At St. Andrew's Hespeler this Sunday (which is Canada Day) we are planning to sing the following as a hymn (not an act of patriotism but an act of prayer within worship). This was not conceived of as an addition to Canada's National Anthem but as a way of lifting up our nation in prayer and being open to acknowledge the contribution of those who went before.
1. O Canada,
our home and native land,
true patriot love
in all of us command.
With glowing hearts, we see thee rise,
the true north, strong and free;
from far and wide, O Canada,
we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free;
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee;
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
2. We, as we stand,
acknowledge those who knew
This place before
and from its waters drew.
They honour the Creator and,
with drum and sacred song,
They find the Divine Presence in
the herbs and winds so strong.
Let us, with them, make hope increase.
Keep Kanata* a place of life and peace.
Keep Kanata a place of life and peace.
3. Almighty Love,
by thy mysterious power,
in wisdom guide,
with faith and freedom dower;
be ours a nation evermore
that no oppression blights,
where justice rules from shore to shore,
from lakes to northern lights.
May love alone for wrong atone;
Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own.
Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own.
*Kanata: “A term meaning sacred land in our language here. The land creator gave us.” – Margaret Mullin
v. 1 based on Robert Stanley Weir’s translation. Public domain
I will be on an intermission that has been approved by the Presbytery of Waterloo-Wellington from April 16 to June 24, 2018. I am very grateful to be able to take this opportunity. Here are just a few notes I would like to leave with you.
I will not be updating this blog during the intermission period.
I will, however, be working on a personal project -- a podcast in which I retell Bible Stories. If you are interested in following this project, you will find all the information and links to each episode at this site: retellingthebible.wordpress.com/
I will not be available to offer pastoral care or assistance during this time. Each week I have arranged to have two local Presbyterian ministers available to visit people or otherwise offer care. They will also be available in the event there is need of services (such as funerals and memorials). The names and contact information will change from week to week and will be posted in the bulletin each Sunday. Please call the church office if you need help connecting with someone. I am very thankful to these colleagues who have willingly stepped up to do this and to our team of Deacons who are regularly involved in pastoral care.
Rev. Mark Gaskin is my Presbytery Liaison during this time. He will be available to the session and Clerk of Session to offer any assistance. If you have any questions or concerns to communicate to the session, you may do so through the Clerk of Session as usual. Thank you Mark!
I have arranged for an excellent and highly recommended group of people to preach during this time and I am truly grateful to each of them. I hope you support them with your presence and enthusiasm.
I appreciate the staff at St. Andrew’s and am thankful for all that they have done to pick up some of my usual tasks during this period. They are wonderful people!
We thank Nancy English who is taking on leadership for the prayer chair during the intermission. If you would like a prayer request placed on our prayer chain please email Nancy at Prayerchain AT standrewshespeler DOT ca. You can also call the office and your message will be passed on.
Above all, I am thankful for the extraordinary people of the congregation of St. Andrew’s Hespeler who I know will continue faithfully in the work that we believe our Lord Jesus Christ has given us to do in these days!
Matthew 16:13-20, Matthew 7:24-27, 1 Corinthians 3:10-17
I
hope you all know by now that, after the Gala Dinner this evening, I will be starting a ten week period that is called an intermission in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. I will be away from the ministry of this congregation and of the larger church for that entire period. I decided to request this for a number of personal reasons – because I felt a great need to rest and refresh and to renew the passion that had nourished me over the past twenty-five years of ministry. So I certainly have a few personal goals that I want to work on, but, that is not necessarily what I wanted to focus on today.
I have been thinking a lot about what I wanted to preach about today, and I don’t really want to focus on me, but rather on the church. In particular, I want to ask how the church can grow and develop during a short season without a regular minister. I know what the natural tendency is, of course. I know that during a vacancy, for example, it is not uncommon for people to drift away from regular church attendance or for various activities of the church to pause or even languish. The problem seems to be that people assume that ministry is something that only the minister does and that if there is no minister for a period of time then there is no ministry. And I hope we can all prove over the next little while that that is a damnable lie from the devil.
It is maybe not too surprising that people think that way when you consider passages of scripture like the one that we read in the Gospel of Matthew this morning. In this passage, Jesus brings up the whole matter of building the church. He is not talking about setting up a church building, mind you, but is talking about establishing the church as a force in society – something that can have a real impact for good in changing times. In many ways, I believe he is talking about how you build a church for times such as the ones that we live in.
And Jesus seems to have some pretty clear ideas about how you build such a church. You build it on a rock, but not just any rock. Jesus wants to build his church on a very specific rock. This is what Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”
Now of course, it makes good sense, if you are going to build anything, that you should build upon a good foundation and building on a rock sounds like a good way to do that. But Christians, down through the ages, have disagreed about just what metaphorical rock Jesus is talking about in this passage. You have probably heard, for example, about the traditional Roman Catholic interpretation of this passage. It is based upon the nickname that Jesus gives to Simon. Jesus was apparently quite fond of giving people nicknames. We’re told that he called the disciple Thomas by the name Didymas which means “the twin,” no doubt because Thomas was the spitting image of someone. He called Mary Magdalene, which means “tower” and I sometimes like to think that he did it because he saw her as a strong protector who would watch over the movement that he had started.
Simon he called “Peter” which means rock – just plain rock. This nickname is not explained anywhere in the gospels (not even in this passage we read this morning, I would suggest) but you just have to think of the modern celebrity who also goes by the name of “The Rock” to get an idea of what the nickname might have been referring to. When you think of Dwayne Johnston what traits come to mind? Strong, certainly, stubborn, not someone you would want to get in a fight with and, how do I put this, not necessarily the smartest guy in the room, though you would never tell him that to his face! I like to think that it was those traits that led Jesus to call Simon by the name of Rock which was Keppa in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, or Petros in the Greek of the New Testament. We get the name Peter from the Greek.
But Roman Catholic theology has taken that nickname and made it the basis of its understanding of the church. They interpret this passage to mean that Jesus was promising to build the entire structure and the very being of the church on Simon Peter himself – that this one man alone would be the foundational rock of the church. Of course, Catholic tradition teaches that Simon Peter went on to become the Bishop of Rome and that is why they believe that Peter’s successor in that office, known today as the Pope, is the one man around whom their entire church is still structured to this very day.
Now, I don’t mean to offer any specific criticism of the Roman Catholic Church or its structures here. I may not agree with all of their teachings but I certainly respect the institution and many of the good works that the church does. My question is rather about what Jesus actually intended, not when you think about the structure but rather when you think about the day-to-day life of the church. We in the Protestant Church may not agree that the entire church should be structured around one man in Rome, but on a local level, I’ve got to ask, isn’t that exactly how we build our churches. In so many churches that I have seen, the weight of the church and its life and its work tends to fall on just a few individuals – they are the rocks upon which we build our churches.
Now I am not saying this as a way of complaining that all of that weight get loaded exclusively on the minister. That’s not what I mean. I know (and greatly appreciate the fact) that I am far from alone in doing the work of this church. But it is true in this congregation, as it is true in so many, that that weight does fall on relatively few. Our staff does carry a great deal of weight as do key volunteers. And I have to wonder, is that really how Jesus envisioned that it would be in the church. When we build the church on the foundation of a few rocks (if those rocks are people as one interpretation of this saying of Jesus would suggest) it is undeniably hard on those rocks and some of them crack and strain under the pressure. Some of those rocks break down, some of them step down before they really want to, some withdraw altogether. We’ve all seen it happen.
