Hespeler, 18 October, 2015 © Scott McAndless – Baptism

Psalm 25:1-13, Mark 10:13-16, 2 Kings 2:15-25

I

f you swallow your chewing gum, what will happen to it? Everybody knows the answer to that! If you swallow your gum, it will sit in your stomach and it will take seven years to digest – seven years! How do I know that? Bobby, my very best friend in the second grade told me so. And it was confirmed by all my ther friends too. So it must be true.

      Now, is it true in the strictest sense? If you were to actually do an MRI on a kid who made a habit of swallowing chewing gum, would you find any evidence of gum that had been in the digestive tract for several years? (Yes, there are pediatricians who have looked, at least while they there were searching for other things.) And the answer is no. In the strictest sense it isn’t exactly true and you wouldn’t find any gum that had been there for more than a week. But, all the same, you might say that it is kind of trueish.

      It is true, after all, that the main ingredients of chewing gum are not able to be broken down by your body. It is true that it has happened that chronic gum swallowers have managed to create intestinal blockages in rare cases. So, while an occasional swallowed piece of gum will not hurt you at all, it actually is something that is better avoided.

      I do not know who created the seven year story about chewing gum. For all I know, it is as old as chewing gum

      That is something that I hope you keep in mind as we turn to our Old Testament reading this morning. When I posted my little Script Out commercial video on the internet and asked people to respond back to me with what they thought of as the worst passages in the Bible (the stories and sayings that, as far as they were concerned, they’d just as soon weren’t in the Bible at all) the first response I got was from someone who brought up the story of Elisha, the 42 boys and the two she-bears.

      You can understand why. The small boys in this story do not behave as they should. They fail to show due respect for a man who deserves some respect. Elisha is a man of God who has taken on the difficult and demanding job of speaking the word of the Lord to the people. The boys insult him in two ways. They insult him for being bald and men, as we all know, can be a bit sensitive about male pattern baldness. The boys also appear to insult him with the words, “go away,” which may also be translated as, “go up.” This is probably meant to be a reference to how the Prophet Elijah, Elisha’s teacher and master, has recently disappeared and, according to the story that has spread around, has gone directly up into heaven riding on a chariot of fire. They are taunting him by saying that he should do as his master has done.

      But, whatever exactly the young lads mean with their taunts, there is no question that they are not showing a lot of respect to Elisha when they say, “Go away, baldhead.” They are clearly showing disrespect and no one disputes that. The thing that people have problems with is the reaction to that disrespect. First, Elisha curses the boys. A bit extreme, perhaps, but, if it is the equivalent of saying “Darn you crazy kids,” I guess it’s not a totally terrible thing to say.

      But, apparently, it’s not just “darn you crazy kids.” We are certainly left with the impression that Elisha’s curse is immediately effective and that it is, in fact, the cause of the sudden appearance of two murderous female bears.

      Now wait one minute here. I get that these kids were disrespectful, and perhaps deserved some punishment for that. I could see giving them a time out, making them write some lines on the chalkboard: “I will not call people baldhead. I will not call people baldhead. I will not call people baldhead. I will not call people baldhead.”

      But how can you call a murderous rampage by the local wildlife a reasonable punishment? And, let me tell you, if that was what this story was all about, I might argue that we need to get rid of it. But I’m not convinced that that is what it’s about.

      I think we need to ask the question, what is the purpose of this story? Why was it told in the first place? Why was it remembered and eventually written down? Why was it felt to be important enough to be preserved in a book that eventually made it into our Bibles? I don’t think that anyone did any of that because they felt that this story was a good example of how to treat disrespectful children.

      If you look at this passage, it’s pretty clear what purpose the stories that we read this morning had. They are stories that were told to establish the reputation of a very important biblical figure: the Prophet Elisha. Elisha was the man who succeeded the greatest prophet that Israel had ever known: Elijah. Elijah had done amazing things: he had challenged the king of Israel to his face, he had taken on the prophets of Ba’al singlehandedly and defeated them. What’s more, these amazing stories had accumulated around the figure of Elijah: miracles, wonders and signs. That is the act that Elisha had to follow.

      It is like what happens in a church when a new minister comes in following the ministry of a beloved and dynamic minister. The new minister constantly finds herself or himself being measured up against the old – a process that can frankly be rather draining and dispiriting (because we all need to be appreciated for who we are). Understandably Elisha, and maybe especially his disciples and faithful supporters, felt the need to establish the new guy’s reputation. But how do you do that? You obviously do it by spreading around stories that mark your guy as the one to watch.

      And that is exactly what we see in the Book of Kings. Stories about miracles and wonders began to spring up wherever Elisha went. That is not to say, of course, that these stories weren’t based in reality. Sure, I can believe that Elisha did perform wonders, but the point of those stories was not merely to report what had happened. The stories were told and remembered and passed down in order to establish the credentials of God’s newest prophet.

