Category: Minister

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Hespeler, 20 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless

Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11

here were six stone water jars, I mean really large water jars that each held twenty or thirty gallons. And they were just sitting there by the entrance when the mother of Jesus brought a crisis to his attention.

      They were at a wedding – a wedding that was the most important event that would take place in Cana that year. Life in Cana – life in most any Galilean village – could be pretty bleak. It was nothing but a hardscrabble existence working from dawn to dusk just to survive. By some estimates, about 90% of what they were able to produce was siphoned off in taxes, rents and fees to support the temple and religion of Judea.

      Opportunities to celebrate anything were few and far between. So when those opportunities came, they were of vital importance to everybody. A wedding feast in ancient Galilee was as close as many of these people would get to feeling that life was good. So when the wine ran out on only the third day of a wedding party that was supposed to last a week, you can bet that it was a crisis. The morale of the entire region was on the line.

      But even more than that was at stake. Jesus had come into the world as the bridegroom. Everywhere he went it was supposed to be a celebration. Once some of the religious people even came up to Jesus and asked him why it was that his disciples didn’t fast and didn’t go around with miserable faces all the time. Jesus’ answer was that it wasn’t fitting. If they were at a funeral, sure, that would make sense. But Jesus was among them as the bridegroom and when the bridegroom was present you had to celebrate.

      The presence of Jesus in the world was a sign, as it says in our Old Testament reading this morning, that “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” So can you imagine what it would be like for Jesus to show up at a wedding party at the very moment when the entire celebration fell apart because there was no wine? This was serious; the entire ministry of Jesus was at stake.

      So, as much as Jesus wanted to protest that his time had not yet arrived, as much as he did protest to his mother that for him to take action was a bit premature, there really was no question: Jesus had to do something about the wine running out. And Jesus had the power to do something; there seems to be no question about that. Why, I suppose that he could have created wine in vessels out of nothing had he chosen to do so. But he did not choose to do so. He chose to respond to the crisis in a very particular way. And there was the problem.

      You see there were six stone jars by the entrance – very large jars each holding twenty or thirty gallons. They were there for a very good reason, and that reason did not include the making of wine. They were there for the Jewish rites of purification. And you need to understand what that was and how important it was. You know how your mother always taught you that you should wash your hands before a meal because if you eat with dirty hands you might get sick and make others sick? Well, it didn’t have anything to do with that.

      So the question is what stands in the way of the church truly embracing its destiny in joy? I’ll tell you what stands in the way: six stone jars. I suggest to you that there are at least six things – things that we have decided are more important than the church embracing its true nature in joy – that keep us from being all that we are called to be. And like Jesus did at Cana, we may need to take some dramatic action – not to destroy those stone jars (Jesus didn’t do that) but to show that we are willing to compromise them for the sake of the greater vision.

Hespeler, 13 January, 2019 © Scott McAndless

Isaiah 43:1-7, Psalm 29:1-11, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-22

t is kind of amazing the difference that one little word can make. Our reading this morning from the Book of Isaiah begins with a pretty amazing promise. “Do not fear,” God says through the prophet, “for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Can you even imagine what is being said here? The eternal creator, the ruler of the cosmos and the King of all kings reaches out to a people who are lost, confused and distressed and God chooses them.

      And it is not just in that passage; it is a theme that runs through all of our lectionary readings this morning. Why are the people flocking to John the Baptist out in the wilderness? They are there because they are filled with expectation. God is doing something and they are being baptised because they want to be part of it. In that baptism, they are experiencing the same thing – God’s redemption, calling them by name and claiming them. This is made even more explicit in the case of Jesus who is claimed by God in spectacular fashion after his baptism with the words, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

      This is good news, right? This is a wonderful promise. Think of all the benefits of having the creator of the universe choose you specially and call you by name. No more worries, no more fears. With a patron as big as the Creator, it’s bound to be smooth sailing from here, right? Surely if there is any trouble, God will get me out of it right away.

      But there’s that little word” if. That should be the next thing that the prophet talks about, right? If anything goes wrong. If I have to pass through a difficult thing, then God will bail me out. But is that what the prophet says? Oh, he goes on to talk about trouble, but he doesn’t use that little word: if. Here is what the prophet says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

      Hold on a minute here God, I thought you redeemed me, I thought you called me by name and were even willing to pay a hefty ransom for me, what do you mean when? It’s like you’re threatening me with dangerous river crossings and passing through fiery infernos. What exactly are you planning for me to do?

      And here is where we actually get to the point that is being made in these passages. Does God call people, redeem them and make them his own? Yes, absolutely. But that calling and redeeming, though it always comes out of the gracious and giving spirit of God, also always has a purpose. God has something for his chosen ones to do. In this specific passage in the Book of Isaiah, the thing that God is calling his people to do is the very difficult task of bringing a nation together out of exile, of carrying out a dangerous journey through a deserted place. So clearly the issue is not that they might face dangerous situations on that journey. It is a certainty that they will. So the prophet doesn’t talk about if; he talks about when.

      It is the same thing in our New Testament readings as well. These words resounding from heaven after Jesus’ baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” are a high point in the recognition of Jesus as God’s anointed one, but we all know where that is heading, don’t we? It is heading to the cross and a long and difficult journey to get there. Whatever the benefits of being God’s chosen one, a trouble-free journey is not one of them. And that is not just true of Jesus; it is also true of all those who follow Jesus through baptism.

