Category: Minister

https://youtu.be/dO4BTW_6xrU

Hespeler, September 22, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a, Mark 9:30-37

Her name was Leah. She was almost four years old. She lived in Capernaum in the house with her extended family. Hers was a life that, as short as it was, had already been marked by sorrow. She had gone to bed hungry far too many times in her brief span. She had also experienced her share of grief and death, even if she didn’t quite understand what it was yet. Many of her young siblings and cousins had not managed to live as long as her. Some had not even survived a few hours after their birth.

But despite the sorrow that surrounded her, Leah was a bright child. Sometimes the adults in the family found it hard to become too attached to the children who came along, knowing that many of them would not survive until adulthood. But Leah had a way about her. When she smiled and placed her little hand in the large palm of an uncle or a cousin, it just made their hearts melt. They couldn’t help but love her even though they knew the risk of experiencing loss that came with such love.

Her Parents and Family

Leah was especially close to her parents, of course, particularly to her mother who still nursed her daily. But both of her parents were working today – her father out in the boats and her mother working at the fish drying racks – so she was here with her aunt and her grandmother in the house.

While they worked in the outdoor kitchen, she played happily in a corner with a few of the treasured possessions she had amassed during her life: a stone that was shaped as an almost perfect sphere, a piece of wood that her uncle had crudely carved in the shape of a donkey and a scrap of cloth that had come from her mother’s tunic.

She heard the group approaching well before they appeared at the door. There were about a dozen of them, and they often stayed in this house when they were in Capernaum. They were arguing loudly with one another as they approached, which was not unusual. The argument seemed to have been going on for a while but at least they seemed to be arguing good naturedly.

The Argument

As usual, the loudest voice among them was one that was very familiar to her. It was the voice of her uncle Simon. She looked up as her aunt turned away from her work and ran to the door to greet the husband who was often away for long periods of time.

Uncle Simon – the others in his group called him “Rock” for some reason – was very loudly proclaiming that he was absolutely the greatest among them all. “Of course I’m the most important disciple of all,” he proclaimed. “Surely that is why the teacher started calling me Rock. I am solid, dependable and the kind of person who is foundational to what he is trying to build.”

“Oh really?” laughed another in response. “And what makes you think that he doesn’t call you that because he thinks that you’ve got rocks in your head?”

They all laughed at that, even Uncle Simon. So, it was a merry company that entered the house. They moved quickly towards the inner courtyard, calling out to the cooks and asking if there was any food to share.

The Teacher

One last straggler entered a moment behind the main pack. He was quieter, clearly caught up in some deep thought. But his eyes flashed around the room as he came through the door. He gave a wide smile as he saw Leah looking up at him. She smiled right back because he had always been one of her favourite visitors.

Once the newcomers had greeted everyone, they settled down in the courtyard of the house while Leah’s aunt and grandma served them a bit of bread and oil. Leah wandered in too looking for a snack as well. She sat down at the edge of the group, just a little behind the teacher. She watched his every move with wide eyes. For some reason he just fascinated her.

“Listen guys…” he eventually interrupted the small talk. Leah noted how quickly they all fell silent and turned to him as if they were afraid that they might miss something that he said. “Before we left to come here to Capernaum,” he continued, “I said something to you. I said, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’

An Awkward Question

“But you guys didn’t say anything at the time. You sort of just stared at me like a deer might do if someone were able to shine a bright light on it. But I heard you talking together on the way here, so I assume that you talked through what I said and you maybe have something to share about it now. So, what were you talking about on the road?

Leah was just a little girl, but even she could pick up just how extremely uncomfortable the entire group became. The others stared awkwardly at the floor or suddenly became completely absorbed with some strange thing they had discovered on their fingernails.

The teacher rolled his eyes. “Right, don’t tell me. You were probably arguing with each other about which one of you is the greatest, weren’t you?” He sighed. “It’s like you don’t listen to a word that I say! You certainly didn’t listen to what I was saying about where this movement is going because, if you had, you probably wouldn’t be so keen to be seen as great within it.”

The Lesson

With that, he sat down before them. In that culture, teachers always took a seated position to give their instructions. Even at her age Leah understood that. If an adult sat down in front of her, she would be expected to pay close attention to the lesson they were going to give her. And so, all of the others in the group leaned forward with anticipation.

“Don’t you understand what it meant when I told you that?” he asked them. “It means that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. It means that if you are arguing with one another over who is the greatest, then you do not have the first clue as to what I am trying to do here.  How can I make you guys understand?”

He glanced around and his eye fell on Leah, who was looking up at him with rapt attention. “Leah,” he said holding his hand out to her, “come here for a moment girl, will you?”

Leah’s Response

Without a moment’s hesitation, she got right up and went straight to him. When he went to hold her hand she walked straight past his outstretched fingers and climbed up onto his lap. Knowing what she wanted, he wrapped his arms around her tightly.

As she sat on his lap, she looked at the men spread through the courtyard. Then she leaned back her head onto his neck. She breathed in the smell of him – his sweat and the dust of the road. She could even smell a hint of the dried fish he had had for his last meal.

She felt completely safe and comfortable. And I know you might think that it is an easy thing to make a child feel safe and comfortable, but Leah had actually known little of either of those things in her short life. But here, in this moment, everyone could see it in the expression on her face.

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,” declared the teacher. “And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

“Let the Children Come”

On a few occasions, Jesus had some pretty surprising things to say about children and the kingdom of God. The most famous incident, of course, comes in the very next chapter of this same gospel we read from today when “people were bringing children to him in order that he might touch them, and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” (10:13-14)

Passages like that one and this one that we read from today, certainly convince me that Jesus really did believe that children had a better understanding of this thing that he had come to announce, this kingdom of God, than anybody else. But haven’t you always wondered what we are supposed to do with that? How are we supposed to become like children in order to enter the kingdom? What does it mean to welcome children? I mean, we are adults. How are we supposed to just put aside everything that we have spent our lives building ourselves up to be in order to be part of God’s kingdom?

Putting Ourselves in Their Positions

And I do not think that we can really answer those questions without trying to put ourselves into the position of children, and specifically of the children who would have been there listening to Jesus say such things.

I know that we have all been children at some point in our life. You may sometimes look at some of the people in your life and have a hard time believing that, but we’ve all been there. But it can be an experience that we have a hard time putting ourselves back into, maybe especially if it was a long time ago.

But it is also true that there were some things different about children in Jesus’ time. We do know, for example, that the infant and newborn mortality rate in those times was so high that, if we saw it today, we would be completely outraged and demand government action. So, what does it mean to be a child living in a world where many of your siblings do not make it out of infancy and where people have their doubts about whether you are going to make it to adulthood. That’s a very different kind of situation than children have to live with today.

Parents Love Their Children

I have heard some people argue that, because of that infant mortality rate, parents hesitated to invest much love or attachment in their children, based on the idea that, if you’re not attached, you’re not going to feel grief when you lose them.

But I do not believe that for a moment. Parents have always loved their children and the reality that your child might not survive actually only has the effect of making you more attached and more loving, committed to make the most of whatever time you are given. So, it is definitely not that children were not loved or valued.

Coming to Jesus Like a Child

So, whatever Jesus was saying, he was not saying that you need to come to see yourself as insignificant, unloved or unworthy in order to come into the kingdom of God. It is true that children had very little in the way of status in that society, but they definitely had a place, and they were valued for who they were.

No, what I think Jesus was saying was that he was looking for those who would come to him much like a child like Leah would have come to him. She brought no pretensions. She did not feel the need to pretend to be something that she was not. She was not afraid to open herself up to him, to throw herself into his arms or to climb up on his lap.

That is what we forget how to do as we grow up. We learn suspicion and mistrust. We learn to guard ourselves against loving too much or trusting too much for fear that we will be disappointed yet again. A child knows nothing of that. That’s what Jesus recognized in the children that he encountered. And he celebrated it because he saw in that something of the nature of this kingdom that he had come to announce.

https://youtu.be/9yalwzRnGLY

Hespeler, September 15, 2024 © Scott McAndless
Proverbs 1:20-33, Psalm 19, James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38

I

n the Second Letter of Timothy, you will find this famous passage: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”(2 Timothy 3:16-17) And we could probably talk for a long time about what, exactly, those verses mean. But one thing I have always understood is that they mean that I can take any passage in the Bible and that I should be able to take from it some useful lessons around which I can construct a sermon.

Do Not be a Teacher

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I open up our passage this morning from the Letter of James to see that it begins like this: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will face stricter judgment. For all of us make many mistakes.”

So, apparently all scripture is useful for teaching but, maybe I shouldn’t be teaching at all? Or is it perhaps that all scripture is useful, but maybe I shouldn’t teach this scripture? Is this passage particularly full of pitfalls? I believe that is the warning that James is trying to give us. Because it is a passage about the dangers of the human tongue. So, another way to see it is to say, you can use any scripture to write a sermon, but you would be crazy to use this one.

Risks in Preaching

And there is a lot of truth in that. James is absolutely right that what you say – even sometimes one word out of place – can have a devastating impact on somebody’s life. And this is especially true if you speak as someone with authority in the church. Any preacher who doesn’t realize that and doesn’t recognize that she or he has probably hurt someone with something that they said is just not paying attention.

I’ll make a confession. I was once praying and included a petition for people who struggle with or have struggled with mental health issues. A good thing to pray for, I think. Then I shifted to prayers about people with other kinds of ailments. But when I made that shift, I said something like, “And we pray for those who deal with real health issues too…” and went on to pray for some people with bodily ailments. But I put one very problematic word in that transition, didn’t I?

“Real” Illness

Do you know how many people a word like “real” can harm in that context? People who have mental health issues are often made to feel by others as if their illness is illusionary, that they are imagining it or making themselves sick. This is often said to them in a way that strongly implies that it is all their own fault if they are clinically depressed or bipolar or suffer from any number of mental illnesses.

Now, I know that that is not true. I know that mental illness is real illness and that it is not something that can simply be fixed with a change of attitude. But do you know what? When I use a phrase like “real illness” in a way that contrasts with mental illness, it actually doesn’t matter what I know or what I believe. It doesn’t matter what I intend to mean.

Anyone who has been told all their life that what they struggle with is fake, is only going to hear that word “real” and all of the negative messages that they have heard all of their lives will just start playing out in their minds all over again. One ill-chosen word might well set them back and leave them to conclude that the church is no better than all of those people in their lives who have failed to appreciate what they struggle with.

James is Right

When I did choose that wrong word many years ago, one person did challenge me and correct me, something for which I am immensely grateful. It gave me the opportunity to apologize for my words and the harm that they caused and thankfully that person did understand. But I honestly don’t know how many other people I could have hurt with that word or with some other ill-chosen word spoken at some other time. So, I absolutely agree with James that this is a perilous thing that I dare to do when I seek to teach people about the word of God.