      The story of the she-bears is a perfect example. What is actually told in this story? It says that when Elisha was passing through someplace on his way to Bethel, he was disrespected by some local children and he cursed them: “Darn you crazy kids!” Now, the story is told in such a way as to imply that the bear attack was brought on by the curse. But I hope you noticed it doesn’t actually say that the curse caused the bears to attack. The timing is also kind of deliberately vague. The story once again implies that the bear attack happened immediately after the curse, but it doesn’t quite say that. It could have happened any time after.

      I can imagine that it happened kind of like this. There was a bear attack – the kind of tragedy that can and does happen in any place where human settlements are built up within the habitat of predators like bears – the kind of tragedy the undoubtedly did happen from time to time in ancient Israel as much as in other ancient societies. And when tragedies like that happen, what do people do? People start asking why. Why did this terrible thing happen?

      And somebody said, “Remember when that Prophet, that man Elisha, passed through a few weeks ago? Maybe some of the kids (in fact, I think it could have been some of those same kids who got killed by the bears) made fun of the prophet. Did some of you see that?”

      And everybody solemnly nodded. They nodded even if they didn’t actually remember such an incident or if the events were being exaggerated because, when tragedy happens, people are so often desperate to make sense of it that they will grasp onto any explanation that seems to work – even if that means blaming the victims of a tragedy. Was it true that their disrespect caused the attack? No. The Bible is actually careful not to draw a direct line between curse and effect. But people held onto that explanation because it promised to give sense to something that was otherwise senseless.

      But the story wasn’t remembered and passed down because of that false meaning. It was remembered and passed down because the story eventually made its way to the disciples of Elisha who grabbed onto it because, for them, it illustrated the importance of the prophet that they revered and it underlined the need to treat prophets with respect. And that’s why the story is in our Bibles – because it had a particular usefulness within a particular community. Yes, maybe sometimes parents told the story to disrespectful children to scare them into behaving better, kind of like parents tell the story about the gum that takes seven years to digest to scare their children into not swallowing their gum, but no one seriously believed that it was literally true in the sense that there were bears prowling around looking for disrespectful children. You need to judge the story according to how the story was used and according to the meaning that the people who told it put into it.

      Of course, on a day like this, when we have had the joy and the privilege to welcome a little infant named Olivia into the life of the church through the sacrament of baptism, I can’t help but wonder what this ancient story that was used to build up the reputation of the Prophet Elisha might have to say to us.

      It is true that people still sometimes take the attitude that is behind the story and apply it to the place and role of children in the church. There are certainly people who get upset, from time to time, at the presence of children in the life of the church because they can be disruptive, unpredictable and noisy. Sometimes people interpret that as disrespect and while I have never heard anyone who would have wanted to see anything like an attack of killer bears, people have gotten pretty upset.

      And it is true that respect for our spiritual leaders is important. They are people whom God has uniquely gifted and called to key roles and when we fail to respect those roles and offices, the church can become a very negative place. But, honestly, if we are looking for an application of the story of Elisha, the boys and the she-bears to the life of the church, it is not the children that I would be concerned about. Children are just being who they were made to be. This story was told to teach adultsabout respect for the prophet, not the children.

      And look what happened to Jesus when he found himself in a similar situation. These women were bringing their little children up to him and the disciples were concerned that these kids might somehow do or say something that might disrespect the growing importance and reputation of Jesus. So the disciples took on the role of the she-bears: attacking the children, not with claws, of course, but with words. But Jesus rebuked them, making it perfectly clear that that is not how we must apply that story.

      In fact, Jesus didn’t just say that the children could come, he said that the kingdom of God belonged to them and that they were the ones to teach others how to enter it. In essence, Jesus took the story of the boys and the she-bears and turned it all on its head. He was saying that, instead of being critical of the children and their ways, we ought to learn from them as we seek to be part of the kingdom of God ourselves.

      In effect, it is almost as if Jesus is saying to us today that, of all the people who are gathered here, Olivia is the one who really gets it. That is humbling for the rest of us, I know, but hopefully it is a teachable moment as well.

      The story of Elisha, the boys and the bears is shocking. It was meant to be. But sometimes, when we are dealing with the scriptures, we need to look beyond the shock factor in a verse to find another meaning that actually can apply to our lives in constructive ways. This, I think, is one such passage.

      

Narrator: It is dark, well past midnight, and in the middle of the field where they found the manger, the small family is huddled near a little fire. Joseph sits and watches the infant sleeping in the manger. It is a boy, just like Mary had assured him it would be—a tiny little boy who sleeps contentedly for the moment, his stomach full of milk.

Narrator: The boy’s mother also sleeps, rolled in a blanket nearby, taking advantage of the brief respite from the babe’s demands. Joseph, though he has every reason to be exhausted, finds that he is wide awake.

Narrator: It is a beautiful night, the stars blaze down from a moonless, cloudless sky and he is content to simply marvel at the sight of the child sleeping and watch his little chest rising and falling underneath the swaddling clothes.

Narrator: Suddenly the babe stirs. He grimaces and for a moment Joseph fears that he is about to wake. And he knows that if the child cries, it will wake Mary and she really needs her rest.

Joseph: (To the child) Shhhhhhalom. Shhhhhalom.

Narrator:“Shalom,” Joseph says to the child. The word means “peace,” which gets him thinking about peace. 

Narrator:There were some local shepherds who came by earlier this night telling wild stories:

Shepherd:We were just minding our own business, taking care of our sheep.

Shepherd:All of a sudden there were angels everywhere!

Shepherd:They sang about peace on earth and people of good will.

Shepherds:(All together) It was totally awesome!

Narrator:The Romans always talk about peace. They say that that is what their empire is all about. But when they talk about peace, what they really mean is that, once they have defeated all of their enemies, no one will be left who is strong enough to resist whatever they want to do. Who needs that kind of peace?

Narrator:But now, sitting here, watching the child sleep and thinking of the strange words of the shepherds, he wonders if there couldn’t be another kind of peace—one that doesn’t come at the point of a sword—a peace from heaven.

Narrator: Joseph has always been taught that the land is a gift of God to all the families of Israel. The gift came, in the ancient days, by means of God’s servant Joshua. It came through conquest and battle and violence. That is why Joseph has always assumed that, if the land is ever to be reclaimed for the families of Israel, it will have to be through more violence.

Narrator: But the words of the shepherds and the sight of this child of promise sleeping so peacefully have made Joseph think differently about such things. Perhaps what they really need now is not for the old Joshua and his ways to return. Perhaps the need is for a new Joshua and a new way.

Narrator: That is why Joseph has decided that the boy will be named Joshua. He knows it’s the right name for this child. In Aramaic (the common speech of the people), it will be…

Joseph:Yeshua!

Narrator: Joseph doesn’t know this, but in Greek—the language spoken throughout the Eastern Empire, the language of Caesar and all his minions—the child’s name will mean the same thing but it will sound different for in Greek, someday, they will call him Jesus.

Genesis 1:26-2:3, Mark 10:35-45, Psalm 24
     There is so much that is so right about the Harvest Festival of Thanksgiving. It is a day to be thankful, but thankful in very particular ways. We especially focus on the good things that are provided to us by the earth itself – the fruits and vegetables, the bountiful harvest, the grain, the meat and the wonderful foods that we can create when we put them all together.

      It is good to be thankful for these things because they are good things provided for our blessing. And, yes, one of the ways in which we connect to our thankfulness for these things can be by overindulging in them. I don’t know about you, but I fully intend to express my thankfulness specifically for turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy in some very concrete ways when I gather with my family at my sister’s place tomorrow. These things are not just given for our sustenance but also so that we might rejoice in abundance.

Hespeler, 4 October, 2015 © Scott McAndless – World Communion

Mark 9:42-49, Romans 16:17-20, 1 Corinthians 12:12-26

Since the beginning of September, as most of you will know, I have been talking about what I call the Script Outâ passages of the Bible – the verses that we love to hate for all kinds of reasons. What I haven’t told you is that I have done something like this before. I did a somewhat similar series of sermons at my last church where I chose to preach on the worst Bible passages I could find. I am a bit of a bear for punishment.

      That time, however, I did make one mistake. We had a prominent sign in front of the church and I had one man who would put my various sermon titles on the sign each week. Well, during this series, this guy came to me and asked me what he should put on the sign. I, foolishly, just wrote out the actual texts of the Bible verses I was preaching on and nothing more. I mean, who could object if we just put the actual words of the Bible in front of a church? And anyways, I had never had complaints about what appeared on the church sign!

      I got complaints about what appeared on the church sign. It was bad enough the week when I preached on the verse that says, “Women should be silent in the churches.” (1 Corinthian 14:3) In hindsight, I probably should have seen that one coming. But that was not the worst phone call I got. That one came on the week that I preached on this morning’s Script Out^â passage: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” I had someone call me up and tell me off for saying such a horrible thing. Of course, I didn’t say it. Apparently Jesus did.

      But I certainly had a lot of sympathy for the person who called me up. I too have a great many issues with that little saying of Jesus. I wouldn’t have too much trouble with it, perhaps, if I didn’t know how at least some people had read it down through the centuries. There have been too many Christians who have been far too quick to take this verse quite literally and start actually chopping off body parts in an effort to free themselves from sin. In ancient times, there was a saint named Origen who, in his youth, read this passage and decided that it was God’s instruction to him that he should mutilate himself and so he castrated himself.

      Many people think that Origen did come to regret what he had done in his youth – regretted it so much that he went onto develop an entire way of approaching the Scriptures in order to avoid literal interpretations. He had come to see how dangerous that could be. But the damage had clearly already been done for him. And Origen wasn’t the only one. There was a Christian sect in Russia, known as the Skoptsy, that also practiced self-mutilation in a quest for perfection and freedom from sin. It is scary to think that we have in our Bibles a text that really could drive people to such extreme and dangerous acts.

      So, absolutely, the first thing that I feel I must say about this passage is that it is not to be taken literally. To that end, I have made sure that there are absolutely no knives, axes or saws anywhere in the church this morning. (Okay, there are probably a few knives down in the kitchen but I don’t want anybody touching them, okay?) But, as much as I want that to be perfectly clear, how am I supposed

      One thing I see is that it is almost impossible to read it literally because a literal reading leads to absurd results. Look at this line: “And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off.” How could that possibly make any logical sense? In what possible reality can you imagine a person stumbling while walking with two feet finding a solution to that problem by choosing, instead, to try and walk only with one? That doesn’t make any sense.

      Nor do the other examples really make much sense. I mean, would anyone ever accept the excuse from someone who was arrested for shoplifting that it wasn’t their fault because their hand made them do it. Would anyone pardon someone who was charged with treason because they made the excuse that it was their eye’s fault, and so not theirs, that they looked at state secrets? Of course not! Though we might be tempted sometimes to blame our body and its desires for some of the things that we do that we later regret (Why did I let my stomach talk me into that extra piece of cake!), we all know that such excuses really don’t hold any water.

      So I really think that we can clearly reject the errors that people have made by reading this passage literally. But that alone is not good enough. It is not good enough just to avoid the worst possible abuses of a certain passage of Scripture because this is Scripture and, as such, something that has been given to us in order to be a blessing to us and not just something that we need to avoid the negative implications of.

      How can we then approach this passage so that it can be a real blessing to us? One thing that might help is not to take it too personally. The tendency is to assume that it is all about me as an individual – about my own personal righteousness and goodness and about getting me into heaven (or at least getting me out of hell).

      You see that particularly among those communities who did take this passage literally. The Russian Skoptsy, for example, congratulated themselves that, because of their physical sacrifices, they were obviously better, more pure and righteous than everyone else. When people start thinking that way, even if they don’t go in for self-harming, it usually does not end up in a good place.

      But what if Jesus never intended for this to be taken as a lesson on personal righteousness and purity? What if it wasn’t just about getting the individual right and pure with God? According to the Gospel of Mark, these sayings came up, not in the midst of discussions about personal righteousness but about how the community of disciples lived together – about who led and how they treated the “little ones.” What’s more, Jesus was talking about who belongs in the kingdom of God, which for him was always about community and how people treated one another.

      And what if the consequences of the “sin” he was talking about weren’t just about what we traditionally think of as heaven and hell. Jesus talks about entering the “kingdom of God,” which we often take to mean entering heaven after death. But I am convinced that most of the time, when Jesus was talking about the kingdom he was talking about a present reality – about experiencing the presence of God in this life. So maybe when he talks about avoiding “hell” and the “unquenchable fire,” he is also talking about avoiding a present reality as well – the particular hell that we build for ourselves when we hurt and wound and fight each other.

      That makes me think that maybe, a good application of what Jesus was really talking about in this passage might be found in the reading we had from the Letter to the Romans this morning. Paul addresses the Christians in Rome and says, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites.” You see, the sin that affects us all the most is the sin that occurs in community and particularly when people in a community get so caught up in their own appetites – taking care of what they see as their own needs and building their own little power centres – that they stop caring about how they might hurt others.

      You hate to think that such things can happen in the life of a church, a place that is supposed to be dedicated to peace and reconciliation, but they do. And the effects can be so destructive that the kind of response that Jesus was talking about may sometimes be necessary. Sometimes there are people who need to be cut off from the community of the church.

      That is not something that we generally practice in our church today. There was a time when it was very common. Today we will be celebrating communion and Presbyterians used to practice something called “fencing” the communion table. Prior to communion, instead of just inviting people to come to the table and share in communion, the minister would build an imaginary fence around it by telling the congregation who was not welcome to come to the table sometimes by saying which personal offenses disqualified them from coming and sometime by specifically naming the people who were not permitted to take communion.

      It was not a nice practice, especially because it was most often used as a way to control people’s personal lives and to impose a personal righteousness and purity that may not have been helpful. It was more about judging people than helping people. I’m not really all that interested in returning to that kind of practice. But I can’t help but think that there might be some times when people who are causing hurt to others need to be cut off from the community of the church.

      Yet, even there, actually telling someone that they can no longer be a part of the church is surely something that we ought not to have to resort to except in very extreme cases. For surely, when people do that, when they become so caught up in pursuing their own power or desires, that doesn’t come from nowhere. Often they will do it because, somewhere deep inside, they are struggling maybe with their own insecurities or because they are carrying around the wounds that other people have inflicted on their spirit.