      I often think that this is the main thing that we miss in the church today. The Christian Church has an important message – a message of redemption and hope and love that has the potential to transform the world. It is a fantastic message that the world definitely needs. So if people aren’t coming and choosing to be part of sharing in such a message, it is certainly not the fault of the message.

      And if people aren’t coming in droves, like they did when John the Baptist proclaimed the message, it is clearly not the fault of God. God is committed, it says, “I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth.’”

      So, if the message is still valid and God is that committed to gathering God’s people in, why don’t we always see that happening? What did John the Baptist (who apparently attracted “all the people”) have that we don’t?

      Well, I think that one of the problems is that we have become “if” Christians instead of “when” Christians. We appreciate our Christian faith and the message of the gospel that we have received and we especially appreciate it if we face hard times. If we have to pass through fire or flood, it is good to know that we have a God who is committed to us, a Christian community that will support us and love us and a message of good news that will comfort our hearts.

      And, in a sense, there is nothing wrong with that. It is a very good thing to be able to draw on that support if tragedy should befall us and it is a blessing to have that assurance. But if Christians are not necessarily the Christians who are going to change the world. For that you need when Christians.

      When Christians are the ones who understand that the gospel message is not just there to support us in those difficult times that may happen. They understand that following Christ and being faithful to his gospel will, sooner or later, lead us into situations that are not exactly comfortable. Following the example of Christ with integrity will sometimes mean standing up for the forgotten, the despised and the oppressed. And when you do that, you will find that it is not possible without displeasing many people. It means that sometimes people won’t like you and that can feel like you are passing through fire and flood.

      When Christians understand that the gospel message is a message of salvation by grace through faith. God’s love and forgiveness and hope come to us as gifts that we can only receive with thanks – that we cannot earn. But we do receive those gifts through faith and faith means trust. It means that we need to learn to trust God for our most important needs. And, guess what, that doesn’t come easily to us. We would rather be in control of our own lives and not to have to rely on somebody else (even if it be the Creator of the universe). Giving up that control is hard – for some of us it can feel as hard as passing through fire or flood.

      When Christians know that the Christian life is not intended to be lived out alone – that we are actually called to live it out in a community – to love and support one another. And that is a blessing in so many ways – it makes life that much richer. But, guess what, other people (even when they are Christians – maybe especially when they are Christians) are not perfect. We sometimes don’t agree or see things in the same way. That diversity, when we work through it, is meant to enrich us, but sometimes working through it can be hard and we may hurt one another and tear each other down. We may need to forgive each other to make it work. And that is hard. In other words, there will be times when living together as the church will be like passing through fire or flood.

      When Christians also understand that this message of the gospel is not just good news for you, it is not just something to hold onto and cherish for the benefits that it gives you. It is a message that demands that it be shared. And I don’t necessarily mean by that that you need to be constantly going up to people and asking them questions like, “Have you been saved?” “Have you been born again?” Actually, I think that kind of in-your-face approach tends to have quite the opposite effect – it gets in the way of effective sharing of the gospel. No I am talking about a real mutual kind of sharing, where you are actually interested in what other people think and feel and believe and are also willing to share your own faith when the opportunities arise.

      Many of us don’t do that – would never even tell someone else what you did on a Sunday morning or what God is doing in your life. I understand the hesitation, of course I do. Such genuine sharing can make you feel very vulnerable. It can feel as scary as having to pass through fire or flood, but taking those kinds of risks are also what it means to follow in the way of Christ.

      When Christians understand that trouble is an inevitable part of the Christian life. They don’t seek out conflict or trouble, of course. They don’t stir it up for fun. But they expect that their walk with Christ will lead them through fire or flood at some point. They don’t complain when it comes because they expect it. Neither do they worry or fear when it happens because they remember God’s promise: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” They know that fire and flood are not things to avoid at all costs; they are not an if, they are a when.

      And I think that this is what we often miss and it gets in the way of the church being all that it is meant to be. We think of fire and flood as things that might happen. They are ifs for us. And if they are ifs, well, then they can be avoided and so we spend so much of our energy avoiding conflict, avoiding anything that might make somebody not like us, avoiding anything makes us feel vulnerable. If we understood that fire and flood are things that will happen, sooner or later, in the Christian walk, maybe we could draw on God’s promises and pass through them to new strengths and new beginnings.

      It doesn’t seem to make sense. We assume that if you tell people the road is going to be difficult, they will stay away, but John found the opposite. We, on the other hand, try to make the Christian life as easy as possible and often find that people aren’t particularly attracted to that.

      Why did John’s approach work so well? First of all, because he was telling the truth and people could tell. The life of faith will lead through fire and flood sometimes. Secondly, he told them that the promises of God could be trusted: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” But most of all, he showed them that the path, though difficult, was worthwhile – that going through the fire and flood meant something. It led to hope, life and new beginnings. Yes, I think we could learn a lot from John.

Hespeler, 6 January 2019 © Scott McAndless

Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12

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 understand why King Herod is frightened. I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. Here a bunch of foreigners show up in one of his grand palaces. They’ve traveled from a distant country far in the east and they certainly come across as rather wise individuals. They are looking, they say, for one who is born the king of the Jews. Yes, Herod is not going to like that.