And surely, as James prefaces this particular passage with that warning, I would be a great fool to choose to take it as the text for my sermon. It might just reflect badly back on me. But what this passage is saying is so important, not only for me but for all of us that, as perilous as it may be, I believe it is extremely import that we pay it some close attention. The truth that this letter proclaims, that words matter and that they can do more harm than many other things, is one that we ignore to our peril.

The Housing Crisis

Let me give you one example of a word that I have come to see in a very different light just in the past year. One of the huge crises that we have been facing in our society for a while now is a lack of affordable housing. It is, in fact, the crisis that is fueling many of the other problems we are dealing with including inflation, the overdose crisis and problems with immigration. So, it is obviously very important that we talk about it.

But you may have noticed that many advocates and agencies addressing the problem have changed one of their ways of talking about it. We used to talk about the problem of homelessness. But now you are more likely to hear officials talking about people living without shelter, houselessness or even people “living rough.”

Why Change the Language?

Now, if you noticed that shift, you may well have thought it as just an example of wokeness or of weird language policing. What does it matter what we call it, after all? What matters is what we do about the problem, right?

Now, it is true that sometimes we do have this habit of thinking that if we just change the ways we talk about our problems we can make them go away. That is foolish. Adjustments to language on their own do not change reality.

The Problem with Talking about “the Homeless”

But that shift in language regarding the housing crisis did not come from language police. It didn’t even come from advocates or agencies. The people caught up in housing crisis spoke up about the need for change.

For one thing, the habit of referring to “the homeless” as a problem, a habit that has become very ingrained over the past few years, has a very dehumanizing effect. It makes it too easy to gloss over individuals and families who are just trying to do their best in trying circumstances – to treat them as some nameless mass problem.

Who Makes a Home?

Even more important, though, it is just not accurate. The problem that we have as a society is not actually a lack of homes because developers and landlords and governments don’t sell or rent people homes. I know they may sometimes market them that way because the word “home” carries such positive associations, but all they can provide is housing or shelter. You may buy a house, but only you can make it a home. And you make it into a home with community and family and all your own personal touches.

Turning the place where you are living into a home is something that all humans do, even if they do not have adequate shelter. Somebody these days who is living with their family in a tent may not have a house, but they will make whatever they have, as much as they are able to do so, into a home. That’s why these days you see people living not in isolated tents but in encampments. The shelters may be rudimentary, but by creating some sort of community by pitching tents together, people are doing their best to create a sense of home.

Changing Our Approach

So, a shift in how we talk about the housing crisis is not going to solve the problem. But failing to make that shift may harm some people. Shifting our language may also affect how we approach the problem. It may help us to think about the real individuals and the homes they are doing their best to create. It help us to understand better why people make some of the choices around housing that they do. And it may make us think twice before we come in and tear apart whatever home they have been able to create for themselves.

So how we talk about our problems is not going to fix everything. But it still matters how we talk about them. It affects our approach and can make a real difference in how we think about people and what they are dealing with.

A Powerful Image

The Letter of James uses an image to talk about the power of words that has very much been on my mind as I prepared for this Sunday. “Look at ships:” he writes, “though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.”

So, the tongue is like a rudder. I couldn’t get that image out of my head. Not being an artist, I couldn’t draw a ship with a tongue as a rudder, so I asked an AI program to draw one for me. And then I couldn’t get this picture out of my mind! But maybe I need to keep it in my mind, because I think that what James is saying is very true. In fact, I would like to invite you to imagine your tongue as a rudder that has that kind of power.

The Power of Your Tongue

You have people in your life – your friends, your families and your significant others. You also have people who cross your paths from time to time. And you also have this church and other organizations in your life.

Each one of those people or groups are like ships. They are on a course. They are being pushed forward by the winds of change that affect their lives. And everyone is on a course to build up their own self-esteem, to create a home for themselves and their loved ones or to find a new future. That voyage is not easy for anybody, but we are all working at it.

Setting People Off Course

But did you realize that you, by saying something hurtful, can very easily set that voyage off course. You, with your tongue, can say something that in a moment can undo all of the progress that somebody has made. You don’t need to do it intentionally or even knowingly. Perhaps you are just having a bad day and your let your own feelings of bitterness or disappointment overflow onto them. Perhaps you are not at all upset with them, but just failed to give thought to your choice of words. It doesn’t matter; your tongue can change the course of their voyage.

So, let me give a little bit of practical advice. Before you speak, ask yourself a few questions. Does this need to be said? If it is a criticism, and criticisms do sometimes need to be spoken, is it constructive, or is it something you are saying to make yourself feel superior to someone else? And, if you can, try and take a moment to put yourself in the place of the person you are speaking to and ask yourself how they might hear what you are saying.

The Other Possibility

James is quite right. It is unfortunately very easy to hurt someone with just a word or two. But I would also remind you that the metaphor that he uses, the idea that a tongue is like a rudder, can also work in the other direction. Yes, with a few words, you can set somebody off their course. But do not forget that, with a few words of encouragement and support you can do the opposite.

You can build somebody up. You can encourage someone on their voyage to take charge of their own life. You can let them know that you’re willing to listen and to understand what it is that they are dealing with. Rudders swing both ways. And please do keep that in mind whenever you have the opportunity to speak to someone who might be struggling.

Listen to the Letter of James. We should all think twice when given an opportunity to speak or to teach. But I think it is pretty clear that the upside of being able to say something that encourages and blesses someone on their voyage does make it worthwhile to open your mouth and use your tongue once you have given some careful consideration to what it is that God is calling you to say.

https://youtu.be/v7BgOpcFFLA

Hespeler, September 8, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146, James 2:1-17, Mark 7:24-37

We have all been greatly blessed and privileged today to take part in a very significant event. A young woman has made the choice to declare her faith in Jesus and willingness to be part of his church, a commitment that has been sealed by her baptism. I am continually amazed at how we as a church are given the opportunity to be a part of some of the most meaningful moments in an individual’s or a family’s life.

A Question

And I would like to take this opportunity to reflect for a bit on the confession of faith that has been made and what it means. I asked this question of Danielle today: “Do you turn to Jesus Christ, accepting him as Lord and Saviour, trusting in his grace and love?” All of you, if you have become a member of this or any congregation have been asked that question or a question very much like it. You are a member of Christ’s Church because of how you answered. But I would like to reflect for a little while on what that question means when it is asked of you in a church.

If someone on the street were to ask you, “Do you believe in Jesus?” what might they mean by that? If a random person asks you that, they are usually enquiring about the things you may believe about Jesus. They may be asking, “Do you believe that Jesus really existed?” Or, “Do you believe that he was born of a virgin?” Or that he rose from the dead, or maybe they are asking if you believe that Jesus is, in any sense, God.

Believe About Jesus

But when I ask that question before a baptism, am I asking you what you believe about Jesus? No, I am not. That is not to suggest for a moment that you shouldn’t seek, by studying and growing, to believe correct things about Jesus. Of course we should do that, but that is not the kind of belief that I am asking that question about.

There are, in fact, all kinds of people who believe all kinds of things about Jesus. They often believe these things passionately whether they are correct beliefs or not.

I have met people who believe that Jesus travelled to India in his youth, that he was white, that he was a supporter of supply-side economics and that he thought that the poor ought to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. These things are all demonstrably false (or at least have no good evidence to support them) but people believe them.

What You Believe Matters

What you believe about Jesus – true or false – matters, of course. I hope we promote the right beliefs about Jesus. But what you believe about him is not fundamentally what makes you a part of his church. The Letter of James, which we read from this morning says this about correct belief: “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.” (James 2:19) Faith has to mean something more than just believing a bunch of correct things.

And I hope that this is something that can give you some comfort. I have met many Christians over the years who get hung up on the whole question of believing the right things. “I have a really hard time believing in a virgin birth,” one might say, “does that mean that I can’t be a Christian?” Or another might say, “I just can’t get my logical mind to come to terms with that whole notion of the Trinity.” (To which I respond, by the way, “Welcome to the club!”) “Does that mean I can’t be a Christian?”

Don’t be Anxious

Do your best to study and believe the right things about Jesus, but do not have any anxiety about getting something wrong or incomplete. God, who knows and holds all of the deepest truths of the universe, whose knowledge of all things vastly outstrips what any human knowledge will ever achieve, cannot look at any of us and fail to see that we all believe things that aren’t quite true. Why would God judge us for that? And so maybe it is past time for us to stop judging one another over differences in belief!

Free of All Doubt?

Another thing that the question, “Do you believe in Jesus?” might mean if someone asked it of you on the street has to do with doubt. For many people, believing in Jesus, in God or in anything to do with the church means that you never, not even for a moment, struggle with any doubt.

Indeed, I have often heard people boast of that – that they never feel even a moment’s doubt when it comes to believing even some of the wildest things in the Bible.

“Do you ever wonder if perhaps, when the Bible says that the world was created in six days, that the entire face of the earth was covered by Noah’s flood or that Jonah survived after being swallowed by a big fish that maybe, just maybe, it might mean something other than that those things literally happened exactly like that?” you might ask them. And they respond by saying, “Yes, I never doubted any of that for even a moment! The Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it.

I don’t personally see such a complete lack of doubt to be a sign of strong faith. It might be a sign of a lack of curiosity or perhaps even of critical thinking, but it is more blind acceptance of whatever you’ve been told than it is faith.

Trust in Jesus

So what is the question, “Do you turn to Jesus Christ, accepting him as Lord and Saviour, trusting in his grace and love?” really asking? It is not asking about intellectual belief or about a lack of doubt. It is simply asking about your willingness to trust in Jesus. The faith that Jesus is looking for from all believers is simply that. Jesus wants to know, “Are you willing to trust me?”

An Old Chair

Allow me to put it in terms that I think we can all relate to. Imagine that I had a chair here. And let’s say that this chair is really old. It has survived two world wars. The varnish is chipped and faded. It probably spent many years sitting in Sunday School classes where people carved their initials into the seat. If you dared to run your fingers underneath the seat, you would likely find many well-chewed pieces of gum.

In short, the chair doesn’t look great. But it does have four solid looking feet extending to the floor, even if one seems a bit shorter than the others and it might wobble a bit. The back appears to be firmly attached to the seat which doesn’t have any holes in it. So, I ask you one simple question: do you have faith in this chair?

Do you Have Faith in the Chair?

Now, if you were to answer my question by giving me a detailed description of the composition, manufacture and the history of this chair, would that prove to me that you have faith in this chair? Of course not. It would only indicate that you know a number of things about it.

If you were to provide me with a scientific study that proved to me that such a chair of such an age would collapse only 0.00001% of the times that somebody sat on it, I might be impressed with the thoroughness of your investigations, but I would not conclude that you had faith in this chair.

Most of all, if you insisted that you believed in this chair with all of your heart and that you had no doubt whatsoever that it could adequately support the weight of a human being, but you absolutely refused to sit on it anyway, I would have no real reason to conclude that you had faith in this chair.

Trusting the Chair

But if, on the other hand, somebody walked up here without knowing any of the history or construction of this chair, had no understanding of the engineering that makes chairs stable or the load-baring ratings of such furniture, could they have faith in this chair? Could they have faith even if they were plagued with all kinds of doubts about whether a chair could support someone such as them? Yes, they could.

And I would immediately know they did if, without hesitation, they just sat in it. Faith is what happens when you take what you know and believe, and you are actually willing to do something with it.

You see, that is what Jesus requires of you – not intellectual assent, not correct understanding or belief as important as those things may be. He doesn’t mind if you have doubts. All he needs to know is if you will trust him.

The Letter of James

The great reformer, Martin Luther, kind of famously didn’t much like the Letter of James that we read from this morning. He called it an epistle of straw and probably would have been happier if it wasn’t part of the New Testament at all. The reason why Luther didn’t much like this letter was because he insisted, and rightly so, that salvation is based only on grace through faith.

In other words, God will save us in whatever ways we need to be saved, but we cannot gain that salvation by doing good things or by earning it in any way whatsoever. The only way to gain it is to receive it as a gift by faith.

The problem that Luther and many others have with the Letter of James is that it goes on and on about the things that we do and the importance of doing the right things. That might certainly leave the unwary reader with the impression that James is teaching that we can earn favour with God by doing the right things.

Faith and Works

Now, it is true that the Letter of James seems to be in conversation with the teachings of the Apostle Paul regarding salvation. He does seem to take exception with some of the ways that people have interpreted Paul’s teaching about the importance of faith. But I ultimately do not think that James and Paul are disagreeing with each other.

James writes, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it?” But he is not really disagreeing with Paul by saying that. He is not saying that faith doesn’t save, he is just insisting that his readers remember what faith truly is. So long as you remember that the kind of faith that God is looking for is trust – the kind of trust that allows you to sit on a chair whether or not you have seen all of the engineering reports on its manufacture.

In other words, if you have faith in Jesus, if you really trust him, then you will not just stand around proclaiming that you believe. You will actually take that trust and act according to it.

Faith Without Works is Dead

James sums it all up by saying, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” Standing around and saying that you believe – even if you believe all the right things – is not what God is looking for. God is looking for trust, and trust naturally leads to action.

What James is absolutely not saying is that you can earn your way into God’s good graces by doing good deeds. He is saying that, if you truly learn to place your faith in Jesus – the kind of faith that saves – it is going to change the way that you see everything.

As you live by forming the habit of placing your trust in Jesus, you will come to see how he is always there for you. And as you come to see as a result that God loves you just as you are, forgiving you when you need forgiving and liberating you when you need liberation, the kinds of actions that will naturally result are actions that demonstrate love and acceptance for the weak and the forgotten, the poor and the oppressed. That is where faith in Jesus will naturally lead us if we allow it to prompt us forward.

So, you see that that question, “Do you turn to Jesus Christ, accepting him as Lord and Saviour, trusting in his grace and love?” is a question that contains so much. I would ask us all to consider yet again how we answer that question and how it has transformed our approach to the ways that we live.

https://youtu.be/eMLrGnmxY6g

Preston, 1 September 2024 © Scott McAndless
Acts 20:1-12, Psalm 16, Luke 7:11-17

Everyone loves to read a good travelogue. You are familiar, I hope with this very popular form of literature in which somebody writes about their experiences while travelling to and from exotic locales. Some of the more popular travelogues you may be have read include Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.” People love to read them because they allow them to experience danger, discovery and adventure, all from the comfort and safety of their own armchair.

But did you know that travelogues are not just a modern publishing trend? They have been extremely popular since the beginning of writing. Ancient travelogues like the Histories of Herodotus and the Odyssey of Homer were widely popular throughout ancient times and there were many imitators that were on Athens Times Bestseller lists. The really fun thing about ancient travelogues is that they always bring with them the possibilities of supernatural and divine encounters. Gods and demigods seem to be hiding around every corner.

Luke’s Travelogue

The reason I bring up travelogue literature is that many scholars today believe that, when Luke wrote parts of his book that we call The Acts of the Apostles, particularly the parts that recount the missionary journeys of Paul, he did so in a way that consciously imitated the popular travelogue literature of his day. He uses the same vocabulary, tropes and pacing as you would have found in those popular books.

And I don’t think that the biblical author did that by accident. He wanted his readers to approach this book with the same kinds of expectations as a travelogue – as a kind of metaphor for how they might encounter God and Christ and the Holy Spirit on their journey through life.

I think that that makes our reading this morning from the Book of Acts very fitting. We have been on a journey this summer, haven’t we? In fact, if Luke (the traditional author of the Book of Acts) were to write the story of our summer experiment, I suspect that it would go something like this:

Our Journey

“And lo, they travelled even unto Doon where they discovered truths about God among the trees. From there they set out to Crieff where a lesson was learned when the preacher failed to properly apply sunscreen. They set sail for Hespeler where the people just wouldn’t stop passing the peace and then onto Duff’s where a totally unplanned organ and piano concert broke out.” Yeah, I think that Luke could probably do justice to our summer journey.

Today we come to the end of our summer journey here in Preston. We, who have made some great friends and connections, are together for the last time. I certainly hope that we will be together again, but right now, we do not know how or when that might happen.

And so, it seemed fitting to focus on the story of what happened when the Apostle Paul gathered with the church in Troas. It was a significant meeting because, after many adventures and many lessons learned among many churches, Paul was leaving that part of the world to go to Jerusalem. Nobody knew when or if he might return. Does that feel a little bit like where we are today? So, my question is how might Luke describe our meeting as the church of Crieff, Doon, Duff’s, Hespeler and Preston today?

Our Meeting Today

On the first day of the week, when we met to worship and enjoy fellowship, the preacher was holding a discussion with them; since it was the last time that they would be together and they would all return to their own congregations the next week, he continued speaking until noon. It was a hot summer day on a long weekend and churches didn’t have air conditioning in those days and the air was scarcely moving.

A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the window, began to sink off into a deep sleep while the preacher droned on and on and on. Overcome by sleep, he fell to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead.

The First Day of the Week

Is that how it is going to go today? Well, no. I (perhaps unlike the Apostle Paul) do have a sense of when I have said enough. But, I do think that this is the perfect passage for us to reflect on where we are today.

If you look through the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, you will notice that the author of those books keeps returning to a particularly powerful image. He describes people gathering on the first day of the week – that is on Sunday.

It comes up often, for example, in his description of the appearances of the resurrected Jesus at the end of his gospel – in his story of Easter and of the walk to Emmaus – Luke makes a point of repeating that these things happened when people gathered to eat on the first day of the week.

The point of this seems clear. One of the things that made the Christian movement distinct from almost the very beginning was their strange practice of gathering on Sunday. This set them apart from the Jews, of course, who had their Sabbath on Saturday, and from every other religious and cultural group in their society. Gathering on Sunday was one of those things that made the church a church.

Luke’s Symbolic Use of Sunday Gatherings

And despite the fact that this habit had not yet been formed in the weeks immediately after the resurrection and possibly not even in the time of the Apostle Paul, when Luke wrote his books, mentioning that a group of people gathered on the first day was a quick and easy way to let his readers know that he wanted them to understand that he was saying something important about the church.

So, when Luke tells us that the people in Troas met and broke bread with Paul on the first day of the week, our alarm bells should all be going off. “Warning, warning! This story is here to teach us something about what it means to be the church!”

The Tired Church

And so, let’s look at Eutychus and ask what he might have to teach us about being the church. And the first lesson certainly seems to be a caution, doesn’t it? He seems to be a warning that the church can fall too easily into slumber. And slumbering and sleeping can apparently have some dangerous consequences.

You know, one of the loudest complaints that I hear from all of our churches these days seems to be exactly that: “We’re tired.”

And I know that it is not coming from nowhere. People are feeling that there is more and more work to do and there are fewer and fewer people to do it. And it is not just a feeling mind you – studies have shown that that is exactly what has been happening in all churches across all denominations and the theological spectrum. Even churches that are growing at high rates are not escaping this trend.  Fewer are doing more of the work. When people in churches tell me they are tired, I believe them!

But what is our response to this Eutychian problem of the church these days? Often it is just to shout at the church to wake up, drink more coffee and work through your fatigue because otherwise your church is going to fall out of the proverbial third-floor window and die! That is our frantic and fear-filled reaction. Does that sound like a compassionate response to you?

The Power of Resurrection

It is not the response to the sense of fatigue that Luke would like us to make. I know that because he does not end his account as a warning. He does not end it with Eutychus lying dead on the sidewalk outside the house. Death is part of the story, but it is not the end of it.

He ends it like this: “But Paul went down and bending over [Eutychus] took him in his arms and said, ‘Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.’ Then Paul went upstairs, and after he had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left. Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted.”

What does that mean? It means that the church is a place where we experience the power of resurrection. It is the place where we are “not a little comforted” because we know that Jesus has triumphed over death for us, that he is risen and that because he is risen, we have hope of life and renewal and new beginnings. It is when we stop experiencing the power of the resurrection as the church that we cease to be the church of Jesus Christ.

What We Must Pass Through First

But the difficult question is what do we need to go through to get to that experience. The church in Troas had to go through a pretty harrowing experience of death, after all, before they were given the opportunity to experience that power. There was grief and anxiety and fear and loss. As they stared at poor Eutychus lying on the ground, how could they feel anything else?

So, I guess the question we may need to ask is what sort of grief or loss are we going to have to live through to experience the power of the resurrection that they experienced?

Here is the problem that I see the church facing. If we – if the people who are doing the work – are weary, then the solution cannot just be a question of more coffee, working harder and exhausting ourselves more. That only leads to a harder crash (possibly from a third story window) further down the road. We need resurrection, not stimulus. We need new life, not just something to keep us awake a little while longer. The only model that we have in the Bible for the renewal of the church is death and resurrection.

We May Need to Die to Something

And I know we may not want to hear it, but this means that in order to become the church that God is calling us to be, our congregations may need to die to something. I know in many of our churches, what we need to die to first is the model of the church that used to be. We are constantly trying to live up to our idealized image of what the church was in the past and we are burning our best people out in this attempt to keep up appearances. That is something that we all may need to die to to a certain extent.

I suspect that if this summer experiment has taught us anything, it is that maybe it’s time for us, in some ways at least, to die to the notion that our congregations can make it all on their own. I don’t know about you, but I have been amazed by the energy that we have found in working and worshiping together.

In my experience working in the church, summer time was always a time that you just had to survive. You kept the lights on. You ran the operation with a skeleton crew. But hasn’t it been so much fun to not merely survive this summer as congregations but to thrive in our worship together? I really believe we’re going to have to find ways to keep some of that energy together going moving forward.

Hard Choices

But if I have discovered one thing in the church, it is that nothing really changes unless we make some hard decisions and give certain things up. And that can feel awful. It can feel as if you are falling from a third story window and the sidewalk is coming at you so very fast.

But if the story of Eutychus can teach us anything, it is that such moments are not the end of the story. We are churches that believe in resurrection. We are churches that trust in Jesus’ ability to raise us up even from the dead. There have been so many times in the past when the church has felt as if it was on the edge of death and Jesus has raised us up and challenged us to live in new and exciting ways. I do feel as if we are in such a moment right now.

If Luke were to write the story of our churches and the challenges that they face today, I have no doubt that it would be an exciting story of adventure and that his imagination would be caught by our journeys this summer. Above all, he would teach us to trust in the power of the resurrection which is and always has been the only hope of the church.

Fortunate

Oh, and there is one more thing that I would like you to take away from this story. Did you ever wonder what the name Eutychus’ means? It means fortunate. So if God has put us where we are right now, remember it is because God loves us enough to bless us with good fortune. I hope that we can get to the place were we aren’t falling asleep, but not because we’re overcaffeinated. Let it be that we…

Don’t wanna close our eyes
Don’t wanna fall asleep
‘Cause we miss all this
And we don’t wanna miss a thing
Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff to do
Eutychus was a righteous dude
And we’ll rise again
Cause we don’t wanna miss a thing.

https://youtu.be/WR90X7kKhXU

Duff’s Presbyterian, August 4, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:13a, Psalm 51:1-12, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:24-35

Nathan was no fool; at least he could do some simple math. How long, exactly, had Bathsheba been married to David when she had her baby? Let’s see… it all started with the incident in which David used his power and position first to spy on Bathsheba inside her house while she was taking a bath and then to send her a summons that she had no power to refuse. Then afterwards, she sent word to him that she was expecting a child.

How long would it have taken for her to come to that realization? They did not have the kinds of sophisticated tests that we have today, so it likely would not have been until she was maybe in her sixth week.

The Cover-Up

Then David spent a considerable amount of time trying to hide the fact that this would be his child. He used his power as king to call Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, back from the battlefields. They had no telephones; that would have likely taken at least a week before Uriah could answer the summons. Then there were several days of David trying to get Uriah just to go home and sleep with his wife so that people might plausibly think that the child would be his. But Uriah was just too virtuous and noble – far more noble than the king – and he wouldn’t do it, not even when David got him good and drunk.

The Murder

David’s next plan – his plan B– was much more diabolical. He sent Uriah back to his unit with instructions to his commander that he was to be sent into the thickest part of the fighting and, at the key moment, everyone else was to withdraw. This plan did finally work and Uriah was killed. But once again it must have taken a couple of weeks or more to implement. A week or so after that, the news was brought back to Jerusalem that Uriah was dead.

And then there was the funeral to be organized and following the funeral, Bathsheba had to observe a decent period of mourning before David could finally send for her and bring her into his harem.

Of course, Nathan knew none of this. He only observed David’s strange behaviour during Uriah’s visit. What he couldn’t help but notice, however, was the undeniable fact that Bathsheba was barely in the harem for six months before she presented David with a newborn son. Surely Nathan wasn’t the only one to wonder at that!

Betrayed Soldiers

Nathan sought out the other soldiers from Uriah’s unit. These were men who were hardened by years of experience in battle. But when he asked them about the day when Uriah died, he saw them shake with fear as they told the story.

“It was crazy,” one of them said. “Our commander ordered us to attack the strongest place in the enemy’s defences and we were practically surrounded by some of their mightiest warriors. And then, all of a sudden, we looked around and discovered that we were all alone. Everyone else had withdrawn.”

“Uriah fought like a madman that day,” another continued. “He was completely reckless about his own safety as if he knew that he was destined to die anyway. Maybe he knew something we didn’t? But thanks to his bravery, a few of us managed to get out alive.

“But we never should have been put in that position to begin with. I just don’t know what our commanders were thinking!”

Nathan left the interview pondering deeply.

The Lord Sent Nathan

All that the Bible tells us about why the Prophet Nathan went into confront David about what he had done is this: “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David.” And I know how many people understand that. They imagine it all as some grand supernatural event. The prophet had a vision or perhaps awoke from a dream suddenly possessed of disturbing but previously hidden information. We assume that God revealed this secret information directly to the prophet.

And then, when he actually goes and confronts David by telling his little parable, I guess the idea is that David is so shocked by this sudden revelation of his deepest and darkest secret by God that it causes him to make his sudden and sincere confession.

Was This Really Hidden Knowledge?

But my question is this: did Nathan really require some form of supernatural knowledge to discover what the monkey business was between David and Bathsheba? Do people not know how to count months? And can you imagine a squad of soldiers who felt as if their commanders did something that was really dumb and they didn’t tell everyone who would listen all about it?

Come on! I don’t believe for a moment that Nathan needed a divine message to know what was going on. All he needed was a sharp mind, a bit of curiosity and the ability to count to nine. I do not think that Nathan needed God to reveal anything to him about what the king had done. And so, the question is, what does it mean when it says that God sent Nathan to the king?

What If Everyone Knew?

Here is the truth of the matter. The entire palace and most of the city of Jerusalem had been buzzing for weeks about the birth of David’s newest son. For anyone whose eyes were open to simple reality, it was something far beyond the levels of gossip or rumour. Any reasonable person could see that something must have happened before Bathsheba’s husband had been so tragically killed.

Now, that is not exactly the same thing as saying that everyone knew what had happened. We have all seen this, haven’t we? How some people have a hard time accepting evidence that is right in front of their eyes. Were there people in Jerusalem who were going on about how it was all “fake news”? Were there conspiracy theories about how the whole scandal was manufactured by a cabal of globalist Philistines who were intent on destroying the Israelite nation? I have no doubt.

There were also likely people who were arguing that since David was the king, he had absolute immunity anyway so anyone who even raised the question of what he had done was engaging in malicious prosecution and weaponizing the judicial system against political opponents because they were trying to steal the next election for… well, maybe not exactly that, but you know what I mean.

What God Gave Nathan?

So, what did God do for Nathan? Did God reveal to him something that he didn’t already know or at least strongly suspect? I don’t think so. But that doesn’t mean that God didn’t “send” Nathan to David. I suspect that Nathan woke up one day to the conviction that, if he had an understanding about what had happened with David and Bathsheba, maybe God had allowed him to figure that out. And maybe he realized that, if God had given him the brains to figure that much out, maybe that meant that God wanted him to do something with that knowledge.

But most of all, I believe that God gave to Nathan the courage to do what I have no doubt that many others in the court and in the family of David did not have the courage to do. God gave Nathan the strength of character to go and challenge David directly.

A Creative Approach

One more thing, I would also credit God with giving to Nathan is the creativity of his unique approach to the king. That was absolutely brilliant.

Nathan could have gone in there levelling a direct accusation, and do you know what would have happened? David would have immediately put his defences up.

But Nathan went in with a story. And a good story always has a way of breaking down your defences and helping you to see something from a whole different angle. Watch out for the storytellers; they will get you every time.

That is why God loves the storytellers, just like God loves the artists and the composers and all those who use their creativity to make people see the world from a whole different angle. I honestly believe such creativity has always been one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity. So yes, God granted to Nathan creativity in his approach to the king.

But did God need to tell Nathan something he didn’t already know? I don’t think so. And I believe that is something that all of us need to understand. Because many of us have the potential of being a Nathan in our world today.

We Need Nathans

We need people who are going to use their God-given intellect to interpret events and see what is really going on in our world today. And a lot of what is going on in our world today is very disturbing.

Do you need to wait for some vision from God to recognize that powerful people are using their power and wealth to fix the system so that it works only in their own favour?  Do you require a supernatural messenger to come to you in order to see how marginalized people are abused and how their work is not paid what it is worth? Are you waiting for divine revelation to come to you before you see how various minority groups like immigrants and international students are being unfairly scapegoated – pinned with the blame for all the woes of our society? I hope not. You are smart enough to employ your intellect to see these things. You are smart enough to be a Nathan.

Using Creativity

What’s more, I am certain that you are creative enough to be a Nathan. Nathan used a God-given talent that allowed him to spin a tale about a cute little lamb and its devoted owner that was somehow able to get past the defences of a man who was so powerful, who was so convinced that he had absolute immunity, that he could do whatever he wanted.

And I would absolutely challenge you to think about the creative talents that God has given to you and how you can use them to break down the defences of a system in this world that perpetuates evil and harm.

My Calling

I believe that God has given me that kind of calling. Apart from my work as a preacher, I also put out a podcast on a regular basis. I do this because I believe God has given me certain gifts as a storyteller. And so, on my podcast, I retell Bible stories in a way that is not targeted at preaching to the church. I do that on Sundays and in my regular job of sermon preparation.

In my podcast, I try to find a way to tell these stories for the world outside of the church, using these amazing stories to suggest to people that they might just try out a different perspective, not just on the Bible, but on how things work in the world.

Have I persuaded anyone to take on a different perspective? I don’t know for sure, but I do believe this is one of my callings. It is simply to use my creativity in a way similar to what Nathan did.

Various Ways of Using Creativity

Now, I know we’re not all storytellers. But there are lots of different ways of being creative. Some may paint or colour or draw. Some have a gift for describing the world in ways that fire somebody’s imagination. Others are really good at using humour or organizing people or even the presentation of numbers and accounting. These are all ways of presenting truths to the world that can change somebody’s perspective.

I do believe that God has gifted each one of us in unique ways to be creative and to use our skills to connect with and influence people. God has gifted us with the ability to persuade people to open their eyes and see truths about how the world is working. I would strongly encourage you to prayerfully meditate on how you can use your creativity to have an impact on the world.

In any case, I hope the story of Nathan might blow up your understanding of what it means to be a prophet. You don’t have to be in receipt of divine hidden information in order to proclaim the word of the Lord. You just have to pay attention to what is really happening and use the brain that God has given you. You just have to use the creativity that God has put into you. I truly believe that anyone can be a Nathan and that we definitely need more of them.

https://youtu.be/pVoZk6le60k

Knox Crieff, July 7, 2024 © Scott McAndless Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Psalm 48, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13

Jesus said, “Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown and among their own kin and in their own house.” And have you noticed that that is not really one of his most famous sayings? It is not up there with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” or “Turn the other cheek,” but I suspect it might be one of the most important things that he ever said.

