So I do welcome the opportunity to reflect on the education that I received, how it helps me and how it may have failed me. I will raise just one quibble with Andy’s title however. I didn’t go to Knox College. I studied at Presbyterian College in Montreal. But I get that “School of Hard Presbyterian College” really wouldn’t have worked, so we will just go with Andy’s title.

      I did learn many things in my studies that I valued and continue to value. I appreciate the fact that I wasn’t just trained to be a minister; I was educated. I wasn’t just told what to do or say in various situations or how to carry out ministerial tasks. I was given the tools I needed to think for myself. Rather than being told what a certain Bible passage meant, for example, I was challenged to discover the meaning for myself. I believe that this was the only way to do it.

      People often suggest today that our ministers should be trained for particular tasks – how to plant a church, how to run a project, fund raise for particular goals or whatever it might be. But I really feel that such training would have been almost useless to me in the long run. After all, the methods I would have been taught back then, 28 years ago, would not have included using the internet, social media, PowerPoint projection and all kinds of other technologies that didn’t exist or were priced out of reach for churches back then. The world in which we live has changed at a breakneck pace over the last quarter century that I have been a minister and the role of a minister has changed along with it far more than we realize. I have gone from using the mail and telephone to initiate most contacts to email and am now in a post-email social-media contact mode for most of the time. That is but one key way in which things have changed.

      So, it was much better to give me the ability to think out how I would make use of any tools that became available and any changes in culture that arose than it was to simply tell me what to think, say and do. I hope that we never forget that the task in preparing a minister is to educate her or him, not merely to train.

      So I do feel that I left school with a good basis that would help me to learn how to approach the Bible, think through various theological questions, preach and teach. But Andy’s question is about what I didn’t learn so let me turn to that question.

      When the Apostle Paul speaks to the church in Galatia – a church that he founded and to which he gave extraordinary leadership – he says a few words that always convict me when I think about my ministry over the last quarter century? “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

      Seeking human approval – trying to please people – is natural. It is something that we all do. And you know why we all do it: because we all want people to like us. We always feel better and safer when we are part of the group and so when we get the sense that people don’t like us we often feel that inner compulsion to do whatever we possibly can to regain that sense of being liked.

      And I, like most people, grew up with that desire to have people like me. And when I began my studies at Presbyterian College and began to work as a student minister (I had, for most of the time that I was studying, a student placement as the effective minister for a small United Church in Laval, Quebec) I would say that I set out with the expectation that all of the people in all of the churches that I served would always like me. How would I accomplish that? Well, I certainly wouldn’t preach things that people might disagree with. That was almost guaranteed to get someone mad at me. I would only choose music that everyone always loved (good luck with that by the way), I wouldn’t mess with any longstanding traditions and wouldn’t rock the boat by suggesting things that someone (even just one person) might have a problem with. Oh, I had all kinds of subconscious strategies that I thought would guarantee that everyone would like me.

      But the Apostle Paul seems to make it very clear that pleasing people is not the goal of Christian ministry and that seeking human approval often comes at the expense of seeking God’s approval. This natural tendency that I had to want to please people looked likely to be a problem.

      Now what is Paul really trying to say here? Is he saying that a good minister should intentionally set out to antagonize the people in her or his congregation? Is he saying that I should make the church a place where people are never happy and nothing ever happens that they like? Clearly not!

      But anyone who has put some time into ministry knows exactly what Paul is trying to get at here. You can preach things that people like to hear, of course, but if you are never dare to say anything that someone might disagree with, there will definitely be times when you are not preaching the word of God and that is your job as a minister.

      But it’s not just about preaching; it is even more about leadership. If you try anything new in a church the simple reality is that somebody (at least one) won’t like it because change makes people uncomfortable. So, if you are people pleasing, you will always pull back from doing that new thing even if it is the right thing to do, even if it is what God is calling you to do and even if, ultimately it will prove to be something so good that everyone feels a deep sense of satisfaction that they are doing a worthwhile thing. That’s right, you can be so focussed on pleasing people that you pull back from doing the very thing that would make them feel the most pleased. That is messed up! But I know that ministers do exactly that all the time.

      So I think that Paul has a point here. Leaders in the church who are primarily motived to please people and draw their sense of worth from doing so, will not be the kinds of leaders that they need to be. And I must confess that many of us church leaders are still stuck in the people-pleasing zone and our education did not necessarily help us to break out of it. That is one good reason why burnout, dropout and things like depression hits the clergy so hard. It is simply impossible to please all of the people all of the time in ministry – perhaps more impossible than in many other professions because we are dealing with things that people take very seriously – and if you base your self-image and worth on how people see you, your self-image will take a hit.

      Even more important, we need to remember that the church itself doesn’t exist in order to please people. Yes, we certainly hope that people will enjoy much of what they experience in the church and, even more important, that they find a deep sense of satisfaction as they fulfill what they were called to be by knowing, serving and loving God and others. But that happiness is not the purpose of the church, it is a secondary effect of the church’s fulfilment of its mission. We are not here to please, we are here to serve, to love and to live out the word of God. If we spend all of our energy on pleasing people and keeping them happy, we will never get around to our true mission.

      But the problem is that it is so hard to let go of that people-pleasing impulse. It is part of one of our deepest drives – that desire to be loved and accepted. The antidote, I feel sure that Paul would say, is to find our sense of self-worth in God rather than in people. “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” But how do you do that? The approval of people seems so real and tangible (even though it is, in fact, quite fickle and changeable) while the approval of God seems less real.

      What you need to do, of course, is to cultivate a correct view of God and particularly a correct understanding of God’s opinion of you. Meditate on passages like the one we read from the Psalms this morning: “You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’” When you let go of the notion that God is just out to get you – dead set on punishing you for all your wrongs – and accept that God really is on your side and delights in all that you are, you can begin to be less reliant on the approval and the pleasing of other people to tell you who you are.

      But it is a long journey. I would say that, in many ways I have spent the last 25 years since I was ordained, learning how to please God before I please people and I am hardly done. If I had learned more in my Presbyterian College days about all the ways in which I seek to please people and how I deal with it (wrongly) when I fail to please others, maybe I could have accelerated my advancement; I don’t know.

      Ironically, I suppose, I would have to say in response to Andy’s question, the things that I failed to learn at school that matter most are not the external things – theologies, scriptural interpretation, philosophy and so on. The things that I failed to learn that matter most were the things about myself – how I am motivated, what are my triggers and fears. To know yourself and what drives you is the beginning of true leadership because it is only then that you can understand what drives others.

      I’m not saying that the college could have laid all of that out for me. But just as they gave me the tools to understand the Bible, theology and preaching that I have been able to build on in years since, maybe they could have given me some tools to understand myself. In any case, I am thankful for all that I have received. Ministry in the church is hard – far harder than I think any of my fellow students realized at the time – but I am very thankful to have been given the privilege of being part of it.

      

Please understand I am not trying to complain about the document or question it. I do find it to be quite excellent. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts and may continue to do so through the year. 

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.

      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 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. 

Hespeler, 7 January, 2018 © Scott McAndless

John 16:20-22, Philippians 4:4-9, Psalm 40:1-9, 15-17

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.

     

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.

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      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.

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:

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!

Contact me (regarding the podcast) at the following links: