Author: Scott McAndless

Making Christmas Specials: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Posted by on Sunday, December 13th, 2015 in Minister

St. Andrew’s Stars Episode:




Hespeler, 13 December, 2015 © Scott McAndless
Psalm 107:1-16, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, John 17:13-19
A
lmost exactly fifty years ago today (think about that for a moment!) On Thursday, December 9, 1965, viewers who were just settling in to watch their favourite television show on CBS, the Munsters, were in for a surprise. The show had been pre-empted, replaced with a brand new television special: A Charlie Brown Christmas. For the very first time the popular comic strip was brought to life through the magic of animation.
        And the executives down at CBS were huddled in fear. They were bracing for what they were sure would be an embarrassing failure. And they had some very good reasons for that fear. The special had been made on a shoestring budget and had definitely suffered for it. The animation was very poor quality. It was jerky and repetitive. The sound was hardly better. The film was poorly edited as well and the action cut from one thing to another in strange and unexplained ways.
      Part of the problem was the pure bullheadedness of the writer: Charles Shultz. He had insisted on a number of ridiculous things. He’d insisted on using child actors for the voices – children who had no experience at all. Some of them couldn’t even read! The producers had to read the lines to the kids and have them repeat them back and then they had to splice the dialogue together. (Which is actually how we tape our St. Andrews Stars episodes.) The result, in the pre-digital age, was dialogue that was choppy and didn’t sound good.
      Shultz also wanted the soundtrack to be played by a jazz trio which everyone considered to be quite inappropriate for a children’s show. Even worse, he absolutely refused to add a la
ugh track. The executives tried and tried to make him see how foolish this was. They even made up an alternate version with the laugh track, hoping that he would change his mind at the last minute but Shultz would not budge.
      But the worst thing of all – the thing that they were sure would lead to a total disaster – Shultz had included in his script a reading from the Gospel of Luke. And the executives were certain that when Linus stepped forward and began to quote from the King James Version of the Bible, people everywhere would turn off their televisions in disgust. Perhaps they would never tune into CBS ever again. Oh, it was awful!
      Well, as we all know now, those television experts in their high towers were all wrong and the lowly cartoonist was completely right. The special was a smash hit both with the general audience and with the critics. It won an Emmy and a Peabody award the next year. It became an instant classic and still remains one to this very day. For many people, Christmas would not be Christmas if they didn’t get to see it. And, what’s more, the very things that the executives were worried about – the things that Shultz had insisted on – were the best things about it. The amateur child actors lent a sense of sincerity to the whole thing. People just loved Vince Guaraldi’s music. When the cdcame out several years ago, it was the top seller of the season. And Linus’ recitation from the Gospel of Luke was hailed as “quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.”[1]
      “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” That is what the Apostle Paul wrote to his friends in the church at Corinth centuries ago. Perhaps if Paul had written it in 1965 he would have said, “But God chose the cartoonists of the world to shame the high-powered executives.” It is a wonderful gospel principle. And it is so true. God has this uncanny way of using the very people that everyone else looks down on and despises to accomplish his greatest works. Who but God would think of creating a nation out of two people who had no children and were already so old that they had one foot in the grave? Who but God would chose a ragged band of shepherds to spread the news that the Messiah had been born? Who but Jesus would think of starting a new religious movement by choosing some fishermen and a few tax-collectors and troublemakers?
      And this eternal principle was put on display yet again when Charles Shultz created his beloved television special. What’s more, the very same principle was on display in the plot of the special. I’m sure that we all know the story. Charlie Brown is upset as Christmas approaches. He is afraid that he has lost the true meaning of Christmas in the midst of all the glitz and glamour and especially the commercialism of the season. The special tells the story of his struggles.
      It is amazing when you think of it but somehow the story has remained very current for over fifty years. Charlie Brown’s struggles with the Christmas season are still the very same struggles that people have to this day. Take this exchange between Charlie Brown and his little sister, Sally. Sally has asked her brother to write a letter to Santa for her. And this is what she dictates: “Dear Santa Claus, How have you been? Did you have a nice summer? How is your wife? I have been extra good this year, so I have a long list of presents that I want.” “Oh brother,” says Charlie Brown. “Please note the size and color of each item,” says Sally, “and send as many as possible. If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself: just send money. How about tens and twenties?”
      “Tens and twenties?” cries Charlie Brown, “Oh, even my baby sister!” “All I want is what I have coming to me,” replies Sally. “All I want is my fair share.”
      That exchange could just as easily be written today as it was fifty years ago. But if anything it has all gotten worse since the 1960’s. For so many people today, Christmas is all about making sure that they get what’s coming to them. And it’s not just the kids; it has spread to every area of our society. The culture of Christmas seems to have become ever more a culture of everyone getting what’s coming to them.
      In the Christmas special, the symbol of the commercialism and greed of the season is the artificial aluminum Christmas tree. The fake trees are beautiful and awe inspiring and the little natural tree that Charlie Brown chooses instead of them is, by contrast, so plain and disappointing. But the message of the special is that the simple, plain and seemingly unimpressive things have a power and a meaning that goes a lot further than the glitz and glamour of the commercial products.
      That’s why, at the end, the Peanuts gang learns to respect and even love Charlie Brown’s little tree. In the same way, Linus’ simple recitation of the plain old simple Gospel story of a plain old simple birth has the power to touch everyone’s heart. The message of the special, when you get right down to it is that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”
      Friends, that is the message, not only of a fifty year-old television special, it is and has always been the message of Christianity and especially of Christmas. Now, I know that the big money-making juggernaut that is Christmas can be pretty overwhelming at times. Those who are out to get whatever is coming to them seem to be in charge no matter what we may have to say about it.
      If we fail to go along with that prevailing wisdom, people might laugh at us and call us foolish. Politicians demand positive economic indicators and economists look for growth in the Gross Domestic Product, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to politicians and foolishness to economists.
      But somehow I believe that once all of that economic wisdom has passed away and been sent to the recycler like so many gaudy aluminum Christmas trees, our simple and lowly little natural tree of faith will still be standing and still be inspiring hope and life. For “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

    
Sermon Video





[1]
Harriet Van Horne in the New York World-Telegram.
        
Continue reading »

Making Christmas Specials: Frosty the Snowman

Posted by on Monday, December 7th, 2015 in Minister

St. Andrew's Stars Video:



Hespeler, 6 December, 2015 © Scott McAndless – Communion
Genesis 2:4-7, Luke 1:46-55, 1 Corinthians 15:12-28
I
n 1969 the decision was made to take a silly little winter children’s song about a snowman who came to life and turn it into an animated Christmas special. It was not really a very radical idea. Five years previously producers had taken another popular Christmas song, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reinde er, and turned it into what is probably the most popular Christmas special of all time. If they could do it for Rudolph, they could surely do it for Frosty and in fact they even hired the same man, Romeo Muller, who had written the Rudolph special to expand the song’s story to fill an entire half hour.
      But didn’t Romeo Muller have quite a challenge before him? How do you take a little lightweight song about what is, I guess, just about everyone’s childhood fantasy (What do you suppose it would be like if this snowman I’m making came to life?) – how do you take that and turn it into a full length drama that will engage people and speak to their hearts? But Muller did a terrific job. And to do it he drew on some deep and ancient truths. He created what I consider to be nothing less than a grand parable that communicates the gospel message.
      The story already touched on the oldest mystery of all – the mystery of creation. Ever since they first started wondering about anything, people have wondered about why they are here and where they come from. And ancient people, including the ancient people of Israel, often imagined a creation process where the creator first formed people out of mud or clay and then breathed life into them. And although I think that we all assume today that the whole creation process must have been a bit more complicated than that, there is something about that simple image of God moulding us out of common clay and then breathing his own spirit into us to give us life that just offers a wonderful symbol of the
meaning behind creation – how God brought together the material body with that spark of the divine to create us as spiritual creatures.
      Well, of course, that whole creation scene is re-enacted in the Frosty story except, of course, instead of mud or clay the creators use snow. Now, the original story in the original song did not have much of an actual connection with Christmas. It could have been the story of any snowman made on any winter’s day. But the producers of the Christmas special want­ed to tie the story in with Christmas, so they made a point of telling us that Frosty wasn’t made out of just any snow but of Christmas snow. This becomes a very important point later on. So the Christmas snow stands in for the clay of creation. And instead of the gift of the spirit or of breath to give the snowman life we have a hat – not just any hat, but a magic hat.
      And so when Frosty is brought to life it is like a parable of the creation of human life. To make this very clear in the special, Muller has Frosty himself tell us what all of this means with his very first words. “Happy Birthday,” he says. It is a moment of birth, an act of creation. But a simple story of creation, as nice as it may be, wasn’t going to fill a half hour of prime time. Muller needed to complicate the story – to introduce a little bit of tension.
      He created a new character, an incompetent magician named Professor Hinkle who is the one who has lost the magic hat – who threw it away, in fact, because he thought that there was no magic in it. And when he finds out how wrong he is, he’s ready to do anything to get it back. And since, in the story, the magic hat seems to represent life or the gift of the spirit, I guess that makes Professor Hinkle into the very personification of the evil that is in this world, of those who would steal life from others to accomplish their own goals. It makes him, if you like, the devil.
      But, if Hinkle is the devil, who is Frosty? That is the key question! He kind of looks like a new being – one who has been created out of magic and of snow. You might even call him a new Adam. And in the Letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul says that Adam “was a pattern of the one to come.”(Romans 5:14) That is to say that when Christians look at the story of the creation of the first man, they should find something that teaches them about Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished for us.
      And I would suggest that, in the television special, Frosty is very clearly a figure of Christ. When Frosty’s life is put in danger by rising temperatures, he and his friends decide that he needs to head north. And one of his friends, a girl named Karen, will not be separated from him and so she goes with him. All goes well for a while and the group has many adventures. But, at a certain point the increasing cold becomes too much for Karen and she collapses. Frosty picks Karen up and, to save her life, carries her into a heated greenhouse. Karen wakes up and realizes that Frosty is risking his own life by being in the greenhouse. She tells him that he must go but he brushes her off and says he can stand to lose a little weight. But at this point Professor Hinkle comes along – still following them and still looking to reclaim his hat – and he slams the door to the greenhouse, locking them both inside.
     Trapped inside the greenhouse, Frosty melts – he dies. He gives up his life to save Karen from dying in the cold! Does that remind you of any story you’ve ever heard? Didn’t Jesus say, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Even more important, didn’t Jesus show with his own life what such a statement really meant? And so, I think it is very clear that Frosty’s death in the greenhouse holds many echoes of the central story of the Christian gospel.
      But, of course, there is more. It is at this point that Santa Claus comes into the story. He arrives at the greenhouse but is too late to save the snowman. All he finds is an old silk hat, a corncob pipe, a button, two pieces of coal, a puddle of water and Karen weeping on her knees just like Mary Magdalene wept outside Jesus’ tomb. (Coincidence? I don’t think so!) Karen is quite inconsolable in her grief but Santa Claus says that there is a reason for hope. He says that it’s because, and only because, Frosty was made out of Christmas snow and there is something special about Christmas snow – it never goes away. And then Santa flings open the door of the greenhouse and a gust of cold wind comes in and sweeps the puddle of water outside where it instantly retakes Frosty’s shape. Santa puts on the magic hat again and again Frosty comes to life with his same first words: “Happy Birthday.”
      Now, if that isn’t a resurrection story, I don’t know what is. And I’m not trying to suggest here that Romeo Muller intentionally borrowed his themes from the gospel story. On the contrary, I don’t imagine that he was even aware of the connection. But somehow, and in a way that even he probably didn’t understand, his story tapped into an eternal truth – the idea that new life can only come through death and resurrection – an idea that has been around for a very long time but that was finally given its supreme demonstration in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
      So this is how I see Frosty the Snowman. The story of his “creation” is a reflection of Adam. The story of his “death” and his “resurrection” is a reflection of Jesus Christ, the new Adam. Talk about serious themes! And yet, through it all, the special remains a light-hearted romp especially for kids. But I think the very simplicity of the Frosty story may allow it to bring some fundamental truths home to us.
      For example, I’ve always wondered, even when I was a kid, about Frosty’s first words. Both times when the hat is placed on his head and he comes to life, Frosty greets the world with a cheery “Happy Birthday.” Now the first time, it kind of makes sense. It is like he has just been born – his own birthday. But why does he repeat it when he is brought back from the dead? Well, I don’t know what Romeo Muller was thinking when he wrote it that way, but I think I can explain it from a Christian point of view.
      There is a connection, you see, between the notion of creation and of resurrection. In our understanding, they are not really two different things. Your hope and expectation for the resurrection ultimately has its foundation in your creation. The God who created you, who took inanimate matter and brought it to life – whether you think of that creation taking place in the womb or in the some primordial soup – is the same God who will raise your earthly remains up to new life after you die.
      That is why the Apostle Paul makes such a close connection between Adam and Jesus Christ: “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” He means that you need to keep in mind that your hope of life after death does not really depend on you, on anything you have done or not done, or on anything that is in your nature. It depends upon God. Your hope for resurrection is based in God and God’s ability to take dead matter and bring it to life. God has shown that he can do that by creating life in the first place and even more forcefully by raising Jesus from the dead. There is really only one miracle – the miracle of life. And what you received in your earthly birth or creation is like to what you will receive in your resurrection, only it will be that much better.
      And, finally, there is one other way in which Frosty resembles Jesus. Even after Frosty is raised from the dead, the rising temperatures mean that he can no longer remain with his friends. He leaves to go and live at the North Pole. But he leaves with a promise – the final words of the song: “I’ll be back again someday.” But Frosty was not the first to say “I’ll be back.” (And, no, I’m not talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger.) That was also Jesus’ promise after his resurrection. And I know that, in the case of Jesus we tend to think of that return as a cataclysmic event – something that we wait for expecting that, when Jesus comes, he will set all things right. It is something that will happen at some future date but that really doesn’t affect the here and now that much.
      But the Frosty special has put the idea in my mind that maybe we should think of the return of Jesus in a slightly different way. Frosty’s return, in the special, is tied to the date of Christmas – the date of his creation (for he was made of Christmas snow) and the date on which he was raised from the dead. And I think that can remind us that the resurrection of Jesus and our own resurrection which the Bible describes as happening when Jesus returns someday, is really one event. It is all tied up together. It’s all one and the same miracle. And it is a miracle that we can grab hold of here and now. You don’t have to wait until you die to start living the new life, the resurrection. Because of Jesus and the work that he has accomplished, you can enter into that reality here and now. “Happy Birthday” indeed!
      So there you have it. You just thought that it was a simple little children’s story. Who’d have thought that it would turn out to be a major treatise on the meaning of creation and resurrection. Christmas truly is a season of magic.
      Frosty the Snowman is a fairytale they say. Maybe it is, but it also contains much truth and children know truth when they see it. Some people say that the story of Jesus is a fairy tale too. We believe, and have reason to believe, that Jesus was a real person. Of course, I would insist that his story is even more true than Frosty’s, but there is also a sense in which both stories share a universal truth about the hope for life and new life that we find in our God.
     

Sermon Video:

Continue reading »

Thought and Prayers

Posted by on Thursday, December 3rd, 2015 in Minister

Something finally broke over the last couple of days. And, as far as I'm concerned, it is about time.

In the aftermath of the latest mass shooting, which led to the death of 14 in San Bernadino in California, people began responding, as they often do, by sending out their "thoughts and prayers." It is, I would suggest, a common and generally positive response to events that are tragic and largely outside of our control. We feel so powerless in the face of tragedy and the impulse is to want to do something about it. Often enough, prayer and positive thoughts are the only things that we feel able to do.

But this time there was a strong twitter reaction against the response as people began to tweet out criticisms that sought to shame those making such statements with the hashtag #thoughtsandprayers. The criticism and shaming was not directed (at least not for the most part) towards people who were truly powerless to do anything except pray about it, but in particular at people like politicians who have had many opportunities to make changes in how things are done but have resisted doing anything. In other words, they have changed nothing and done nothing but pray and it is time to point out that such a strategy is not fixing anything. It is, as the headline on the Daily News has proclaimed:

Ats a leader in a Christian church, I have often used the phrase, "My thoughts and prayers are with you." I have often let people who are going through some crisis know of the thoughts and prayers of the congregation and I have led the congregation in prayer in the face of various tragedies over the years. I do believe that this is an important thing to do and to say.

I never say it lightly. I always do make a point of actually praying for those people. I also think that doing so matters.

It matters to them. It matters that they know that they are not alone in facing whatever they are facing -- that there are people who are sympathetic and empathetic, that there are people who care. Just knowing that you are being supported in this way can certainly help to improve outcomes. I happen to also believe that it matters to them because God answers prayers. God doesn't always answer prayers in the ways that we want or desire or expect. We may not like God's answers sometimes. But I have seen God's presence with people in various ways as they have gone through tragedy. It has mattered.

It also matters to me -- a lot. I have faced many problems and intractable difficulties in my work as a minister. I have felt overwhelmed by them far too often. Prayer has been an invaluable resource to me. It works like this:

When I am faced with a problem that seems overwhelming, I do what I can about it. I make use of what talents and skills are at my disposal. I call on assistance from people who may have talents and skills that are unavailable to me. I put the time and energy into the problem that I am able to put into it given all of my other priorities and limitations. But, often, having done all of that, I still feel overwhelmed and can be filled with anxiety and fear.

That is when I especially need to pray. I need to tell God that I have taken on as much weight in this issue as I can. I need to tell God that my shoulders are full and I cannot bear it any more. I need to tell God to take the weight from me. This is an extremely freeing prayer. It is not freeing in the sense that I don't need to act any more, but it is certainly a way of freeing me from anxiety. If I couldn't do that, I know that I couldn't continue in the work that I do.

But if all I was doing in the face of problems and tragedies was jumping to that prayer without even considering what I can and need to do about the situation, I believe that God would and should rebuke me.

Perhaps the hashtag #thoughtsandprayers is God's rebuke to some.

It is not, as the old saying goes, that "God helps those who helps themselves." That is not true. God's actions are always gracefilled.

What it is is this: Prayer is a dangerous activity. When you ask God for somethings -- something that you claim to be passionate about -- God says, "Great. I am glad to hear your passion for this. So, if you are so passionate, what are you doing about it."

If the answer is nothing (especially if it is your power to do something), God might well wonder if you are passionate at all. Why would God answer a prayer like that?
Continue reading »

Making Christmas Specials: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Posted by on Monday, November 30th, 2015 in Minister

St. Andrew's Stars Episode:

Hespeler, 29 November, 205 © Scott McAndless – 1st Advent
1 Corinthians 12:12-26, Psalm 133, Matthew 20:24-28
A
baby is born in a cave, a baby who is different from every other child who has ever been seen. And his parents look on him in wonder, not comprehending just how unique their son will be, not understanding how he will grow up to be the saviour of all his kind. That is the classic Christmas story isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about.
      What? Oh, I’m not talking about that baby. For lots of people Christmas has very little to do with hisbirth. You misunderstand me. The baby I’m talking about was actually a fawn. And the parents who wondered at his birth were named Donn er and Mrs. Donner. The cave was just an ordinary reindeer cave. That’s the birth I’m talking about. It is a birth that says Christmas to a lot of people because it is the opening scene of the classic Christmas special, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and, for them, Christmas cannot really begin until they have seen that special.
      Now, I know I could look at that as a negative thing. I could stand here and go on and on about how awful it is that a lot of kids seem to grow up today being a lot more familiar with the story of the birwe tell on Christmas is a lot better than the story of any reindeer, no matter what colour his nose is.
th of Rudolph than they are with the story of the birth of that other baby. Of course, that’s true. And of course I know that the story that
      But, of course, it is Christmas time and I don’t want to get all negative about Christmas traditions that people love. And besides, the Rudolph Christmas Special tells a great story – a story that, as far as I am concerned, contains a great deal of truth. And not just any truth either. I find a great deal of gospel truth in this story. It is a great illustration of some key Biblical ideas; ones that we need to take to heart particularly at this time of year.
      The story, in case you’re among the seven people in Canada who haven’t seen it, is all about misfits – people who don’t fit in because they are different. Rudolph is a misfit because, of a physical deformity – a big bright shiny red nose. The other main character is Hermey, an elf who doesn’t fit in with the other elves at the North Pole because he doesn’t like the lifestyle. He hates making toys, he doesn’t like singing and all the other things that the elves do. Hermey only wants to be a dentist and nobody can get behind the idea of an elf dentist.
      But Rudolph and Hermey aren’t the only misfits. They run off and end up at a place called the Island of Misfit Toys, the place where all the toys that are unwanted by girls and boys end up. Most of these toys have been rejected because they are different too – like a Jack-in-the-Box named Charlie, a bird that can’t fly but only swims, a train with square wheels and a cowboy who rides an ostrich. So that is what the story is all about – about people who are different and don’t fit because of it. And that is exactly why the story has endured as long as it has. It connects with people because everybody has felt like a misfit at some point in their life or, if they haven’t, they have known someone who was a misfit. Everyone wonders, at some point or another, what to do with someone who doesn’t fit in. And when you’re the person who doesn’t fit in, that can be a very painful question.
      It was also, apparently, a very important question for the early Christian Church – maybe especially the church in the city of Corinth. First of all, it was a church that was made up almost entirely of misfits to start with. They were people who were looked down on and despised by just about everyone they met. Many of them were devalued and despised because they were poor or because they were slaves. They were also all rejected by general society because they had rejected the pagan religion – the worship of the ancient gods. This meant that they could not participate in the activities of an ordinary civic life because they all took place in the temples of and under the patronage of the various gods. They just didn’t belong in the general society but they found a home and a sense of belonging in the life of the church. In Jesus they found someone who loved and accepted them despite all of that.
      So that is one part of the answer to the question of what you do with the misfits – you find them a place where they belong and people who accept them for who they are. But that, in itself, is not quite a good enough answer. In the Rudolph special, there actually are a couple of characters who do accept Rudolph as he is. His mother, in particular, makes the decision to simply overlook the nose – to pretend it’s not there. And Clarice, a young doe, befriends Rudolph and doesn’t hold his nose against him. And obviously that measure of acceptance helps Rudolph. (In fact, when Clarice tells him she thinks he’s cute, it makes him fly higher than all the other young reindeer.)
      But it is not a complete answer. Despite these exceptions, the main message that Rudolph gets in the first part of the special is that if he wants to be valued and loved, what he needs to do is blend in with everyone else. He needs to stop being a misfit. And so it is that Rudolph’s father, Donner, covers over Rudolph’s bright red nose with brown mud. That muddy cover is the symbol of the pressure that is present, in any group, for people to conform to the norms of that group.
      In a way, it is only natural. Whenever people get together or work together they just feel more comfortable to be alongside people who are like them. So there is a natural tendency to pressure people who look different or act different to change themselves to fit in with the majority. Even more important, the majority also sets the standards for advancement. It decides what you need to do or how you need to be in order to gain honour, prestige and glory. If you’re part of a reindeer team, I suppose that would mean that those who fly fastest or highest would have the most honour while those who distract everyone else with their bright shiny noses would only be put down.
      Even a society of misfits can end up doing the very same thing. That’s what happened in the group of misfits that was in the church in Corinth. There were some people in the church who had this ability, in the Spirit, of speaking in strange languages. It was, to be sure, a pretty impressive thing to be able to do. And so everyone started to look up to them – to think of them as more spiritual people. Everyone else wanted to be like them and some actually managed to do it.
      But this strange speaking was not something that everyone could do. It was a spiritual gift that came from the Holy Spirit. And it didn’t take long for everyone in the church to start treating those who couldn’tdo it as misfits – as a lower class of Christians. It’s pretty bad when you think about it. They were doing to these people exactly what the general society around them had done to them – treating people who were different as less valuable. Isn’t human nature grand sometimes!
      And so the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians to set them straight. He told them that the Christian church, being made up of misfits as it was, had to behave better than other groups. It had to find a way not merely to tolerate those who were different but to discover how truly valuable they were. That’s what that passage we read this morning is all about. Paul is trying to tell them that the people in the church, who don’t do this funny speaking thing, but who do have other things that they are good at, are not any less valuable than the others. His message is that each one contributes in his or her own way and that when we all do that, the church will be strong.
      Now, that sounds like a pretty simple and straightforward idea. When Paul compares the church to a body, for example, and says that each part has its own strengths and contributes in its own way we all nod our heads. When he says, that a body could not function if every part were an eye or if every part were an ear, we all say, “Yes, that makes sense.” But, when it comes to practically living together with peace and understanding and working together to reach common goals, that can be a different story.
      That’s why I think a story like the one in the Rudolph special can be so helpful for us. It can become a kind of parable for us. Because the Rudolph story isn’t just a story of acceptance, it is a story of value and true contribution. At the end of the story, as we all know, Rudolph doesn’t just find acceptance in the reindeer herd in spite of his deformity. His deformity actually saves everyone by making it possible for Santa to navigate in the fog. What is different and unique about Rudolph actually turns out to be absolutely essential to everyone. In addition, Hermey also saves everyone from an attack by an abominable snowman by pulling out the monster’s teeth and proves that even elves need dentists.
      And that is what is so hard for us to understand in the church. That is why we need such a simple illustration as what we find in this story to get it through to us. That is what the church is about too. The church is a society of misfits. But it is not that, in the church, we are all just tolerated in spite of our own little problems and idiosyncrasies. It is not that we smile to people’s faces but then, when they turn their backs, we roll our eyes or say bad things about them. That might be good enough for a workplace situation or some other casual relationship, but it is not good enough for the church. Here we love them and value them for who they are.
      Now I know that that is something that doesn’t always come easily. Sometimes there is something about another person that just rubs you the wrong way or drives you crazy. But in the church, this society of misfits, we learn that God made our brothers and sisters as they are for a reason. That God put something special in each sister and brother that allows them to contribute in a way that no one else can. And I know that you may not always see that at first, but you can take it on faith. You can believe that the God who created them was able to put something valuable in them. And from that attitude of faith you will, in time, come to see what that special thing is.
      But the other side of that is even more powerful. Being part of the church – of this society of misfits – means that you come to see that value in yourself. You begin to see that you are loved and valued by your God and by your fellow misfits, not merely in spite of your little personal quirks and faults, but precisely because you are the person that those things made you. This too is an attitude of faith. It is the belief that the God who made you doesn’t make junk and that even in the things that have gone wrong for you God can have a plan for good.
      The love that you can experience in God and in God’s representatives is not a grudging love – a love in spite of who you are. It is a full whole-hearted love for who you are. That doesn’t mean that you cannot strive and work to become even better than you are – to become the best that you can be – but it does mean that, wherever you are on that journey right now, you can move forward in confidence that you are loved and valued. And that is something that can make your heart fly as high as one of Santa’s reindeer.

      

Sermon Video:

Continue reading »

Christmas Armistice

Posted by on Monday, November 23rd, 2015 in Minister

It is the end of November and we all know what that means: it is time for War.
                Yes, every year at this time of year we are reminded that we are supposed to be at war. It is called the War on Christmas and we are apparently all conscripted as foot soldiers.
                The first shots of this year’s battle have already been fired. The skirmish was fought over the holiday season cups at Starbucks. A few Christians took offence because the plain red and green cups being filled by the iconic café this year don’t have any explicit Christmasy words or symbols on them. But we all recognize that that is only the beginning and there will be many more fights to come. What will be next? Will we have to take offence at someone who says Happy Holidays? Will we need to be appalled by a lack of mangers in public squares? Where will it end?
                I’ve got to say that in this particular war, I am pretty much ready to declare myself a conscientious objector. I’m not sure I want to fight it anymore – at least, not if it is a battle between the Christian idea of Christmas and our secular society’s idea of Christmas.
                The fact of the matter is that I love both Christmases. I love the church’s Christmas with our focus of the story of the birth of the messiah, the candles, the sacred carols and prayers for peace on earth and good will to all. But I also love the secular Christmas that surrounds us with its lights and colourful decorations, the Christmas songs and the hustle and bustle of the malls. I will admit that I do get very tired of the materialism that seems evident everywhere you look, but I am not entirely certain whether the extreme consumerism belongs to the sacred or secular side of Christmas. After all, so many of the battles seem to be fought over what greetings are given to shoppers in stores.
                I also happen to love the fact that I live in a multicultural society where people celebrate both Christmas and other religious and cultural festivals at this time of the year. There is a wonderful richness amid such diversity.
                And so I really don’t want to think about what happens at this time of year as a war. I’d like to call for an armistice from our point of view at least.
                And so this is what I’m going to do. Rather than going to the Bible first, this year I’m going to start my Advent sermons with the sacred texts of the secular Christmas. When I was growing up, there were four canonical Christmas stories that we had to hear every year. They were: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch stole Christmas. When I was growing up at least, Christmas just wasn’t Christmas unless you gathered together with your family and tuned your television to the CBC for every single one of these classic stories. So I am going to explore the meaning behind these classic stories.
                This is not something that I would normally do. I have not been trained to seek inspiration in the secular stories of society but exclusively in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. I have long found that they are all I need. But somehow I am not too worried. Yes, there are perhaps some stories that are told by the world around us that we need to be wary of – that might lead us down a wrong path. But my sense is that we may just discover that, even if the people who wrote these great Christmas stories set out to be completely secular and to avoid all mention of the gospel Christmas story, there is something that would not allow them to stray too far from the ultimate Christmas message. My expectation is that there is a lot of truth—gospel truth—in these stories and I am going to find that they lead me back to Bible before I’m done.
                And, perhaps by finding the gospel truth in these secular Christmas stories, we might find a way to bring peace between warring factions at this most blessed time of the year.
                Wishing you:
               
                              Peace on Earth, Good Will to All!


Continue reading »