      King of the Jews was one of his titles and he was certainly not interested in hearing about another claimant to that throne. In fact, Herod was so self-important that he could hardly even tolerate the idea of his own sons succeeding him on the throne and had a number of them put to death. These strangers arriving with news that a new king has been born, one who is obviously not even related to Herod’s family, is bound to upset him and, given his somewhat fragile ego, to frighten him.

      But I have always wondered about the little detail that Matthew adds to Herod’s reaction. He says that all Jerusalem was frightened with him. Why would that particular piece of news frighten an entire city? We certainly know that they had no great love for Herod.

      I always understood Jerusalem’s fear in the way we often think that politics works today. When a powerful politician, like, say, the president of the United States, gets some bad news, everybody in Washington DC tends to get on edge. But this is not (perhaps especially in the present political context) because everyone in Washington loves the president. This is because they know that a frightened and upset president is an unstable president who can sometimes react in pretty dangerous ways and do things that can throw things into great chaos. (And I’m not particularly making any comments on the present political context here. This has been true of many presidents.)

      So often when powerful people get frightened, the people around them do get frightened too but not necessarily for the same reasons. So I always thought but that was what was going on in this story of the visit of the wise men. The people were nervous about Herod’s reaction.

      But today, we read this all-too-familiar story in a bit of a different way than I have for a w hile. We read it as part of a set of lectionary readings. These are readings that have been designed by some committee somewhere to speak and communicate with each other to help us to look at the stories from a bit of a different angle.

      These lessons have reminded me that today is Epiphany and that Epiphany is not just, as we often assume, the day when we celebrate the arrival of the wise men. It is an important festival and season in the life of the church in its own right and it is a season when we particularly celebrate the revelation of God’s hope and salvation and gospel to the whole world.

      The readings this morning, you may have noticed, tend to focus especially on outsiders, strangers and gentiles being exposed to the good news about the Hebrew God in various forms. This has made me think that there might be a different reason why all Jerusalem – and the particular representatives of Jerusalem who are named, the chief priests and scribes of the people – were particularly frightened and upset by the arrival of some foreigners asking a rather impertinent question…

     

      The scribes and priests had a number of reasons to be upset as they waited in the king’s antechamber. First of all, they had been summoned here on no notice from warm and comfortable beds. Secondly, the king, as usual, was making them wait, his favourite tactic for reminding people that he was the boss. But the third reason was, by far, the most disturbing. It had to do with the reason why they had been summoned. The rumor was that several foreigners, devotées of some strange Persian religion, had come to town. Word was that they thought they knew something important about the Jewish faith – that is, the faith that was presided over by these very scribes and priests. Can you imagine that? These outsiders thought that they knew more about the faith of these people than these leaders themselves did!

      They all understood that that phrase that the magi had used, “the king of the Jews,” was a code that their people used when they wanted to talk about the hope of a messiah. It was the most important hope and expectation that any Jew could hold. And these leaders were not about to be instructed on the coming of the messiah by a bunch of foreigners. Why, if there was going to be a messiah, they would make sure that it was a messiah announced by a good old-fashioned Jew, not some stranger.

      But that was not the worst part. The worst part was that the question asked by these so-called wise men had forced them to go looking in their own scriptures in order to have something to say to the king when he asked them what this was all about. And, much to their consternation, they had found something. It was a passage in the prophets and it seemed to point to the possibility that the messiah could indeed be born and that, if he was, it would probably be in Bethlehem.

      Can you imagine that? Not only had these foreigners forced them to go and read and study their own scriptures, they had prompted them to discover something they had never understood before and it turned out that the foreigners might just be right. This was intolerable! They were not about to be taught how to do their job by a bunch of outsiders! And so they decided that, when they were summoned into the presence of the king, they would present a united front. They would not admit that these magi knew anything about kings or messiahs. They would present themselves as the only experts and they would assure the king that everything was under control – their control. There was no way that they would ever learn anything important about the Jewish messiah from a bunch of foreign magi.

     

      The kings and politicians of this world are frightened by anything that threatens their hold on power. But religious leaders, and by extension the communities that they lead, are frightened by something else. They are frightened that outsiders might know more about the truths that they proclaim than they do. That is the danger that the wise men represent.

      And I sometimes think that we in the church today are foolish to think that we are immune to the error that those learned scribes and priests fell into. We think that we’ve got our messiah – our Jesus Christ – all figured out. I understand why we think that. After all, Christians have been thinking and talking about Jesus for centuries. If some Christian preacher or teacher hasn’t said something important about Jesus in all that time, you would think whatever it is, it is really not worth hearing.

      But actually, knowledge of the messiah doesn’t work like that. Jesus Christ, we believe is still alive and still in the process of revealing himself to his followers. What’s more, if the best resource that we have for learning about Jesus is the Bible, we might think that since we have had it for so long, we have understood everything that it has to teach us. But even the Bible doesn’t work like that. It seems that Jesus is constantly giving us new understandings, new epiphanies, and we really miss out when we don’t accept them.

      For example, back a few years ago, like around the time when I was born, good Presbyterians had decided that they understood exactly what kind of ministers Jesus wanted leading his churches. In particular, they were sure that Jesus wanted those ministers to be men. The scriptures, after all, were clear on that point. Jesus was male and so were all twelve disciples. That had to be the model intended for the church too.

      But then something happened and it didn’t really happen inside the church, not at first anyway. It was an idea that started within society in general – a movement that started without reference to what the church thought – the idea that women are essentially equal to men. And eventually these wise… people came to the church and said, “Where are the women who are called to be ministers in your churches?” And when they heard this the leaders of the churches were frightened and all the churches with them.

      And some remained there frozen in their fear of change, but others allowed this idea from the outside to send them back to their scriptures. They explored the Bible and discovered that their previous idea hadn’t been quite the obvious slam dunk that they had thought it was. They found passages that spoke of female disciples and even apostles – some of which had been neglected and a couple of which were even intentionally mistranslated for centuries.

      And so a great conversation took place in the church and it was not an easy conversation because change is never easy in venerable institutions. But, in the end, the church did agree: Christ didn’t want us to exclude women from the ministry. We had been mistaken in our understanding of Christ. And so, ever since, our churches have been greatly enriched by the ministry of many talented and gifted women. But I honestly think that that great blessing would never have happened if there had not been for some wise… people outside of the church pushing us to think in new directions.

      Today, as I said earlier, the church celebrates the festival of Epiphany. Sometimes people explain that a bit simplistically by saying that it is when we remember the arrival of the wise men to adore the young baby Jesus. It is that, but traditionally also so much more – it is not about one day when the wise men arrived but that longer period of time – the time that we celebrate as the revelation of the messiah and the message of the gospel to the gentiles.

      But what I’m realizing is that even that is not just a one-time event – not even if you expand it to include that whole period of time when the gospel was first preached to the gentiles. It is something that continues to happen. God is continually interested in revealing Godself to new people. Jesus Christ, the living Word of God is not a closed book but a constantly renewing epiphany. The gospel will continue to touch the lives of new people in new ways.

      And that is a sometimes frightening proposition to those of us who have been in the church for a while. Because when the gospel begins to touch new people in new ways, they are likely not going to be just like us. They will have different ways of thinking and approaching even fundamental ideas. They won’t want to just do things in the ways that they have always been done and so sooner or later they will push us back into our scriptures to discover new things and new ways of looking at things. They might even make us discover that we didn’t understand Jesus as well as we thought we did. And that might lead us to change and frankly we are not very good at change.

      In popular culture today, an epiphany is just a general term for a sudden life-changing realization. “I just had an epiphany,” somebody might say, “I realized that if two people on opposite ends of the earth simultaneously dropped a piece of bread, the entire earth would briefly become a sandwich.” Well, that is maybe not a great example of a life-changing realization but it is one that can really change the way you look at something. An epiphany – a real life-changing realization – sounds pretty exciting and it is. But changing how you look at everything actually is a pretty scary proposition.

      This festival is a reminder that God does, from time to time, like to send his people an epiphany. I’m not sure what new realizations God might be sending our way, but I am pretty sure that if this church (and the church in general) is going to grow, it will only be by attracting people who are significantly different from the people who are already here. And when they come, they will ask us some awkward question that frighten us and send us back to our scriptures. That is as it should be. What we find there, and how we respond to it, may well bring us to the next great epiphany that God has for us.

      

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hroughout 2018 we have printed a weekly selection from “A Catechism for Today” in our bulletin. It is a teaching document that was produced by the Church Doctrine Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Canada several years ago. The reason for doing this was to take an opportunity to focus on some of the essential doctrines and teachings of the church. Throughout the year, therefore, I have often drawn on the readings of the catechism for the sermons I preached (though not so much during the season of Advent, I admit). But today we come to the end of 2018 and the end of our little experiment with the catechism. Starting next week, we will begin a new adventure in another old church tradition: the lectionary.

      But as we leave behind our old friend, the catechism, it is kind of fitting that we take a little bit of time today to ask ourselves the final question. The final question in this catechism is this: “What is the meaning of the little word “amen’?” Not only is amen the last question of the catechism, it is also the last word of the Bible as we saw in one of our readings this morning and it is the last word of all of our prayers. That makes it a pretty fitting word with which to end our year.

      And it is actually a pretty good question because I’m not that sure how well any of us could answer it. And I’m not just talking about you here, I’m talking about myself. I’m not sure I could have given a good answer to that question before taking some time to look at it as I prepared for today’s sermon. Of all the words that we use in the church, amen has to be one of the most frequent, but how much do we know about why we say it and what it really means?

      Amen is a Hebrew word – one of only two ancient Hebrew words that are still in common use in the English language. The other Hebrew word, by the way, is hallelujah which means “praise the Lord.” In ancient times it was likely a word that you would use to accept a curse or a threat. For example, if I said to you, “If you cross this line, I will knock your block off,” you would respond by saying “Amen,” which would signify that you understand and accept that if you step across the line, the consequences will be severe.

      There are several pas­sages in the Bible where the word amen is used exactly in that way. If you ever want some good bedtime reading, for example, try the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuter­onomy which is nothing more than a long list of curses that are read out with the people responding to each one by saying “amen.”