It is, on the surface, just his reflection on a bad experience he had when he took his disciples with him and visited his hometown of Nazareth. Apparently, even though they had heard great things about what he had been doing, about how he had been spreading his wisdom and doing great deeds of power in other towns and villages of Galilee, they were not inclined to give him any respect.

They Knew him too well

And it is at least suggested that this was because they knew him too well – that they knew his brothers and sisters and mother because he had grown up among them. They knew that he had made a living as a carpenter which they clearly saw as a rather lowly profession. Maybe we can also read into that that they remembered what he was like as an annoying little kid who, like any other child, must have gotten into trouble and gotten on other people’s nerves.

Hometown Heroes

But that can’t quite be the whole story, can it? Because that is not how people usually behave. When somebody from your hometown makes it big on a larger stage, is your first reaction to disrespect them? Of course not! In a couple of weeks, the whole world will focus on Paris, France and the Olympic Games. Now, as far as I know, there will be no athletes from Puslinch at the games this year. Though, if there is, I’m sure that someone will let me know at the end of the service.

But, if there were, and if they did really well and won some medals, can you imagine people from around here saying, “Oh, that’s no big deal. I don’t respect them because I once saw them in diapers”? Of course, not! We celebrate our hometown heroes. We vicariously take their victories as our own. So, what is up with this reaction in Nazareth?

Jesus as a Prophet

I think that it is not just that they think they know him too well. I think that Jesus is saying something very specific and that we need to pay attention to it. It is because he is a prophet. This incident is the only place in the gospels where Jesus claims to be a prophet, so I think it is very important that we understand what he means by that.

I know that “prophet,” in the popular imagination means somebody who is able to predict the future, but that is not the primary job of a biblical prophet and that is not what Jesus is talking about here.

Biblical Prophets

A biblical prophet was someone who spoke the word of God for the people of his or her own moment in time. They said, “This is what the Lord is saying to God’s people at this moment.” Now, sometimes that included warnings about the future in the sense of, “If you don’t do what God says, this will be the consequence,” but it is actually a misunderstanding of the role of a prophet to think that they went around saying things that wouldn’t make any sense to their audience until years, maybe centuries, in the future when their predictions eventually came to pass.

So, when Jesus says that he is a prophet, what he means is that he is proclaiming what God is saying to the people of his own time and that that is what the people of Nazareth are unable to accept.

Preacher Prophetic Role

Think of it this way. A Christian preacher is supposed to have a similar prophetic role. Are we put in place, to tell people what they want to hear and make them feel good? Not really, though comforting people can be part of the job, it is not what it’s all about. The prophetic job of the preacher is to push and challenge and correct when that is what God is calling for.

And honestly, being prophetic like that is often not a very easy thing in your home church because you know what are the things that are really important to the people in that church. You understand the habits and ways of doing things that they don’t want to let go of. You know what they expect you to be. And I have found that God often challenges us about those very things. And so, the more you know your congregation, the harder it is to be truly prophetic. In some ways, I think that’s what Jesus was saying to the folks at Nazareth.

What was the Prophetic Message?

And so, what was the prophetic message of Jesus that they were having a hard time accepting? Well, I think it may have had something to do with those observations that they were making about Jesus. They had noticed the incredible ministry that he was having elsewhere, the extraordinary teaching and healing that he was doing. But, you see, the very fact that he was doing it elsewhere would have been a sore point for them because they would have had expectations of him.

We often don’t realize this, but there actually were many examples at that time of people doing the kind of thing that Jesus did. There were famous teachers and storytellers. Healers and wonderworkers are also well attested in the historical record. I know we would insist that Jesus did both of those things better than anyone else, but it was not as if other people weren’t engaged in the same kinds of activities.

How You were Supposed to Do It

But there was an expectation about how you were supposed to do it. You were supposed to settle down in one place, usually, of course, in the town that you came from. You were supposed to make the people come to you for what you could offer.

And now can you see why the people in Nazareth might have been a bit upset with Jesus? They were wondering why he hadn’t stayed in Nazareth. If he had, he would be attracting all kinds of people to their little town and they would be selling souvenirs and reaping the economic benefits of having multitudes pass through their village. Jesus wasn’t doing it right! And they felt as if they were missing out on the benefits of his fame.

The prophetic message that he was giving to them was not what he said so much as it was about how he was operating in a way that defied their expectations.

How We Planned this Experiment

As I read this story of Jesus and thought about what I would preach on this, my first opportunity to preach during our grand summer experiment, I’ve got to tell you that these particular words of Jesus really jumped out at me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but we did our best to set this experiment up so that we preachers spent the summer not preaching in our own churches.

The prophets, in other words, are spending the summer away from their home pulpits. And I think there is a challenge in that for me. I think that God might be calling me, might be calling all of us, to be bold in our preaching and to maybe say those things that it might not be safe to say in our home congregations.

What We don’t Want to Hear

So, what is God saying to our churches? What is God saying that maybe we do not want to hear? In particular, what might we be holding onto that is preventing us from seeing the kinds of deeds of power that were associated with the ministry of Jesus? Well, I think it may be the same message that was implicit in the simple fact that Jesus was just paying a visit to Nazareth and not opening up shop there. He was saying that the kingdom of God, this thing that he had come to announce and proclaim, was not tied to your place.

They Loved Nazareth

They loved Nazareth; of course they did. They had probably lived there all of their lives. Every significant spiritual experience in their lives had taken place there. They had encountered God in meaningful ways in the meetings of the synagogue. They loved the buildings and the people that they had shared both good times and bad times there with. But here was Jesus showing them that the kingdom of God was not tied to their place. Is it any wonder that they took offence to him?

And I don’t think that it is any coincidence that that is the very same message that many of our modern-day congregations don’t want to hear from their own prophet or preacher. But, as I said, I am not in my own home pulpit today. So, will I dare to preach the word of the Lord?

That message for today is not, as far as I’m concerned that we’re going to have to all give up our church buildings and sacred spaces. Yes, there may be some major shake-ups coming in terms of how we relate to those spaces. Some of the models that we’ve had that have been so centred on those buildings will probably need to change, but I do believe that God sees the beauty and value of our cherished church buildings as much as we do.

A Shift in Understanding

I think that the shift that Jesus is calling us to is in our understanding of where our ministry takes place. We have fallen into the habit of assuming that these lovely spaces are where ministry occurs. The church has focused its strategy around bringing people in here so that they may minister and be ministered to. But that model hasn’t been working very well for a while now. We need a new understanding of the work that God is calling us to do.

How Jesus Organized His Ministry

I do not think that it is a coincidence that immediately after this whole incident in Nazareth, the Gospel of Mark jumps immediately into an account of the way that Jesus organized his ministry. Far from settling down in one place and expecting that people would come to him to be ministered to, what did Jesus do? He organized his disciples to go out to the various towns and villages of Galilee. They were to go to where the people were. This is the ultimate refutation of the expectations of the people from his hometown of Nazareth. And it may be the key message that prophets should speak to their home churches today.

We rightly cherish these sacred spaces of ours. The wonderful spiritual experiences we have had and continue to have in them are valid. But I do believe that Jesus is calling us to step out of these comfortable and familiar spaces to explore what it means to live out the good news of the kingdom of God in the community and in the wider world. Jesus is sending us out to make the good news of hope and new beginnings real in the lives of the people that we encounter.

Away from the Familiar

That is indeed one of the reasons why I am so excited about what we’ve chosen to do in our summer experiment. We are stepping out of what is familiar and predictable. We’ve chosen to be the church in innovative ways outside of our usual buildings. The very idea of such an approach was what shook up the people in Nazareth. And Jesus seems to have been saying that such a shaking up was prophetic. It may be just what we need.

Now, I’m not trying to suggest that our little summer experiment is the ultimate solution to what is ailing the church today. But I do think that it is symbolic of what Jesus is calling his church to. We need to be willing to conceive of new ways of being the church. We need to be willing to live our faith out in new ways as we meet people where they are with the good news about Jesus, his compassion, care and healing.

If this little experiment helps us to take even a few steps in those directions, then I do believe we will be heeding a prophetic voice. And that is what we need to be doing in these days above all.

https://youtu.be/ihxutJ52Rwg

Hespeler, June 23, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Job 38:1-11, Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Mark 4:35-41

It was a lovely morning when you and Jesus got into the boat and started sailing. The gulls cried overhead, and the herons and egrets waded through the shallows around you. The cormorants swam cheerily alongside as you raised the sail and caught the gentle breeze that would make for an easy crossing to the other side.

And so, you just had a lovely time. You sang some of your favourite songs, had some fine uplifting prayers and Jesus even spoke to you about the scriptures and their application to life in Galilee in your day. It all made being a disciple of Jesus feel so free and easy. Many of you were so comfortable that you began to nod or even doze off in the bottom of the boat.

The Other Boats

There were other boats drifting alongside you as well. There was one nearby that was filled with disciples who were very faithful to Jesus but just had a slightly different way of living out the practice of baptism – insisting that only adults could be baptised. Another boat was full of disciples who were very fond of burning incense, ringing bells and doing things like that to enhance their practice of faith.

And then there were some other boats where their practices were hardly different at all from those in your boat. It was just that they really liked their boat and, even if it was a bit rickety and let a little water seep through, they really wanted to stay in it. So, despite the minor diversity among the boats, everyone just had a wonderful morning of pleasant Christian fellowship and formation.

Why Don’t We Get That Story?

That pleasant crossing must have happened prior to the story that we read from the Gospel of Mark today. But did you notice that we didn’t get the story of that crossing? Such times are very meaningful and are keys to discipleship. Jesus and his friends no doubt had many such times while they were together. The accounts of them just didn’t make their way into the gospels.

In the same way, there have been many eras in the life of the church when we have been able to enjoy together the peacefulness of the voyage of this Christian life, when we can coexist amicably with other Christian groups but don’t worry about them too much because we are all moving in the same general direction.

These have been wonderful and meaningful times that have been fundamental to the formation of our faith, practice and priorities. We cherish them. But are we living in such times? It seems not.

A Promised Destination

And so, despite the fact that I know we love to talk about such times in the life of the church, I don’t want to talk about that morning crossing today. I want to talk about the one that is described in the gospel. And let’s note that the story of that crossing actually starts out pleasant enough. Jesus has just wound up a lovely day preaching to the crowds and he turns to his disciples and says, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” Now, that sounds nice enough, doesn’t it? Jesus seems to be promising just as gentle a crossing as you had this morning.