Script Out Passages: Script Out Principles

Posted by on Sunday, November 22nd, 2015 in Minister

Hespeler, 22 November, 2015 © Scott McAndless
2 Timothy 3:10-17, Romans 1:26-32, Psalm 19:7-14
T
oday we come to the end of what I think is the longest series of sermons that I have ever preached. Since the beginning of September we have been looking at what I call the Script Out passages of the Bible – passages that we love to hate and often wish weren’t there in the Bible at all. I’m going to confess that I am kind of glad to bring this series to a close on this, the last Sunday in the church year. It can be a little bit difficult to spend all that time focusing on Bible passages that you don’t really like. Next week, the first week in Advent, I am going to be very happy to turn to some more traditional themes of the Christian gospel.
      But I hope that you have picked up that, even if it is hard, I do think this kind of work is important. If we are people who believe in the Bible and take this book seriously, we have to be willing to invest the energy to struggle with those parts of the book that may make us feel uncomfortable or that we just plain don’t like. You cannot pick and choose which passages to follow.
      But even more important than that, I think that we need a better general understanding of how we can approach this book that we say is so important to us. One of the reasons why I felt I had to tackle the Script Out passages of the Bible was because I was hoping to develop some basic principles that we could use to apply whenever we come across passages that challenge us or give us trouble because this
is just something that is going to keep happening and we may even find that, as times goes by, there will be more passages that we stumble over for various reasons.
      A perfect example is a request that comes to us this year from the highest governing body of our denomination: the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The General Assembly has asked the congregations and sessions of our church to discuss and get back to them on a somewhat thorny social issue of our time. They want us to talk about how we include (or perhaps fail to include) LGBT people in the church. Just to be clear, LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. So it is simply a reference to a group of people who for various reasons, don’t quite fit into what might be called the traditional approach to how to live out sexuality.
      This has been a discussion that I and many people have resisted not because it is unimportant but because it seems likely to be divisive. No matter what answers we come up with, we will almost certainly not all agree. And if we tend to avoid the discussion, we are also going to avoid the passages in the Bible that have anything to say on the subject.
      But the reality is that, if we are going to be Christians who take the Bible seriously, we have to grapple with what the Bible says even if the discussion is uncomfortable. There are only a few passages that speak directly to these questions and I want to look at how we are going to approach them. I don’t mean to do this in order to tell you how you need to understand these passages or what you ought to think about the question in general. I just want to offer you some helpful approaches to keep in mind.
      But before we look at any particular passages, I want to start with some basic Biblical assumptions. You have heard the argument made (seriously by some, ridiculed by others) that the Bible does not support same-sex marriage because, and I quote, “It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” There is actually a valid point in that, at least when you understand what it is saying, and we need to take it seriously.
      What it is saying is that there is a certain assumption about what is normal or common in human relationships and specifically about the relationship between men and women in the Bible. This isn’t just something that we see in the creation story but an assumption that runs through much of Scripture, that the male/female relationship in marriage is normative and that it is the kind of relationship, from the perspective of Biblical society, that everyone is simply expected to engage in. And of course that was true. Everyone in Biblical times was expected to participate in so-called traditional marriage.
      Of course, what they called traditional marriage (as we saw a couple of weeks ago) was a little bit different from what we are used to. It included things like arranged marriages that had nothing to do with love, polygamy, female slavery and concubinage, rape victims who were forced to marry their rapists and all kinds of other things that we would never find acceptable. But there was an expectation that, one way or another, everyone would fit into the basic male/female marriage relationship somewhere and that was really whether they wanted to or not and whether they desired that kind of relationship or not.
      So it is true that the Bible takes male/female marriage relationships for granted and, indeed, as the basic foundation of society. And I see absolutely no problem with that. Even today, such relationships represent the norm in the sense that it is the kind of relationship that the majority of people will fit into in one way or another. What’s more, such relationships are very good and even foundational to society as a whole.
      But just because the Bible only sees one kind of relationship and calls that relationship good, that doesn’t mean that it is the only kind of relationship possible or the only one that can be good. I mean, just because the Bible assumes that everyone wears tunics and sandals doesn’t mean that such a mode of dress is the only one that anyone should wear today. Sandals and tunics being good doesn’t mean that a suit and tie is necessarily bad.
      One of the principles that we discovered during our discussions over the last few weeks had to do with something called proof texts. Proof texts are short Biblical texts that clearly lay out some Biblical policy. We saw, for example, that there are a few verses that, in former times, were regularly used to defend the practice of slavery. But the fact that there were a few verses in the Bible that clearly declared that slavery was an acceptable practice did not stop many Christians from using the Bible to argue against it. They discovered that, despite those few proof texts and despite the fact that the Bible took the institution of slavery for granted throughout the whole text, the overwhelming narrative of the Bible was about a God who was committed to bringing his people freedom from slavery and all oppression and that that story was more important than a few proof texts.
      Does that principle apply to the discussion of the place of LGBT people within the church? It is true that there are a few verses that are clear proof texts against homosexuality – six verses by most people’s count. Their meaning is not really open to a great deal of interpretation though we can look at them. Does the existence of those proof texts (assuming we are correctly understanding them) mean that any sort of conversation about how to include LGBT people is already over – that there’s nothing more to say?
      Well, I would say, given where we stand on slavery, we cannot possibly say that. We can never say that a proof text is the end of a conversation. Of course, that doesn’t answer the question of what the overall narrative of the scriptures is. Is it one of including outsiders or is it one of judgment of people who don’t fit in. That is another discussion and one that you need to decide on for yourself as you read the Bible.
      Now, turning to those so-called proof texts, the clearest one is found in Leviticus chapter 20: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” It is, like many proof texts, a passage that doesn’t seem to leave much room for interpretation and many would point to it as the clearest Biblical rejection of LGBT people.
      But here again, another of our Script Out principles does apply. Way back when we started this series and looked at the Biblical prohibition against people getting tattoos, we noted that that law really doesn’t apply to today because it was part of a particular law code that was intended to set the people of Israel apart from their neighbours by forcing them to have a distinct culture.
      And when we looked at that ancient law against tattooing, I made this note: “We have to be consistent. If we don’t worry about one verse that we don’t like for a good reason, but then find another verse that we maybe do like that has a lot in common from the verse we rejected, be can’t just choose to dump one and keep the other. We have to think it all through critically.”
      The law against tattooing and the law against men lying with men are only one chapter apart in the Book of Leviticus. The two laws have a great deal in common and seem to have the intention of setting the people of Israel apart from their neighbours culturally. The tattooing law seems to reject the funerary practice of the Israelite’s neighbours and the law against men lying with men is likely rejecting the cultic prostitution practices of their neighbours but neither one is really reacting to cultural practices that are part of the world today. This leaves the question of whether either one really applies today at all open.
      There are only a few passages in the New Testament that touch on the question at hand. There is nothing at all in the Gospels. Jesus himself never said anything on the subject, possibly because the issue just never came up for him. At the very least, this seems to indicate that the matter wasn’t really a big concern for him. We have said before, in connection with some of the other Script Out passages, that Christian doctrine teaches us that God’s ultimate revelation of Godself to the world is not in a book like the Bible but is to be found in the living person of Jesus the Christ. Jesus’ lack of attention to this issue may be an indication of where it lies on God’s priorities. Something to keep in mind.
      The issue does come up in the letters of the New Testament: in Romans, in 1 Corinthians, in 1 Timothy and in Jude. We don’t have the time to go through those passages one by one now. People have certainly differed down through the centuries over exactly what they mean. And I am not going to tell you what you ought to do with them. You are smart people. You have seen some of the various principles that I have been talking about that help us to deal with those parts of the Bible that we don’t like or that we often avoid. I would like you to encourage you to apply them for yourself. We will also offer an opportunity in the New Year to study these passages and the larger issues in discussion.
      But I want to be clear here – I’m not trying to tell you what you should think of these passages. I’m trusting you to come to your own conclusions and understandings. I do expect that, though we will agree on some things, we will not agree about it all. But I think that is okay. In the history of the church it has happened too often that a majority (or sometimes a powerful minority) have imposed their thinking or their Biblical interpretations on everyone else. It is past time for that to stop.
      I don’t know exactly where this whole discussion will lead us in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. My hope and prayer, though, is that we find a way to create an environment where everyone feels the freedom to act according to their understanding and convictions and where we can respect the understandings and convictions of each other.
      In the Second Letter to Timothy, we are told that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” If we really believe that – that all scripture (both the parts that we like and the parts that we don’t like) are given to us by God for our good, we will not be afraid to struggle with the scriptures, to question them and find some way to embrace them. What is at stake in these discussions and in other difficult discussions that may come is that we are a people who take all scriptures as a gift of God – sometimes especially the parts that we struggle with.

      

Passages referred to in the sermon:
Leviticus 18:22, 29; 20:13
Romans 1:26-27
1 Corinthians 6:9;
1 Timothy 1:10;
Jude 7.

Script Out principles:
  • Be consistent. You can’t just pick and choose which verses you like. Apply the same critical thinking to them all.
  • Pay attention to what is actually being said.
  • God never intended for us to turn our minds off and just take our moral truths from proof texts. You must never take your eyes off of the overall narrative of scripture.
  • God knew that the Bible would always be limited by the humans who transmitted it. So God chose to reveal himself in a way that could not be corrupted by human transmission. God revealed himself in a person: in Jesus the Christ. The living revelation of God in Christ always comes first.
  • Is this God’s final word on this subject or does the Bible have more to say elsewhere?
  • Understand the intentions of the people who first used this story.
  • Understand what the underlying assumptions are.
Continue reading »