      And, let me ask you, when someone is hurting other people in the church because they themselves were hurt by someone they trusted in the past or because they feel like they have to get everyone to do things their way because they never got the approval they needed when they were growing up (I only use these cases as made up examples but when there’s something like that going on), what needs to be cut off? In the vast majority of cases what is needed is not to cut that person off from the church. Maybe what is needed is for the church to help them to cut off the things that they carry that cause them to behave in such ways?

      You see, the reality is that your hand isn’t what causes you to sin, neither does your foot or your eye. These things are just the tools that you sometimes use to do bad things. My dream and my hope for the church is that it could be a place where we help people to deal with the things that actually do cause them to hurt others – where we are able to bring the things that we carry around inside us that have hurt us or have made us afraid and help each other to cut them off from our lives. Now, that is not something that is going to happen easily. It is going to have to take some trust and honesty. It is going to take being willing to open up with each other in ways that might even be uncomfortable. It is certainly nothing that is going to happen overnight. But I think that it can happen.

      The communion that we will celebrate in a little while will be open to all. I won’t build any fences around the table. But I hope you don’t come carelessly. We need a community that is mutually supportive, where we deal with the things that may make us sometimes hurt and wound one another if we are not careful, where we are a blessing upon one another. The communion, that mutual sharing, is supposed to be a symbol of that. It is supposed to be that moment where our unity and harmony is on display.

      I hope, as we approach this table, we can all examine ourselves and find that our inner lives are in accord with this outer symbol. I hope that if there is anything that is keeping us from doing that, that with God’s help and the help of our sisters and brothers, we can cut it off.

     

      

Hespeler, 27 September, 2015 © Scott McAndless

1 Samuel 15:1-21, Psalm 137, Colossians 1:15-20

I have been talking about what I call Script Out^® passages for a few weeks now – passages from the Bible that we like to ignore or pretend like they aren’t there at all. It is something that we often do because a passage makes us feel uncomfortable. And I’ve been thinking this week, that there is a certain power in discomfort.

      I mean, consider the really extraordinary things that have happened this month because of discomfort. At the beginning of September, the world had been in the throes of a full blown humanitarian disaster for quite some time. As a result of a revolt in the region of Syria and Iraq, driven by an organization called ISIS, and made worse by the anti-insurgency tactics of the Syrian government, there was this huge movement of people who were on the move trying to save their lives, their families and some sense of hope.

      Many reports were filed on this disaster. All kinds of information was freely available. But most of the world barely even noticed until there was a picture. And you all know which picture I mean because I know that you’ve all seen it – a picture of three year old Aylan Kurdi lying face down in the water on the beach of a Turkish resort town.

   
   I didn’t want to show you the picture. I hate to see the picture and I’m sure you do too. And I thought about not showing it but I think I have to because that picture did what no report could have done because it is one thing to talk about the statistics of a human tragedy like what’s happening in Syria. It is quite another thing to put a human face – and especially a child’s face – on that tragedy. And, yes, it makes us mad and it makes us upset, but at least it made us notice.

      The human-caused tragedy unfolding in Syria is not a new thing. It has happened again and again throughout human history and it has usually, like this time, been driven by the hatred or fear of those who are different in one way or another. In particular, racial, tribal and religious differences have played a huge role in the atrocities that have been committed down through the ages. And if we’re going to be people of faith we can’t ignore that, as much as we might like to.

      Now, to say that religion has played a role in such terrible stories is not the same thing as saying that religion is the cause of these things. I am not a person who would blame all of the terrible atrocities that happen in this world on religion. But it would be extremely foolish for us to ignore the role played by religion because, when we ignore it, we practically guarantee that it will just keep happening.

      And, to be painfully clear, as much as we might like to think so, it is not just something that belongs to other religious traditions. It is an intimate part of our own. There are several passages in the Bible where atrocities such as genocide, cultural genocide and mass deportation are not just tolerated but actively endorsed. All of these passages are what I call Script Out^® passages – passages that we like to pretend aren’t there. We don’t read them, don’t talk about them, they might as well not exist at all so why not just take a bottle of my trademarked liquid and literally remove them.

     A perfect example of that kind of passage is the story about Saul, the first king of Israel and the Prophet Samuel. The land is threatened by foreign invaders – the Amalekites. But Samuel, speaking for God, doesn’t just tell Saul to fight in defense of the nation. He goes a lot further than that and “Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” He is specifically (and in the name of God) ordering Saul to commit what we would call genocide today. It is one thing to kill the combatants in a conflict, it is quite another to target those not fighting including, in that case, women, children, infants! and even the domesticated animals.
gives very specific instructions:

      And not only does God order, through Samuel, this slaughter, but when Saul fails to follow the orders to the letter, he gets chewed out for it and essentially fired from his job as king. (And it is not even as if Saul hesitated to kill the children and infants, he was apparently fine with that. His sin, according to Samuel, is that he doesn’t quite slaughter all of the cattle.)