But, if you pay close attention, you will realize that he doesn’t actually promise anything about the ease of the crossing. He does promise that you are getting to the other side which will turn out to be a very important promise indeed. But you should never mistake God’s promises about your destination for promises about how easy it’s going to be to get there. Nevertheless, when God gives you a promise, you should hold onto it.

The Other Boats Still There

And so, you get back in the boat. Just before you push off from the dock, I want you to notice something. Mark makes a point of saying at this point in the story that, “Other boats were there too.”

I can find no other way to understand that than the way I described those other boats during the morning crossing. Mark seems to be dropping into his story a reference to other Christian groups that existed at the time that this gospel was written.

Of course, that early on, the division between disciples of Jesus would not have been as formal as what we have today. There were no denominations and there were not even church buildings for people to become attached to, but there are all kinds of indications that different groups of Christians had different understandings of how to be faithful disciples almost right from the very beginning. This is the reality that Mark is giving a nod to at the beginning of the story of this crossing. And he refreshingly even seems to be acknowledging that it is okay that different groups have different approaches to Jesus.

So, everything seems to be pretty promising and harmonious as you set out to go back across the lake. But, of course, that is exactly what is about to change.

The Challenge of Stormy Times

It is one thing to be a Christian and live out your faith as a church when the breezes are gentle, the water is calm and the passage is easy. It is quite a different matter when the storm comes. And that is exactly what this story in the gospel is about.

And there have been many storms in the history of the church. The storms have been different in intensity and power. The church has dealt with barbarian invasions, persecutions and reformations. Those were terrifying storms for those caught in them. Other storms have been a little less ferocious and have had more to do with societal change and economic troubles.

A Regular Refrain

But my studies in church history have taught me that, no matter how intense the storm may be, we always seem to respond in the same way – the way that the disciples respond to the storm in this story. “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?” we cry with them.

Have you noticed that this seems to have become the refrain in many churches these days? Not all, certainly, there are places and congregations where they seem to have found their way through the present storm, but when I was at the General Assembly the other week, that was certainly a very common refrain.

Mark’s Lessons for Us

I feel as if Mark has very intentionally told this story of Jesus in a way that is intended to help the church of his time and down through the ages to navigate such storms and so I would like us to pay close attention to what we can learn from it. The first lesson we need to hear is the most important. The story begins with Jesus saying “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” And it ends with them arriving at the opposite shore.

The meaning of this is, I hope, clear. Jesus does not abandon his church. Jesus will see us over to the other side. That doesn’t mean that the crossing won’t be frightening. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be afraid that we will die. It certainly doesn’t mean that we will not change in some significant ways in the crossing. But we will get there. Hold onto that promise. Never forget it.

When We Forget

When the disciples forget that promise in the middle of the storm, Jesus rebukes them, and rightly so. He wonders why they have no faith. And so, though I certainly understand why we are tempted from time to time to cry out, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?” we will be rebuked when we do so.

I do believe that Jesus understands and appreciates it when we express our fears and worries. But do not make the mistake of giving into despair because you have forgotten Jesus’ promises. When you believe them, you will begin to see the new possibilities that Jesus is creating for you in the midst of the storm. It is true that you may not arrive at the far side of the lake in exactly the same condition as when you embarked. The storm will bring change. But Jesus’ promise of arrival is secure.

Where Are the Other Boats?

But, speaking of potential change, we come to the second lesson of this story. As I noted, when the disciples began their journey, Mark made a point of saying that “other boats were there too.” I think I made it clear that I don’t think that is just a random comment. I think that Mark is saying something about the church outside of storm times.

But, if that is the state of things before the storm comes, what happens once it starts? “A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.” Yes, it seems as if once the storm starts, we are no longer thinking in terms of our boat and the other boats.

When We’re All in the Same Boat

And that is exactly how it goes, doesn’t it? When all is going well, when the breezes are gentle and the currents are not against you, it is easy to let all those little things matter. The disagreements over theology, the differences in polity, and the particular preferences in pious practice can seem really important and the resources are abundant enough that you can justify each maintaining your own boats.

But once the storm hits what happens? You suddenly realize how much we are all in the same boat. When the water is washing over the gunnels and the waves threaten to capsize you, all of those distinctives and differences just don’t seem to matter anymore.

Downside and Upside

Now, I need to be honest here and admit that there is a downside to this inclement weather realization. When storms have struck at various times throughout the history of the church, those have been times when various traditions or distinctiveness have been lost. It just became too much to maintain all of the different ways of doing and being. And those losses are real and very painful. The present storm the church is facing will see some of those kinds of losses and we must be compassionate in the face of them.

But the “we’re all in the same boat” reality of the storm also brings with it a very large upside. The storm is also a time of great creativity and we particularly experience that in terms of finding ways to work together. All of a sudden, those distinctions that you have between your various groups, even if they are still very meaningful to you, no longer seem to be a big enough reason for you not to get in the same boat together.

When the storm hits, there is often a willingness to suspend and sometimes even ignore those rules and structures that might get in the way of you working together. You would never dream of doing such things in the calm weather, but everything seems possible in the storm.

The Summer Experiment

That is exactly what happened, by the way, with our summer experiment this year. This whole idea of us working together and worshiping together was not something that we asked the Presbytery to make happen, despite the fact that the Presbytery is ultimately responsible for the relationships between its congregations. We worked this out between ourselves, respecting the wisdom of the sessions in each congregation.

Now, if, at the end of this experiment we discern that God is calling some of these congregations to work together in ongoing ways, we may have to go to the Presbytery and figure out how to do that according to our Presbyterian polity, but, in the storm, there is a kind of freedom to experiment. And there is some exciting about that.

Fright and Faith

And yes, I know that it is also frightening. You are afraid that your boat might sink. The terror of the disciples in this story, even though many of them are experienced fishers, is palpable. I don’t expect that we won’t be dealing with fear. But, if you remember Jesus’ promise to the church, that we are going to get to the other side, you do not need to lose faith and that is what matters.

But is not just the promise that Jesus gives you before you start this crossing that gives you reason to hope. It is also what he does for you in the midst of the storm. Jesus stood up and commanded the wind, “Be quiet!” and he said to the waves, “Be still!” The wind died down, and there was a great calm. Never forget that, as we learn to trust in Jesus, he will give that same comfort and peace and calm even though the storm may rage all around us.

We have his promise that we will get to the other side. We have his offer of peace and calm in the midst of the storm. And so let us embark with faith. “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.”

https://youtu.be/OJQY59HRiw4

Hespeler, June 16, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, Psalm 20, 2 Corinthians 5:6-17, Mark 4:26-34

I don’t expect you to remember this but, three years ago I preached a sermon on the story that we read this morning from the Book of Samuel. And I focused on the part near the beginning where it says that, “Samuel grieved over Saul.” It was a verse that seemed to speak to us pretty directly where we were three years ago. We were looking at change, which seems to be a constant in the world these days, and recognizing that the church was going to need to embrace change if we were going to find a place in the world moving forward.

Feeling Optimistic

And I will confess that I was feeling a bit optimistic about change way back then. We were, you will recall, still in the middle of a pandemic, but signs of hope were surfacing. New vaccinations had been approved and we were just getting to the tipping point where a majority of Canadians were going to be protected. There was a lot of goodwill being expressed about scientific research, healthcare professionals and front-line workers.

It seemed possible that this crisis would lead us towards a better society overall with renewed confidence in truth and science and a new respect for the work of those traditionally paid low wages. In many ways it felt as if we were all about to come together and sing “kumbaya” in sweet harmony.

And in that optimistic spirit, I imagined that the greatest impediment to the church embracing the change that was needed was nostalgia. We, like Samuel, were so busy grieving for the glorious lost past of the church that we couldn’t even bring ourselves to think about what could be different.

Was it Just About Samuel’s Grief?

And so, I imagined Samuel’s grief as nostalgia for the “good old days” with King Saul. He was sitting around remembering all of the wonderful battles, the blood and guts and gore. He was sighing over how good Saul looked in his armour and how tall he had been. He was stuck in the past and God had to push him to let go of all of that before he could even think of going out to find someone else to anoint as king.

In the same way, I suggested, all that the church needed to do was let go of its attachment to the past and, as God says to Samuel, “fill your horn with oil and set out” to anoint the new future that God was calling us to.

Things Feel Different

As I return to this story today, though, I am not sure that I am feeling quite as optimistic. That good will that I was hoping for, didn’t quite materialize. Far from coming together to meet the challenges of the moment, we seem to have fragmented as a society over the last few years.

What’s more, the statistics have come in from the pandemic and it has been confirmed that our statements about valuing front-line workers and healthcare professionals were meaningless. The only people who saw their situation improve through the pandemic turn out to be those who were already rich when it started. The only change we seem to have seen has been doubling down on how things have always been.

Maybe I’m a bit more pessimistic, but as I revisit this story today, I notice something. It is not just Samuel’s nostalgia and sentimentality about the good old days with Saul that are in the way of the change that needs to happen. There is something much more sinister. There are indeed powerful and dangerous forces at work that are arrayed against what needs to happen.

Saul’s Power and Privilege

And so, Samuel feels extremely threatened. When God tells him to go out and anoint a new king, Samuel protests. “How can I go?” he says, “If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” This indicates that Saul is aware that Samuel is a threat to his rule. Samuel is being watched and if he makes an open move that even suggests that he might be considering replacing Saul with somebody else, there is a very real threat of violence. Samuel knows this, and he is not the only one.

When Samuel travels to Bethlehem to secretly choose a successor to Saul, the local elders also understand the threat. “The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, “Do you come peaceably?” Why are they trembling? Obviously because, though they might not know exactly what it is, they also recognize that Samuel is trying to change something, and that Saul is going to resist any change with violence.

Violent Resistance to Change

That is why I think it is very important to recognize that change – even positive change – is not only resisted passively with nostalgia and people not wanting to let go of the familiar. It will absolutely be resisted actively with anger and even violence.

And the reason why is obvious. Saul doesn’t want things to change because, the way things are, he gets the power and the privilege. He can set up the monarchy to run in a way that benefits him and his family. He naturally sees change as a threat to his power and privilege and so will use his power and privilege to prevent it.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that every powerful and wealthy person will always use their power in corrupt ways. There are exceptions, wonderful people who have used their privilege to create a better world that did not necessarily benefit themselves. But such people are rare enough that we should hardly be surprised when the opposite happens.

The Need to be Wary

That is why, when we are living in times when change is in the air, we need to be wary and ready. We need to be asking who has something to lose in the change and, if they have power or influence, we need to be ready for when they choose to use it.

As I said, change did seem to be very much in the air in the early days of the pandemic. The recognition of the importance of low-wages workers, the admission that income support could be a good thing, the realization that the health of the poor and marginalized could affect the health of everyone else all strongly suggested that things had to change.