And one thing I particularly note is this, it is not necessarily the work of the church itself that tends to wear those rocks down. Most of the work of the church is actually a great joy. To teach the gospel message to children, that is a joy and honour. To visit the sick or struggling, that can be difficult but it is also very rewarding as is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and preaching the word of life. Most people who contribute to the work of the church in a way that utilizes their own personal skills and strengths find that, in general, the work itself builds them up. No, the things that tend to make those rocks crumble are the other things: criticism of themselves or others, being taken for granted or not being appreciated for who they are, griping, complaining and general negativity. These things, from what I have seen, are what are most likely to wear down the rocks upon whom we build our church.
And I think that the reason why we do that – why we so easily turn the joy of ministry into the burden of dealing with all the negativity of the church is precisely because of this idea that we have that the church is built on the foundation of a few rocks that are people. When we think that they are the ones who are supposed to hold up the church, it becomes easy to focus any negative energy that arises upon them. (And negative energy always arises simply because we are human and things will never go perfectly).
And, no, I don’t think that that is how Jesus wanted to see any church that came out of the movement he had started behave. And it is that, more than any historical differences in interpretation between Protestants and Catholics, that makes me think that it is not correct to suggest that Jesus, in this passage, is trying to say that the entire church should be built in such as way as to depend on one person – even such an extraordinary person as Simon Peter. I believe that Jesus meant something else.
Now, I could try to make my point here by delving into the original language and grammar of the passage. I have read many a commentary on this passage arguing over the connection between the name Peter (which is Petros in Greek) and the Greek word for rock (which is petra). Some people argue that it is obvious that both words refer to the same thing while others argue that it is obvious that they do not. Of course, as you find in so many debates these days, the only thing that is truly obvious is that everyone can only see whatever supports what they have already decided to believe. I don’t think we can count on grammar to solve this one for us.
And so, instead of focussing on that one word, rock, let us look at what Jesus has to say about the purpose of the entire project. This is what Jesus has to say about the church that he wants to build: “the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” That is a pretty audacious promise and it is one that is often misunderstood. You see, it is often understood to be a promise about the defense of the church. People assume that Jesus is talking about the church being under siege – that the powers of Hades (or Hell or evil or however exactly you want to understand that) are attacking us and the promise is that they will not prevail, they won’t win.
But actually that is not what Jesus is saying at all, because he talks about the gates of Hades. And when have you heard of gates attacking anybody? You haven’t because gates are defensive structures, not offensive. The role of the gates of Hades is not to attack but to defend against attack. So the picture of the church that Jesus is painting here is not the picture of a church defending itself against the attacks of evil but rather a church on the offensive.
And I think that this is a very important point because so much of what we do in the church seems to be defensive. We are fearful of the loss of status of the church, we are fearful of change. We feel as if the church is under attack in society and that is the source of a lot of the negativity that we feel. We are always trying to keep up appearances, to pretend that nothing has changed and when we do that we tend to pile more and more on the people who do the work of the church. But right here, right in this passage, Jesus has revealed to us that the church is not made to be on the defensive. We have been made the storm the gates of Hades – to take the evil of this world head on – and not to cower in fear. If we really believed that, how different would our attitude be and how much weight would it take off of the foundation rocks of our church?
In the end, I don’t believe that the church depends on any one person – not on Peter, not on me, not on you. If the church does not find its foundation in Christ himself and in the confession of Christ that Peter made, it will not succeed. (And, by the way, I think that was what Jesus was saying when he spoke about building his church on a rock.)
I realize that the next several weeks will create somewhat of a shakeup in the human leadership of this congregation. It may not all go smoothly; there may be some disruption. But I honestly believe that it can be a good thing because if that can show us where the true foundations are, maybe we can stop being defensive or afraid and get on with the work that Christ has given all of us to do.
John 15:12-17, Ephesians 2:4-10, Psalm 139:1-16, 23-24
L
incoln Alexander ______, it is such a wonderful privilege for all of us to be able to celebrate your baptism today. It is wonderful because it means that your parents and your brother have been willing to share you – their joy in you, their hopes and dreams for you – with all of us and with Christ in this very meaningful way.
I remember when we first heard from your parents that you were coming and how exciting that was. When I heard what they had named you Lincoln Alexander, I wondered (the way that you do) what significance there was in such a name. One thing that occurred to me, for example, was that you might have been named after one of the most famous presidents of United States. You could certainly do worse than to be named after a man of such vision, the great emancipator who changed the world for good. We certainly still need people who will stand up and stand in integrity for what is right, no matter what the cost may be. But no, your parents tell me that you weren’t exactly named after Abraham Lincoln.
Next I wondered whether you might be named after Lincoln Alexander. That is also not too shabby for a namesake. Lincoln Alexander is a very important barrier breaking leader as every Canadian knows (or at least as every Canadian should know and it is a tragedy if they don’t). Alexander was Canada’s first Black member of parliament and first Black cabinet minister as well as Ontario’s 24th Lieutenant Governor. He blazed the trail for so many minority voices and leaders who have followed in his wake. But it appears that you were not named after him and the “Alexander” in your name is, not surprisingly, a gift to you from your father.
My next guess was that you were named after history’s third most famous Linc, the star character of the “Legend of Zelda” video game series. In fact, that is not really my guess at all but is actually who your father told me that you were named for. That too, is a great legacy – the hero of thousands of quests, the saviour of the beautiful princess Zelda – you could do worse! But alas, while your father does say that you were named after that Linc, I am not entirely sure that your mother agrees.
So we are left with what I am pretty sure is the ultimate truth. Lincoln, you weren’t named after anyone, not really. You are Lincoln, and your parents want you to be your own person and for you to grow up and set your own course and find your own destiny in life. That is what your parents hope and expect for you and for your brother overall and that, along with their love, is the greatest gift that they will ever give you.
The very concept of a God has long led human beings to struggle with strange concepts. We describe God as this being who is far beyond our limited human understanding. God is all-knowing and there is nothing in the entire universe that can ever escape God’s sight. We also believe that God is not limited by time and is able to view the past and the future just as easily as the present. Above all, we confess, God is powerful and nothing can resist the imposition of God’s will.
Now this understanding of God has created many problems in our philosophies and theologies. It makes us struggle with the problem of evil – if God is good and all-powerful like that, how is it possible that God would permit evil to occur? That is a great question and people of faith have been struggling with it for a very long time. Unfortunately, it is not a question we are going to be able to answer here today.
There is another question, connected to this idea of the nature of God, that I think we ought to deal with. If God is indeed all knowing and all-powerful, what does that mean about our own free will? Is the entire path of Lincoln’s life all laid out for him? Has it already determined what he will be and do – that he will be a great emancipator, or a breaker of barriers or a rescuer of princesses or some other thing? Is the whole future path of his life written for him? Is it written for you and for me? And if it is, what is the point of all the human plans, hopes and dreams that we cherish?
A quick reading of our responsive psalm this morning would certainly seem to indicate that we have very little control over our own paths through this life: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” That certainly seems to be saying that all of our paths are completely determined – that God has literally hemmed us in and so limited our choices that we simply must move in the directions that God has given to us.
And, by the way, we don’t even need to appeal to an all-knowing God to run up against this whole question. The whole scientific approach to reality – where every effect has a cause – has led us to the idea that everything in a human’s life is pre-determined. For example, if the decisions that I make are determined by such things as the levels of certain chemicals in my brain, previous life experience and the circumstances that surround me, can I really say that I have free will to determine the course of my own life?
So what is it? Are we truly free beings who have an ability to set our own course in life, or is everything determined ahead of time and are we merely puppets who must follow a course that has been already set for us? To put it another way, who is Lincoln? Is everything that he is destined to be or to do already written? Is his destiny already decided by science? By his parents? By God? “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” Is that what that means?
It certainly is possible to read the Psalm from this morning and conclude that that is what it is saying. But I don’t necessarily agree that it is the way that we were intended to read it. The Psalm, you see, isn’t really about the freedom of human will, it is about how well God knows us and relates to us. The psalmist talks about how God is everywhere with him and how he could not escape God even if he tried no matter where he might go in the entire universe. “If I ascend to heaven, you are there;” he declares, “if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
This is not a matter of God chasing us everywhere we go or anticipating our every move with all-knowingness. It is rather the case that, wherever we go, God is already there, has always been there because there is no place in the universe where God cannot be. The psalmist is able to set his own path as he travels through the universe and through time, it is just that wherever he goes, he will discover that he has been able to do nothing outside of the grace and benevolence of God.
It is in that spirit that I understand the words, “you discern my thoughts” in this psalm. It is not that God is somehow reading your thoughts from someplace on the outside. It is more that God is already present in your brain just as God’s presence is everywhere else in the universe. The God who gave us the ability to think, reason and choose can hardly fail to completely understand the processes by which we make our choices – processes, by the way, that modern neurologists have only begun to understand.
That is why I do not feel as if believing in God means that you lose your free will. Your course through life is not all set. Even when you are acting in obedience to God, it is not the type of obedience you might expect from a soldier drilling on the parade square where every moment is programmed out. There is not just one path for your life that is God’s correct and sanctioned path for you. Rather than acting like your drill sergeant, God is your constant companion on the journey. When you are open to God’s presence, God becomes so intimately involved in the decisions you make that it’s hard to know where your thoughts end and God’s begin.
Lincoln’s baptism today is a wonderful reminder of the entire basis of our Christian faith. We have today welcomed Lincoln fully and completely into everything that the Christian faith can offer to anyone. We have offered him hope, forgiveness, salvation and life eternal. We have welcomed him into full membership in the church of Christ, though, of course, we will wait until he is older before we ask him to choose for himself whether he will take on all of the commitments and responsibilities that come with being an active member of this congregation. These are all wonderful, divine and valuable gifts – gifts that many in this world have not found.
But what has Lincoln done to gain these things? Basically nothing. He just showed up – that is it. He didn’t even have to demonstrate any faith or understanding and it was his parents and us who confessed faith today. So how is it possible that we could offer so much to Lincoln today when he has done little to nothing to deserve it? This makes no sense according to the logic of our world, but it is the greatest mystery of the Christian faith, perhaps best expressed in a couple of the verses that we read this morning, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” It is only by the grace of God, a gift freely given, that we can claim so much for Lincoln and it is because of the grace of God that none of us can claim anything more than what this child has been given.
But there is one other gift that we have claimed today that doesn’t always get the same attention. The apostle continues on from there to talk about the purpose behind it all. “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” What this is saying is that God has loved you, me and Lincoln so much that God not only gives us salvation and hope, God has also given us the great gift of meaning – that your life will mean something. God has something for you to do. Again, this is not just a matter of God having one specific thing for you to do and if you fail to do this one thing you will have failed. It is more like what we have been talking about that God will be there with you as you make your choices and develop what is actually important to you and that, if you are open to God’s presence, God will enable you to carry out the good works that have been prepared for you as you follow your path.
And this also we can celebrate today. We do not know what particular “good works” are in Lincoln’s future but we stand in awe of the great potential that is there in just one young life. Will he grow up to set free some in this world who are still in bondage like Abraham Lincoln did? Will he break yet unimagined barriers in politics, science, engineering, who knows what like Lincoln Alexander did? Will he save a princess? I don’t know, but I do know that some great good works have been prepared for him to do, that is why his heavenly father has claimed him, that isinin why his Lord Jesus has saved him and that is why we celebrate his baptism today.
he sun was rising on a new day, but it was also rising on a new reality. There, inside a borrowed tomb, had been a man utterly defeated. He had stood up against the greatest powers in this world – the power of hate, the power of privilege and exploitation, the power of death – and he had been defeated in the worst and most shameful way possible. The dark powers of this world had won as they always seem to win.
But on that Sunday morning, all of that had been changed. Defeat had been turned into victory. Shame had been turned into glory. And, in that place haunted by the regrets of what might have been, death had been turned into life.
I wonder if we understand what this really means. It means that the fighting is over – that the battle is won once and for all. The greatest and most persistent powers of this world have been routed. And I have long wondered, if the greatest dark powers of this world were defeated way back then, why is it that so many still to this very day are living in a world of shame, discouragement and death?
It turns out that, according to the Gospel of Luke, there were a couple of angels wondering that very thing. Specifically, they were wondering why the women were there. They had come to grieve and mourn and minister to the dead. They were stuck in the moment of defeat. But defeat was so three days ago! Now the victory had happened. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” the angels wanted to know.
But those women aren’t the only ones. You still do that, don’t you? You seek the living among the dead. Don’t be surprised that I know your secret; I only know it because it is my secret too. We look for the things that give us life among the dead things of this world. Many seem to assume that wealth and possessions can give us life but these things are dead. How can they give life?
Some people live only for the pleasures of the body – no matter what those pleasures may be. The lusts of the flesh take many forms. And it is a good thing to enjoy these things – good food, pleasurable experiences, that feeling when you are strong or powerful – but remember that your body and the pleasures that it experiences are mortal and limited. When you live only for these things, you are spending your life pursuing what is ultimately dead. Is that not also a case of seeking the living among the dead?
No, we are not called to seek the living among the dead. As followers of Christ, the risen one, our job is to spend our lives for the sake of what is alive. Our job is not to perpetuate the ways of death – the philosophy that says that the only way to deal with the violence and killing of this world is with more killing and violence – our job is to show the way of life.
One way that we do that is by proclaiming, as we do on this day, that the tomb is empty, that Jesus is risen and that we have come to know him even though he did die. One way that we do that is by proclaiming that the power of violence and death have been defeated once and for all, that they are false lords sitting on empty thrones. One way that we do that is by gathering at this table where we celebrate a meal that is not merely eaten in memory of a great man who sadly died but is the feast of the living Christ.
When we eat and drink in hope at this table, we can know that he is alive and present with us in this moment and will continue with us as we leave this place even as these morsels of bread and sips of wine will go with us and remain part of us. He will be with us always, even until the end of the age.
Why do you look for the living among the dead? It is a good question. You don’t need to. He is alive. He is present and I invite you now to join together in the feast celebrating that new reality.
he sun was rising on a new day, but it was also rising on a new reality. There, inside a borrowed tomb, had been a man utterly defeated. He had stood up against the greatest powers in this world – the power of hate, the power of privilege and exploitation, the power of death – and he had been defeated in the worst and most shameful way possible. The dark powers of this world had won as they always seem to win.
But on that Sunday morning, all of that had been changed. Defeat had been turned into victory. Shame had been turned into glory. And, in that place haunted by the regrets of what might have been, death had been turned into life.
I wonder if we understand what this really means. It means that the fighting is over – that the battle is won once and for all. The greatest and most persistent powers of this world have been routed. And I have long wondered, if the greatest dark powers of this world were defeated way back then, why is it that so many still to this very day are living in a world of shame, discouragement and death?
It turns out that, according to the Gospel of Luke, there were a couple of angels wondering that very thing. Specifically, they were wondering why the women were there. They had come to grieve and mourn and minister to the dead. They were stuck in the moment of defeat. But defeat was so three days ago! Now the victory had happened. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” the angels wanted to know.
But those women aren’t the only ones. You still do that, don’t you? You seek the living among the dead. Don’t be surprised that I know your secret; I only know it because it is my secret too. We look for the things that give us life among the dead things of this world. Many seem to assume that wealth and possessions can give us life but these things are dead. How can they give life?
Some people live only for the pleasures of the body – no matter what those pleasures may be. The lusts of the flesh take many forms. And it is a good thing to enjoy these things – good food, pleasurable experiences, that feeling when you are strong or powerful – but remember that your body and the pleasures that it experiences are mortal and limited. When you live only for these things, you are spending your life pursuing what is ultimately dead. Is that not also a case of seeking the living among the dead?
No, we are not called to seek the living among the dead. As followers of Christ, the risen one, our job is to spend our lives for the sake of what is alive. Our job is not to perpetuate the ways of death – the philosophy that says that the only way to deal with the violence and killing of this world is with more killing and violence – our job is to show the way of life.
One way that we do that is by proclaiming, as we do on this day, that the tomb is empty, that Jesus is risen and that we have come to know him even though he did die. One way that we do that is by proclaiming that the power of violence and death have been defeated once and for all, that they are false lords sitting on empty thrones. One way that we do that is by gathering at this table where we celebrate a meal that is not merely eaten in memory of a great man who sadly died but is the feast of the living Christ.
When we eat and drink in hope at this table, we can know that he is alive and present with us in this moment and will continue with us as we leave this place even as these morsels of bread and sips of wine will go with us and remain part of us. He will be with us always, even until the end of the age.
Why do you look for the living among the dead? It is a good question. You don’t need to. He is alive. He is present and I invite you now to join together in the feast celebrating that new reality.
John 12:12-19, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Psalm 118:1,2 19-29
H
ave you heard the word? They say that that man from Nazareth has come to town. He’s here for the festival. You’ve heard about the stir that he has been causing up in Galilee. He’s a storyteller, they say, loves to tell these stories about farming and seeds. Obviously he’s coming down here to support the local farmers and it is about time! Farmers don’t get the respect that they deserve. They feed us all! So what do you say, shall we grab a few of these palm branches, symbols of the fruitful earth, and be part of it? Hosanna! Jesus comes in the name of the Lord to save us from disrespecting farmers!
Hey, what are you sitting around wasting your time here for? Haven’t you heard that Jesus has come to town? He is the one who has made his name up north for being such a good exorcist. He’s been casting demons out right and left. And you know that those Galileans up there are all yokels – not sophisticated like us Jerusalemites. They are likely to blame all sorts of things on evil demons including mental health issues like depression or bipolar disorder. So you know what that means, don’t you? It means that he will be leading a campaign against mental illness. Grab a palm branch, we need to be part of this.
Jesus is coming to town – you know, Jesus – the one who when he was asking his disciples who people were saying he was and one of them said he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, he didn’t deny it – that Jesus! Well, if he is the Christ, that surely means that he has come to gather the people, form and army and drive the Romans out of this country for good. That is a campaign that I can support. Who is with me? Arm yourselves with palm branches and let’s go kick out the bloody Romans!
Jesus? Jesus? Oh yeah, I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he the one who said, “The poor will always be with you”? In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing I’ve ever heard about him. Hey do you suppose that means that he’s all about helping rich folks get richer? Maybe he’s got some good stock tips or investment advice and I’m all in on that kind of thing. See this palm branch? It is green, a symbol for money! Wave it around and lets all get rich!
And so it went. I like the way that the Gospel of John tells the story of Palm Sunday – it’s just a little bit different from what you find in the other Gospels. John puts it like this, “The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him.” The way John tells it, it seems like more of a spontaneous thing with people turning out for their own reasons and Jesus and others, like the Pharisees, responding to what was happening. I like that. I think it must have happened pretty much like that. But it also puts particular emphasis on the problem that people have always had with this story.
People have always wondered how it could have happened like that – how there could have been this huge crowd of people welcoming and shouting the praises of Jesus one day and then, just a little bit later (less than a week) the same crowd was screaming for his death. And the traditional answer to that question – the answer that I heard from the pulpit as I was growing up – was that it was all a big misunderstanding.
You see, I was taught that the people of Jerusalem were welcoming Jesus because they had some very specific expectations of what kind of messiah he was going to be. They thought that Jesus was coming, as the messiah was often pictured in certain passages of the Old Testament, to lead some kind of armed revolt against the Romans and set the land free from the people who occupied it. They got all excited about that, but when Jesus didn’t turn out to be exactly what they were expecting (they were mad when Jesus didn’t take on the entire Roman Empire at once) they turned against him and, kind of ironically, delivered him up to the representative of the Roman Empire to be killed.
Now, I am not saying that that is entirely wrong, but I will tell you one key thing that I learned in my New Testament studies courses at seminary that causes a problem with that interpretation. This is actually a pretty well-kept secret and I was kind of shocked when I learned it so I am a little worried that I might just blow your minds here but this is what I learned: we actually don’t know what Jews were thinking in the time of Jesus. Shocking, I know! But this is a very important point.
And this is not just a matter of not being able to read the minds of people who lived 2000 years ago. The fact of the matter is that we actually do not know very much about the state of Judaism in the time of Jesus because Judaism, as we know it, actually didn’t exist back then. Judaism, what we know as the various sects of Rabbinic Judaism that are followed in the world today, only started to come into being a few years after the time of Jesus. In Jesus’ time, the Jews still had the temple, the sacrificial system and the priesthood; things that together defined their religion. But that was all taken away from them at once, about forty years after the crucifixion of Jesus when the Romans destroyed the temple. In 70 AD, the Jews lost everything that had once told them what it meant to be a Jew and so they basically had to reinvent their entire faith from scratch.
Most of the things that we associate with Judaism, including their devotion to the scriptures, many of their worship and their rituals really only came into being after the time of Jesus. And I tell you that mostly so that you will understand that nobody has a really clear idea what anybody was thinking when they went out to greet Jesus waving their palm branches. Their thoughts are almost completely alien to us.
Where they expecting something from Jesus? That seems clear. They were shouting “Hosanna!” and hosanna means “save” or “help.” They clearly wanted Jesus to do something for them and were hailing him as someone who had come “in the name of the Lord” to save them. But saving and helping can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Save me from what? Help me how?
At least some of them also seem to have been greeting him as messiah, but, again, what did that mean? We don’t know what Jews in Jesus’ time were looking for in a messiah. In fact, the only indications that we have are that there was a great variety of expectations. Sure some may have been looking for a leader of an armed revolt, but there are also indications that some were looking for someone who would lead a religious reform or for someone who would lead the people to submit to Rome. The fact of the matter is that there were probably as many different expectations of what Jesus would do for them as there were people in the crowd. In fact, isn’t that exactly how things often go?
I don’t know if you have noticed this, but we seem to be living in a golden age of populist leadership. It is a time when the people who seem to have the greatest success as leaders are not necessarily those who are able to communicate the best policies but rather those who are best at presenting an image that people can connect to. People seem to vote for or follow such leaders not for what they specifically plan to do but because of how people feel about them. The best of such populist leaders don’t get very specific at all about what they are going to do, they somehow present themselves in such a way that people just believe that they are going to be for whatever they want them to be for.
Donald Trump is an excellent example. He seems to be a master at getting a lot of people to project the things that they hope for or the fears that they want to be protected from onto him. For example, it seems that a whole lot of white Evangelical Christians came to believe that he was one of them and would save them, despite a large amount of evidence to the contrary. It is all about image, getting lots of attention and allowing people to project their desires onto you. And Trump is hardly the only example we could look at. It seems to me that Justin Trudeau employed a populist approach in his own way – at least to the extent that his success was more based on his personal image than it was on his policies. His popular image certainly allowed some people to project their hopes onto him. Now that it seems that that image is tarnishing somewhat, we may see if he is able to adapt to a new kind of leadership. The early indications of the new PC leader, Doug Ford, also seem to be that he is taking a very populist approach to the upcoming provincial election campaign.
What am I saying, that these leaders are all the same? No. Nor am I saying that there is no place for populism in leadership. Populist leaders can do a lot of good (though there is no question that they can also do a lot of evil – there are historical examples). No, I think that the real danger is not the leaders as much as how all of us deal with the image of the leaders. There is a problem when we are more interested in image than we are in substance. There is a problem when we turn off our critical thinking and just react to image. Lots of people have gotten in trouble by doing exactly that.
I do not believe that Jesus set out to make a populist entry into Jerusalem. He did apparently set out to project a particular image on that day. It says that “Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: ‘Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!’” But the image he was projecting was one that, at the very least, should have made people stop and think critically about the expectations that they were projecting into him.
Jesus was a good leader – we would even say a perfect leader – who had truly come “in the name of the Lord.” He did his best to communicate what he had really come to do both in word (as in, for example, his many parables of the kingdom of God) and in public relations actions (like, say, riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey). But none of this prevented people from projecting their own expectations, prejudices and fears onto him.
It is easy for us to do that with Jesus too – to make Jesus stand for and represent what we want him to represent. It didn’t just happen on Palm Sunday, it has happened throughout Christian history. Jesus has been used to promote slavery and to lead the charge against it. Jesus has been used to keep women in their traditional subservient place and to break them out of it. Racists and white supremacists had only been too happy to claim to have Jesus on their side but so have civil rights leaders and campaigners for equality.
Here’s what I would challenge all those people with – the truth that Jesus didn’t come to be on your side or on anybody’s side. Yes, people went out to him waving their palm branches and putting their expectations on him, but Jesus met them on the back of a donkey. He wasn’t coming to promote your idea or your way of fixing what you see as wrong in the world. He was coming to call you to change, to repentance and to be part of a new world. If there is one lesson that you can take away from Palm Sunday, it is to lay down your own ideologies and ideas about how to fix the world and just be open to allowing Jesus to change your mind and your heart.
So, by all means, let us join the throngs and wave our palms; let us shout “Hosanna,” which means save. But let us not assume that we can do it without allowing Jesus to challenge all of the ways in which we live in this world. He will challenge us on how we treat others. He will challenge on us on questions of fairness and justice. Palm Sunday isn’t just a party; it has to be the beginning of a redeemed world.
ast week we talked about something unique in the nature of the God that we meet in the Bible. The people of Israel, unlike their neighbours around them, came to understand that their God was a God who made covenants. He entered into a relationship with his people where he required certain things of them and promised, in return, that he would remain faithful to them by continually showing them steadfast lovingkindness.
And that kind of covenant relationship is a good and beautiful thing. To be in a covenant relationship – any kind of covenant relationship – is a great blessing. I know that many of you have been blessed by such a relationship in your life, as have I. A good marriage, where each party in the marriage promises to support the other and to remain faithful and loving in the good times and in the bad, when everything is easy and when it hard, is such a covenant relationship. Many people are also deeply blessed by a similar dynamic in other relationships – enduring friendships and family ties, certain working situations and so on. Being in that kind of a relationship does more to form us, give us confidence and hope and help us to be our very best than just about anything else in life.
But there is a potential downside to being in a covenant relationship. Anytime you enter into something with that level of commitment, there is a danger. When you only trust someone a little and they let you down, it may hurt a bit, but you will probably be alright. But when you are in a covenant relationship and somebody lets somebody down, it can be absolutely devastating and can bring some real long-term effects. And the thing is that disappointment and betrayal are almost inescapable in some ways. None of us are going to be perfect covenant partners. We will all likely fall short in some way or another sooner or later. And when we do, and when it is a serious betrayal, that hurts and wounds us in ways that often stay with us for the rest of our lives.
That is what makes this idea that the God of Israel is a God who makes covenants so surprising. It means that, by choosing frail humans like us as covenant partners, God is exposing Godself to disappointment, pain and heartbreak that we can hardly even fathom. If God makes a covenant with people, they will let him down. That is about the only thing that can be guaranteed.
And that is indeed the history of the covenant that God made with the people of Israel. There are countless examples of how the people of Israel disappointed God in the Bible. Even as Moses was standing in the presence of God and receiving the terms of the covenant on top of Mount Sinai, we are told that the people at the foot of the mountain were busy casting their own alternate god out of gold. Think of it – a people flagrantly violating the terms of their covenant with their God even while the covenant is being set up. That would be comparable to a bride or a groom cheating with somebody else even while the wedding ceremony is going on! Can you even fathom the feeling of betrayal that God, as a covenant partner, would feel at that moment!
And that is, of course, not the only instance. As you read through the scriptures, the story is repeated again and again as the children of Israel repeatedly turn away from the God who has chosen them, forget the ways in which he has asked them to live and run after other gods and strange practices. Again and again in the Bible, God is portrayed as a jilted lover, a cuckold. Sometimes he speaks of his anger at the betrayal, sometimes he is just so indescribably sad, but the theme of God’s disappointment is a theme that runs through the whole Bible.
But despite it all, God doesn’t give up and doesn’t forget the promises that he made. No matter what, God reminds them, they will be his people and he will be their God. God responds to the people in various ways. He gives them the law through Moses – not as a way of making their lives miserable by piling on rules and regulations, but in order to offer them some real and helpful guidance on how they should live out their lives. More than anything, and especially if you read the Book of Deuteronomy, the law seems to be about helping them to create a just and fair society where everyone is given the resources they need to live a decent life.
But law seems to fail to accomplish its true intention. Rather than live up to the spirit of the law, the leaders prefer to put the emphasis on the form of the law with festivals, sacrifices and rituals becoming the focus. So God sends in the prophets to correct and challenge the people – especially the leaders. “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies” the prophets say on God’s behalf. “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever–flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24)
So God attempts to call the people back to the keeping of the covenant through the prophets but the prophets are rejected, persecuted and even killed. They are too much of a threat to the established order and the people who are in charge and so, despite their enduring, beautiful and poetic words, the work of the prophets cannot persuade the people to keep to their side of the covenant.
But still God does not give up, does not walk away from what only looks like a bad deal from his side. Ultimately, the Book of Deuteronomy and the Books of the Kings conclude, God decides that he must send the people out of the land altogether. They are invaded and taken away to captivity by the Babylonians so that the land itself might have a chance to rest and recover from the lack of justice. But even there, God does not forget his promises. After a generation has passed, he relents and allows his people to return from their exile and start over again in the land that he had given to their ancestors.
And that is the story, if you want to put it in a nutshell, of the entire Old Testament. God is the faithful covenant partner who is disappointed again and again by the partners that he has chosen. Like a longsuffering wife who just refuses to give up on her violent or abusive husband, he just keeps coming back for more. That is how it is portrayed.
And how do you fix a relationship like that? I mean that sincerely – how do you fix it? Because Lord knows that we have all seen more than our share of relationships like that. Some partners are abusive, some neglectful, some more than a bit cruel. Don’t get me wrong, there are all kinds of wonderful relationships out there where you see a couple constantly building each other up and offering encouragement, but what about the other kind where they only seem to manage to tear each other down?
Sometimes, of course, the sad reality is that a relationship becomes so destructive that the best possible way forward is to separate and go on and build your lives apart from each other. The only alternative is that there be real substantial change, but how do you go about doing that? Sometimes people will try making vows and promises – “I promise you, baby, this time it is going to be different, this time it is going to be better” – but in my experience those kinds of promises, often made in desperation are bound to fail sooner or later. That was what God found with the people of Israel and sometimes finds with us. We make promises and vows but too often our resolve is simply not enough to keep us faithful.
Sometimes, in an effort to save the relationship, people will try setting up rules and boundaries. This is what God did through the Law of Moses. But, as we have seen in that case, rules can quickly lose their meaning, in any relationship, what you really need is not outward obedience to rules but inward and genuine devotion and commitment. Sometimes an outside voice is found to help the participants in the relationship to learn to see the relationship in new ways. I guess you could say that prophets coming in to speak for God carried out this function in the Old Testament.
So basically, in the Bible, God tries the very things that we try to repair a wounded relationship. There is repentance and forgiveness and ups and downs, but everything seems to fall short at one point or another. What is a deity to do when he just doesn’t want to give up – when God absolutely refuses to walk away from the covenant he has made? God is desperate to make this work. What would you do?
Well, what God does is opt for one dramatic act that is intended to change the entire dynamic of the relationship. His plan is to make a dramatic demonstration of just how much he cares for his people hoping that this will finally convince them of his love. You will see something like that, sometimes, in ailing relationship. I’ve heard of a person, for example, who walked away from a high paying but super high pressure job that had been slowly been killing him as well as his relationship with his family. It was a radical choice that left the whole family much poorer off financially but so much more healthy in other ways. It was a hard thing to do, but it totally changed the dynamics of a once-failing relationship. That was the kind of dramatic move God needed.
God made that move, we believe, in the person of Jesus. God chose to enter into the fullness of all that it means to be us in Jesus Christ. That changes the dynamic of the covenant so dramatically because it means that, for the first time, God can understand the struggles of the covenant from our point of view – can understand the weaknesses we struggle with, the temptations that we face. In understanding the limitations that we face, God can deal with us with a new and powerful compassion.
But, more than that, in Christ, God gives us the supreme demonstration of what God’s love looks like and it looks like Christ who is willing to put up with all of the pain and rejection and shame of the cross for our sake. It looks like a man who is innocent and has done nothing but stand up for what is true and right being struck down for it in all injustice. It looks like a friend who is willing to give up his life for the sake of his friends. And you could talk about the love of God and how deep it is and how wide it is forever and you will never be able to equal what was shown to us when Jesus was nailed up on that wood.
That is what God does for us in Christ Jesus. That is the story that we will be rehearsing yet again over the next couple of weeks. And I know that none of that makes all of our problems go away. We are still weak. We still fall short of our best intentions. We still do not live up to everything that God expects of us. But the relationship has changed because of Christ. The covenant has moved beyond the mere matter of obedience to an affair of the heart.
It has moved towards what Jeremiah was promising when he said, “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
God took it there for us in Christ and in our hearts we will live out that covenant with hope and power. That is what is different because of Jesus.
he ancient Babylonians had a myth about a great universal flood sent by their gods to destroy the life of all the humans on the face of the earth that they had made. Only one man and his family made it through – survived by building a great ship and riding it out. And if that story sounds a bit familiar it should. It is a basic plot that I am sure all of us would recognize if we know anything about the Bible.
The ancient Babylonian story was not exactly the same, of course. The hero of the story was named Utnapishtim instead of Noah – a fact that I share with you mostly because I just like to say “Utnapishtim.” And, of course, the deity involved in the Babylonian story was not the God of Israel but rather a collection of ancient Babylonian gods. But the story corresponds so closely that most scholars would say that the biblical story is dependant on the much older Utnapishtim story.
This is, in itself, not all that surprising. The ancient Hebrews were a part of the ancient world in which they lived and they knew the stories of their neighbours. They quite naturally developed their own versions of those stories which they told for various reasons. Some of these stories they told to work out their understanding of ancient events – and there may well be ancient events behind this one – the memories of some ancient flood that was likely not universal but that devastated an entire region. But these stories weren’t just about things that had happened a long time ago. They were mostly told as a way to process the things that they were coming to know about the God that they worshipped.
For example, one of the big differences between the Babylonian story and the biblical story is the reason for the flood in the first place. In the older story, the Babylonian gods basically decide to wipe out the humans because they are too noisy. Like grouchy neighbours on the upper floor of an apartment building, the gods are upset about all the noise downstairs and the flood is just their way of turning on all the taps until they overflow to “persuade” the noisy neighbours to move out. And, for the Babylonian gods, the only regret that they have for doing this is that when the human race is wiped out, there is nobody left to feed them with burnt offerings and so they do come to regret it, but for rather selfish reasons.
The ancient Hebrews heard that story and they knew that it didn’t sound quite right. At least it didn’t seem to be how the God that they were coming to know – the God who had made the people of Israel his own people – would behave. So the story they told mostly differed in how it reflected the relationship between God and the people of the earth. So, for example, instead of being annoyed that the humans are too noisy, God, in the biblical story has a legitimate beef with the people of the earth. They are evil, given to violence and murder, and God decides he is not going to stand for it any more. So there is the first difference from the gods of Babylon. The God of Israel is motivated by justice.