      So we seem to have a whole-hearted endorsement of the practice of genocide right here in the Bible. And passages like this one have definitely been used to justify terrible acts down through Christian history. Although Nazism in Germany did eventually go far from Christianity in its pursuit of what it called pure Aryan Religion, it also appealed to the cultural genocide described in the biblical Book of Ezra as justification of its policy of racial purity. White South Africans used the Book of Joshua and its account of the genocidal conquest of the Promised Land as justification of its policy of Apartheid. If you had been on the ground during the Bosnian genocide, you would have heard both Orthodox and Catholic Christians (who were killing each other as well as Muslims) appealing to the Bible for what they did.

      For these and many other reasons, I’m sure that many of you would agree that this is a definite Script Out^â passage – that we’d all feel much more comfortable if I just took out my bottle of Script Out^â and removed it completely from my Bible. But I’m not going to do that. And the reason why I’m not going to do that is the same reason why I don’t think we should shy away from the picture of Aylan Kurdi, because there is a real power in those things that make us feel very uncomfortable even about the Bible.

      I’ll tell you what I think happened in that story of Samuel, Saul and the Amalekites. I don’t have any real trouble seeing that Samuel was speaking for God in much that he said. In fact, I think it went something like this:

      Saul, the king, said to Samuel, “Samuel, our land is being overrun by these Amalekites. The people are in danger and are desperate for some help. What should I do, Samuel?”

      And so Samuel went to God with this question: “God, what should the king do about this Amalekite problem?”

      And so God said to Samuel, “The king must call up the tribes. The people must come together and fight. Sometimes, that’s just what you have to do.”

      Samuel didn’t have any problem with those instructions so he just passed them on to Saul who organized his armies. But then, Saul noticed something about the enemy and he came back to the prophet for further instructions.

      “Samuel, I have noticed that these Amalekites have a lot of non-combatants with them. They have women and children and even infants. They also have a lot of cattle and other animals. If God gives us the victory... I mean when God gives us victory, what do we do with the non-combatants?”

      Samuel took the issue to God, and God’s answer must have been something along the lines of this: “Non-combatants? What, are you crazy? You can’t kill them. That would be wrong. Let them escape across the Nile River.”

      And Samuel got that answer, but how clearly did he get it? There may have been something that interfered with his reception, some static on the line as it were. The thing that might have interfered was Samuel’s own prejudice against and hatred of these Amalekites. The message may have been, “Let them escape across the Nile,” but the message Samuel passed on to Saul was, “You should annihilate them!”

      I believe that has often happened throughout history. God’s message of justice, his hatred of violence and oppression, his love of mercy has always been there. The message hasn’t changed but it has sometimes been corrupted by the people receiving and passing on that message – corrupted most often by the messengers’ own fears and prejudices and hatreds.

      And that is reflected even in the pages of Scripture. Yes, we believe that the Scriptures are inspired by God. But that does not mean that they were dictatedby God. Inspiration works like this: people experienced God in various ways and the accounts of what they experienced and what they learned came to be written down in the Bible. But that truth about God was always limited by their own human knowledge and understanding.

      That is why, though the Scriptures are absolutely essential to us as Christians, they are not and cannot be our ultimate authority. God knew that no matter how well-inspired the Bible was, it would always be limited by the humans who transmitted it. So, we believe, 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. For Christians, the real reason why the Bible (both the Old and the New Testament) has authority is because it bears witness to the one who is our ultimate authority: our Lord Jesus.

      So, while those passages that endorse things like genocide are still there in the Bible, we cannot and must not let them be our guide. If God most fully revealed Godself in the person of Jesus Christ, then the God that we know through Jesus would never approve of such things.

      And yet, the passages are still there in our Bible. They have not disappeared from our Bibles and, as much as we might like to, I say we cannot use our bottles of Script Out^®to remove them. So what possible purpose could they have in our Christian lives? I would say that they are there to make us feel uncomfortable. They are there, right in your Bibles, as a permanent reminder that it is always possible for our hatred and fear and suspicion of a people who are different from us to interfere with the clear message of love and mercy and acceptance that God has given to us in Jesus Christ. These passages remind us that we can do it too. And that might be hard for us to see – as hard as seeing a picture of a three year old boy lying in the surf – but I hope it may at least prompt us to action as that picture has.

      I can think of one key application of this. This spring, Canada completed something truly exceptional: a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that looked at the entire Indian Residential School system and the terrible abuse that occurred in and around it. Beverley McLachlin, Chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada stated, on seeing the reports, that there was really no question that Canada had clearly set out to commit cultural genocide with the active support of various churches including our own.

