Author: Scott McAndless

https://youtu.be/-z4LGXZi3cA

Hespeler, August 6, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 55:1-5, Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21

Earlier this summer, the Southern Baptist Convention – the national body of the largest Protestant denomination in North America – made a controversial decision. The Southern Baptists voted to expel two of their congregations, one of which was their largest: Saddleback Church.

Amazingly, this did not have anything to do with the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked that denomination for the last few years. No, apparently the congregations were exiled for permitting something much, much worse. They were expelled because they had chosen to have women on staff as pastors.

And I would note that women pastors are not necessarily a new thing in such churches. Many Baptist congregations have had women employed as pastors for a very long time. In fact, one of the congregations that was expelled, Fern Creek Baptist Church of Louisville, Kentucky had had the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham as their senior pastor for three decades before being kicked out!

A Crackdown

This decision is part of a reactionary crackdown within that denomination – a retrenchment as the church reacts to a time of crisis. You see, the Southern Baptist Convention might be the largest denomination, but it is also the one that is declining the fastest. I know that lots of denominations are in decline these days, including our own, and I do not rejoice or crow over any of it. But the decline they are facing is rather stunning. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is getting smaller, but the SBC loses more members than are in the entire PCC every few months!

And so, what has happened is that a reactionary conservative group has seized power and is intent on taking the church back to a time long before the decline began – back to a time when, they might say, women knew their place and it wasn’t in leadership.

It is not a new idea. It is a very, very old idea that has been with the church for a very long time. It is the idea that certain sorts of people don’t count, not when you really want to build a church.

An Odd Ending

Haven’t you always wondered about the end of the story of the feeding of the five thousand? The story is told in all of our gospels, and it ends in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark with a count of those who ate. The counting is obviously really important. It is a way of making it clear that a great miracle has occurred.

The story ends like this in the Gospel of Mark: “The number of men who were fed was five thousand.” (Mark 6:44) But the Gospel of Matthew ends with an explicit detail found nowhere else. He puts it like this: “The number of men who ate was about five thousand, not counting the women and children.” But I have to ask the question, why not count the women and the children? If the point of this story is to show us the great wonder that Jesus performed, why exclude so many people from your accounting?

Why Would You Understate the Numbers?

Every politician, every organizer and certainly every preacher I have ever heard has always tended to overstate, not understate, the size of a crowd. Donald Trump was kind of famous for it and if ever the media tried to correct the record with a more realistic estimate, he would attack them relentlessly for it. And yet here we are told that the gospel writer could not be bothered counting part of the crowd.

Interpreters have come up with various theories for how many people would have been in the crowd if there were 5,000 adult males. Not everyone agrees, but I’ve seen some commentators who’ve made a study of the demographics of early first-century Galilee estimate that this could mean a crowd as big as 15 to 20,000 people. If you knew that the crowd was as big as that, why on earth would you not bother to count three-quarters of them?

Is it Because Certain People don’t Count?

Why indeed? I believe that it comes back to the issue that I started with – an idea that is obviously much older than the most recent meeting of the Southern Baptist Conference. The idea has long been built into the very foundation of the church that certain people don’t count, or at least don’t count the same.

The notion that women don’t count has deep roots. And I feel that I must say that I don’t believe that it is something that comes from Jesus or from God or even the true nature of the church.

Jesus’ Self-Care

We see where Jesus’ concerns lie at the beginning of this story. He is going through a very rough time. He has just learned that John the Baptist who, to a certain extent at least, seems to have been a kind of mentor to Jesus, has been murdered by Herod. Of course this is hard and of course Jesus, who Christian doctrine teaches us is utterly human no matter what else he is, feels this deeply.

And so, he needs a little bit of self-care. He heads off to a deserted place on a boat, hoping, no doubt, for a little bit of time to reflect and meditate. But his self-care is interrupted by the needs of the great mass of the people who come looking for him, even though they have to walk a great distance to find him.

Jesus’ Care for All the People

And, as much as he may need some time alone, as much as he is aware of his own needs, Jesus recognizes the need to care for the people – all of the people. When he saw them, “he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” And when he heals them and goes on to feed them, he quite clearly does not fail to count all of them. He does not simply provide for the most important or the most powerful. He certainly doesn’t feed or heal only the men. Obviously, for Jesus, the women and the children count, as do their needs.

So, if it didn’t start with Jesus, where does it come from? Why, by the time that this gospel was written, had people stopped counting the women and the children? Well, it had everything to do with the society and culture in which the early church found itself. There is lots of evidence that shows that the early church did count women. It counted them among the leadership, with women named as apostles and leaders of churches. That is why the Apostle Paul could say things like, “There is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

A Patriarchal Society

But the early church found itself in a culture, dominated by the Roman Empire, that was extremely patriarchal. Such a culture found the very idea of counting women – or at least giving them any significance – to be offensive.

And, by the time that the Gospel of Matthew was written and by the time that some of the later letters of the New Testament were written, that attitude had begun to drift into the church as well. Basically, the church began to feel that it needed to go along to get along. And, in many ways, that attitude continued to affect the church for many centuries. And, as we see in recent decisions by the Southern Baptist Conference, among others, it hasn’t really gone away.

Who We Count

It does mean a lot to me to be part of a church, and a denomination, that has done some serious work on counting women, on truly recognizing and appreciating their contribution, over the last few decades. I also appreciate the steps that we have taken to count others who were excluded from our accounting for way too long.

But I do not think that we can or should just lean back and put our feet up and assume that the job is done. I believe we will always encounter a cultural tendency not to count certain kinds of people, and as long as we do that, we will be missing out on a true picture of what God is doing among us.

People Sitting in Pews

For example, for a very long time, the impact of a church such as ours was measured by only one metric – by the number of people sitting in pews for one particular hour on a Sunday morning. Congregations that had lots of people sitting in the right places at the right time every week were considered to be successful congregations that were having real impact.

Even back then, this was not necessarily an accurate measure of the liveliness of a church. There were lots of people who were vital to the church who were not counted – people who were teaching Sunday school, people who had some pretty good reasons for why they couldn’t be there at that time, but that were great supporters of the church in other ways.

Old Assumptions No Longer Work

So, it was never quite accurate, but these old assumptions have become even more problematic because of recent developments. Now we have people who attend our worship services online through Zoom or through Facebook Live. Others watch the videos of sermons and other elements of our worship at another time than that extra special hour that was once the only one that mattered. Some of them do that from great distances away – all over the globe, in fact. Do they count? Are they part of the life and work of our church? Of course they are, but we do not often count them.

But there is more than that. There are all kinds of people in this community for whom this church is part of their spiritual life and for whom this congregation helps to meet both their spiritual and physical needs, and yet we have never seen them during the magic hour on a Sunday morning. Maybe we never will.

Who is Part of our Church?

I’m talking, for one thing, of those who come in for a good meal, to pick up some food from the Food Bank or our Community Cupboard. I’m talking about people who need help to get decent clothing for their families. This church is their church too and it meets their needs. The very fact that they are welcomed warmly here and treated without judgement absolutely feeds their souls as well as their hungry stomachs. If you asked them what they know of the church, they will speak well of St. Andrew’s. But do we count them? We do not.

I am also talking, by the way, about the amazing army of volunteers that keeps our ministries operating. Many do not worship here but they also have formed an amazing society of mutual support and encouragement and surely that is what the church is supposed to be about. Recently, for example, one of our Hope Clothing volunteers suffered the sudden death of her spouse. I know that she found the support that she received from her fellow volunteers to be invaluable.

Undervaluing Volunteers

I was talking with the people from the Food Bank recently, and they were noting just how seriously we undervalue the contribution of such volunteers. If you were to put a dollar value on it – and they are working up some models to help to put a dollar value on it – it works out that this church is making an additional contribution of thousands of dollars every year to this community. This is the mission of the church.

These are all people who are living out the mission of the church and doing it admirably. Are you going to tell me that they don’t count because they have never sat in a pew? That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? And yet we seem to assume all the time that that is how things are.

A History of Not Counting Some

The church, sadly, has a long history of not counting certain people. For centuries women didn’t really count, even as they often did the greatest part of the work in many churches. For centuries members of certain minority racial, ethnic or language groups didn’t count.

Oh sure, we were happy enough to include them in our statistics when it made us look good, but we didn’t seem to believe that they could really contribute anything of value. Their theological reflections were often simply dismissed.

Work Yet to be done

I’m glad to say that our church today has learned better about such things. But we still do fall into the temptation of not counting certain people. We say we would love to welcome families with children, for example, but can have a hard time making space for families that don’t quite fit into the pattern of families that we are used to.

Imagine those people who went out to find Jesus when he set off to be alone after he heard of the death of John. Those people are a picture of the whole of the church. They are gathered, as we are gathered, for one reason alone – because the compassion of Jesus met them where they were. Each one was met according to their need. Each one given a role in the ministry according to his or her ability. And they all counted. They all count. So, we must always be careful about who we don’t count.

https://youtu.be/cDewdKfJGD0

Hespeler, July 9, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 16:14-23, 18:1-11, Psalm 150, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

It’s not easy to be a musician these days. If your passion is music, it seems almost impossible to make your living playing. Employment is intermittent at best. Wages are low unless you really make it. And even if you do finally make it and actually get a hit streaming on Spotify, you are paid in pennies while the streaming service and the label takes everything else.

Tough Audiences

But if you think things are tough today, you should try being a musician in the court of King Saul. Apparently, if the audience (and in that audience only one member really mattered) didn’t like what you were playing, you might find yourself pinned to the wall with a spear. Now, I know that there is really no danger at all that the audience this morning will object in any way to the music that they hear but you never know when the people of St. Andrew’s might seek to imitate the Bible a little too closely. So let me put Martin’s mind at ease. I have taken the precaution of removing all spears from the church this morning.

But let’s look at what Saul does in that interesting little story we just read. In it, Saul is starting to get a little nervous about a young man named David who is in his service. David is the best fighter in his army and is his son-in-law. But lately Saul has been worried that David’s getting too big for his britches. Absolute rulers always worry when their servants get more popular than they are.

Music to help a Troubled Spirit

Saul was given, the Bible says, to being tormented by an evil spirit. What that likely means is that he suffered from what today we would call a mental health issue – some have thought (given that he did eventually commit suicide) that he suffered from severe clinical depression. In any case, whatever exactly afflicted him; he often had these episodes where he was quite out of his mind. And when that happened, the only thing that could break him of his evil mood was the music that David played on his harp.

Sometimes, you see, music is the gift that God gives you to help you break out of that dark mood, to see the hope in tomorrow, to leave anger or despair behind. That’s what David could do for Saul. But one day, Saul couldn’t listen to the music. He let his anger, his fear of David and his bad mood overcome him instead. The spear was cast and for Saul, that was really the beginning of the end. He began from there to lose support, to lose his army and eventually he lost his kingdom. Maybe he should have listened to the music instead.

W. A. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 and by the time that he died in 1791, he was an incredible musician and a fantastic composer. His personal life, by all accounts, was a mess and his finances were so bad that he was buried as a pauper, but his music was a different story. In his music, all was in incredible and perfect order. The harmony was always just so. And he apparently had the ability to put all the notes together in such order right out of his head and directly onto his manuscripts.

Mozart did things with music that nobody had done before. He pushed the forms of music that were available to him to new heights of excellence and always succeeded with his compositions. So much so, in fact, that you might have said (and perhaps some did say at the time) that no one would ever top what he had accomplished musically. Mozart had pushed the classical styles and forms of music to their extremes and there was no reason to expect that anyone would ever be able to do as much as he had done.

The World Changes

But the thing is this, in the year 1791, the year that Mozart died, the world changed. That was the year when the King of France tried to flee and was arrested by the Revolutionary Government of France. At that point, France passed a point of no return.

After 1791, France and most of Europe were completely transformed. Gone were the days when society was seen to be in perfect order and harmony – when kings and princes, commoners and peasants all knew their places and kept to the tasks and roles that they had always done.

The world was now a place of chaos, disorder and constant change and suddenly a very fearful place particularly for those who had been on top of everything in the upper classes – that is, those who were the patrons of the music. So, the world for which Mozart had written during his life – a world of order and predictability – no longer existed after his death.

Beethoven

In 1792 Ludwig van Beethoven arrived in Vienna – the city where Mozart had died the year before – and began to emerge as a musician and composer. His music was composed, therefore, for a very different world than Mozart’s and if you listen to what he wrote, you can tell.

The great works of Beethoven are more chaos than order, more discord than harmony. They are very much a reflection of their times. This does not make Beethoven’s music any less beautiful or meaningful, of course. In fact, his ability to use such things made his music far more extraordinary than anything that had been written before!

It is quite interesting, therefore, to compare Mozart to Beethoven. They were both masters, both extraordinary composers in their own right. And their music tells us so much about the worlds that they lived in – despite the fact that they lived in the same city one year apart.

Jesus’ Complaint

One day Jesus made this particular complaint against the people of his generation: “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” This is interesting because Jesus seems to be speaking of the popular music of his own day – the kind of music that was played by young people in the streets. The equivalent for us today might be the sight of young people standing at a street corner and dancing as they stream music from Spotify.

Jesus is speaking to the religious-minded people of his own age – the people who criticized John the Baptist and the people who are criticizing Jesus. And what is the problem that he has with them? They won’t listen to the music of their times – the music that the kids on the street corners are playing.

Jesus and John

Now, in part, of course, Jesus is comparing himself and John the Baptist to these two styles of popular music. John, who lived out in the wilderness and ate a diet of locusts and wild honey and preached fasting and repenting and was generally a downer, is the dirge.

Jesus, who was all about joy and didn’t hesitate to enjoy food and to drink with people is the music of the pipes that invites you to dance. Jesus is complaining that these people were presented with two very different kinds of ministry and managed to find fault with both of them.

Popular Music

But I am sure that it is no coincidence that Jesus chose to use images and examples of popular music to get his point across. He was always reminding his followers to keep their eyes on the “signs of the times” – to be aware of the currents and flows that were going on in society and in the wider world because these things could give you an indication of what God was doing.

Music can be a very important barometer for what is taking place in the wider society. So, don’t you think that Jesus would want us to pay attention to the music of our times?

The Church and Popular Music

Now, this can be a bit of a problem in the church which seems to be very slow to accommodate to new musical trends. Sometimes, in fact, I think we’re like King Saul and the only kind of music we can listen to is the music that is calming to our troubled souls. Certainly, there are some churches where, if anyone does try and introduce new musical styles, they are bound to have a spear chucked at them. So, we’re not exactly riding the latest musical wave. We are likely going to have to learn a bit more musical flexibility in coming years.

But even if we are slow to adopt new musical styles, that certainly doesn’t mean that we can’t be open to listening to the meaning behind the music in the society around us.

Now, a lot of the popular music today frankly doesn’t have much meaning in it. It is produced in such a way as to attract the biggest possible audience and get the most streams. But some of it really does manage to speak to some of the fears, the passions and the hopes that haunt people’s lives.

Rap and Hip Hop

Take Rap and Hip Hop music – perhaps the most popular forms of music overall today. Yes, it can be very crude, the language very objectionable and attitudes towards women and some other groups can be downright frightening. But many young people growing up in inner cities find that nothing else is able to express the things that they are feeling better.

There are real grievances, real hopes and dreams being addressed in it. That’s why those songs inspire such energy. It is, unfortunately, a kind of energy that is often directed – at best – towards making money and – at worst – towards violence and hatred. But when that kind of energy is directed in more positive and constructive ways there is no limit to what can be accomplished. When you are willing to listen to the music, those kinds of possibilities are there.

Music and our Generation

The music of Beethoven reflected the kind of chaos that existed in Europe during and following the French revolutionary times. But if you think the French Revolution stirred things up, that is nothing compared to the kind of turmoil we see in our world today! And so, music can be pretty disturbing to listen to today.

Sometimes we are rather tempted to just ignore all forms of modern music and hope it goes away. After all, we are Christians. We can just hold on to our old and familiar sacred forms of music and try and forget about everything else.

Except Jesus told us that we have to pay attention to what is happening in the society around us. “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky,” he complained one day, “but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:3) “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree:” he said on another occasion “As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.” (Matthew 24:32)

Jesus didn’t want us to just keep our heads down listening only to the things that are familiar to us or that we find pleasing or calming. He wanted us to be aware of the major movements in our world.

Encountering God in our Generation

Why was this so important to Jesus? Because he saw that it was in such things that God was at work. Jesus had a much bigger understanding of God’s power than we do. We tend to think that God can only work through our plans, our schemes and ways of doing things. Jesus knew better and that was why he was always reminding people to be on guard, to watch and to listen. God can come at you from just about anywhere, even from the music that the kids are listening to on the streets.

https://youtu.be/VWr9pc77ICc

Hespeler July 2, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 22:1-14, Psalm 13, Romans 6:12-23, Matthew 10:40-42

Years later, even after he had become a father himself, Isaac still had nightmares about it. And sometimes, when he was awakened suddenly by some noise in the night, he would lie in his tent, and it was as if he was back there again – back at the night when he was merely a child and he heard his father in the nearby tent.

A Strange Conversation

It was in the darkest time of the night when he suddenly heard Abraham cry out, “Here I am.” What followed after that was a strange discourse, as if Abraham were having a conversation with someone but Isaac could only hear one side of it – only what his father said in response to unheard words.

“But, my Lord, which son do you mean? I have two.” <Silence> “But what do you mean, ‘my only son,’ I said, there are two?” <Silence> “Isaac? What do you want with Isaac?” <Silence> “Well, I do love Isaac, but of course I love Ishmael too!”

And then, after a longer pause, Isaac could hear the cold fear and dread in his father’s voice as he said “Yes, Lord, to Moriah. We will go if you show us the way.”

Isaac didn’t know what any of that meant at the time, but it did not seem good. Every time he remembered it, or even if someone spoke in a tone that reminded him of how his father spoke that night, he would begin to tremble and would sometimes be physically ill. Even when he was a strong patriarch and respected man, it always made him feel so powerless, as if he were a small child all over again.

Departure

The next morning, Abraham rose early and saddled his donkey, taking two servant boys with him. When he called Isaac over to join the group, Isaac didn’t want to come. He was filled with an unaccountable dread. But he was in no position to refuse.

As they set out, Isaac noticed that his father wouldn’t look at him – wouldn’t even meet his eyes when he glanced his way. And that he offered no explanation of where they were going or why.

After they had walked a short way, they came upon a fallen tree and Abraham stopped and split several pieces of wood with his axe and fastened them onto the back of the donkey. That, together with the pot containing a small smoldering fire that was carried by one of the boys and the special ceremonial stone knife in his father’s belt, led Isaac to assume that the purpose of this journey was to perform a sacrifice. He had so many questions about that, of course, but did not dare to speak.

The small group traveled for three days before Isaac finally looked up and saw a mountain looming in the distance.

Abraham and Isaac go on alone

At this point, Abraham told the boys to stay behind with the donkey and that he and Isaac would go on alone. He took the wood from the donkey’s back and tied it onto Isaac’s before himself taking the pot of fire, which had been carefully fed all this time so as not to go out, and carried it himself. And so it was that father and son moved on together.

When the servant boys had fallen into the distance and the two of them were completely alone, Isaac finally found the courage to ask the question that had been burning in his mind for three days. “Father!” he said. “Here I am, my son,” Abraham immediately replied. And the phrase took Isaac right back to when he had heard his father speak in the tent a few nights previous. He had a deep feeling that something was very wrong. But he still felt he needed an answer to his question. He pointed to the fire pot. “The fire is here. And so is the wood,” he added, pointing to the load on his back.

His gaze then paused for a moment on the handle of the blade that protruded from his father’s waist, but something prevented him from mentioning that. Possibly it was the same thing that, ever since, had made him shudder whenever he caught sight of such a ceremonial knife.

The pause was going on too long and Abraham automatically looked at his son. For a few agonizing seconds, their gazes met, and Isaac managed to stammer out, “b-b-but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham looked away and when he spoke, it was as if he were speaking to someone else, someone not present, “Godself will see to the lamb for a burnt offering, my son, don’t you worry about that.”

Dangerous Memory

Isaac had done his best to never remember what had happened when they finally arrived at the top of that mountain. Whenever his conscious mind seemed to drift in the general direction of the events, he forced himself to think of something else.

But it never seemed to work. The memory would come back to him when he least expected it, triggered by the oddest things. He often found himself flying off the handle, especially with his son Jacob, at the least offense because the boy looked so much like his grandfather.

And how often had he become unaccountably enraged at Rebecca, who had only been kind to him? Sometimes these days, she treated him more like an adversary than a husband and he knew it was all because, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t let go of what had happened to him on that damned mountain. It made him so angry, and she often bore the brunt of it.

On the Mountain

When they reached the top of that mountain, Isaac watched warily as Abraham gathered stones and built a makeshift altar. He then took the wood and carefully laid it out before turning towards his son.

Isaac had successfully managed to block out the next few seconds from his memory, it only came back in his nightmares. So, as he recalled it, when he dared, he suddenly found himself lying on the altar, his legs and arms trussed up just like you might do to an animal sacrifice before the slaughter. And he saw his father, holding the knife over his throat with a wild look in his eyes.

Saved!

And then, Abraham’s face changed. It went blank for a moment and then he turned and uttered for a third time the same words still haunted Isaac. “Here I am!” he said. And then Isaac heard something too – the sound of rustling in a nearby bush.

Abraham immediately dropped the knife and ran to the spot. He yelped with pleasure and surprise as he pulled back the undergrowth to reveal a young ram struggling there, caught by the horns.

“You see, Isaac,” he cried, “I was right. God did see to it. He is Yahweh who sees my need!”

Left Unresolved

Abraham was long dead now. Never once, before he passed, had he spoken to Isaac about what had happened on that day. Perhaps that was why Isaac never felt as if it had been resolved. It was like some horrible doom that still hung over him. And now his own children were grown, and he had never been able to talk to them about these things. Sometimes he couldn’t help but feel as if that was why Esau was so wild and why it seemed as if he had driven Jacob away. That is how it goes sometimes and perhaps that’s what it means when it says that the sins of the fathers are passed down to the sons.

Despite it all, however, Isaac still held on to faith in Yahweh, the God of his father, the God who saw. He just wasn’t convinced that it was God’s fault, all that his father had put him through. Yes, perhaps Abraham had been trying to do what he thought his God wanted, but that doesn’t mean that he was right, does it?

A Troubling Story

The story of the binding of Isaac, as it is often called, is definitely one of the most difficult in the Bible. However you understand it, it is very difficult not to see it as reflecting very negatively on God. If God really did want Abraham to literally sacrifice his son on an altar, only to change his mind at the last minute, that leaves us with an image of a God who not only demands the unacceptable but is also changeable and perhaps unreliable.

The only other option seems to be that God never really intended for Abraham to go through with it at all, that it was only a test. But I fail to see how that could be much better. To put a father and, oh, how much more, a child through such a test would not merely be cruel, it would be unquestionably immoral. Can you imagine the scars, the lifelong trauma, that such an experience would have created?

I realize, of course, that ancient people did not have the same understanding and appreciation of the potential life-long effects of post-traumatic stress that modern people do, but surely, you would think God might be able to understand the effects his stunt would have on Isaac!

What do we do with it?

So what can we do with this story? I tend to approach these questions from a somewhat different angle than most. I assume that the Bible is the record of human experience of God. As such, it is a human product, even if the overall process of its creation is inspired. Thus, it reflects a growing and changing understanding of God over time. This would naturally include understandings that were wrong or incomplete and that were corrected by new experience.