The second difference in the biblical story is God’s response after the disaster. God, like the Babylonian gods, does regret the slaughter of the flood. But the God of the Bible doesn’t merely miss the sacrifices of the people. Yes, it does say in Genesis that “the Lord smelled the pleasing odour” of Noah’s sacrifice after the flood, but rather than inspiring God’s hunger, the Bible says that the sacrifice reminds God of his love for the people he created. He realizes that to seek to destroy them was wrong, that it didn’t really solve anything but only made things worse. So here is the second wonder about the God of the Noah story – he is able to learn and grow.
It is a bit surprising, perhaps, if you have always believed that God never changes, to read that God changed his mind after the flood. But I honestly believe that that passage is more about the changing and growing realization of the people who were telling this story as they learned more about the God that they worshiped than it is about Godself changing. The more they came to know this God who they were exploring by telling these stories, the more they discovered, especially about God’s devotion to justice and what was right.
But there is another aspect to the story of the flood that sets it apart from so many other similar stories that come to us from the ancient world. God doesn't just repent of what he has done, he makes a covenant. And here is the most amazing thing of all in this story about what the ancient people of Israel learned about the God that they worshipped. He was a God who made covenants. From what we can tell from the history of the ancient Near East, this was something that was unique. No other ancient peoples had a covenant making God. This was probably the first thing that set the Hebrews apart from their neighbours.
Now covenant is not necessarily an everyday word for most of us, so I do want to make sure we all understand exactly what one is. A covenant is an ancient word for what we might call today a contract or a deal or an agreement. In ancient times covenants were originally made between larger groups of people like tribes or nations, so you might also say that a good word for it might be treaty.
When ancient people made a covenant, they would come together and decide on the terms of their accord – what each party owed the other. There was usually some kind of document that laid out all of the blessings that the participants in the covenant would receive if they kept the terms and (since you can’t have the one without the other) there would also be a list of the curses that would be visited upon them if they broke the covenant. In addition, there would be some sort of monument set up that would remind the parties of the commitment that they had made so they would not break the terms of the covenant.
These covenants were extremely important in the ancient world. They created peace and prosperity for those tribes and nations that entered into them. But, generally speaking, in the ancient Near East, covenants were only agreements made between tribes and nations or between individuals. But the ancient people of Israel came to understand something quite different – that they had a God who made covenants.
We see that covenant-making God being introduced, in a sense, in our story this morning from Genesis. He, unlike that ancient gods of Babylon who are only interested in greedily eating up the meat of the sacrifices after the devastation of a flood, instead God wants to make a covenant with the people who have just come off of the ark and all of his creatures. God asks very little of them but he makes a huge promise in return. “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
God even sets up a monument for this covenant. “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” He is speaking, of course, of the rainbow that often appears in the sky when there is rain. But the symbolism of it is very significant. God speaks of laying down God’s bow – that is to say his war bow, his weapon of war. It is a clear demonstration of his commitment to no longer use violence against this world.
What’s more, he states that the reason why the bow will appear is not to remind us but God to keep the terms of this covenant. “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” This reminder of the covenant is so important that you probably noticed that it is repeated three times in the text.
And so, in the Noah story, we are introduced to this radical idea of a God who makes covenants – who voluntarily puts himself and his integrity on the line for the sake of his covenant partners. And this one unique trait that is revealed about the God of Israel drives much of the rest of the scriptures. When we next encounter God, we find him choosing to make a covenant with one particular righteous man and wife pair: Abraham and Sarah, and to make a nation out of them that will bring a blessing to the whole world.
Later, because of that covenant and because God remembers his covenant promises, he saves the descendants of Abraham and Sarah from slavery in Egypt and creates them as a nation. He also sends Moses to teach them, through the Law, how to live up to their end of the covenant. And throughout the Old Testament we are told the ups and downs of that covenant relationship and how Israel sometimes disobeys and goes astray, things go wrong but God never forgets his covenant promises.
Even the Psalm that we read this morning was all about the covenant between God and his people. Though you may not have noticed that, you probably noticed that it was a little bit repetitive with the same phrase being repeated over and over again: “for his steadfast love endures forever.” Well, there is a reason why that phrase was considered so important that they needed to keep saying it over and over again in that psalm. “Steadfast love” was a key technical term in the forming of ancient covenants. It was the quality in a person (or group of people) that made them committed to keeping the covenant. If God had steadfast lovingkindness, the Israelites were saying, they they could be sure that God would never desert them or abandon the promises he had made to them. God’s steadfast love – his covenant commitment – was the driving force behind everything that he had done for them.
And, of course, covenant isn’t just an Old Testament idea, it is also the foundation of the New Testament. Christians proclaimed that Jesus had come to create a new covenant with his disciples – a covenant not based on laws and rules, but a covenant of faith that we celebrate and renew every time we perform a baptism and every time we gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
This concept of a covenant making God revolutionized everything about the relations of God with his people. It gave people hope and security to know that they had a God who would not forget them or his promises to them.
What does it mean today to know that our God is a covenant making God? It should continue to be a source of encouragement to us. Every time you are tempted to think of God as a God who is out to get you, to punish you for the slightest mistakes or to make you suffer for the decisions you made earlier in your life, you must remind yourself. Look for some monument that will remind you of God’s steadfast love – a rainbow in the sky, a baptismal font, a loaf of bread, the glory and beauty of nature. These things are placed there as a continual reminder to you that God is a God who makes promises to you and will never fail in them. These things will remind you that God has already given you his steadfast love and that his steadfast love endures forever.
Knowing such things, reminding yourself of such things truly has enormous power to change your perspective, change how you see God and how you see everything. So know this one thing about the God that you worship – that God is a God who makes covenants.
hey had grasped her by the arms and by the legs and then dragged her through the streets little caring that her clothes were being ripped and torn away from her. Frankly a number of them took advantage of the situation by ogling the exposed portions of her body that would normally never be seen in public. A few of them were even so bold as to take advantage of her vulnerability by reaching out to touch what should have been off limits.
It was fine. They were sure that it was fine because they were on a holy mission. They had taken her in a flagrant act of sin. They were protecting the community from her filth. Surely, if they took advantage just a little bit, it was only in a good cause.
They were looking for the popular preacher who had been seen around town recently – gathering large crowds and preaching all sorts of nonsense. He had been getting certain people in the community all worked up – treating them like they mattered or something and it had been causing trouble. They had decided to take the man’s popularity down a peg or two by forcing him to take a position on this clear matter of sin.
A cry went up from the men at the front of the mob. They had spotted the preacher. They soon had him cornered and forced the woman to stand on her feet in front of him. Their leader, a big ruffian, spoke for the group. “Teacher,” he said, “this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
Now I think it is probably helpful to pause for a moment and try to understand what that mob was actually asking. They were accusing that woman of sin – the specific sin being, of course, adultery. And you may think that you know what they meant by that accusation, but it doesn’t mean exactly the same thing for us as it did for them. For us, adultery refers to some sort of marital infidelity, usually of a sexual nature. It is what we accuse someone of if they break their marriage vows.