So why didn’t things change? Why, a few years later, is everything not just back to the way it was but we’ve even seen the wealth gap between the rich and the poor grow dramatically? More and more people all the time are slipping through the cracks in the economy. Do you think that that just happened by accident? I suspect that it had more than a little to do with the powerful in our society flexing their muscles and intentionally taking society to where they felt that it should be.

God Comes Up with a Plan

Embracing change, it turns out, is about more than just our unwillingness to let go of how things used to be. But that does not mean that we should give up hope for change; it just means that we need to do a bit more of the right kind of work for it. After all, when Samuel reminds God of what he is up against, God doesn’t just reply, “Oh, okay, never mind.” God comes up with a plan that we ought to pay attention to. “And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.”’”

Now, to be clear, God is not sending Samuel to Bethlehem because God desires a sacrifice. It is a ruse. But it is an intelligent one. Saul doesn’t want Samuel going around anointing kings, but Samuel knows that Saul would never prevent him from performing sacrifices. That is kind of the opposite of Samuel fomenting change. Samuel is falling back into his traditional prophetic role which is to support the status quo by keeping God happy.

But even as Samuel falls into his traditional and non-threatening role, he is doing it in a way that will bring about new connections. “Invite Jesse to the sacrifice,” God says, “and I will show you what you shall do, and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.”

Samuel’s Sacrifice

So, this is what Samuel does. He convenes all the families of Bethlehem – including, of course, the family of Jesse that he is particularly interested in. And note how he takes particular care to make sure that everyone is there including seemingly insignificant people like the youngest son of Jesse. That is because Samuel needs to take advantage of the one thing that could possibly counter the power that Saul has. Only by people joining together in solidarity and mutual care can we find the way of defeating the malicious powers of this world. So, Samuel uses the unique ability and privilege he has as a prophet to gather people around a sacrifice.

This is symbolic of the power that we have as the church. I am fairly certain that God never really cared about animal sacrifices. Why would the creator of the universe need such things? But God has always understood both the human need to find connection in community and the power that is inherent in that. And so the sacrifice of animals was always an excuse to gather people together and make connections.

We may not slaughter animals anymore as part of our religious practice – something that I must say that I am very glad about. I mean, can you imagine some of the classes I would have had to sit though in seminary to prepare for that? But we, like Samuel, do have the privilege in our society of bringing people together around acts of worship and it is time for us to recognize that there is power to bring about change in that.

This is the secret that the wealthy and the powerful don’t want anyone to find out about. Their kryptonite, the one thing that can defeat them, is the power of the people united. And, honestly, that is precisely why the powerful few have lately been able to control the agenda of our society so overwhelmingly. They have somehow managed to keep people divided.

A Divided Society

As you have probably noticed, the deep divisions that separate us from one another have particularly contributed to our malaise as a society of late. We have become increasingly fragmented over politics, over public health issues, over news sources or, as Christians, differences in interpretation and biblical application.

It is not just that we disagree about such things – disagreement is a healthy thing. It is that we come to the place where we no longer see the people who are on the other side of the disagreement as worthy conversation partners. We see them as nothing but enemies or heretics. I imagine that things were much the same in Saul’s kingdom. Despotic rulers and wannabe dictators have a way of fostering such a state of affairs.

But Samuel found a way to begin to break that down – to gather people together in a way that transcended the differences. He used an act of worship to do that. I think that there is untapped potential in that the church today needs to embrace.

The Power in Gathering in Worship

I am not going to pretend for a minute that everyone who enters this worship space agrees on their view of God or of what exactly God wants from us. I don’t think we are all on precisely the same page in our understanding of major issues like climate, health or inclusion policies. I really don’t expect us to agree on politics. But somehow, we are here. We are gathered to worship one God, trusting in one saviour and gathered around one table. That unity in diversity doesn’t seem to happen in too many places in society today. But it happens here. That is one of the unique powers of religion when it is done well, it can bring a great diversity of people together.

And if Samuel could harness that possibility and begin a change that would challenge the power of Saul, why couldn’t we? There are powerful forces at work in our world that are preventing positive change both for the society and for the church. I believe that we can be part of challenging those powers if only we use our common devotion to create the sense of unity that is necessary.

I think of this especially in terms of our experiment this summer. Over the next couple of months, we will be gathering with Christians that we do not know. We will be gathering in acts of worship. That is what Samuel did when he went to Bethlehem. Can we do it with the same expectation that Samuel had that God will use such gatherings to show us a new way forward in some new kind of unity? I am engaging in this summer experiment with a heart full of just such an expectation. I hope you will too.

https://youtu.be/16rW1hBROqM

Hespeler, June 2, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Second Sunday after Pentecost, Communion
Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Psalm 81:1-10, 2 Corinthians 4:5-12, Mark 2:23-3:6

Did you know that there are two accounts of the giving of the Ten Commandments in the Bible. The first one is likely the one that you are familiar with. It’s the one that gets played out in the blockbuster movies. It takes place at Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 20. Moses goes up the mountain to receive the commandments directly from God while the people stand trembling at the foot of the mountain watching the terrifying sound and light show from a distance.

The Second Giving

But the second giving of the commandments, the one we read from this morning, takes place about forty years later. The people of Israel, a whole new generation of people who have replaced those who died during the wilderness wandering, are just about to enter into the Promised Land. Moses, as one of his last acts before his death, is addressing them in what we know as the Book of Deuteronomy. As part of his address, he goes over the Ten Commandments one more time.

These two versions of the Ten Commandments don’t contradict each other. They are clearly getting the same points across. But there is a strange thing you will notice if you read them side by side as I did. There are these slight variations in the wording. Nothing that would change the intent, but I find it interesting, nonetheless.

The First Sabbath Law

For example, take the commandment we read this morning. In Exodus, speaking from Mount Sinai, God says, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” The commandment continues from there much like we read from Deuteronomy this morning, but it starts with a command to “remember.” Remember that.

And then, after laying out what it means to remember the Sabbath, God gives the rationale for this commandment. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.” So, in Exodus, the reason for the Sabbath is that you need to imitate God. God rested and so therefore so should you.

The Second Version

But the passage we read this morning is just a little bit different. “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.” Did you observe that? The command here is not to remember but to observe. Not enough to really change the meaning, I know, but maybe enough to make you go, “Hmm.”

It goes on to lay out what observing the Sabbath means in the same way – working six days and then not on the seventh. It lists, in the same way, the people who aren’t supposed to work: “you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns.”  But then it adds a phrase not found in Exodus: “so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.” So, it makes a point of saying that your slaves get the day off twice.

Then Moses gives the reason for the commandment, and it is different from the reason given at Sinai. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” So, instead doing this to be like God, the people are told to do this because of their past history of enslavement. And the command to remember has now been moved from remembering the Sabbath to remembering their past bad treatment when their taskmasters never gave them a day off.

How These Differences Function

Now, if you read biblical scholars, they will have fancy literary and historical explanations for the variations between those two passages. Such studies are interesting but are not particularly what fascinates me today. I am much more interested in how these little changes function in the overall narrative that we find in the story of the people of Israel. I think the variations between the two commandments have been placed here quite intentionally and that there is a very important message in them for us today.

Think of it this way. At Sinai in the Book of Exodus, we are given the commandments in the direct voice of God. They offer a pure and idealistic view of the way that things should be. But in Deuteronomy, we have Moses’ restatement of the commandments just before the people enter into the Promised Land where they are supposed to live these commandments out. This is where the rubber meets the road, where the practical issues of living out God’s perfect will for God’s people need to be ironed out. That is how I understand the subtle rewording of this commandment.

The Created Need for Rest

And I really do think that there is a very important message for us in that. It is precisely in the shift between the ideal and the practical that we struggle with the idea of Sabbath rest.

On one level, surely, we all agree that rest is a good thing. Everybody deserves a break. Everyone should get some time off. We recognize that, as human beings, we are not designed to be working and producing 24/7. This is something that has been confirmed by all kinds of scientific studies.

A Biological Need

Human beings break down on a biological level and on a mental health level without proper breaks and rest. And when we try to overcome that biological design by pushing ourselves to work beyond what we were designed for, not only do we suffer for it, but our work also suffers from poor quality.

So, no one can argue against the idea of Sabbath. It is something that we are designed for. And I would say that that is exactly the way the commandment is presented in the Book of Exodus. There, the reason why you must remember the Sabbath is because of the way the world was created. Because God rested on the seventh day of creation, that means that all creation was designed with the necessity of rest in mind.

That’s why scientific studies into the nature of human beings find that rest is necessary. God designed us that way. Whether they believe in God or not, everyone accepts that basic idea. We do not have any issues with Sabbath rest on the level of ideology.

My Struggle

But man, do we have issues when it comes to the practicalities! Let me tell you about my own struggles with writing this sermon. When I saw that all the readings today were connected to the idea of Sabbath, I knew that that was what I had to preach about – that it was something that God was calling us to consider.

But then, for two whole days, I just found that I could not even start writing. I sort of knew what I needed to say, but I couldn’t figure out how to say it. Now I do not usually have that kind of problem getting started on a sermon. The demand of producing one every week honestly means that I can’t really afford to not be writing a sermon almost all the time.

So, what was my problem? I do believe in Sabbath rest; I think it is something that we all need. But when it comes down to practicing it in the real world, I will confess that I am a bit of a failure. I generally work seven days a week. There was a time when I would have been in the church office six days a week, and I have at least and thankfully gotten away from that. But I am still working all those days wherever I happen to be.

Just too Much to Do!

And if you challenge me on my work schedule, as you probably should, I will answer you and say that I know that God did not design us to work without days off, but that, given all I have to get done in a week, this is what the practicality of the situation demands. When the rubber meets the road, it’s just not practical to stop working. There’s just too much to be done. The problem with the Sabbath is not the idea of it, it is the practice.

I am far from unusual in this. I know that each and every one of us has times when we let the busyness of work take control of our lives because of very practical reasons. So that is one big reason why the idea of Sabbath breaks down when it encounters the real world, we make too many exceptions for ourselves because of the practicalities of real life.

Christian Practice

And then, of course, there is a question of how we treat others. I have known many Christians who have a firm understanding of the practice of Sunday as a Sabbath. They will insist that they will always refuse to work at their job on Sunday. They go to churches where they preach regularly about the importance of keeping Sunday as a Sabbath.

But they fail to recognize that, given the society that we live in, that is something that only a privileged few can do. Our society is simply not set up like the ancient agrarian society of Israel. And, as much as we may rail against all the things that are open or active on Sundays, the very structure of our society and economy demands that things stay open. Lots of people simply cannot opt out.

It would be one thing if Christians who had the privilege to opt out did that personally as a sign to our society that things could be different. I could get behind something like that. But that is often what I do not see.