So, were there people – even early Israelite ancestors – who thought that God might want human sacrifice? Possibly. Were they right about that? Of course not!

Were there ancient Israelites who believed that God wanted them to go through cruel tests that would leave permanent scars on their children? I have no doubt that there were. But they were wrong, and I believe that their subsequent experience showed them that they were wrong. The Bible is an incredibly valuable record of that journey of discovery.

For me, this story of Abraham and Isaac is a story of Abraham discovering that God didn’t want him to behave like he thought God did.

The Dangers in Such Religion

But, because we do not always take the right approach to the Bible, a danger still persists. What happens when people take stories like this one as the end of the journey of discovery and not just a step along the way? What happens when they discover, for example, that their children are expressing themselves in ways that they do not approve of? They might react by “binding” their child – by forcing their child to conform to their understanding of what God wants, suppressing the child’s God-given self-understanding.

And that kind of thing continues to happen. Psychologists and counselors are seeing that people who grow up in or spend extended lengths of time in high control religious environments can indeed suffer from long-term post-traumatic stress.

I’m talking about the kind of religious environment (Christian or other) where the members of the community are under constant surveillance. Their speech, their thoughts and dress and appearance are ever liable to be judged and found lacking either by their family or by their church community. Living under these kinds of circumstances, being bound in this way by not being able to express yourself, can leave lasting scars on the psyche. Many have undergone extensive therapy trying to find healing.

Stems from Fear

And why do people do this to the people that they love and to the members of their spiritual communities? Because they are afraid. They are afraid of people who are different. They are afraid of divergence. And they are likely carrying around an image of a very angry God of whom they are afraid.

That’s why I don’t think we should be afraid to say that Abraham was wrong about what he thought God wanted and demanded. By the end of this horrible episode with his son, he knew better. And, yes, it would have been preferable if he had not had to put himself and his son through such a terrible ordeal to get there. But the truth of the matter is that we human beings can have the hardest time with some of the most important lessons.

High-control religion can absolutely be dangerous. It causes trauma. I am certain that it is not what pleases God. In the end, this story in Genesis is a story about a God who sees. That is what the name, Yahweh Yireh that Abraham gives to God at the end means. It is about a God who sees the damage that is done, who sees to what we need to survive it. The real question though, is what do we see and what are we going to do about it?

https://youtu.be/pQmiVFSOx2Q

Hespeler, June 25, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

As I think most of you have realized by now, there are two things that I am committed to doing in my preaching that may sometimes clash with one another. First of all, I have committed myself to preach every week from the lectionary, a 3-year-long cycle of readings that are used in many churches.

But I am also committed to our practice of when we celebrate an infant or child baptism here at St. Andrews, we focus all of our worship on that day on that very important and blessed event. That means that I want to preach, in this case, about Oliver and his family and the important spiritual step that they have taken here among us today. This is actually my favourite thing about baptism Sundays, and I always look forward to it when the occasion arises.

But I am sure that you can see where the problem might come from. The people who choose the lectionary passages don’t know and don’t much care about when we celebrate a baptism. So, there’s really no way of making sure that the passage we read on a given Sunday is going to have anything to do with what we are doing during the service.

A Promising Start

So, it was with much trepidation that I opened up the readings for this Sunday, wondering how they might help us to talk about what we have done here this morning. And I read the first few opening words and I breathed a big sigh of relief. “The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.”

I mean, isn’t that just perfect? The passage opens with almost the exact situation we are celebrating today. A child has reached a certain age – and it is probably about exactly the age the Oliver is today because they would have weaned their children at a somewhat later age than is common today. And obviously, in that culture, that was considered to be the perfect moment to gather friends and relations and the whole community and just celebrate the birth and the early life of this young child.

That is so much like what it is that we have come together to do today. We are celebrating Oliver, this wonderful symbol of new life and hope for the future. We are celebrating all of his potential and lifting up our prayers for his future. I am quite sure that was almost exactly what Abraham and Sarah were doing for Isaac on that wonderful occasion that they had organized.

It All Falls Apart

But, if I was thrilled with the first sentence of our passage this morning, my enthusiasm soon waned. Because, after just one sentence of the best intentions and the most wonderful of celebrations, it all falls apart, doesn’t it? That’s all we get, just one sentence. After that, almost everything about this seemingly perfect family that could possibly go wrong does.

Isaac has an older half sibling named Ishmael. And Isaac’s mother sees the two boys playing together and she kind of freaks out. Now, whether her concerns are valid and Ishmael had been playing inappropriately with the boy, we are not told. I don’t know whether Ishmael has done anything wrong, but we certainly do know that things sometimes happen between siblings – maybe especially half siblings – that create great stress within families.

But, as is often the case, it is not what the kids do, it is how the parents overreact that creates the real crisis and problem. Sarah is so upset that she demands that Ishmael and his mother be thrown out of the family altogether! Now, I know very well that mothers are protective of their children. Her knee-jerk reaction of kicking Ishmael out is just wrong, but in her anger she could just not be thinking straight. She is just human, after all.

Parents are just human – that is a radical thought and just hold onto it for a moment.

Can Abraham Save the Day?

So, Sarah has a bad reaction. This would obviously be a wonderful opportunity for her husband, Abraham, to step in and maybe calm her down and help her direct her anger in a more helpful direction for everyone. But, of course, it is at this point that Abraham fails, in my mind, even more tragically than his wife.

We are told this about Abraham’s reaction: “The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.” So, Abraham knew it was the wrong response. He was distressed about it. And I want to say, first of all, poor Abraham, right? Poor, poor Abraham! Don’t you feel bad for him? He started out this day ready to celebrate and now it has turned out like the worst day ever and he is all distressed!

But wait a minute, who cares about Abraham’s feelings? What are they compared to a mother and son who are just about to be turned out into the desert with nothing more than a loaf of bread and a skin of water? But, of course, Abraham is the hero of the whole story. I guess we just have to focus on his feelings.

So, while Abraham absolutely has the power to do something about the tragedy that is about to unfold, he doesn’t do it. I guess you might say that he just sends his thoughts and prayers without actually doing anything other than gathering the skin of water and loaf of bread.

Parental Failure

In case you haven’t picked this up from my comments so far, I am trying to say that I’m not overly impressed with the actions of the parents in this story. Sarah fails. Abraham fails. The only one who stands up and does the best she can for her child is the most powerless among them, Hagar. But such are the limitations of her power to do anything at all, that she gives in to despair and practically gives up hope. I can’t really blame her for that either.

So, here I am with this Bible passage that starts out wonderfully reminding us of what we are celebrating today, but then quickly devolves into a tale about a deeply, and I mean deeply, dysfunctional family. How on earth can this offer me anything constructive to say to Oliver and his family today?

Well, I am very aware of all of the stresses and strains that are on families these days. You all have these amazing expectations being piled on you. You have to be these perfect parents. If you are like most parents – if you are like I was as a parent of young children – you put that expectation on yourself as well.

Failed Expectations

Every time that you don’t react like you think you should, every time you discipline too harshly or not firmly enough, every time something bad happens to your child and you can dream up some obscure way that you could have stopped it from happening, you just won’t forgive yourself. And of course, it is even worse when you have people all around you telling you what they think you are doing wrong, which is often the case these days.

So, if you ever feel bad about your parenting or other choices in life, this story in Genesis stands as a wonderful reminder that parents are just human, and they all make mistakes. And, in fact, no matter what you get wrong as a parent, chances are that its effects will be nowhere near as bad as the mess that Abraham and Sarah, those great biblical examples of parents, made of their family.

There is Grace

But there is more than that going on in this story – something that should give encouragement to us all. There is grace. Hagar and her son Ishmael are treated terribly in this story. But despite that, Ishmael does alright. “God was with the boy,” it says, “and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”

So, despite all that was done to him, Ishmael is able to find his way in the world. Now, should Abraham and Sarah be given credit for Ishmael’s success in life? I don’t think so. If he succeeded, he obviously succeeded in spite of them. And I hardly think that, later in life, he looked back fondly at that skin of water and loaf of bread that he received from his father thinking that it gave him a good start. But he came through despite a lack of his father’s support and despite the fact that his mother Hagar had so little to work with.

But that is the nature of God’s grace. Whenever we fall short or fail to live up to our best intentions, God has a way of bringing about good results in spite of us. That is the good news that every single one of us needs to hold onto whenever we feel as if we fail or fall short. God does have a way of taking even our worst mistakes and bringing something good out of them. I can’t tell you how often that has given me comfort when I look back at the mistakes I made as a parent, in my work and in the advice I have given.

A Caution

But there is one caution that I would put on that truth. While it is always good to trust in God’s grace, we must never use it as an excuse to walk away from our commitments and responsibilities. And that is exactly what I see Abraham doing in this story.

We are told that God actually spoke to Abraham saying, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”

I don’t know about you, but I am always suspicious when I hear somebody claim that God told them to do something that really only benefited themselves or was just the easiest and most trouble-free course for them. In my experience, people who do that have always misunderstood or taken the promises of God out of context.

Sure, Abraham knew that his God was committed to his family and his offspring and that that included Ishmael.  Of course God would take care of the boy. Of course God would make a great nation of him. That was the fundamental truth that Abraham heard from God.

I don’t necessarily mean, by the way, that Abraham actually heard the voice of God reverberating from heaven. The Bible is quite clear that God speaks in various ways, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be audible. But however he received the message, Abraham heard correctly; God’s commitment to the boy was unshakable.

But I don’t believe that Abraham correctly heard the implications of that truth. It was just easier for him to believe that it let him off the hook and that he didn’t need to resist the evil thing that Sarah wanted him to do.

Getting Advice

Lisa and Steve, we are so thrilled to be able to celebrate you and your family today. We honour your choice to raise children at a time when lots of young couples are finding that it is too expensive or too challenging. We know that the path that lies before you will not always be easy, but it will always be worthwhile because your family is an expression of your love.

I know from personal experience that in the years to come you will be surrounded by people who are going to want to tell you how to raise your children. Some of that advice will no doubt be wise and helpful. Some of it will, frankly, just be somebody trying to make themselves feel good by trying to convince you that you’re doing everything wrong.

I understand that most people mean well when they try and give advice to parents, but the honest truth is that they often only manage to make parents feel as if they’re wrong no matter what they do.

So, I’m not going to try and give you any advice today. Just follow your instincts. Follow the love that I know you carry in your hearts. Will you always get it right? Of course not. Nobody does. But love will take you so far. And above all, take comfort in the truth that we have affirmed here today. God is committed to your child. God has some amazing plans for him, plans that you can’t even dream of yet. So, trust in that. God’s grace will meet you and your family where you need it most.

https://youtu.be/ZBRGbBiBjCU

Hespeler, June 11, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Second Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

We began an important journey together as a congregation at the start of the year. We did so because we recognized that we were facing some unprecedented challenges as a church in the early twenty-first century. We were not thriving like we felt that we could or should. We wanted to know why and what we could do to change that feeling and that reality.

And now, today, we are moving toward the end of that process. After worship today we will discuss a report that includes some specific recommendations that we hope will help us move into the future with a real sense of vitality and hope. But, before we delve into that report, I would like to talk a bit about the attitude that we want to bring with us.

Online Advertising

I wonder if you can remember a time about two decades ago. Online advertising and commerce were still kind of new back then, and, in the early 2000s, the web was flooded with a certain kind of advertisement. They called it clickbait. It was the kind of ad that had a loud and enticing headline that made it almost irresistible to click on it just to find out what it was about.

One Weird Trick

And one kind of ad stood out. I know you have seen them. They proclaimed that a certain man or woman had found “one weird trick” to solve some of the most difficult problems that people struggled with. There were weird tricks for everything – to fix your weight problems, your hair loss, you complexion or wrinkles. And all you had to do was click and the answer to your problem would be right there. Remember those ads?