      Now that is kind of harsh. No one wants to be associated with such things, but the evidence was fully examined and quite clear. It is not an issue of personal guilt or blame, mind you. It was nothing that you or I did, and it is not as if we have to feel personally responsible, but we are part of a community (both as Canadians and as Christians) who carry that burden for what was done.

      But it really does seem to me that most Canadians and most Christians haven’t come to terms with that. We just don’t see ourselves as belonging to a community that does such things. Perhaps we need something – maybe a picture or a passage of Scripture – that makes us feel uncomfortable enough to realize that even people like us are capable of doing terrible things if we let our fear or mistrust or hatred of people who are different from us interfere with the message of God that has been given to us in Christ Jesus.

      For me, Bible passages like the story of King Saul and the Amalekite genocide can serve to make us that uncomfortable and that is why I am not going to use my bottle of Script Out^®to disappear this passage either. I hope you keep it in your Bible too.

I

Hespeler, 6 September, 2015 © Scott McAndless

Leviticus 19:19, 26-28, 2 Timothy 3:10-17, Psalm 119:1-16

I

’m here today to introduce to you my brand new product – the most important Bible Study tool that you will ever own. You see, a lot of people will sell you tools to enhance your study of the Word of God. They will sell you pens and highlighters that you can use when you find a verse that you really like. They can sell you tabs and bookmarks that you can put into your Bibles so that you can quickly find all of your very favourite passages. And they will sell you very fine pens that you can use to make exhaustive notes in the margins beside the passages that you really love detailing how you want to apply them in your life.

      I’m not talking about that kind of Bible study tool. Anybody can sell you a tool that you can use to mark or annotate or find your favourite passages. But, let me ask you, when was the last time someone offered you the kind of tool that you really need – something to help you with the passages you don’t like, the ones that you maybe even hate. And don’t try and tell me that you love the whole Bible and you couldn’t possibly dislike anything that it says because it doesn’t matter how much you love and respect the Bible. You could be the most conservative, Bible thumping fundamentalist or the most liberal, critical thinker or anyone in between. You have some passages that you just wish weren’t there. They may be different passages based on what your position is, but you’ve got them.

      And the really big question, if you are someone who is committed to the Scriptures (as I am) is what are you going to do with those passages. And I will even go so far as to say that what you do with the passages that you hate is far more important than what you do with the ones that you love. It tells me a whole lot more about what kind of Christian you are.

      And do you know what most of us do with those passages? We just ignore them. We don’t read them. We certainly don’t read them in public and, should we come across them by accident in our private reading, it’s like we can’t even see them. If we read them by mistake, we forget them as quickly as possible. That’s why I created my new product. I thought, if that’s how we’re going to treat the passages of the Bible that we don’t like, why not just go all the way. Why not just take out your bottle of Script Out^® (patent pending) and, with just a few strokes of your brush, that offending verse will never bother you again.

      And, even better, today I am very proud to introduce the newest addition to the Script Out^®family: our new and very handy paragraph size!

      Let me give you an example of how very necessary this product is. A little over a year ago, a picture surfaced on the internet. It was a picture that a man had taken and posted of this text that he had had tattooed onto his arm. The picture got a lot of attention and engendered a lot of discussion because it read as follows: “[Thou] shall not lie with a male as one does with a woman. It is an abomination. Leviticus 18:22” It was simply a verbatim quote from the King James translation of the Bible but the text was very controversial because it was one of those texts that a lot of people really don’t like and wish it wasn’t there but that some other people really like and will even quote it, sometimes, as if it were the only Bible verse that matters.

      Now, I think that that text that the man had tattooed on him counts as what I would call one of these “Script Out^®” texts because it makes a lot of people rather uncomfortable and so we like to pretend that it doesn’t exist. And to do a complete look at the uses of this new Bible Study tool, we’ll have to take a look at that text sooner or later, but I am not really going to talk about it today but rather about another step that the story took.

      If you spend much time on the internet, you will know that people can go on and on talking about pretty much anything for a very long time. Well there was a lot of discussion about this man’s tattoo and I read a great deal of it in various forums because I sort of like that stuff. And a lot of the discussion wasn’t about the actual verse that the man had put on his arm but actually about another verse from the same book of the Bible that appears only one chapter later. In Leviticus 19:28 it says, “You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” People brought up that verse as a way of saying how stupid they thought that tattoo guy was. Here he was condemning people for breaking one law in the Book of Leviticus by actually breaking another law from the very next chapter of the same book!

      And that verse, the tattooing verse, is, I think, a great place to start talking about Script Out^® verses in general. It is not an overly controversial passage for most people. I don’t know about you, but I can’t say I have any really strong feelings about tattoos. I’ve never really been interested in getting a tattoo of my own, but I certainly have many friends who have them and I have nothing at all against them. I kind of like some that I have seen.