Script Out Passages: Lessons from Sodom and Gomorrah

Posted by on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 in Minister



Hespeler, 15 November, 2015 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 19:1-13, Matthew 10:5-15, Isaiah 1:9-18
I
n late August, 2005, as we all remember, a powerful hurricane named Katrina made landfall on the southern coast of Louisiana. Katrina did a whole lot of damage, but no place was hit harder than the City of New Orleans. Many who surveyed the damage at the time gave the opinion that a great American city had simply been wiped off of the map. It was positively apocalyptic.
      As always happens in the face of that kind of tragedy, there was a great deal of soul searching and people asking why. Why did this happen? And there were lots of answers that were offered. Climate change and weather, the failure of the levees was blamed on the army corps of engineers, the failings of disaster assistance were blamed on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But by far the clearest answer to the whyquestion was given by a Christian evangelist by the name of John Hagee. Hagee declared that the cause of the disaster was obvious. It was God’s judgement. In particular, he stated, it had happened because some sort of Gay Pride parade had been planned in the French Quarter of the city. The hurricane had been sent by God to stop it.
      And what was the proof that Hagee offered for his explanation. He pointed to an announcement of such a parade that apparently was not really known to anybody else and appeared in no major newspapers. And he pointed to the Book of Genesis and the story of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. That, as far as he was concerned, was proof enough.
      Lots of people disagreed with him, of course. But everyone knew exactly what he was talking about. It has long been taken for granted by many that the meaning of that story is perfectly clear and that the Bible clearly says that God destroyed those two cities on purpose and that he did it specifically because of homosexuality. Because of that association, the story has become a rather uncomfortable story for many of us which means that we tend to ignore it and not think about it too mu
ch and that is not a good thing. It is a powerful and deeply meaningful story and it is a shame to lose that power and leave it in the hands of those who would use it to advance their own agendas.
      It is a story about consequences and it is important to talk about the consequences of our actions and choices. But in the hands of people like Hagee, only a small minority of people is singled out for blame – only they have to be responsible for their actions. Is that how the Bible really intended for us to read this story?
      The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is mentioned often in the Scriptures and is generally held up in the Bible as an example of the kind of consequences we may have to deal with if we make bad choices. As such, the story is applied to many different situations. One excellent example is a passage in the book of the prophet Ezekiel. The prophet is criticizing the city of Jerusalem and does so by saying that it is like a sister to the doomed city of Sodom. “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom:” he says, “she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
      So clearly, as far as Ezekiel was concerned, Sodom’s problems were about how food was shared and about the growing gaps between the rich and the poor. And it was also clear to him that Sodom’s problems were not unique to Sodom and certainly not to some sort of minority in the city that they tolerated. He is warning the people of Jerusalem that they are like Sodom. That suggests to me that any interpretation of this story that limits its application to other people, to people not like us, is just not going to be good enough.
      The only real indication of what was wrong in Sodom that is given in the Book of Genesis is the way that the city treats a couple of angelic visitors. They arrive as strangers in the city and seem to be fully intent on spending the night sleeping in the town square. But one citizen, a man named Lot, doesn’t want them to do that and insists that they come to his house to stay instead.
      In ancient Mediterranean society, it was generally believed that, if a stranger appeared at your door or in your village, you had a moral obligation to offer them a place to stay. It was a divineobligation and there were many stories told in many different religions about people who welcomed strangers and discovered, to their surprise, that they were actually hosting gods or other heavenly beings. There are stories like that in the Bible too and this story of Lot and the angels is one such story (though this one certainly has a less happy ending than some of the others).
      So Lot takes the strangers home as his guests. As their host he owes them certain things under the hospitality laws of that time and place. Above all he owes them protection and security – he must protect them with his own life if necessary. This part quickly becomes very important because the men of the town soon hear of the strangers among them and gather to attack them.
      The threat that these men pose to the strangers is the source of the connection that has historically been made between this story and things like gay pride parades. The men of Sodom come to Lot’s door and say, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”
      That doesn’t sound too bad. “We just want to get to know them.” But you need to realize that that verb, to know, had a very particular meaning in ancient Hebrew. It meant to know someone reallyintimately. It was, in fact, a term that was commonly used for sexual relations.
      So, no, when these men ask to “know” the guests in Lot’s house, it is no idle or innocent request. They are seeking to rape them. Because they are men and the angels they want to rape are male, that is where the whole association with homosexuality came from. But you do need to understand that the kind of rape that is threatened in this passage doesn’t actually have anything to do with sexual desire.
      We have come to understand that rape in general is not a crime of sexual desire but rather a crime of power, violence and domination. Not everyone realizes this, but men usually do not rape women because they are driven mad with sexual desire but rather because they want to impose dominance or power over them. So really, any discussion about rape is quite separate from any discussion about consensual sex.
      But this story is not even just about common rape. When a large group of people overpower a few weaker victims (either of the same sex or the opposite sex), that is called gang rape. And gang rape is and has long been a terrible feature of life in this world. It is particularly common in times of war and, as such, it has been extensively studied by historians and sociologists. They conclude that this kind of rape, in particular, is primarily a tactic – and sometimes a conscious military tactic – of domination, intimidation, dehumanization and control. It very clearly doesn’t have anything to do with sexual desire and those who participate in it do so entirely without reference to their own sexual orientation.
      And I think that is quite clearly what these men of Sodom are doing – they are seeking to dominate these strangers who have come to Lot’s house. They are, of course, quite despicable, abominable and immoral to seek to do this and deserve all sorts of condemnation for it (as do all rapists and gang rapists).
      But their intended actions in this story do not tell us anything about what we would refer to today as their “sexual orientation.” Indeed, the concept of sexual orientation is a very modern one that would not have made any sense to ancient people. And while you could very well use this story to criticize people for engaging in rape or gang rape, this story doesn’t really have anything at all to say (either positive or negative) about adults who engage consensually in sex.
      That is why I say that people who use this passage to lay the blame for Katrina or for any other disaster or misfortune at the feet of people because of their orientation or because of anything they engage in consensually are totally misusing the passage. In fact, to use this passage to challenge anyone but ourselves as readers of this passage is a very unbiblical reading. The prophet Ezekiel used the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to challenge the Jews of his own time to think about how the people of Jerusalem, his own people, failed to take care of the weakest and poorest people among them – that is how the Bible teaches us to use this passage.
      I also find the ways that Jesus used the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to be rather informative. I went looking through the gospels and was kind of surprised at how often Jesus did bring the story up. But, as often as he brought it up, it was never about singling out some group who were different from his own group. It was always about what was wrong with the entire generation.
      The passage that we read from the Gospel of Matthew this morning is a great example. It comes as Jesus is sending his disciples out to the various towns and villages of Galilee and he has been careful to send them out in pretty much the same condition as the two angels arrived in Sodom, as poor beggars who arrive with nothing – no gold, or silver, or copper, no bag, or change of clothes, or sandals, or staff.
      He is sending them out to share the good news and to bring healing and hope to the people, but he is also sending them out as a test of the whole generation. As they arrive, poor strangers in these Galilean towns, how they are received will reveal the true nature of the generation. If they are received as honoured guests according to the laws of hospitality that is a sign that the kingdom of God has indeed drawn near. If however they are received without hospitality, it will be a sign that this generation has reentered the evil age of Sodom: “it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”
      That is how we need to be using this story. It is meant to help us look at the society of which we are part. In particular, it is supposed to help us look critically at how we personally contribute to how our society treats outsiders, people who don’t fit into our neat little notions of what is acceptable and not acceptable. And it is especially about how we treat the poor and the strangers.
      It is a shame that, because this particular story of Sodom and Gomorrah makes us feel uncomfortable, that we have been unwilling to give it our attention. By failing to deal with the story we have essentially left it to those who are only too happy to use it to advance their own agenda and attack whichever particular groups they have wanted to.
      In the extreme case, this is the kind of thinking that makes religious terrorists (such as those who claim responsibility for Friday’s attacks in Paris) feel that they are justified – that they are God’s hand of judgement against the immorality of a city or a nation. The whole world sees today the disgusting place such thinking leads us to.
      The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about whatever annoys us about other people. It is about what we need to do to welcome and give a place to those who we may struggle with because they are different from us. If this story isn’t doing that for you, you might just be reading it wrong.

      
Continue reading »

The Script Out Verses of the Bible: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock.”