      But if that is where the word started out, how did we get from there to a word that we just use to end our prayers? Well, it kind of grew out of that initial usage. If you could use it to agree that some threat or punishment was due for a transgression, then you could also use it to agree with some good things like a blessing or with words of praise and worship directed towards God. And so it was that the ancient people of Israel developed the tradition of prayer where the leader, the priest or perhaps the king, would address God with praise or requests or complaints, and then the people would call out “amen” at the end or after every phrase as a way of saying that they agreed with what was being prayed. By doing that they could make one person’s prayer the prayer of the entire community. Amen became, “and so say we all.”

      And, of course, we still sometimes use the word amen in that way. In our worship services that is our most common response to the prayers that are led by a worship leader or minister. But that does not explain how we use the word in our private and individual prayers. Why do you say amen when you are praying alone to God? I mean, what would be the point in saying it if all it meant was, “I agree with all the things I just said to God.”

      Well, it does indeed mean much more than that. When you say amen at the end of your prayer, you are actually acknowledging the true nature of prayer. Prayer is not just a monologue – not just a speech where you declare the things that are on your mind and heart. Prayer is not just talking to God, it is talking with God. It is a conversation. Now it is hard for us to remember that sometimes because, unlike in most of the conversations we participate in, we don’t get to hear another voice like ours speaking back to us, but prayer is always meant to go two ways and the amen is an explicit acknowledge­ment of that.

      When you say amen, you are acknowledging that everything that you put forward in prayer is open to the will and response of God. When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and famously asked his heavenly Father to “remove this cup from me,” asked that he be spared from the bitter experience that awaited him upon the cross, he also famously added the words, “yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

      That is what saying amen means – it means that you seek God’s agreement to what you are saying but are also open to another answer. You recognize that the wisdom and will of God exceeds your own. It means that you may not understand why God would give you something different than what you ask but that you are willing to trust God to be that father who knows how to give good gifts to his children.

      This amen is what sets the activity of prayer apart from every other kind of conversation. Yes, prayer is different in that we don’t hear that other voice coming back to us in the same way. But prayer is also different in that it is a conversation based on extreme trust. By saying amen, you are saying to God, “I trust you.” You are saying, “you are trustworthy like no other that I know.”

      That is a truth that Paul brings out in our reading from 2^nd Corinthians this morning. He is talking to the Corinthians about some plans that had made to visit them. He was going to stop by for a visit on the way to Macedonia and then again on his way back. But something seems to have gone wrong with his plans. Paul doesn’t say what the problem was. Maybe his luggage went missing in the Macedonia International Airport or there was construction on the E75 Highway between Thessalonica and Thermopylae.

      But we can all understand what he is saying here because we have all experienced it. We have all made plans and then had those plans go awry because of circumstances beyond our control. That is what it is to be human: it means that our plans are subject to circumstances beyond our control. And so, as Paul says in his letter, our intentions may be “Yes and yes,” but the reality is that the best we can say is “Yes and no.” Circumstances may change my intentions.

      Paul is saying that God is different. Are circumstances beyond God’s control. Of course not. “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ… was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’ For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’” But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to link that truth about God’s nature to that word we use in prayer. “For this reason,” because God is utterly reliable and doesn’t change God’s mind, “it is through him that we say the ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God.”

      Now, does that mean that you will always receive whatever you ask for when you pray and say amen? No. That amen also still means, “yet, not what I want, but what you want,” and God’s will and response is not something that we will always understand and appreciate. Amen doesn’t mean you always get what you want, but it does place yourself in the hands of a God who understands what you really need and who is committed to you.

      In a day the year 2018 will draw to a close. And, while it has been a good year in many ways, I’ve got to say that there are parts of it that haven’t been all I would have hoped. I have found some political and international relations events to be very disturbing. There have been more than enough disasters from hurricanes to terrifying forest fires to a tsunami. As we come to the end of 2018, can we say amen? Is that a fitting coda to a year that perhaps makes us feel rather conflicted? I can’t say I agree with everything that happened during the year. I can’t say that I accept that everything was exactly as it should have been. But, again, saying amen is not just about agreeing to what I want or need. It is rather about being open to trusting in God for what is past. So let us say amen for 2018. Let us say amen for the joys and the sorrows, for the hopes fulfilled and for the disappointments that may have come.

      And, perhaps even more important, let us think of the year to come. I’ve got to admit that looking forward at 2019, I’ve got more worries than I’ve got certainties, and I have more questions than I have answers.

      2019 will see a federal election for Canada. That is a good thing and I hope we all participate. But the problem is that it seems like it’s going to take place in a political environment that seems to be very negatively charged mostly because of the way that some groups are using the internet. I’m worried about that. I also don’t really know what I think the outcome of that election ought to be for the long-time good of our country. How can I pray for 2019 if I don’t know what’s really needed?

      2019 looks to be a year of great turmoil – I mean political turmoil like we have never seen before – for our closest ally in the United States. Oh boy, do I really not understand what’s happening there and neither do I have any idea what needs to happen for the healing of that country and the world. Those are just two of my anxieties and my questions about the year ahead. Believe me there are many more. How do we pray – how do we say amen as we pray for the year that lies ahead?

      Well, once again that little word seems to be our salvation. When we say amen, we’re not saying that we have all the answers. We are not saying that we understand it all. It is an expression of trust and hope in God. Yes we will ask certain things and try to find an answer that seems to be the best, but our amen says, “You know what, God, in the end we are willing to leave it up to you. You alone can oversee it all. You alone can possibly hold the future in your hand.”