The ads often included lines like, “Doctors hate him or her.” That part of it was also enticing because it suggested that you could solve your problem without going through painful or expensive medical intervention, that you could be healthier without having to work out or make significant changes to your diet. The implications were that “they” (the doctors or whatever other experts) were intentionally trying to suppress or hide this trick because “they” didn’t care about you like the people posting the ad.

Why These Ads Work

Many of these ads, in case you don’t know, were scams. Some of them managed to defraud people out of thousands of dollars. But I am sure that we all understand why they were so successful. Whenever we are struggling, whenever there is something that isn’t quite right, it is always so tempting to look for that one weird trick. If only we can find that one simple thing we can do to make it all right – especially if it is painless and if you don’t have to make any real changes to what is comfortable to us – everything will be great!

North American Churches Search for Solutions

Churches do that too. In fact, in many ways, the history of the Christian Church in North America over the last few decades has been the story of an endless search for that one weird trick. That history is just full of ministry and program fads. Various experts have come along and promised that, if only you adopt their three-point (or twelve-point or however many point) plan, you will thrive. We have been promised that this evaluation tool or that missional philosophy will make everything alright.

And, of course, I am not saying that there wasn’t anything of value in these approaches. A lot of churches undertook them, and they helped them to make some necessary changes and led to at least some success. But I would suggest that those congregations who saw these ideas as that one weird trick that would fix everything with no mess and no fuss likely did not get what they really needed.

Local Churches Affected

The one weird trick fallacy also affects many a local church. How many times have church leaders had a church member, or even a visitor, come up to them and say, “Pastor, Pastor, I have one weird trick that will save this church.” Well, okay, they don’t actually say it in so many words, but that is what they mean when they say that they heard about this church over there that does this thing or that church over there that does that thing, and they have so many people showing up. If we just did that one thing, just think of the results!

Now, once again, there is nothing wrong with learning from what other churches do successfully. But it actually rarely works that you can just take one thing from one church and expect it to work somewhere else in the same way without taking into account the culture, context and many others specific characteristics of that church that no doubt contribute to that success. It doesn’t really work as a one weird trick kind of solution.

The Woman with a Flow of Blood

There was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years – an absolutely horrible situation. A flow of blood would have made her unclean and, therefore, socially unacceptable. So this is not just a medical issue, it affects every part of her life.

This woman’s story is told three different times in three of our gospels. Each time it is told in the same general terms, but if you compare them side by side, you quickly realize that each gospel writer, Matthew, Mark and Luke, has a way of telling it slightly differently.

For example, in the Gospel of Mark, it speaks specifically about how this woman “had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse.” (Mark 5:26)

But Matthew just jumps over her years of struggles. He doesn’t mention her suffering under many doctors. (Which makes me ask, do doctors hate her?) Matthew jumps straight to her finally coming up with one weird trick to solve all of her problems. “She was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

A “One Weird Trick” Story

The way that Matthew presents it, it really does seem like a “one weird trick” kind of solution. Years of struggling and trying to find health and social acceptability for herself are suddenly wiped away by her doing just one thing. And I’m sure that you will agree with me that what she does is definitely a bit weird!

And honestly, if the story had ended there, I think that would be the message. It certainly represents the way that we often approach Jesus to solve our problems. We like to wait until we’ve gotten ourselves into a bad corner and then finally turn to Jesus in desperation to just fix things for us.

As I have already said, we tend to do it when we are worried about the vitality of our churches, but I can also give you countless examples of people who do it when they run into serious problems in their lives. I know I’ve done it too. Our default is to want to turn Jesus in to that lucky charm, that talisman, that one weird trick.

That is not how it Ends

But the story doesn’t end there. And here again, if you read the other versions of this story in the other gospels, you will get quite a different impression. They spend a fair bit of time puzzling out how Jesus figured out what had happened.

In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that Jesus felt the power going out of him and stopped, looking around to try and figure out who had touched him. But Matthew mentions none of that, likely because he recognizes that it might leave his readers with the impression that Jesus really is a magical source of healing power, that he really is that one weird trick that can solve your problem.

Jesus’ Response

But Matthew and Jesus know that that is not the case. And so Matthew jumps immediately to Jesus’ commentary on the whole affair. “Take heart, daughter;” he says, “your faith has made you well.” And only then Matthew finishes her story by saying, “And the woman was made well from that moment” – that is, from the moment when Jesus said that to her.

Now, at first glance, it may seem as if all of this is only reaffirming this woman’s “one weird trick” approach to health and vitality. It is her faith that has made her well; doesn’t that simply confirm that she was right to believe that she would get well just by touching the hem of his garment? But, of course, Jesus doesn’t say that she has been healed because of her belief in the magical power of the hem of his robe.

Having Faith

He says that her faith has done it. And in the Gospel of Matthew, in all of the gospels, having faith is never simply a matter of just believing certain things. It is always a matter of trust. It is always about trusting in Jesus and in what he has said. It is always part of an ongoing relationship and so it can never be reduced to one weird trick.

The woman’s wellness doesn’t begin when she touches his cloak. Matthew makes it clear that it only starts with Jesus’ affirmation of her faith and his encouragement to take heart. Most significantly, it begins when he calls her “daughter,” which is all about her relationship with him and with her God.

Our Report

When you get your copy of the report today, you will find that it is filled with things that we propose that we do as a congregation together. There are actions that we plan to take by particular dates. There are new regular practices that we mean to put in place. I hope you will find that there are a lot of specifics that will help us to discover a thriving future and do it well.

But do you want to know what you won’t find? You won’t find one weird trick that will solve all of our problems and fix all of our worries. Health, well-being and thriving are not things that we will ever achieve by just finding one weird trick.

Yes, there are some relatively simple things that we can do and that will help us, but none of these are about doing something that costs us nothing and fixes everything. They will only make a difference if they are part of it an ongoing journey of faith and faithfulness – faithfulness to God and faithfulness to one another.

Cultivating a Culture of Kindness

Let me get a little more specific by talking about one of the aspects of our report. We identified as one of our priorities the need to cultivate a culture of kindness. That includes things like making sure that people feel that they are welcome and that they can participate no matter who they are. We do believe that that priority can certainly help us to bring vibrancy to our church.

But if we try to do that through a one weird trick approach, it will be doomed to failure. It’s not going to work just to tell people that they are welcomed or included, for example. It is not enough to just lay out a welcome mat. Actually, getting to a place where people, especially people who are perhaps a little different from us, feel as if they can really belong, it’s going to take some work. Because it can only be achieved by building trust over time.

Healing Hurts

I don’t know if you realize this, but a lot of people have been hurt by churches over the years. It may not have always been intentional. Sometimes, perhaps, it was unavoidable. But it has happened. And when you have been hurt, when you have been made to feel as if you do not have a place, there’s no one weird trick that can fix that. It takes time to build a relationship, to get people to a place where they feel as if they can let their guard down because this time nobody’s going to try and hurt them.

Hespeler, June 11, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Second Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

W

e began an important journey together as a congregation at the start of the year. We did so because we recognized that we were facing some unprecedented challenges as a church in the early twenty-first century. We were not thriving like we felt that we could or should. We wanted to know why and what we could do to change that feeling and that reality.

And now, today, we are moving towards the end of that process. After worship today we will discuss a report that includes some specific recommendations that we hope will help us move into the future with a real sense of vitality and hope. But, before we delve into that report, I would like to talk a bit about the attitude that we want to bring with us.

Online Advertising

I wonder if you can remember a time about two decades ago. Online advertising and commerce were still kind of new back then, and, in the early 2000s, the web was flooded with a certain kind of advertisement. They called it clickbait. It was the kind of ad that had a loud and enticing headline that made it almost irresistible to click on it just to find out what it was about.

One Weird Trick

And one kind of ad stood out. I know you have seen them. They proclaimed that a certain man or woman had found “one weird trick” to solve some of the most difficult problems that people struggled with. There were weird tricks for everything – to fix your weight problems, your hair loss, you complexion or wrinkles. And all you had to do was click and the answer to your problem would be right there. Remember those ads?

The ads often included lines like, “Doctors hate him or her.” That part of it was also enticing because it suggested that you could solve your problem without going through painful or expensive medical intervention, that you could be healthier without having to work out or make significant changes to your diet. The implications were that “they” (the doctors or whatever other experts) were intentionally trying to suppress or hide this trick because “they” didn’t care about you like the people posting the ad.

Why These Ads Word

Many of these ads, in case you don’t know, were scams. Some of them managed to defraud people out of thousands of dollars. But I am sure that we all understand why they were so successful. Whenever we are struggling, whenever there is something that isn’t quite right, it is always so tempting to look for that one weird trick. If only we can find that one simple thing we can do to make it all right – especially if it is painless and if you don’t have to make any real changes to what is comfortable to us – everything will be great!

North American Churches Search for Solutions

Churches do that too. In fact, in many ways, the history of the Christian Church in North America over the last few decades has been the story of an endless search for that one weird trick. That history is just full of ministry and program fads. Various experts have come along and promised that, if only you adopt their three-point (or twelve-point or however many point) plan, you will thrive. We have been promised that this evaluation tool or that missional philosophy will make everything alright.

And, of course, I am not saying that there wasn’t anything of value in these approaches. A lot of churches undertook them, and they helped them to make some necessary changes and led to at least some success. But I would suggest that those congregations who saw these ideas as that one weird trick that would fix everything with no mess and no fuss likely did not get what they really needed.

Local Churches Affected

The one weird trick fallacy also affects many a local church. How many times have church leaders had a church member, or even a visitor, come up to them and say, “Pastor, Pastor, I have one weird trick that will save this church.” Well, okay, they don’t actually say it in so many words, but that is what they mean when they say that they heard about this church over there that does this thing or that church over there that does that thing, and they have so many people showing up. If we just did that one thing, just think of the results!

Now, once again, there is nothing wrong with learning from what other churches do successfully. But it actually rarely works that you can just take one thing from one church and expect it to work somewhere else in the same way without taking into account the culture, context and many others specific characteristics of that church that no doubt contribute to that success. It doesn’t really work as a one weird trick kind of solution.

The Woman with a Flow of Blood

There was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years – an absolutely horrible situation. A flow of blood would have made her unclean and, therefore, socially unacceptable. So this is not just a medical issue, it affects every part of her life.

This woman’s story is told three different times in three of our gospels. Each time it is told in the same general terms, but if you compare them side by side, you quickly realize that each gospel writer, Matthew, Mark and Luke, has a way of telling it slightly differently.

For example, in the Gospel of Mark, it speaks specifically about how this woman “had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse.” (Mark 5:26)

But Matthew just jumps over her years of struggles. He doesn’t mention her suffering under many doctors. (Which makes me ask, do doctors hate her?) Matthew jumps straight to her finally coming up with one weird trick to solve all of her problems. “She was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

A “One Weird Trick” Story

The way that Matthew presents it, it really does seem like a “one weird trick” kind of solution. Years of struggling and trying to find health and social acceptability for herself are suddenly wiped away by her doing just one thing. And I’m sure that you will agree with me that what she does is definitely a bit weird!

And honestly, if the story had ended there, I think that would be the message. It certainly represents the way that we often approach Jesus to solve our problems. We like to wait until we’ve gotten ourselves into a bad corner and then finally turn to Jesus in desperation to just fix things for us.

As I have already said, we tend to do it when we are worried about the vitality of our churches, but I can also give you countless examples of people who do it when they run into serious problems in their lives. I know I’ve done it too. Our default is to want to turn Jesus in to that lucky charm, that talisman, that one weird trick.

That is not how it Ends

But the story doesn’t end there. And here again, if you read the other versions of this story in the other gospels, you will get quite a different impression. They spend a fair bit of time puzzling out how Jesus figured out what had happened.

In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that Jesus felt the power going out of him and stopped, looking around to try and figure out who had touched him. But Matthew mentions none of that, likely because he recognizes that it might leave his readers with the impression that Jesus really is a magical source of healing power, that he really is that one weird trick that can solve your problem.

Jesus’ Response

But Matthew and Jesus know that that is not the case. And so Matthew jumps immediately to Jesus’ commentary on the whole affair. “Take heart, daughter;” he says, “your faith has made you well.” And only then Matthew finishes her story by saying, “And the woman was made well from that moment” – that is, from the moment when Jesus said that to her.

Now, at first glance, it may seem as if all of this is only reaffirming this woman’s “one weird trick” approach to health and vitality. It is her faith that has made her well; doesn’t that simply confirm that she was right to believe that she would get well just by touching the hem of his garment? But, of course, Jesus doesn’t say that she has been healed because of her belief in the magical power of the hem of his robe.

Having Faith

He says that her faith has done it. And in the Gospel of Matthew, in all of the gospels, having faith is never simply a matter of just believing certain things. It is always a matter of trust. It is always about trusting in Jesus and in what he has said. It is always part of an ongoing relationship and so it can never be reduced to one weird trick.

The woman’s wellness doesn’t begin when she touches his cloak. Matthew makes it clear that it only starts with Jesus’ affirmation of her faith and his encouragement to take heart. Most significantly, it begins when he calls her “daughter,” which is all about her relationship with him and with her God.

Our Report

When you get your copy of the report today, you will find that it is filled with things that we propose that we do as a congregation together. There are actions that we plan to take by particular dates. There are new regular practices that we mean to put in place. I hope you will find that there are a lot of specifics that will help us to discover a thriving future and do it well.

But do you want to know what you won’t find? You won’t find one weird trick that will solve all of our problems and fix all of our worries. Health, well-being and thriving are not things that we will ever achieve by just finding one weird trick.

Yes, there are some relatively simple things that we can do and that will help us, but none of these are about doing something that costs us nothing and fixes everything. They will only make a difference if they are part of it an ongoing journey of faith and faithfulness – faithfulness to God and faithfulness to one another.

Cultivating a Culture of Kindness

Let me get a little more specific by talking about one of the aspects of our report. We identified as one of our priorities the need to cultivate a culture of kindness. That includes things like making sure that people feel that they are welcome and that they can participate no matter who they are. We do believe that that priority can certainly help us to bring vibrancy to our church.

But if we try to do that through a one weird trick approach, it will be doomed to failure. It’s not going to work just to tell people that they are welcomed or included, for example. It is not enough to just lay out a welcome mat. Actually, getting to a place where people, especially people who are perhaps a little different from us, feel as if they can really belong, it’s going to take some work. Because it can only be achieved by building trust over time.

Healing Hurts

I don’t know if you realize this, but a lot of people have been hurt by churches over the years. It may not have always been intentional. Sometimes, perhaps, it was unavoidable. But it has happened. And when you have been hurt, when you have been made to feel as if you do not have a place, there’s no one weird trick that can fix that. It takes time to build a relationship, to get people to a place where they feel as if they can let their guard down because this time nobody’s going to try and hurt them.

There are no one weird tricks. But there is hope, and there is life. That is what that woman discovered when she came up to Jesus that day. I don’t know if doctors hate her, but I do know that that day she was finally able to know that Jesus loved her and that she belonged. And that is what made the difference.

https://youtu.be/dAQCsO41F14

Hespeler, June 4, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Trinity Sunday
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

Many people, even faithful believing Christians, will argue over the passage that we read this morning from the Book of Genesis. Many will ask the question, is it true? By which they usually mean, is it true that God really created everything that exists over a period of six 24-hour days. Many of us, perhaps rightly so, are a little bit skeptical about that idea.

But I actually think we are too quick to ask that question of this story. I would argue that you cannot say whether a piece of literature is true or not until you decide something else first. You have to decide what kind of literature it is.

Different Kinds of Literature

This is actually something that we all know, it’s just that we don’t usually talk about it. Every different kind of literature operates according to its own rules that we use to judge whether or not it is true.

For example, when you read a newspaper article and you ask whether it is true, you are actually asking whether all of the things that the article says happened actually happened as it says that they did. A true journalistic article is one that is properly sourced, that quotes people accurately and tells you what happened.

Fiction and Poetry

When you read a book of fiction, on the other hand, you know very well that the events that it narrates never happened and the characters it describes never existed. But why, then, do you read fiction? Is it because there is no truth in it? Of course not! I think that I can honestly say that some of the deepest and greatest truths I have ever learned about humanity and life in this world, I learned from some of the fictional novels that I have read. They are a great source of truth, just not literal truth.

And then you pull out a poem, let’s say, a much-loved poem by Robert Frost. And you read the part where he says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” How would you judge whether that poem was true? Would you insist that, unless somebody could show you the actual roads that diverged in a wood somewhere where Robert Frost once stood that that was a false poem? Of course not. The truth of the poem does not depend on the existence of any roads because the road is a metaphor for the course of the poet’s life.

What Kind of Literature is it?

So, I hope you will agree with me that every different kind of literature has different rules for their truthfulness. And the Bible is not just one kind of literature. It is a collection of various types of literature. And so, if you want to know whether and how certain passages are true, you need to know what kind of literature you were dealing with.

So, what kind of literature is the creation story? I suspect that most of us would agree that it was not intended to be a journalistic account of what actually happened at the beginning of all things. It predates the invention of journalism by many centuries. Therefore, the truth of it does not depend on everything having happened exactly as it describes. Nor would we call it a scientific textbook, which would mean that it’s truth would have to be demonstrated through repeatable experimentation and observation. But what sort of literature are we dealing with?

A Liturgy

I am going to make a suggestion that might not necessarily occur to many people. I am going to suggest that the story of creation in Genesis chapter 1 is actually a liturgy. A liturgy is a very specific kind of literature. It is a document written to guide a community through an act of worship. Our Sunday morning bulletin, for example, is a very simple kind of liturgy.

And there are some pretty good reasons for thinking that Genesis 1 could be a liturgy. It is very repetitive, and you can easily imagine how it might have worked as a sort of call and response. You can imagine, for example, the worship leaders calling out, “And there was evening and there was morning.” And then all the people responding, “the first day, the second day, the third day, and so on.”

The Enuma Elish

But, even more important than that, we know that there were worship services in the ancient world that were very similar to what we see in Genesis 1. I mean, extremely similar. In Babylon, during the Neo Babylonian kingdom, there was an annual New Year’s festival. And as a key part of this worship festival for the Babylonian gods, the great epic story, called the Enuma Elish, was recited.

And guess what the Enuma Elish was. It was the story, told in seven tablets, of how Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonians, created the world and everything in it. And there is a lot in common between the two stories.

How Marduk Created

Marduk creates, in fact, following almost exactly the same steps as the Lord God does in Genesis. He separates the waters above from the waters below. He creates lights in the dome of the sky to organize the passage of time and seasons. Step by step, the creation takes place in pretty much the same order.

So, there is a lot in common. But there is also a lot that is different. In Genesis, how does God create? By a word. God speaks and everything in all creation is put into its proper place.

Marduk, on the other hand, has a very different approach to creation in the Enuma Elish. Marduk creates almost everything through violence. When he separates the waters above from the waters below by creating a solid barrier, he doesn’t do it by speaking like God does. He does it by defeating a great monster named Tiamat and then literally ripping her in two from top to bottom.

When he creates humanity, he does so by killing another god and creating the human beings, as slaves to the gods, out of the blood of that dead god. So, while it is remarkable how the two stories are alike, it is in many ways even more remarkable how different they are.

Story Originated in Babylon

The connections between the two stories are so significant, that most scholars today believe that the Genesis account was influenced by the Babylonian creation story. And, by far, the most likely time when that would have happened was while the people of Israel were living as exiles in the land of Babylon.

While they were there, many of them living as servants in the homes of the Babylonian elite, they would have been exposed to the Enuma Elish. And, in the midst of that harrowing experience, some of them may have been inspired by God to create this liturgy of creation.

Why they Needed this Story

Put yourself for a moment into the position of those poor Judean exiles in Babylon. They have been subjugated and defeated by this terrible violent people. They have been robbed of their homeland by them and reduced to being their servants and slaves.

And every year, at the Babylonian New Year, they are forced to listen to a story that affirms that the Babylonians are the greatest and that they deserve to rule over the whole world. And why are the Babylonians so great? Well, obviously because the Babylonian gods are the best. And we know that the Babylonian gods are the best because look at all of the other gods and monsters they killed and slaughtered and tore into pieces in order to create the world. That was the message.

A Better Story

And can you not imagine some poor Judean exiles getting together one day and saying, “No, that’s just not right. The world was not created to be a place of violence and slaughter and death. It was not created merely so that the strong could exploit the weak. It was created to be a place of hope and life. And so, it couldn’t have been those violent Babylonian gods who made everything.

“It must have been our God who is the creator of all. And our God did not create everything by violence and slaughter and tearing other beings in two, our God brought order and meaning to the universe with… with just a few words. And God made it good. That’s how powerful our God is!”

A Festival

But, of course, it wasn’t enough to just say that. Who would care what a bunch of powerless slaves and exiles said. They needed a powerful way to express it so that people would remember it and have hope. And what better way to do that than to start to gather as a Jewish exile community. Over a week they would gather and celebrate their God as the true creator of the universe.

And let’s just guess what exactly they may have worshipped over those seven days. Day one: God the creator of light. Day two: the creator who separated the waters above from the waters below and created the barrier of the sky. Day three: The creator of dry land and growing plants. Day four: The creator of the sun, moon and stars and, well you get the idea.

Just a Basic Outline

So what we seem to have in the first chapter of Genesis is the basic outlines of the worship that was carried out over this weeklong festival. Of course, there would have been more to it than that. There would have been hymns to sing and we might even have some of the lyrics: “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” I can imagine a choir singing that, can’t you?

I’m sure there must have been dancing and feasting too. What better way to celebrate the creator of growing things than with a feast of fruits, for example. But the basic outline is right there in the seven days of creation story.

The Seven Days

Of course, you realize what this means? All of those people who tie themselves up in knots about how the Bible says that God created the world in seven days and that therefore all of the scientists who say the earth is millions of years old are wrong despite having all of the evidence on their side, may have completely misunderstood what this passage is actually saying. The seven days is not intended to be an indication of how long it took God to do it. It is only an indication of how long it took for the people to celebrate it.

An Act of Resistance

But, more important, this means that this story is about a whole lot more than how the world came to be. It is all about how a subjugated and exploited people can stand up for themselves and resist their abusers. And that is an aspect of this passage that we definitely need to recover given what is going on in our world today.

So, what can we draw from this story to help build a better world? Well, think of it this way. The exiles in Babylon lived in a world where everyone believed that violence and power were the solutions to every problem and that only the most powerful could rule. The Babylonian Enuma Elish reinforced that view of things.

We still live in a society that believes that today. Think of all of the stories we tell – the stories that come out of Marvel Studios for example. But the Jewish exiles told a very different story of a God who created with words, not violence. It was a powerful witness that the world could be different!

Valuing Human Life

The exiles in Babylon lived in a world where human beings like them were considered to exist only to serve the interests of the powerful and wealthy. This was reinforced by the Babylonian creation story that declared that all humans had only been created as servants to the gods.

And make no mistake that we also live in a world that values human life in much the same way. All of us everyday are constantly being judged in terms of what we can produce, what we contribute to the economy. And those who do not produce, or who do not earn enough from the fruit of their labour, are increasingly abandoned and treated as worthless. The Babylonian Creation story’s message is still powerful!

But the Jewish exiles were bold to proclaim in their story that the purpose of humanity was very different – that “In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” They dared to tell a story of God giving dominion over the land to all people and that the goods of the earth were gifted to all humanity by God for their sustenance.

A Subversive Sabbath

And, if the people who celebrated this story were essentially slaves, what do a slaves need more than anything else? They need time off! And this story of creation is all about taking time off, isn’t it? That is why the whole thing is built around a seven-day cycle! It is all about getting us to the seventh day, the day of rest!