      So I’ve really got to say that I don’t find anything morally wrong about tattoos unless, of course, they depict something offensive. If people want to have them it is up to them and I’m not going to judge them and hope that they will be happy with what they’ve put on their body because they are kind of stuck with it for the long term.

      So, in short, I don’t feel that tattooing, in general, is a moral issue worthy of being condemned by the Bible. At most, it is an issue of personal judgement and decision. I don’t want to deal with it on a Biblical level and so, why not make this the first verse we try out our Bible Study tool on. (Remove the offending verse using Script Out^®). There, that’s better.

      And yet, it is in the Bible. And, as Christians, we actually are committed to the Bible – the whole book whether we like it or not. Yes, maybe everyone does pick and choose the verses that they love and the ones that they ignore, but that doesn’t mean that that is what we really should do.

      When I was reading the comment threads about that guy who had tattooed the passage from Leviticus on his arm, there actually were some people who were basically thought that the guy’s tattoo was not contrary to the Old Testament law and were defending it. So why not take a look at some of their arguments and discover if there is any merit to them. It might be a good exercise that would help us to deal better with Script Out^® passages in general and I think we may need some help dealing with these passages.

     One thing that people were saying was that you needed to take in the full historical context of the verse and that, if you did, you would see that the verse really didn’t apply to the kinds of tattoos that people get today. In particular, they noted that the particular tattoos that the verse has in mind are the tattoos and other marks or piercings that people made in that culture as a part of mourning for and perhaps even worshipping honoured loved ones who had died.

      It was apparently a common custom among some people who lived in the ancient Near East for people to do such things. It was a cultural practice like sending flowers or giving eulogies is for us. So, the argument is, the commandment really only applies narrowly to that specific cultural practice and not to tattoos in general. And it does seem true that that is the specific practice that is in mind in the verse. Presumably, since such cultural practices don’t really exist today, there is no real application to life in the modern world. People today who go out and get tattoos are, therefore, in the clear because they don’t do it for those narrow reasons.

      But that leads to another question: why is the Bible so worried about cultural practices anyways? There are in fact, many Biblical commandments that speak specifically to such things – outlawing certain hairstyles and certain foods, restricting certain fashions and styles of clothing, for example. These are not moral issues but clearly cultural issues and yet the Bible spends a whole lot of energy regulating them. Why?

      Well, the idea seems to have been that the people of Israel were supposed to be special and unique because they were the chosen people of a God who was special and unique. For that reason they were supposed to be different from the other people who lived around them – different in terms of everything about them including their customs and culture. And so that is why the Bible is so into regulating things like fashions and hairstyles and tattoos.

      But what are we supposed to do with that? Are any of those laws of use to us? The answer, generally speaking, seems to be no. Yes, we are called as Christians to be different from the other people around us. But Jesus didn’t seem to be interested in setting his followers apart culturally from the people around them – in fact, he often specifically told his disciples that they didn’t need to worry about things like food laws if they served to create a division between them and the people that they were ministering to. Jesus had a different idea of what it meant that his people were holy and special.

      So the bottom line is that the placing of tattoos on the body is not something that needs to concern us. We need not make a fuss over it one way or the other because it was something that was maybe important at a particular time in history when the people of Israel needed to set themselves apart from the people who surrounded them, but that need is no longer there in the same way.

      So, as I say, in the internet forums I was reading people who were saying that we should not be so quick to condemn that young man with the tattoo. There was nothing wrong with what he was doing. But the interesting thing was that there were at least some people who were defending him who also thought that he was right to proclaim the particular scripture that he was. In other words they were saying that the prohibition against tattoos no longer mattered but the prohibition against homosexuality did.

     My big issue with that is that they were willing to apply critical thinking to the one verse but not to the other one. Surely some of the same considerations that applied to the one verse also applied to the other. There are lots of reasons to think that the other verse also had some specific cultural activities (like temple prostitution or fertility r

      There is also the fact that we find this law in the midst of a whole set of rules and regulations that are mostly cultural in nature and that have the clear goal of setting the people of Israel apart from their neighbours around them. And yet, no one seemed to be willing to ask whether this law can be safely ignored because of Jesus rejection, in general, of laws that regulated cultural practices.

      And here we come to the first lesson that we can take away from these Script Out^âpassages in the Bible. We will come across Bible verses that we don’t like but that we don’t really need to worry about because they no longer apply to our situation. And that is great. It is often a relief. But there is a catch. 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 easy thing is to use your Script Out^â. People have actually been doing it for centuries even before this new product came on the market. They just pretended that the verse wasn’t there. But that is not good enough. If we are going to claim to take this Book seriously, a Script Out approach is just not going to cut it. So we are going to continue to struggle with those very passages that we’d really just rather they weren’t there at all.