      The year 2018 is in God’s hands. As it comes to a close, we confess we still don’t understand what happened or even what should have happened. But we are here at the end of that year by God’s grace. God has seen us through and we are thankful. Can I hear an amen?

      The year 2019 is in God’s hands. Nothing has happened yet. Nothing is written and we know that many things that will happen will leave us bewildered and confused. We’re not even sure what needs to happen in some cases. But we will get through by God’s grace and for this let us be truly thankful. Can I hear an amen? 

T

he Gospel of Luke is the only one to give us any sort of description at all of what it was like. But I am afraid that it just doesn’t answer many of the questions that I wonder about. Luke says that they made a long trip – and I mean a very long trip. It is over 100 km from Nazareth to Bethlehem and with ancient modes of transport and political and physical barriers, it would have taken weeks to travel so far. He also seems to say that they arrived there when M ary was just about ready to deliver her baby – at least, they did not have the time or the means to arrange anything like proper accommodations and Mary was forced to lay her newborn in a feeding trough.

      We all know that story, but it has always raised lots of questions for me – questions like, how on earth did Mary (who must have been somewhere between eight and nine months pregnant) manage such a long, arduous and dangerous journey in such a state? I know that Christian tradition, concerned for Mary’s safety and comfort, has very helpfully supplied her with a donkey to ride. That is nice, though I’m not sure that I would say that the back of a donkey makes for the most comfortable and smooth ride.

      But I would note that, while tradition was thoughtful enough to supply a donkey, the author of the gospel, didn’t give any thought to what Mary might have needed in order to make such a journey. He mentions nothing at all about a donkey. In fact, he kind of gives me the impression that he thought Mary walked the whole way. But however she travelled, on foot or on donkey back, I can’t imagine it being easy. How did she manage the extra weight, the nutritional requirements of “eating for two” and the early contractions? On these issues, Luke is completely silent.

      And there would have been an even bigger question that weighed upon her during all that time: what about the birth? This was Mary’s first child and having a child – especially a first child – was about the most dangerous moment in any ancient woman’s life. An unthinkable number of women just didn’t survive it. And yet, here she was, coming to a place where she had no family support, where she wouldn’t have even known who the local midwives were, and she was about to go into labour in what definitely don’t seem to be sanitary conditions. Was she fright­en­ed – terrified? And yet Luke says nothing about her state of mind or body.

      But what else would you expect? This gospel was written by a man – a man who is totally oblivious to the concerns of the only female character in his birth narrative. But maybe that is a bit unfair to poor old Luke. I mean, ancient men in general didn’t care about the trials and tribulations of women. Why should we expect Luke to be any different?

      But is that fair to ancient men? Were they all as ignorant as that about the struggles that women went through? Well, apparently not. Take the Apostle Paul for example. He, by all accounts, never seems to have married and never had any children. He, of all people, should be completely ignorant about the dangers that women faced in childbirth. But apparently he was not. In fact, in our reading this morning from his letter to the Romans he speaks of such things in very direct terms.

      He is speaking about what he calls, “the sufferings of this present time.” and even if he’s talking about the troubles of his own particular time, I think that is something that we can all relate to. You see, the promise of Christmas – the promise of Emmanuel – is that God is actually involved in this world. God has chosen not to remain some distant observer looking down upon us from a safe heaven, but has actually entered into the troubles of this world in the person of Jesus Christ.

      And if they were discouraged, how discouraged should we be? It has not been decades for us, it has been centuries – even millennia – for us and still we look around at the state of the world and are often discouraged. Where is the evidence that the coming of the messiah, the birth of Emmanuel, has changed anything?

      That is the question that Paul is struggling with in our reading this morning from his letter. And what is Paul’s response to that? “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now,” is what he says. He compares the troubles and trials of the present age with the pain and trouble that comes with a woman’s labour when she is bearing a child. And I realize that this is something quite odd for someone like Paul to be saying. I mean, what does he know about labour pains? But that is what he says.

      But let’s just say that Paul did have a way of knowing about the reality that many women face. Let’s take what he is saying here very seriously for a minute. What can the pain of labour teach us about the problems that the world faces and the hope that can be found in the face of them? And, since Christmas is coming, let us think of that in terms of the mother-to-be who is on all of our minds in these days.

     

      Mary’s entire body shuddered as she let out a low and plaintive moan. She wasn’t sure how she was doing it, how she was even staying on her feet while her husband went to the door and begged whoever was there (Mary no longer cared who it was) to give them a place to stay for the night. At this point, she was beyond caring. It didn’t matter where they ended up. If she had to lay her newborn baby in a manger someplace, she would make that work. All she knew was that this baby was going to come and that it was going to hurt a whole lot before it got there.

      She could have been feeling sorry for herself. She could have been blaming God for putting her through all of this because, apparently, if she was to believe what that stranger had said nine months ago, this had all been God’s idea. Oh, you can bet that she had a few choice phrases to scream out to God every time the contractions hit her. Yes, the pain was terrible, but at least she knew that it had a purpose to it. She knew that it would bring forth something good and beautiful – not only for her and for Joseph but even for the whole world. She just knew that it was true. And because there was a purpose to it, she knew that she would be able to withstand a great deal.