Posted by on Wednesday, November 11th, 2015 in Minister



Hespeler, 8 November, 2015 © Scott McAndless – Remembrance Sunday
Matthew 5:43-48, Joshua 5:13-15, Psalm 137
A
bout our Psalm reading this morning, I just wanted to let you know that I saw your reaction. In fact, we actually read this same Psalm in the same way a few weeks ago. I chose to have us read it responsively even though, at the time, I was not intending to preach on it as a part of my Script Out series. And then we read the closing words of the Psalm together: “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”
      When we all read that, I saw it. There was this little, “Wait, what?” moment. “Did we just read what I thought we read? How can there be people in the Bible who are congratulating themselves for dashing little Babylonian babies against the rocks? I thought that the Bible was supposed to be a nice book!”
      It is an awful couple of verses – the kind of passage makes you wish it were just taken out of the Bible altogether. I mean, I think we can appreciate, in this Psalm, that the Jews were rather mad at the Babylonians. The Babylonians had attacked them. They had destroyed their whole country and reduced the city of Jerusalem and the temple of the Lord within it to so much rubble. The Babylonians had taken the Jews as slaves and captives and removed them from their land and made them live by the rivers of Babylon far from home.
      So, yes, they hated the Babylonians and saw them as their enemies and it is hard to blame them for that. I’m sure that we would all understand if they cursed and swore at the Babylonians all they wanted or even if they fought against them if given the chance. But, at the same time, I’m pretty sure that most of us would draw the line at rounding up little Babylonian babies and dashing them against the rocks as a way of getting back at the nation of Babylon for what it had done to them.
      So, yes, we squirm when we read it and would just as soon pretend that the verses weren’t there at a
ll. But, I’ll tell you, I think we need those verses in our Bibles and I’m going to tell you why.
      Today we are observing Remembrance Sunday. It is a day on which we honour the service of those who went and gave of themselves for the sake of their country in wars, conflicts and peacekeeping missions. We honour those who fought and defended. We honour those wounded in body and in spirit and we especially remember those who gave their very lives in service. This is a worthy thing to do. It does us all good, both as Christians and as Canadians, that we set aside time each year to do this.
      It doesn’t mean, of course, that we love war or glorify the violence that comes with war. On the contrary, we also see this time as an opportunity to pray for peace and to support those who work for peace. It’s just that most of us recognize that, as bad as it is, sometimes war cannot be avoided. There is a time to fight. If you look at the case of the Jews and the Babylonians, we can sympathize. We can understand the enmity that the Jews held for the Babylonians and can support the idea that they might have resisted them.
      And that is what the greater part of the psalm we read this morning is about: the Jews grieving and mourning for what has been done to them. Their captors, the Babylonians, make fun of them. They mockingly tell him to sing some of their songs of Zion – to sing the songs that used to be sung in the temple that was built on the top of Mount Zion in the city of Jerusalem before the Babylonians destroyed it. They are rubbing it in and it is just plain mean. For the Jews to chafe and complain and even to seek to fight their way out of their situation is at least understandable.
      But the whole thing about bashing out baby’s brains crosses a line. That’s not about defending yourself or even about fighting back. That is about hate, pure and simple. It is about treating Babylonians as something other than human beings – as objects that can be bashed against the rocks with impunity.
      The reason why I am glad that it is actually there in the Psalm is because it is human. It is a reaction that is natural and all too common in times of war and civil strife. I don’t think that there has ever been a war where people didn’t speak of those that they were fighting against as somewhat less than human. Just think of all the slang terms that have been used for Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Iranians, Somalis and the list goes on and on. You can understand why soldiers do it. It is just so much easier to kill an enemy if you don’t think of them as human anymore – if they are just a Hun or a Jap or a Raghead.
      So I understand where it comes from, but there is also so much that is wrong with it. When we dehumanize anyone, even an enemy, we are ultimately devaluing our own humanity and that is a big problem. And of course, it becomes even worse when the fortunes of war put us in a position where we can actually act on our belief that our enemies are somewhat less than human. Fortunately, the Ancient Israelites were never put in the position where they could actually dash Babylonian babies against the rocks, but unfortunately Canadians, Americans and others have been in that kind of position. The Canadian Airborne Division found itself in that kind of position in Somalia in 1993 and the result was what we know of as the Somalia Affair, one of the worst chapters in Canadian military history. The Americans found themselves in that position at the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war. The results were very disturbing to say the least.
      Enemies can be very useful, of course. They have a way of uniting people together and focusing their efforts towards a clear purpose. And of course, if you can persuade the people in general to treat their enemies as somewhat less than human, it allows you to manipulate people in some very scary ways. I don’t know about you, but I have felt like there has been a lot of that going on recently.
      Look, for example, at the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. With huge numbers of people on the move through Europe and spilling over into the whole world – people fleeing for their lives – of course there are a number of difficult issues that are arising. There are concerns about the economic impact, about security and about what such a large number of outsiders can do to a society. Of course these concerns are there and there is nothing wrong with being concerned about such things.
      But what is a problem is a growing tendency to see the strangers involved in this global disaster as somewhat less than human – to see them as barbarians or terrorists or to focus on the niqab that some women wear. These are all terms that have been freely thrown around in our political discourse and it is worrying to say the least. Some people have been using this kind of language in an attempt to direct the Canadian population in some dangerous directions.
       As I say, I think it is important that this kind of dehumanizing attitude is found in the scriptures. It teaches us that, if the Ancient Israelites had to deal with such attitudes, we have to be prepared to as well. But it would not be good if Psalm 137 were the final word on the attitude we should have towards our enemies. Fortunately, it is not.
      We get another point of view, ironically enough, from one of the most violent and war-minded books of the Bible: the Book of Joshua. In that book, Joshua, the great commander of the forces that are about to sweep through the land of Canaan and to conquer it for the children of Israel has an amazing encounter. He is out walking through his army’s camp when he comes across a soldier – a man he does not know, standing there fully armed with a drawn sword.
      Joshua responds to this, like any of us would, by saying, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” – “Are you a friend or an enemy.” What he doesn’t realize, however, is that he is not confronting just any soldier but a heavenly warrior – the commander of God’s own army. In fact, the suggestion is, he is in the very presence of God. So this ordinary battlefield question – “friend or foe” – actually turns into the great question that people ask in war: is God on our side. And usually the answer to that question is an unqualified yes, of course God is on our side. We almost have to believe that.
      But God has a very different answer for Joshua: “Neither;” he says, “I’m neither on your side nor on the other but as commander of the army of the LordI have now come.” God doesn’t take sides. God certainly doesn’t see your enemies as dehumanized monsters as much as you might like him too. God won’t approve of bashing the little ones against the rocks just because their parents are Babylonians. I wish we could all learn the lesson that Joshua gained that day in his camp.
      Jesus took that kind of approach even further. He felt it wasn’t enough to just see your enemy as a fellow human. “You have heard that it was said,” Jesus challenged his followers, “‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That saying of Jesus is, in its own way, almost as hard for us to hear as that passage from the Psalm about bashing babies against the rocks. In many ways, loving enemies is much more objectionable than is treating them as somehow less than human.
      Of course, in this saying, Jesus was acknowledging that we do have enemies – that, in this dark world, there are people who will be out to get us, to destroy our way of life and even all the good that is in the world. He was being utterly realistic and he was speaking to people who knew very well who their enemies were.
      But it was out of that very realistic view of the world that Jesus brought the command to love your enemies. He said that you had to love them, not for the sake of those enemies who, realistically probably couldn’t care less about your love for them. He said that you had to love them for your own sake – so that you could be all that you were created to be, so that you could be like God, in fact, who could never hate even those who hate him.
      The world is a dark place where there are people who will hate us, threaten us and attack us. That hasn’t changed and that is why we can and must honour the memory of those heroes who put their lives on the line for the sake of all that is good about our country.
      But at the same time, we must never forget that God calls us to see more in the world than just that. He calls us to understand that even those who would destroy us are humans made in God’s image. We cannot rob them of their humanity without robbing ourselves of our own. Are we always going to live up to what Jesus calls us to do – will we always be able to love those enemies? I suspect not. But what Jesus asked for must ever be before us. That is our challenge. Whatever we do, however, we must not give into hatred and treating people as less than human. That is a very dangerous path to go down.

      
Continue reading »

Is it really about freedom of conscience?

Posted by on Friday, November 6th, 2015 in Minister

Freedom of conscience clause eliminated by Church of Iceland

I was reading the above news item from the church of Iceland and some of the online discussion around it today. The reactions that I was read mostly seemed to be from people who have serious theological objections to participation in same sex marriages. The tone of the comments was basically: "See, this is why we can't give an inch on same sex marriage. If we give an inch, they'll take a mile and take away our freedom of conscience to refuse."

It was making me think a lot about what I believe about freedom of conscience.

I really do believe in freedom of conscience. I believe that, when people struggle in good faith with the meaning of the Biblical text and come to a conviction about how they should act, we ought to do what we can to give them the freedom to live out their faith according to their conscience.

There are, of course, some limits to that. We couldn't possibly tolerate someone who sincerely believed, for example, that the Bible was telling them to commit genocide. So there are limits and some of those limits will be hard to work out, but I really do feel that freedom of conscience is a valuable thing and that we should do what we can to protect it.

But there is something that puzzles me in this discussion. People seem to be talking under the assumption that we have freedom of conscience now and we don't - not by a long shot.

What about the many friends I have who have struggled with the scriptures and what they say about homosexuality, relationships and family and have come to the conclusion that there is no good scriptural reason for them to refuse to perform the marriage of a same sex couple - that it would be morally wrong, in fact, if they refused. Do they have the freedom to act according to their conscience? No, they don't at this time.

Now, to be completely honest, I do largely agree with the reasoning and biblical interpretation of these friends of mine, but that is not the point. If I believe in freedom of conscience, it should not matter whether I agree with the conclusions of my sisters and brothers in Christ, I should be willing to do whatever I can to protect that freedom. (And if someone comes back to me and says that they are free to pursue their ministry in another denomination, I would ask, "Well, don't the ministers in the Church of Iceland have that same freedom? So what are you complaining about?)

So, if people are arguing that we need to protect freedom of conscience for people who feel that they cannot participate in same sex marriages by denying freedom of conscience to those whose conscience tells them that they need to participate, we have a problem.

It makes me think that freedom of conscience is not the issue here.

I do hope that our church finds a way to allow people to act according to their conscience. That is important and valuable to me. That is not where we are now.
Continue reading »

Script Out Passages: The men of her town shall take her and stone her to death.