And in this liturgy, what were the Hebrew exiles saying? They were saying that their time off was not a gift of their Babylonian masters. They were saying that it was a gift of their God – indeed that God had built the entire universe around their need for a break! That was a dangerous thing to say in Babylon, but the Jews told this enduring story, and a good story has a way of getting through to people. The story stuck.

The Genesis creation story is a worship liturgy. But, more important, it offered a way to tell a story that went against the narrative of the world. As such, it had a powerful and enduring impact. Let’s think about the stories that we tell about this world. They can also have the same kind of impact. And let’s also consider how our acts of worship can also transform our understanding of this world. That is where the deepest truth and greatest power of the story of creation can be found.

https://youtu.be/T7f-ZKb8vWU

Hespeler, May 28, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Pentecost
Numbers 11:24-30, Psalm 104:24-34, 35b, Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23

You might not know this about me, but I have a degree in Linguistics – the study of language. And that has always meant that I look at the famous story of the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts a little differently from most preachers.

I cannot just turn off the Linguist part of my brain when I read it. I cannot help but notice, for example, that, on one level, the miracle of people speaking in different languages was not really necessary for comprehension.

Everyone Spoke Greek

It is true, of course, that various people who lived in various places spread all over the known world at that time had their own local languages. But it is also true that, because of the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire, many people had also learned at least one other language.

If you traveled or traded or dealt with government officials, you learned to speak Greek. You had to just to get by. And so, even if expatriate Jews and some Gentiles had travelled to Jerusalem for the festival of Pentecost, and even if they spoke the local language back home, they all had a very easy and convenient way to communicate with each other: just speak Greek.

What is the Point?

So, what is the point of these members of the church suddenly speaking in all these local languages from back home? What is it supposed to accomplish? It can’t be about comprehension, so what is it about?

Ah, but any Linguist understands that language isn’t just about comprehension. It also serves several social functions. So, I suspect that something else is going on in this story. But, to understand what it is, you may need to put yourself in the sandals of one of those outsiders who had come in for the festival that year.

A Visitor from Parthia

Shimeon was a Jew, but he was a Jew who had lived all his life in Parthia. And, for almost all of that life, the King of Parthia had been at war with the Emperor of Rome. Even though it was practically required of all Jews that they should travel to Jerusalem every year for the three main festivals, everyone understood that those who lived elsewhere could only make the trip rarely.

But when you live in a place at war with Rome, when you literally have to cross a demilitarized zone to get from your home to the temple in Jerusalem, you can imagine that even doing so rarely could become impossible.

A Wonderful Opportunity

The fact of the matter was that Shimeon had never been able to make the pilgrimage, not even once in his entire life. So, he had been so very excited when things had worked out and he was able to come down for the Festival of Passover this year. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with the heritage and traditions of his people that had always been so hard to hold onto in far off Parthia.

As a Jew, a member of a minority community, he had always felt like an outsider in Parthia. He was excluded from all religious festivals and most other social gatherings in the mainstream society. So, of course he had been looking forward to being in a place where he was surrounded by Jewish people and by Jewish practices and worship. He had thought that he might find himself here. But, things had not quite gone as he had expected. A lot of it had to do with language.

Jews in Parthia

When the small Jewish community in Parthia gathered in synagogue, they sometimes did some prayers and rituals in the old Hebrew language. But the old language didn’t mean much to them. When the elders read the scriptures, they occasionally read from the few Hebrew scrolls that they had, but then they had to explain what they meant to the younger people in Greek. So, it was usually much easier to read from the popular Greek translation known as the Septuagint. These scrolls, that had first been published some two centuries earlier, were also easier to obtain in far-off Parthia than any Hebrew scrolls.

So, while Shimeon had heard some archaic Hebrew, he really wasn’t comfortable using it. But he hadn’t expected that to be a problem on this pilgrimage. Wherever he had traveled before, he had always managed to get by in Greek, surely things would be the same in Jerusalem.

Treated like an Outsider

But it had not worked out that way. As he dealt with the native Judeans – bartering for a place to stay or for food in the marketplace or even just asking for some directions – when he spoke to them in Greek, he could tell that they could understand him. When he asked for the price of the figs, for example, they looked right at the basket of figs in the booth, but then they stubbornly answered him in the local dialect of Aramaic.

Aramaic was somewhat related to old Hebrew, so he was sometimes able to work out what they were saying, but then, when he tried to answer them in the language that he had heard in the synagogue back home, they laughed at him, calling his accent strange and ill-tutored. They then used this as a ready excuse to overcharge him or deny him the goods he had been looking for.

Understanding the Judeans

You see, the Judeans, who had so long felt like outsiders in the big world of the Roman Empire, tended to make up for that by treating those who came from other places like minorities and outsiders. They refused to speak common Greek to them. They doubled down on the local Aramaic dialect and were only too happy to make fun of the way that the outsiders spoke.

They did this to all of the outsiders who came down to the festival, even those who only came from as close as Galilee. Galileans, in many ways, were the most like the Judeans, especially in their dialect. But the Judeans went out of their way to make fun of their strange northern accent.

So, even though participating in the events of the festival had meant a great deal to him, ever since he had arrived, Shimeon still felt as if he didn’t belong here either. It made him wonder if he really belonged anywhere.

A Sudden Disruption

The greatest day, the climax of the festival, was the day when the people brought their first fruits to present in the temple. It was a chance to give back to God from the very best that God had given to them over the year. And Shimeon was excited as he joined the throng moving through the streets. If he didn’t speak, no one looked twice at him and, for a few moments he could feel as if he was part of something much bigger than himself.

But suddenly, as he passed by a side street, he heard some shouting. It sounded… different. It didn’t have the same cadence and rhythm of the local Aramaic language. It seemed strange and out of place here, and yet the thing that really struck Shimeon about it was a strange familiarity. There was something in it that felt like home to him, as if he were suddenly back on the streets of the city in Parthia where he had grown up and played with the other local boys.

Galileans Behaving Strangely

And so, he turned aside, as did a number of other worshippers in the crowd. They soon came upon a small group of men and women who had gathered outside of a house. It was quite plain that all of them, by their clothing and their mannerisms, were Galileans. But, amazingly, they weren’t speaking like Galileans. To his wonder and amazement, Shimeon noticed that one of them, a young man, was shouting out praises to God in the local language of Parthia – the very language he had grown up speaking on the streets.

As he looked around at him, he saw many other pilgrims has been drawn to the spot. They, like him, had traveled from many places to be here for the festival – Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia. Oh, there were too many to name! And he could see by the looks on their faces and by the tears that they were wiping from their eyes that they were reacting much as he had. They also had felt completely excluded up until this moment, but they all suddenly felt that they belonged.

Judean Backlash

But they were not the only ones who had been attracted by the disturbance. There were also some local people too, some Judeans. And they were moved by what they heard as well, but not in the same way. Many of them were furious. For, in and amongst all of the various languages and accents that had been emanating from the group of Galileans, there were also words spoken in the local Judean dialect.

The Judeans in the crowd felt as if they were being mocked by these crude Galileans. Why, the very idea that their language, the language obviously favoured by God, could be counted merely as one among so many others was unacceptable. And so, they, for their part, began to shout out against these Galileans. “Don’t listen to these country Bumpkins,” they cried. “Here it is. Only nine o’clock in the morning and they are already drunk and raving like lunatics!”

A Galilean Speaks

But then the crowd fell silent as one of the Galileans stepped forward. Everyone wanted to hear what he might have to say about such wonders. “Fellow Judeans, and all who live in Jerusalem,” he said, speaking specifically to those who had been criticizing them. He spoke in very poor Greek, mixed with many Aramaicisms and a heavy Galilean accent. “Let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these people are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.” And so began the very first Christian sermon ever preached.

Something about the Early Church

When the writer of the Book of Acts started writing his account of the beginnings of the Christian movement, he knew a number of things about the earliest church. He knew, for example, that one of the practices of the church from near the beginning (and perhaps it continued into his own day) included believers speaking in strange languages.

It worked like this. Some believers, while they were gathered with the community in worship, would enter into an ecstatic state. This is something that human beings have been doing for a very long time. They get all worked up in a frenzy until they lose all ordinary control of themselves. It is something that still happens to this day in various settings including worship services and raves and even some practices that use psychotropic drugs.

Speaking in Tongues

In this state, the believers would sometimes speak in unintelligible languages. These were not actual languages, but more like ecstatic utterances. In his Letter to the Corinthians, Paul insisted that they could only be understood through a similar act of ecstatic interpretation by another believer.

But the act of speaking in tongues, as it was called, could be very moving and had the effect of deepening the worshipper’s connection to God and the community through the Holy Spirit. As a result, those who engaged in it seem to have sometimes thought that they were somehow better Christians than those who didn’t. The Apostle Paul saw that as a problem.

The Author of Acts Makes it Mean Something Else

The author of the Book of Acts obviously knew about this practice. But when he came to write the story of the origins of the Christian Church, he decided to present it in a different way. He decided, for just this one occasion it seems, to transform this speaking in tongues into something that wasn’t just ecstatic and unintelligible. He had the first Christians on that first day speak in the local languages of people from every corner of the known world.

Why did he do this. I think he was trying to say something – something that was probably more symbolic than it was literal.

A Writer who Knew About Being an Outsider

We don’t actually know who wrote the Book of Acts. Christian tradition says that it was a man named Luke, but we can hardly be sure of that. Whoever he was, though, he was almost certainly a man who spoke Greek as his first language. His Greek is excellent.

So perhaps he had had the experience, as a Greek interested in the God of Israel, of going to a festival in Jerusalem and being treated like an outsider. He knew what it was like to be the outsider who the locals thought talked funny. I wonder if that is why he reimagined the practice of the early church of speaking in tongues as something that could overcome that kind of prejudice and mistreatment.

If that’s what he was doing, he was putting forward something very hopeful. He was drawing a compelling picture of what the church could be – a community where there really was a place for anybody and nobody ever got treated as a second class citizen. That is an idea of the church that I still cling to and aspire to. If we could all aspire to that, I think that God would do some amazing things among us.

https://youtu.be/8Dq9_UFakqs

Hespeler, May 21, 2023 – Ascension Sunday
Acts 1:1-14, Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35, 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11, John 17:1-11

On October 14, 2012, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner got into a helium balloon and flew straight up into and beyond the atmosphere. He climbed 39 kilometres (or 24 miles) into the stratosphere. The blue sky turned black and the stars came out. He was wearing a specially designed pressure suit, of course, or he would have been dead before long.

He stood there at the door of his capsule and looked down. The curve of the earth’s globe was plainly visible beneath him. He leaned forward and then he just fell. Well, he didn’t just fall; he hurdled to earth in free fall. He fell for 4 minutes and 19 seconds before eventually deploying his parachute. During that time the black sky turned blue, the whole earth spun, and he moved so fast that he is the first and only human being to ever break the sound barrier without an engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9oKEJ1pXPw

A Stunning Event

The whole event was absolutely stunning and awe inspiring. All over the world, people watched the video of the feat in shocked amazement. And if you had been present in New Mexico, where the whole event played out, you would have stood there staring into the sky. Your eyes would have widened in shock when you heard the sonic boom and realized that a man had just made that. You would have been filled with wonder and relief to see the man land safely.

I could not help but think about that incredible stunt that took place over a decade ago when I read our passage this morning from the Book of Acts. “When [Jesus] had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” The connection between the two events seems inescapable. Jesus takes exactly the same route as Felix Baumgartner, just in the opposite direction.

An Amazed Reaction

Even more important than that, the reaction is much the same. While he was going, the disciples were gazing up toward heaven. And they are clearly so amazed and shocked by what they are seeing that they barely even noticed the sudden appearance of two men in white robes. These men, who appear to be angels, then criticise them for staring up so fixedly saying, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

There is so much that connects these two stories. They both follow the same route. They are both extremely awe inspiring. But, in many ways, when you look at the question of what these two events mean, they really couldn’t be more different.