      Mary’s thoughts turned to the other pains of her world that she knew ran deep. She thought of the people in her own village of Nazareth who lived in terrible poverty, of the children who had died the previous dry season simply because there had not been enough food. She thought of the colony of lepers that they had passed in the hills on their journey – their bodies breaking down and their spirits long destroyed. They had seen Roman soldiers laughing about the women that they had raped and officials demanding bribes from travellers like them. All of it was painful in its own way; all of it was just plain wrong. And many times, while they travelled, Mary had cried out to God against the pain that she observed even as she cried out in this moment as she felt another contraction building inside her.

      Mary was learning, through this, her first experience of labour, the truth of something that her mother had once taught her. When the pain struck, there was no point in trying to keep it inside – no point in pretending to be stronger than it by keeping silent. Sometimes you just had to call out and it actually helped to do so. It made it possible to go on.

      She now suspected that the same was true about her reaction to the pain and evil that she observed in the world. It didn’t hurt and it actually helped to cry out against God for these things. There was a good reason why the psalms of her people included many songs of complaint and lament. God wasn’t harmed when people shared what they honestly felt; God could take it and was glad to take it for the sake of the healing of his people.

      But crying out in her labour pains was only one part of how she was learning to deal with them. The other part was the perspective she had gained – the knowledge that, as painful as they were, they were leading to something that had a purpose. And, in her case, that purpose was not just the joy of a new child for her but also a child of hope for the whole world.

      But, she was wondering, was that also part of the answer to dealing with the pain of the world. Was there a possible purpose in that? As painful as it was, was it leading to something that, when you looked back on it after the fact, would maybe not exactly make it worthwhile but would at least give some meaning to it all? Was it possible that, yes, “the creation was subjected to futility,” but that this happened for a purpose? Creation was subjected “not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it.” But why? Why would God do such a thing? There could be only one reason good enough; it had to be for hope. God had to do it “in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

      Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that that cannot be good enough. There is so much pain, so much that goes wrong in this world, that it doesn’t really matter what good might come out of it in the long run. To try and justify it away in that way is really just to dismiss the real pain that people suffer from.

      I’m not going to argue with that. I’m not saying that anyone has to buy this explanation. But I do think that Paul, who certainly did experience a great deal of pain for standing up for what he believed was right, came to accept it. I do think that Mary, who not only suffered great pain just to bring Jesus into the world but also suffered a great deal of pain by virtue of being the mother of the man to whom terrible things would happen – I think that Mary came to accept it too.

      And the reason why is not because the exchange is fair. It’s not fair to exchange pain now for the promise of some goodness or freedom later. This isn’t about fairness. But it is about trust. Mary and Paul may not have understood the purpose to be found in the suffering of this present life, but they did learn to place their trust in the God with whom the future lay.

      That trust was all that Mary had left as she waited, in full labour, while Joseph tried to find someplace – anyplace – where the couple could lay down their belongings. She didn’t know what the future held. She didn’t even know if she would live through the night. (The statistics were not on her side.) But she knew in whose hands she was and in whose hands her son’s life was. And that was enough. It might just be always enough.

t usually happens somewhere between 13 and 16 weeks into a pregnancy. I’ve not experienced it myself, for pretty obvious reasons, but I understand that, at first, it is just like a little fluttering sensation in your belly. Sometimes you might not even be sure exactly what it is and wonder if it might just be gas or something. But, when you first do figure out what it really is, it changes everything. It is traditionally called the quickening.

      I think that for many mothers when they first feel that – first feel their baby moving within them, it is a great sign. You see, up until then, they have known that they were expecting. They have known that everything happening within them was leading to a baby being born, but that is just head knowledge. In many cases, it just doesn’t seem real. For many mothers, the moment when that happens is when they feel that movement inside them, movement inside their body that is not them. A new ultimately independent life is forming within. And all of a sudden it becomes very real: their life is about to change in ways that they can hardly even imagine. It is a clear sign of a new beginning.

      This morning we read the story of the time when Mary, the mother of Jesus, met Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist. And, when that happened, something happened inside of Elizabeth. Her baby moved within her. And, on the one hand, it was an entirely ordinary thing. It was the kind of thing that happens to virtually every mother somewhere between 13 and 16 weeks. Except it isn’t really ordinary, is it? Every mother knows that it is always extraordinary when that first happens. Every mother knows that it is a sign and Elizabeth knew that it was a sign.

      But Elizabeth, the new prophet, declared the meaning of her sign and what she declared was a sign unlike any other: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?”

      According to the Gospel of Luke, Elizabeth, with those words, became the first human being to actually announce that the Messiah was coming into the world. And I cannot help but dwell on this idea for a little while this week before Christmas. Elizabeth had something happen inside her body, something that was really only part of a natural human process, an extra­ordinary event that happens ordinarily to every human mother, and yet she recognized it as a sign that God was about to break through into human history in an unprecedented and unique way. What an incredible moment! And is it not a moment that we really need in the world right now?

      I think that many of us these days look around at the world and see so much that is going wrong. There is so much hatred. Despite everything that we have learned, there is so much racism. The social divide between rich and poor only seems to grow greater and to become more toxic. We are looking for a better world – for a sign that the world can even be a better place. That was the sign that Elizabeth felt within her at a moment that seemed just about as hopeless.