Posted by on Sunday, November 1st, 2015 in Minister

St. Andrew's Stars Episode that goes with this sermon:



Hespeler, November 1, 2015 © Scott McAndless
Deuteronomy 22:13-30, Matthew 21:28-32, Psalm 72:1-14
I
f you are going to look at the passages of the Bible that people sometimes struggle with and maybe even sometimes wish weren’t there at all, you are going to end up, sooner or later, talking about sexual morality. Well, today is that day and we are going to delve into some of the sexual themed passages of the Bible.
      Talking to some people, of course, you will definitely get the impression that the Bible is all about sexual morality, that the only thing that matters, as far as the Bible is concerned, is what happens in the bedroom. Certainly when you hear somebody complain about how nobody follows Biblical morality anymore, you can be almost certain that the morality that they have in mind is the sexual kind. For many people, that is the only Biblical morality that matters.
      Now, is it actually true that the Bible is totally obsessed with sexual morality? Not really. At most, sex is just one of many moral subjects that the Bible spends time talking about. It is a concern, but it’s not as central as some would make it out to be. And there are some things that Bible does say on the subject that we would have trouble with. And I’m not saying that because I think that so many of us are liberal-minded people. There is lots of what the Bible says about sex that even the most conservative among us would find downright immoral and perhaps even evil.
      Much of the Bible takes it for granted, for example, that polygamy is fine and dandy. King Solomon, one of the great heroes of the biblical tradition, had over 700 wives and 300 concubines. It
is also taken for granted that, if a woman is unable to have a child, she can force her maidservant to sleep with her husband and bear a child for her. Fathers are permitted to sell their daughters into sexual slavery, women can be forced to marry the men who rape them and should also be stoned to death if their hymen doesn’t bleed on their wedding night. These are all things that do not fit with what we would call good and positive sexual morality and many of them we would even condemn as abusive and criminal.
      But even more troubling than the specific laws and practices that are found in the Bible, are the assumptions that lie behind them. Look, for example, at the laws of sexual morality that we read from the Book of Deuteronomy this morning and ask the question what are the assumptions behind those laws. These laws assume, for example, that virginity is very important – but only female virginity. The sexual history of a man never seems to be a concern.
      Nevertheless, female virgin­ity was clearly something that was valued. In fact, it was so valued that, if it was questioned or stolen by rape, it was given a cash value – a compensation that had to be paid. But here’s the thing. The compensation was always to be paid, not to the woman, but to her father. The underlying assumption was that the father (not the woman herself) was the victim when a woman was raped or dishonoured in any way. That is kind of messed up, but that was clearly how they saw it.
      That is because of another, deeper assumption behind all of this – the assumption that a woman was not a person so much as she was a piece of property. She was a valuable asset who belonged to her father until she was passed onto someone else in marriage. That is why, if that asset was devalued in any way, some sort of compensation had to be paid to her “owner.”
      Another assumption is clear: marriage was a transaction. It was sometimes a straight-up economic transaction where a woman was sold in exchange for wealth or property. It was sometimes a social transaction where families allied themselves through marriage to build up their standing in the community. But there was always something to be gained (for the men involved at least) through marriage. Women could also at least hope for some sort of economic security through marriage, but that was about the only benefit theygot.
      One thing that marriage was definitely not about was love. That is not to say that couples didn’t sometimes love one another. We are told, for example, the Patriarch Jacob did love one of his four wives. King David was apparently also quite fond of one or two of his wives. We are never told, in the Bible about women who were in love with their husbands because nobody cared about that. But anyways, perhaps some who were lucky would find love or domestic harmony in marriage, but that clearly wasn’t what marriage was about.
      A woman’s desires or wishes didn’t matter at all. But I personally don’t think that the nature of human beings – men and women – has changed all that much in the last few thousand years, so I am pretty sure that both men and women did have desires and wishes and even (gasp) urges back then. So what did a woman who had been engaged to marry a man that she had never met by her family and who fell in love with another man who wanted to be with her do? Such a woman had no recourse. If she met and slept with her beloved in the city, they’d both be stoned to death – he for raping her and she for failing to cry out. If they met in the countryside, she would survive and he would die so that was not much better.
      And that brings us to the question of consent. Consent, for modern people is absolutely essential to the moral and legal definition of rape. Basically, for our modern legal system and for most of our moral judgements, if someone has sex with someone else without their freely given consent, that is just plain wrong and usually falls under the definition of rape. When you consider that certain classes of beings (including children) are not considered to be competent to give their consent, that really covers a wide range of sexual offenses.
      Interestingly enough, the Bible seems to have pretty much the same definition of rape – it defines it as sex without consent. But here is the difference: in that society, no woman of any age was considered competent to give consent. Consent was something that could only be given by her father or by some other controlling male in her life. This is because of the other key assumption lying behind all of these laws: that a woman wasn’t a person and certainly wasn’t, by any measure, equal to any man.
      So here is our problem: there are important moral issues around how people live out their sexuality. As Christians we need some help to make right choices around sexuality. As a church, we surely should have some worthwhile and helpful things to say on the subject. But, after examining passages like this one, I really have to wonder what we’re supposed to base those things on because to lift up these particular laws, that make cultural assumptions that we just don’t agree with, doesn’t make sense.
      And, let me be clear here: I do see these things as cultural assumptions and not as fundamental truths. Whatever the people of Israel understood of the justice and righteousness and faithfulness of their God – an understanding that developed over time – it was filtered through their culture and all of the assumptions that came with that culture. How could it be otherwise? Just like they assumed that the earth was flat and that the sky was a solid blue dome and filtered their understanding of the creator that they had come to know through those assumptions, they filtered the moral nature of their God through their cultural baggage.
      So we don’t have to take on these ancient cultural assumptions ourselves just because they lie behind these biblical laws. But, of course, if we don’t accept the assumptions they are based on, how can we just take the Biblical laws and rules around sexuality and apply them uncritically today? How can we judge people morally by laws that are based on assumptions that we don’t agree with? That is our problem.
      So we need to develop a sense of sexual morality – what is acceptable and what isn’t. In fact, I would suggest that our society is in deep need for some guidance about how to live out our sexual lives and relationships. But we are going to have to do more than just read laws and rules out of the Bible and apply them directly to today. Nevertheless, the Bible can help us a great deal as we seek to do this.
      There are principles that we can take from the Bible and apply to modern relationships, provided that we find ways to correct the underlying assumptions. For example, we do find this notion of consent in the Bible – that sex needs to be consensual to be positive. Of course, when we look at it we find the assumption that a woman isn’t competent to give consent – that only her father can give it for her – to be ridiculous. But the correctives for that flawed assumption can be found in the Bible itself. We see it in the life and ministry of ministry of Jesus of Nazareth who treated the women he met with dignity and respect – who recognized that they were autonomous persons capable of making their own decisions.
      Do you realize, after all, how radical that saying of Jesus in our gospel reading this morning is? “Truly I tell you,” he said, “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” He was talking to religious people, very self-righteous religious people, and told them that prostitutes were ahead of them in God’s kingdom. I’m sure that if you had been standing there you would have seen all of their jaws drop when he said it.
      They were standing there feeling so certain that they knew who the sinners were and that it wasn’t them. They especially thought that women who strayed, even just a little, from the strict sexual rules, and especially women who dared to take control of their own lives and bodies, were wicked. All such women were despised and treated as prostitutes and yet Jesus dared to elevate these women ahead of these self-righteous men. I think that that is a pretty fair indicator that Jesus felt that grown women were able to take control of consent for what happened to their bodies.
      So we can take the basic principles we find in the Bible and yet use the words and actions of Jesus to give a correction to the mistaken underlying attitudes. I think that we can do the same thing with laws around the valuing of virginity, the need for fidelity and the respect for boundaries. There are good principles that are found in the Old Testament laws. So long as we can correct for any negative cultural assumptions like the inequality of the sexes or the loss of freedom of choice by referring to the teachings of Jesus and the early church, these biblical principles can still serve us well.
      I would say that I do have a sexual morality – a morality that is, in my view biblically based even though I don’t just try and lift Old Testament laws and apply them today and I do not see some things as previous generations of Christians might have. I believe that sex is a very good thing. It is not just given for procreation but also to bring many positive blessings in relationship. I believe that it is God’s intention that sex be experienced in committed and loving relationships where both parties are treated with respect and valued for who they are. It is in such relationships that sex can find its highest and best expression as God intended.
      I do think that we are all called to do our best to encourage relationships and institutions (like marriage) and supports to relationships in which sex in its best form can flourish. That doesn’t mean that I am interested in coming down in judgement on those who haven’t been able to find that yet and I am certainly not going to condemn people for their past mistakes, especially when they are working on correcting them. Nevertheless, I don’t think we need to apologize for being committed to making sex as good at God intended it to be.
      My desire, above all, is to define sex positively. There has been too much negativity around this good gift of God down through the Christian centuries. I look forward to getting out from under that kind of negative cultural baggage.
      I am not saying, of course, that you should just adopt my understanding and approach to sexual morality. What I am saying, though, is that there is something that you need to work out here. You can’t just lift your notions of what is right and what is wrong from the pages of Scripture – not without examining what is says and what it is assuming. That can be hard work, but I think it is very important and worthwhile work.

Sermon video:



      
Continue reading »