I see Christians who go to church on a Sunday morning and are all smug about how they don’t work. Then as soon as the service is over they run to a nearby restaurant where they expect to be waited on hand and foot and are often not even very charitable towards those who serve them. Sabbath for me but not for the ones who take care of me is, unfortunately, an attitude that I have sometimes encountered among Christians. I am not speaking about present company, please understand me. But I have certainly seen it.

Moses’ Address

So, Moses addresses the people of Israel just as they are about to leave the ideal time of the wilderness – a time when God has provided for their needs directly – and enter the real world where everything they need will be provided only through work and labour. He knows that they will be particularly tested in how they keep the Sabbath and so he tweaks the commandment for the new challenge.

Maybe it is not going to be enough to merely remember the Sabbath when they are in the Promised Land. Life in the real world requires a bit more. You are called to observe it, which means exactly the same thing in the Hebrew as it does in English. It means to watch, to keep your eye on it because, if you don’t, the demands of practical life will keep creeping up on you and you will never rest.

Keeping Watch

To personally practice Sabbath requires that you keep a watch on yourself. The fact of the matter is that the things that you feel you must do are not always necessary. They may be based on unrealistic expectations that others have put upon you or that you have put upon yourself.

I know that I do that in my work. I place huge expectations on myself on what I need to do before I consider my work done. Some of these expectations are good, of course, but others are more about me trying to control things that I don’t need to control – about me refusing to trust in God for an outcome and feeling that I have to control every step of the process.

I’ll bet that you all do that in certain areas of your life. But you will never know that if you do not observe and carefully evaluate the choices that you make. Life in the real world may require that we do more than just remember the Sabbath. It requires that we observe.

The Reason for the Law

But where Moses particularly revises the Sabbath commandment for the new challenges is when it comes to the reason for it. We no longer see the appeal to creation and the nature of God, instead we learn that the reason for this command is rooted in the human condition. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

The biggest reason why we must watch to keep the Sabbath is because of the human tendency to exploit the labour of others. That is what we must remember and, because we remember it, we must watch to make sure that it doesn’t happen. That is what Moses is saying. So it is never enough for you to enjoy whatever privilege you may have to rest.

Valuing Labour

We live in a world that increasingly devalues the labour that people do. That is why, over the last several decades wages for labour have not kept pace with the earnings of the investment class. That’s why people have to work more and more just to make ends meet. Those are exactly the trends that Moses is telling us that we need to watch out for. That’s why he repeats the insistence that your slave needs to rest too. Those are the trends that increasingly mean that Sabbath rest of any sort is a privilege enjoyed by the few.

Moses is speaking to us as we seek to live out faithful lives in the real world. This commandment is not given to judge you and certainly not to give you a reason to judge others. But the command for you to build rest into life is given to teach you to trust in God enough to take a break from trying to control everything around you. It is given in order to encourage you to stand up for those who are exploited for their labour.

I know that we can’t simply take the notion of Sabbath as it applied in the ancient agrarian society of Israel and apply it directly to life today, but, with Moses’ help and wisdom, I do believe that we can observe the Sabbath in the real world of today.

https://youtu.be/7Tn510j3Gmk

Hespeler, May 26, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 29, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17

Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. I want you to think for a moment about what that means. This very gospel tells us that Jesus was “The true light, which enlightens everyone.” (John 1:9) It tells us that Jesus is “The light that shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overtake it.” (John 1:5) But Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.

This gospel says that a woman, a despised Samaritan, came to Jesus as he sat by a well at the very moment when the sun was at the zenith of the sky. It was the hottest part of the day to be sure, a time when others hide in their homes. But she was not afraid of the light and in the illumination of that day, she could see that Jesus was a prophet and messiah. But Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.

Jesus himself said that he was the light of the world and proved it by giving a blind man sight. He taught that “Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” (John 11:9-10) And yet Nicodemus came to him by night!

A Respected Man

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a man who was greatly respected by all for his commitment to the law. He sat on councils and spoke in meetings where he was honoured and people were always willing to hear his opinions and judgements. He counted powerful people like Joseph of Arimathea among his friends – Joseph who went in and out even among Roman governors and who could put his hands on large sums of money to bury a friend on short notice.

Everywhere he went, Nicodemus could count on a warm welcome and friendly conversation. He was always given an honoured place whenever he was invited to dinner.

People Assumed the Best

If ever he happened to be caught in what looked like some compromising position, people always gave him the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone can count on that. When something is missing, for example, there are certain people who are always suspected because of their race, their status or their living situation. They might be accused despite there being no evidence at all.

Some people live with the constant expectation of such accusations, but Nicodemus never had to worry about such things. On the contrary, people always assumed the best of him even when he gave them no particular reason to do so. He was a man whose days brought him nothing but honour and respect, and yet Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.

Sincerity

Nicodemus knew that Jesus was a teacher who had come from God. He had no doubts about that because he had seen and considered the things that Jesus had done and recognized that they were powerful acts that could only be accomplished when God is with somebody. When he said that to Jesus, he said it with utter sincerity. And yet, knowing all of that, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.

There is something wrong with this picture, isn’t there? When you are somebody who has a privileged position in society, you will act openly and carry out your deeds in the full light of day. When you truly believe that somebody has come from God and that the goals that they pursue are good ones, will you not say so openly? What is the point of believing something if you will not say it at times and places where people will hear it? If you are a person who loves the light, why are you skulking around in the darkness of the night?

Criticism of Dr. King

But here is the truth. Nicodemus is not alone. In fact, there have been many others like him who have come to Jesus by night. In 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and imprisoned in the Birmingham City Jail for disobeying an injunction that banned public protests against racial policy, a group of eight prominent white Christian leaders made a statement.

They said that Dr. King’s goals of racial equality were good, that it was the right thing to do to build a more just society. They might as well have said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for you teach a way of justice.” But there was one problem. They came to Jesus by night.

They called the actions of King “unwise and untimely.” They thought that he was acting in a manner that was too open and confrontational. His demands for justice and change were being made in the full light of day. They felt that the only way to effect the change that was needed was to work without disturbing things, without shaking things up. They wanted to come by night so that no one would see and maybe no one would even notice the change.

Letter From Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Jr’s response is justly famous. When he read about the statement of the white leaders, he began writing a response immediately on the newspaper clipping. He continued on scraps of paper passed to him by one of the black trustees working in the jail and finally finished it using legal pads supplied by his lawyers. It was finally published as “The Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a great work of American literature.

There is one passage in the letter that I know that I must return to regularly to challenge myself. “I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” King writes. He might as well be saying, “I am disappointed in those who come by night.”

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion” he continues in the language of the time, “that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’”

Need More than Good Intentions

I think that that was what Nicodemus was doing with Jesus. He was trying to say, “I agree with you in the goal you seek,” but I am not willing to risk my standing or my reputation by using them to support what you are doing. I’m going to come, but I’m going to come by night.

And Jesus understood all of that. Just as Martin Luther King Jr recognized that the eight leaders were men of goodwill who were speaking with all sincerity, Jesus understood that Nicodemus had good intentions and wanted to do the right thing, but the fact that he had come by night told Jesus that Nicodemus desperately needed more than good intentions.

What Nicodemus Needed

Jesus cut him off immediately and told him this: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus was puzzled. He had come, he thought, to discuss the finer points of creating justice in this world without having to risk himself by showing his intentions in the light of day, and Jesus seemed to have suddenly changed the subject. He blinked and declared that what Jesus had just said seemed nonsensical: “Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’”

But Jesus hadn’t changed the subject. What he had just said made perfect sense. It didn’t matter if Nicodemus agreed with Jesus’ goals. It didn’t even matter if he believed all the right things about Jesus. None of that was obviously going to persuade Nicodemus to give up on what had convinced him that he could just come by night. Nicodemus needed to be born again.

Double Meaning

For centuries people have wondered what Jesus might have meant by the demand that he made of Nicodemus. Even Nicodemus was puzzled over the phrase. It doesn’t help that the Greek phrase that Jesus uses in the Gospel has a double meaning. It can mean both “born again,” and “born from above.” And that quickly becomes a reason for misunderstanding between Nicodemus and Jesus.

But what he was saying – and what Nicodemus failed to understand – was that Nicodemus didn’t need just another birth to a life that was oriented towards the values of this world. Had he gone back into his mother’s womb to be born again, as he suggested, it would have only been to be born once again to the world of privilege and honour given to him by his first birth. He needed to be born anew from a new place, from above and with the very different attitudes and priorities of heaven.

“Born Again”

As you probably know, that phrase that Jesus used with Nicodemus, that demand that he be born again or born from above, has since taken on a life of its own. People have pulled that one phrase out of the context of this story and used it as a definition of their kind of Christianity. “I am a ‘born again Christian,’” they will say.

They are saying that their faith began with the kind of experience that Jesus told Nicodemus he needed to have. And that is all fine and good, assuming that you understand what it was that Jesus was saying to Nicodemus.

Sometimes when people say that what they mean is that they have had a powerful experience of the presence of Jesus. Maybe they were at a particularly low time in their life, regretting some things that they had done perhaps, and they experienced the presence of Jesus in a way that brought them the healing and forgiveness that they needed most at that moment. Others might experience the presence of Jesus in a public worship context where, among the people of God who are praising, they find themselves transported into the presence of Jesus.

Not Just an Experience

Such experiences are truly wonderful. If you have had such an experience in your life, you are indeed blessed. I would never question the validity of someone’s experience of Jesus. But let me ask you this. If you encountered Jesus, but you came to him by night, did you really have the “born from above” experience that Jesus was talking about? I mean, Nicodemus encountered Jesus. He was right there in front of him talking to him. And yet Jesus told him that he was still in need of that second birth.

What I mean is that, if you are blessed to have such a wonderful experience of Jesus, and it doesn’t transform your priorities, it doesn’t make you willing to stick your neck out like Jesus did for what is right and just, Jesus might still be looking for more from you.

Jesus’ Acceptance

Let me be clear about one thing, however. Jesus was glad that Nicodemus came to him whenever he came. In the same way, Jesus is extraordinary glad that you came to him as well. Later on in this passage, as we read this morning, we have one of the most powerful statements of God’s love and acceptance in the entire Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

On whatever terms Nicodemus was willing believe in Jesus, whatever trust he was willing to place, even if he came by night, Jesus accepted that. In the same way, Jesus accepts whatever trust you are able to place in him as well.

But for your sake, he would rather that you not come by night but in the fullness of the day. He would have you be born from above so that you do not value the fleeting things of this earth – things like wealth or status – over the priorities of heaven. Jesus wishes this for you and for Nicodemus because he wants you to be a part of his great work in this world – work that is done in the day.

Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, but you don’t have to. And if we can all remember that, we are on our way to carry out the works of the day and change this world for the better.