What it means?

Baumgartner’s jump was many things. It was a publicity stunt engineered to promote the Red Bull brand. It was a successful attempt to set a world record. But it was, above all, a scientific experiment. And, as such, it confirmed many of the things that we know about our planet. It dramatically demonstrated the shape of our planet and the form and substance of the atmosphere and stratosphere.

But if the story of the ascension of Jesus into heaven means anything – and it obviously means a great deal – that meaning seems to depend on a denial of just about everything that has been demonstrated by Baumgartner’s jump. Because, if all that Jesus did was to rise up from the earth in order to enter into the stratosphere – if all he did was travel upwards until the blue sky turned black, the stars came out and the oxygen ran out – that would have been amazing. But it would have had none of the meaning that it is meant to have in this passage in the Book of Acts.

How they saw the Universe

The meaning of this story is entirely dependant on a first century understanding of the universe. The disciples of Jesus lived in a world that they conceived of as a layer cake. There were three basic levels of their universe, and the meaning of those levels was more spiritual than it was physical. The earth was sandwiched between an underworld below – a place of death and possible damnation – and heaven above. Heaven was where God lived, and it was just beyond the clouds and on the other side of what looked like the blue dome of the sky.

And the meaning of Jesus’ ascension is all found in the spiritual shape of the universe. This story is about Jesus departing from a physical presence with his disciples to take his place at the right hand of the Father so that he can watch over and intercede for his beloved followers on the earth.

A Theological Idea

Now, as a theological idea, I have no problem with that. The amazing story of the gospel is that God so loved this world that he gave his only begotten son to live among us. What that means is that, in Christ, the very nature of God broke through into this world. Somehow Jesus was able to show us the true nature of God (that God is love).

In addition, Jesus brings humanity together with God so that God may understand all of our failings, temptations and weakness. And yes, it is only fitting that the risen Jesus must stand before God to plead for us and support our needs to the great ruler of the universe.

So as an idea, it is absolutely beautiful and wonderful. It means the world to me. But when you tell me that this had to be accomplished by Jesus doing a reverse Baumgartner, you kind of lose me there. Because I know that the universe doesn’t work like that.

I know that if you go straight up, you do not somehow pass through a solid blue dome and find yourself standing in the physical presence of God in heaven. Astronauts have been up there. Felix Baumgartner has been up there we know that that is not how the universe works.

Where is God?

That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that heaven doesn’t exist. Oh yes, they probably exist in a way that doesn’t quite fit into the three-dimensional space that we’re familiar with, but they still exist. But if I have to embrace the concept of the universe that was held by the first century disciples in order to accept the meaning of the story of the ascension, I have a problem. I know that, in order to take a place at the right hand of God, Jesus did not have to literally fly up into the stratosphere.

Stories about what they had Experienced

Here, then, is how I have come to see all of this. As far as I’m concerned, there is no denying that the disciples and followers of Jesus experienced something extraordinary in this person. They experienced God in him in some truly irresistible ways. They tried to pass on the truth of what they had experienced to us by telling stories of his incarnation, his transfiguration and other extraordinary events.

After he had been crucified and died, they experienced him alive and with them again. They passed on the incredible news of what they had experienced with the stories that they told of his resurrection. And sometime after he had been raised, they experienced something that convinced them that he had moved on to another plane of existence from which he would intercede for them before the Father. They passed on the truth of this with their accounts of the ascension.

The Challenge of the Ascension

But they had a challenge in telling the stories of the ascension. Stories of the incarnation were extraordinary of course, but at least they could relate them to things that they had already seen. They had all experienced things like conception and birth, and they knew that Jesus’ birth had to be something like that, just more divine.

In the same way, they could talk about the miracle of the resurrection using terms that everyone could understand because everyone could at least imagine what it was like to see someone again after they had died. Yes, in the case of Jesus it was far more amazing than that, but it did relate to everyday life.

But they didn’t have the words to describe an experience of Jesus taking this new place at the side of God. And so, they had to resort to doing the best that they could, describing it in terms of the three-layer universe as they understood it. And so, I don’t think that we can know exactly what they saw and felt and knew on that day. The best that they could say was that it was like watching Jesus go up and into the stratosphere.

What it Means Today

That all leaves us with the question of what we do with all of that, and what it means for the faith that we profess today. The thing that particularly strikes me about it today is the way that, in that moment – as they stand there staring into the sky – the disciples are given an incredible new insight into the relationship between themselves and God – an insight that they can only describe in terms of Jesus going up into the sky.

And we are all given such insights from time to time – moments when heaven and earth come together and it all makes sense. These are powerful moments. But they come with a temptation. Such visions can be so overwhelming that we stand there in awe of what we have seen. We are just so impressed with our own insight.

Our Response to Insight

That is exactly what the disciples are doing in this passage, and it is exactly why the two men in white call them out. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Yes, we have been shown the secrets of another existence. Yes, we can take comfort in knowing that Christ will intercede for us from the right hand of God. Yes, we know the hope that he will return some day and finally bring justice and equity to the whole world. But none of that is a reason to stand frozen in inaction.

The day of ascension is all about what Jesus has done and will do for us. But the point of it is not to stand there amazed by what we have seen. Jesus has already been clear about that when the disciples asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”

In other words, he is saying that, even though God is going to do it, you can’t know when. Therefore, there is no point in standing around looking up to the place where God was thought to abide.

What to do Instead

So what, then, were they to do instead of standing around and staring? Jesus had told them that too. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And I think it is very significant what they are asked to do instead of waiting around. They are told to be witnesses. It is not up to them to make it happen – that is up to God. But they can be witnesses – they can tell other people about what they have seen and experienced of God in Jesus Christ.

So, what you have experienced, the deep insights that God has given to you over the years, the sudden realization of God’s love and grace that have come to you, you can and should share them. They will be blessings to many others. But they are not an end in themselves, don’t become stuck staring at them and contemplating them. Expect more from God, and in your expectation be bold to share what you have experienced. That is how hope spreads. And that has to be what Ascension Sunday is about.

https://youtu.be/dDLFvbI3SjE

Hespeler, May 14, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Christian Family Sunday, Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:8-20, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21

It has become common these days to blame religion for so much of the evil we find in this world. This is not without some good reason. If you want to create a list of all of the ways in which religion, all religion including Christianity, is evil, it is not really very hard. Just think of all of the Jihads, Crusades and genocides that have been carried out in the name of faith. Consider the atrocities committed because of religious differences – in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories just to name a few.

Evils in the Name of Faith

Remember, in our own country, the story of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery, endorsed by all major Christian faiths, that justified stripping all lands from the indigenous people because they were “savages.” Think of the residential school system that was a matter of national government policy, but that various Christian churches bought into wholeheartedly because they saw it as a chance to build up their own institutions.

Yes, religion is not the only cause of such devastation. We could also say many of the same things about nationalism, tribalism and racism, for example. But still, no one should underestimate all of the evil that has been carried out in this world in the name of faith.

But more than that, many people’s individual lives have been devastated by their encounters with religion. Abused people have often seen their abusers empowered and protected by religious institutions.

On this Christian Family Sunday, we need to admit that sometimes religion has had a devastating effect on families. Parents have been persuaded by religious teachers that, if their children don’t fit in with certain expectations, that they should reject them, maybe even turn them out. Such teachings have led to horrible outcomes like suicide and addiction.

Why Remain?

Many people today struggle with the long-terms effects of the trauma they experienced because of a strict religious upbringing. This is a pain that they carry with them every day and that most cannot overcome without extended therapy. Religion of all sorts has negatively affected people’s lives.

The downside of religion seems undeniable in many ways these days. And so, you might well ask me why I stay committed to the kind of work I do. Why not just give up on religion altogether? I’ll tell you why. It is because of the altar to the unknown god.

Paul in Athens

When the Apostle Paul went to Athens, he discovered a city that was full of religion and of gods. There were found some of the most famous and celebrated temples and altars in the whole world – the incredible Parthenon, the celebrated temple of Olympian Zeus, the massive Temple of Hephaestus, to name only a few. These temples represented some of the most powerful religious institutions that had ever existed.

In the names of these gods and others like them, the Roman legions had marched and conquered the world. In their names much evil was done, and perhaps some good. But, whether for good or ill, people believed in these gods and their stories because that was what they had always been taught. And so, Paul looked at all of these altars and concluded that the Athenians were indeed very religious people.

And maybe he wondered, given all of the violence that had been committed in the name of those well-established gods, whether it might not have been better if such religions had never existed. As a member of a religious minority who had suffered at the hands of the worshipers of these gods, you could hardly blame him for thinking such things.

Before the Areopagus

So why, then, when he spoke before the Areopagus, an assembly of leading Athenian citizens who were judging him, did he speak positively of the spiritual and religious lives of the Athenians. “Athenians,” he said, “I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way.” Why didn’t he simply reject their spiritual impulses as dangerous and deadly? I believe it was because of the altar to the unknown god.

As he wandered around the city, he had seen an altar dedicated to an unnamed god. Now, no one has ever found the actual altar to the unknown god among the many archeological digs in the city of Athens, but there is no reason to doubt that there was at least one there. They were not uncommon at all in the ancient Mediterranean world. There has been one found in excellent condition in the city of Rome.

Why were there such Altars?

But I’ve got to wonder why such things existed in a place like Athens. They had plenty of gods, after all – twelve major deities and tons of minor gods and demi-gods. You would think that they had all of the bases covered. And yet these strange altars kept being built, no doubt at great cost and personal sacrifice. Why?

The answer is simple. These altars were erected because, from time to time, people had experiences of the divine that they could not fit within the boundaries of all the huge varieties of religions that they saw around them.

Perhaps they were just going along with their everyday lives and they suddenly found themselves experiencing a transcendence that they could not explain. It might have been a moment of pure joy, or perhaps of terror. Maybe they felt as if they had been helped in some way that they couldn’t explain. Maybe they couldn’t quite put their finger on it, but they just knew that they were in the presence of the divine.

But clearly, what they had experienced did not fit with anything that they had been taught about the traditional gods all their lives. And so, they had to create some way to acknowledge what they had experienced that was outside of the religion of their society. That has to have been what happened.

What Comes First?

But do you realize what that means? We often work under the assumption that spiritual experiences are created by religious practice and belief. We assume that if you pray in certain ways or go through certain rituals, that you will experience God. We think that if you learn all the proper doctrines about God according to a religion, that you will come to know God. But the very existence of the altar to the unknown god proves that is not true.

Pretty clearly, if you had just taken away all of the altars to all the Olympian gods in Athens and all of Greece, if you would take it away all of the priests and the philosophers who taught their religious and spiritual ideas, this would not have eradicated the belief in the divine. People still would have been experiencing such things and, in response, feeling compelled to set up altars to the unknown that they had experienced.

Our Disposition to Spiritual Experience

The truth of the matter is that there is something in humanity itself, something that is built into the very structure of our minds, that disposes us to have spiritual experiences. I don’t know why that is. My suspicion is that it is something that God has built into us, but I obviously cannot prove that. But wherever it comes from, it is an undeniable part of who we are.

That doesn’t mean that everyone will have spiritual experiences – at least not to the same degree. But they will always remain an important part of human life and experience.

So, even if religion itself is flawed – even if it has often led to evil in this world, we cannot respond to that by giving up on religion entirely. If all of the principled and thoughtful and moral people just gave up on religion, would it just cease to exist? No, it would not.

You could tear down all of the churches, the temples, and mosques. You could destroy all of the institutions that support them. What would that mean? Would it bring the end of religion and the evil it might do? No. People would continue to experience the divine and they would continue to build their altars to an unknown god.