      But think about that for a moment. The sign that Elizabeth felt was inside her. It was, at once, both ordinary and extraordinary. It was an everyday thing, something that any doctor would tell you happens all the time. And yet Elizabeth correctly interpreted that sign as the beginning of a new world and of new hope. My question is this: was that just a one-time thing? I mean, is that the one time in the history of the world when the ordinary quickening event in the middle of somebody’s pregnancy turned out to be a sign that God was about to do something truly extraordinary in the world? Is Elizabeth an exception?

      Or is this something that God just does? Does God speak often to us through such signs and wonders that happen around us or even within us? Is the problem not that God doesn’t speak, is the problem that we fail to recognize the signs of what it is that God is saying and doing?

      About 2,000 years ago, the Gospel of Luke tells us, two women met, both of them expecting a child, in a village somewhere in Judea. And in the womb of one of those women, a baby moved. A child kicked within his mother’s belly, and the entire world changed. That is what our story says this morning.

      And I happen to believe that God still is involved in that kind of thing. God would still like to make the world move. God would still love to reveal the presence of his Emmanuel in this time and in this place and he would like to use you to do it. Pay attention to the signs. God is doing something inside you or maybe inside your neighbour. God is calling you to do some justice that needs to be done. God is calling you to speak a word of comfort or of encouragement to someone who is lost right now. Pay attention to the signs even if they are inside you. They are real and God is in them.

T

Hespeler, 2 December, 2018 © Scott McAndless – Advent 1

Galatians 4:1-7, Luke 1:26-38, Psalm 25

’m going to start off this morning with a little quiz, just a little bit of Bible trivia. Let’s see if you can answer these questions:

      During Noah’s flood, how many days and nights did it rain?

      How many years did the people of Israel wander in the wilderness?

      How many days was Moses up on Mount Sinai receiving the law from God?

      For how many days was Jesus tempted in the wilderness?

      When Jonah was preaching in Nineveh, how many days did he give them before the city would be destroyed?

      According to the Book of Acts, how many days did Jesus hang around with the disciples after the resurrection?

     

      Why does the number 40 come up so often in the Bible? Part of it, undoubtedly, has to do with ancient Hebrew habits of speaking. The ancient Hebrews likely used that number, forty, as a way of saying a really long time. But the number itself also had meaning beyond being a significant amount of time, the number was also used symbolically to represent a probationary period of time.

      You know what a probation is, I’m not just talking about the probation that people sometimes have when they get out of jail, I’m talking about any period of time when you’re not quite sure how someone is going to be in a new job or a task or a position and you just want to try them out for a while to see how it goes. That’s what a probation is and for the Hebrews, forty was considered to be a good amount of time for a probation.

      And that is likely another reason why that number comes up so often in the Bible. It’s not just a long period of time, it is specifically a time of testing and preparation before God begins to do something very new with his people. After all, isn’t that what Noah’s flood represents, and the giving of the Commandments on Mount Sinai, the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in the wilderness and on and on. It is about preparing the people for something exciting and new that God is about to do.

      Okay, I’ve got one more quiz question for you. Can you answer this one? How many weeks was Mary pregnant with her child, Jesus? How many weeks? The answer is forty because, whatever else Jesus was, he came into this world, we are told, as a fully human being and fully human beings take about forty weeks to gestate.

      Forty weeks! Think about that. Is it, too, not just a really long period of time? (And, yes, I am quite sure that every woman who goes through it finds it to be a very long period of time.) Is it also a time of probation? Probation for whom? For us? For humanity? For Mary? For God about to enter some new phase in relationship with humanity? Perhaps that is something that we can ponder with Mary.

     

ary had been struggling with the nausea of late. It was particularly bad in the morning. She would barely be up and out of bed and she would be running to the privy outback. The nausea made it hard to eat often and there were mornings when she could eat little more then a few scraps of bread and a little bit of dried fish.

      But the physical struggles that she was going through were nothing in comparison to the tumult in her spirit. She found herself going over and over again the strange words spoken to her by that amazing visitor. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” he had said, “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

      What did such words mean to a woman such as Mary? You need to understand, for one thing, that people didn’t really think of such matters back then as they do today. All of the things that you learned about the human reproductive system in your biology classes and in health, Mary didn’t know any of that. Back in the first century, they didn’t think of conception in terms of fertilized eggs or implanted fetuses. In fact, the metaphor that they used to talk about the creation of new human beings came from agriculture. For them, making a baby was like planting a seed in a farm field. In that analogy, the mother was the field. She was considered to be little more than a passive carrier of the life that was entrusted to her by the father of her baby.

      That is what the official understanding was at that time but, of course, the official understanding was what had been maintained and written down. But here’s the thing: there was one particular group that was doing the maintaining and writing down: men. And let’s just say that there is a long-standing tradition among men in thinking that they are the most important part of any process and of dismissing the importance of women in general. So it is actually quite possible that women didn’t really think of it in the same way that was officially taught by first century philosophers and teachers.

      So how did Mary think of that little child who was growing in her womb? I think she clearly understood that it was her child. I really have no clue what she understood about how that child came to be there. Honestly that is something that the author of the Gospel of Luke is not really interested in commenting on. The angel’s words simply refer to the power of God overshadowing Mary. It’s a way of saying that it doesn’t matter how it came to be biologically speaking because God is powerful enough to do anything. “For nothing will be impossible with God,” are Gabriel’s departing words.