If we Abandon Religion

But that is not the only result. I can almost guarantee you that things would be quickly turn so much worse. If all of the principled and ethical believers abandoned religion, what would that leave? That would just leave all of the unscrupulous ones. And do not think for a moment that they wouldn’t be only too happy to co-opt all of the good intentions of those builders of altars to an unknown god and direct them towards new campaigns of terror, hatred and intolerance.

So, if you were to ask me to defend my choice to continue to participate in the Christian religion despite knowing the damage it has done and that it is capable of, that is what my answer would be. I stick around not because I have deluded myself into thinking that there is never anything wrong with religion. I stick around because I am not going to abandon this tradition to those who would use it in such ways.

I’m going to stick around so that I may do my best to promote a Christian faith that is open, tolerant and welcoming. I want to demonstrate to the world that it is possible to be a Christian and not be hateful. I am very sorry that I seem to be living in a time when so many have found it easy to conclude otherwise. But I will do my part to counter that narrative.

What Paul was Thinking

And so, while I obviously have no way of knowing all that was happening within the mind of the Apostle Paul at that meeting of the Areopagus, I’d like to think that he was thinking something along those lines and that is why he chose not to condemn the Athenians for the errors that he saw in their religious practice. He had respect for the divine experiences that they had had and how they had found ways to honour them.

And yes, Paul did not hesitate to proclaim his own understanding of the best way to approach the divine, especially because of what he had learned through his own experience of the risen Jesus Christ who revealed God in extraordinary ways. There is nothing wrong with doing that.

Paul’s Respect for them

But it is amazing to see how Paul speaks of these things while maintaining enormous respect for the spiritual experiences of the Athenians. He quotes their own poets and philosophers to them. He recognizes that their impulses towards the divine and even their desire to set up modes of worship are legitimate. That kind of respect for people who believe differently can take us a long way. It is an attitude that I would like to bring to every aspect of my religious life.

But more than that, even as he doesn’t refrain from sharing his own understanding and faith, he is definitely interested in finding the points of contact with others rather than the points of difference. He focusses, for example, on the common kinship of all humanity: “From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth.”

And he also doesn’t insist that God’s concern is limited only to his own people. The God he worships acknowledges all nations: “And he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.”

Most of all, he humbly acknowledges that all our knowledge of God is, at best, little more that us fumbling about and perhaps finding him. Such humility will always serve us well in all our dealings with those who believe differently.

Religion

Religion is not the greatest evil on the face of the earth. Neither is it the salvation of humanity. It really is a whole lot of us fumbling about and trying to do our best to honour what we have experienced of God. It is just a response and an imperfect response at best. But it is not going to go away if we give up on it. It will likely only become more problematic.

The hope, above all, is not found in religion. It is found in the God for whom we fumble about. The grace and hope is found in the fact that that God “is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’”

https://youtu.be/LgJFEq5ygBY

Hespeler, May 7, 2023 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 7:55-60, Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16, 1 Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14

In 1946, a brand-new translation of the New Testament was published. It was called the Revised Standard Version. And this was a very significant event in the history of the English Bible because, the previously unrevised Authorized Version had been around for a long time – I mean a very long time. That Bible, better known as the King James Version, was first published in 1611.

So, for 335 years, people had only heard one translation of the Bible. It was quite a shock for some people to hear familiar verses translated in new ways. And one particular verse was especially shocking. We read it this morning and in the Revised Standard Version it was translated like this: “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

“I want my mansion!”

In this passage, Jesus is speaking to his disciples just before his death. He is apparently describing to them what it is that will await them after they die. So, the promise seems to be that, in heaven, they will get to have rooms in God’s house. That sounds nice enough. Why would anyone have any trouble with that translation? Well, the problem was that they were used to a somewhat different translation in the King James Version. In the King James version, Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

And now you see why people got upset. It seemed as if this new translation of the Bible was ripping them off. The King James Version promised them a mansion and now this newfangled Bible was downgrading them to a mere room? I don’t think so. And so, one of the big complaints against the new translation was, “I want my mansion!”

A Word with Changed Meaning

It was all a misunderstanding. What the original Greek text of the Gospel of John says is basically what it says in the Revised Standard Version: In my Father’s house are many rooms or dwelling places.

But actually, the old King James Version hadn’t been wrong, at least not when it was first published over 400 years ago. Over 400 years ago, the English word mansion didn’t mean the same thing that it means today. Back then, when somebody said that they lived in a mansion, people didn’t imagine the homes of rich people like, in the year when the Revised Standard Version was published, Henry Ford or Andrew Carnegie. They didn’t imagine The Beverly Hillbillies.

Back when the KJV was published, a mansion just meant a place where you stayed. It often referred to a room in an inn or a place where you were staying in somebody else’s house. 400 years ago, that was an excellent translation of the original Greek phrase. It wasn’t the Bible that had changed. It wasn’t the promises of Jesus that had somehow been reduced, it was just that the English language had changed.

It’s about what you get

So, that is one misunderstanding that people have had of this verse. But there is another, deeper, misunderstanding that is also there that I think we need to address. Whether they’re thinking of a room or a mansion, there is a bigger fundamental assumption that people bring to this passage. They assume that is all about what they get in heaven. It is taken as a description of the accommodations, even of the possessions that they will have in the afterlife. And I just want to underline that that is absolutely not what is being described for us in this passage.

I do not believe that Jesus or anyone else in the New Testament for that matter, ever gave us a description or list of what we would get in heaven. I don’t think they ever described it at all. And they didn’t for one fundamental reason: whatever is waiting for us from the other side of death, absolutely defies all human description. We’ve never been there, and we don’t have the language to describe it.

The best we can do is offer a few metaphors. The best we can do is tell a story about what it is like. And that is exactly what Jesus is doing in this story. He’s not telling you what you get. He’s telling you a story.

A Familiar Story to them

And the story that he is telling would have been familiar to everyone who was listening to him or reading this gospel in the first century, because it was based on something that was essential to their culture. Their imaginations would have filled in the details of the story with no trouble.

But we are not a part of that culture, so it is harder for us to fill in those details and understand the richness of the story he is telling. So, for us to appreciate what is really going on, we have to add those details. So allow me to assist you.

A Young Man Makes his Way

The young man had come to the city to find himself. His father was a wealthy man who owned a fine farm in the countryside. The young man knew that it would all be his one day and he would look forward to doing his best to take care of it. But in the meantime, he wanted to experience the world outside of the farm and discover himself apart from his family.

And so, he did not flaunt any of his wealth. He went and found what work he could to sustain himself. And he just lived in the city and experienced its people.

Miriam

And it while he was there that he met and became rather enchanted with a young woman named Miriam. She was a simple girl, hard working and kind. She kept a booth in the city marketplace for her father.

Over several weeks he had interactions with her as he bartered for some fruit. He found himself spending more and more time hanging around her booth. He was smitten. She was smart, clever and had a killer sense of humour.

He just had to find out more about this enchanting woman. And so, he started to ask around. He found out that she came from a poor family, but one that was highly respected and honoured. He decided to approach her parents. Respecting all of the customs and expectations of the society, he wanted to ask them if he could have their permission to speak to their daughter.

Meeting the Family

To them he revealed his family and the resources that he could claim, but he asked them not to say anything of that to her. He had this odd idea that she should be free to choose for herself whether or not she wanted to spend time with him. He didn’t want her to be influenced by his name or wealth.

The parents thought his ideas to be odd, to say that least, but they told him that he had their permission. So, he spoke of his love to her and, to his own wonder and amazement, he discovered that she felt much the same. They entered into a period of time together of heady love. They continually found ways to talk together and spend time. Always he was careful not to act in any way that might put her virtue or modesty in question, but it became plain to all that theirs was a relationship that was not to be denied.

Love matches were not common in those days. The normal practice was for marriage to be something worked out between families with the actual couple’s feelings on the matter being seen as a question of little importance. Love marriages could sometimes be frowned upon just because they were unique, but it was not as if it wasn’t something that could happen. As he came to the next step, therefore, the young man was very nervous about how he would speak to her.

A Misunderstood Proposal

They met in the public square. They gazed lovingly at one another for a while before he finally found the courage to speak of his plans. “My love,” he said abruptly, “I am leaving. I have to go out of the city.”

In his nervousness and fear, he did not pause to think about how she might respond to such words. He did not realize how it might have sounded to her. Immediately her eyes filled with tears. He saw such dismay upon her face. She was clearly thinking that he had chosen to abandon her.

“No, that’s not it at all,” he cried out. “Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying.” But then he felt lost because he could not imagine how he could put into words what it was he was intending to say.

And so he paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and decided that it would be best to explain to her, step by step, what it was that he was planning to do. “In my father’s house there are many rooms. I know I haven’t told this to you before. I haven’t said it. But, yes, I do come from an honoured family and a prosperous house.”

“That’s what I mean when I tell you that I have to go now. I am going there, to my father’s house. And if I go there, it is only so that I can prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

And when she heard that, she finally understood. And she sent him off with all of her love.

Back Home

And so, the young man went off to his father’s house. After a few days’ journey, he arrived and greeted his parents joyfully. He went in and over a welcoming meal he told them everything about the incredible woman that he had met in the city. So lovingly and joyfully did he describe her that his parents simply could not wait to meet this extraordinary woman.

But first, the man had some work to do. His father’s house was built around a central courtyard. On one side was the main entrance and the room where his father carried out his business. On another, there were kitchens. Over here was a place for welcoming guests with lavish couches for reclining while dining. But there were also a number of private chambers.

It was a large and extended family who lived here, not just his parents and siblings. There were his grandmother, his uncles and aunts and cousins as well. And they all had their own spaces for sleeping and other private matters. His task was to prepare a place among those chambers for himself and his bride so that they could join his father’s household.

Preparing a Place

He worked at it hard for many days, expanding the space, making it warm and welcoming. He filled it with mementos that reminded him, and he hoped would remind her, of the many discussions they had had together in the marketplace. He put in windows to fill the room with light and cabinets in which she would store her happiest memories. Finally, it was all ready. And so he went and said to his father, “Now I will go to find my bride and I will bring her here and she will make her home in the heart of our family.”

A few days later, the father looked out of his front door and was pleased to see his son coming down the walk. He was accompanied by his best friends who had come to wish him well and at his side was a beautiful young woman with whom he would share a wonderful life.

Beyond Death

I happen to believe that there is something that awaits us on the other side of death. I don’t tend to imagine it in terms of people sitting around on clouds or playing harps. Nor do I think that we’re all going to join in some never-ending chorus singing the praises of God. I don’t think that the streets will be paved with gold. I mean, who would want to drive on a street paved with gold? And, no, I don’t think that we get a mansion or even a room. At the same time, I do not think of an afterlife in terms of some people burning in eternal conscious torment.

These are all words or images that you can find in the Bible, except for that one about clouds and harps, that just comes from a Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial, I think. But I do not believe that any of those images are meant to demonstrate to us what that existence is. They are meant to give us some vague sense of what that existence is like.

Telling us a Story

When Jesus told his disciples of the rooms in his father’s house, he wasn’t giving blueprints of heaven. He wasn’t telling you what you’d get. He was telling them a love story using elements that were essential features of a marriage in that world at that time.

For them, marriages did not include things like giving rings or ceremonies before ministers or justices of the peace. The essential ritual of a marriage involved taking your wife to live in a room in your father’s house that you had prepared to share with her. Jesus wasn’t saying what the afterlife was, he was telling a story.

Love Remains

Like I say, I believe in an afterlife, but I believe that it’s going to take place in a plane of existence far beyond our understanding. I suspect it probably has more to do with participating in a great collective consciousness than it has to do with any rooms or streets or clouds. But whatever it is, we simply don’t have the language to express it.

And so, we’re left with stories and images and metaphors. But, man, they are some pretty amazing stories. And with this particular story about the rooms in his father’s house, what I suspect that Jesus was saying more than anything else was that the fundamental nature of this existence that we can scarcely imagine is love – pure, unconditional and unfailing love. I believe that he was saying that, when everything else has been destroyed, love remains, and love is enough.