It didn’t mean exactly that to them, which is kind of obvious when you think about it. For us, there are always two (or maybe more) people involved in adultery. It takes two to tango, as they say. But these men have brought only one “sinner” to be judged in this case. A lot of modern people react to this story by asking, “If she was taken in adultery, why did this gang just bring her for judgement to Jesus. Where is the guy? Why didn’t he get brought along too?
But the fact of the matter is that adultery wasn’t just a matter of infidelity between two persons to them. Marriage, for them, was not just something between two people. Marriage was about the larger family and, to a certain extent, the entire community. It was also very much about property with marriage being the prime method of transferring property between families. For that matter, the woman in a marriage was herself considered to be a piece of property.
You are all familiar, I imagine with the commandment that goes, “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.” Well, you realize that that commandment is all about not trying to take your neighbour’s property away from him. And note that, in this context, a neighbour can only be a “him” because your neighbour’s wife is not your neighbour but obviously a piece of property that belongs to your neighbour. So a marriage, for them, was a property deal with the wife being just another piece of property.
And if that is the case, then adultery, for them, was as much a crime of theft as it was a matter of the breaking of any marriage vows. And what’s more, anything that a woman did to devalue herself as a piece of property could have been seen as an act of adultery.
What do I mean by that? Well, for example, before she became a piece of her husband’s property a woman was considered to be a piece of her father’s property and so he could give her, in marriage to whomever he chose. But what if she didn’t like her father’s choice? What if she rejected his choice and, horror of horrors, pledged herself in some way (and, yes, perhaps in some carnal way) to someone else. Well, that would have been to devalue herself as a piece of her father’s property. And it would have been to break the sanctity of the marriage vow because she, as a woman, was not considered competent to make any marriage vows by herself. So actually it was not all that uncommon for a woman to be accused of committing adultery all by herself.
All of this goes to illustrate, I hope, that questions of sin did not mean exactly the same to them as they do to us. For them, how you dealt with sin had much more to do with protecting the whole of society than with the concerns of the individual. That is why, of course, the response to sin that is proposed in this case – stoning someone to death – is a communal punishment. It is something that the entire community has to participate in because what she has done is seen as a threat to the entire community. She has threatened the very foundations of that community.
And so I have lots of problems with how this woman is being treated and judged in this passage. Basically she is being offered up as a kind of scapegoat for all of the problems, lacks and failures of her entire society. All of the failures of marriages in her society, all of the misery that powerless women are put through in their relationships, all of the men who act out their anger at their lot in life against weaker people than them (like women) – all of these failures and miseries produced by the society, these are being laid upon this woman. She must die to save the community because she has dared to challenge the rules of her society in some way. It is not right and I, like you, like all “civilized” modern people, bristle at what is being described in this passage.
Jesus, I am glad to say, bristles at it too. He agrees with you and me that this is not right. But you shouldn’t assume that his objection comes because he is looking at this issue as you would. Jesus, whatever else he was (and he was a whole lot else) was a man of his time.
You see, we, as modern people, would likely suggest a very modern resolution to this situation. We would likely say that this woman’s offence (if we saw it as an offense at all) was a personal matter – something to be worked out between her and her husband or whoever else she might have offended. We would likely not see any role for anyone else except, perhaps, some sort of mediator. We would certainly not see the rocks and stones of the entire community as a necessary remedy.
Jesus would agree that the stones are not going to solve anything, but his reasoning is quite different from what ours would be. Jesus does recognize that her sin is not just her own personal matter. It is something that affects and is a part of the community. In that he agrees with the people of his own time and with the overall view of the Bible regarding sin. But his response is that the traditional solution, which is collective punishment of the perceived offender, is not going to work. Why? Because we all participate in the sin.
That is what Jesus is referring to when he confronts the men in the mob by saying, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” He is not accusing them of any particular sin here. He is not saying that they have committed any particular offense much less the specific sin of adultery. Some of them may have, of course, and may feel some shame on a personal level, but Jesus is not seeking to shame them in that way. He is saying something significantly different. He is taking sin seriously and is not denying that it is a threat to the community, but he is rejecting the traditional response to sin which has been to say that we can just find someone to shame and punish to expiate the sin and be done with it. Jesus challenges us to look at the problem differently, to see how we are all participants in it.
How should we deal with the issue of sin in the church today? There are some Christians, I know, who are just like the mob in this gospel story. They want to be seen as tough on sin and they love to pick out particular types of sinners in order to shame them. Ironically, just like the men in the story, they never seem to pick those whose sin is greed or pride or the use of power to subjugate others. No, they prefer to ignore those sins (which are heartily denounced in the Bible) in order to find some sinner who can be accused of something else, something that seems worse to them because it is sexual in nature. They then focus on shaming that person or group of people as a way of making themselves feel that they are righteous. That is an approach to sin that I see Jesus roundly rejecting in this passage.
There is another approach that some Christians take that may lead to them to being accused of being soft on sin. Some Christians even desire to be seen that way. I don’t think that is the approach that Jesus takes in this story either. He takes the sin seriously, but he is not willing to use shame – especially not on the the individual – the woman. He knows how ineffective shaming is and that it often twists and even destroys those it is deployed against.
But even more important than that, he understands that it is never as simple as blaming one person. The choices made by individuals are never taken in isolation. They are often forced or constrained by others – by the flaws in the society itself that deprives people of income or forces them into unhealthy relationships. Jesus asks us all, as he asks the men in this story, to examine the ways in which we participate in the flawed society that has a penchant for creating ever more victims.
And we do. We participate in the capitalistic system – a good system in many ways, maybe even the best possible economic system, but one that nevertheless continues to create more losers than winners. We participate in activities that accelerate the destruction of the environment. We participate in a society that has a way of turning a blind eye to too much injustice, inequality and open racism and hatred.
I do not say this to shame anyone. I know that, in many ways, these things are just part of how the world works and that the world is flawed. You really don’t have much choice but to participate in these systems and that does affect each and everyone of us. But we all do participate and that is part of the problem. Our obsession with shaming others doesn’t help to make any of us any better.
Instead of shame, Jesus is looking for repentance – for change. Instead of finding a victim to blame, he is asking for an honest look at the things that we allow to go wrong in society. This is what Jesus is disturbed about and so should we be.
How seriously should we take sin? Very! How much should we invest in piling on those who are easy to blame for what goes wrong in society? We should give no energy or legitimacy to that. We should be gracious. We must look to ourselves first. Let the ones who do not participate in systems of injustice and unrighteousness be the first to cast a stone.
leven days ago, a young man walked into a school in Florida with an AR-15 rifle near the end of the school day. He pulled a fire alarm and started firing on students and teachers indiscriminately for about six minutes. By the time he dropped his pack and gun and left, 17 people were dead and 15 more wounded. It was an afternoon of bravery and terrible suffering on the school grounds with one teacher even putting his own body in front of his students. It was an afternoon of a million tears. And yet we as Christians proclaim, “The Lord is king forever and ever.” I have to ask: what kind of king stands by and watches something like that?
At the end of last September the tenth most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean finally sputtered out. When that hurricane, named Maria, was near the peak of its strength, it had slammed into the island of Puerto Rico with unprecedented destructive power. The island, already destroyed by decades of economic neglect had seen almost all of its infrastructure destroyed including power, water and housing. In the immediate aftermath over sixty people died, but in the time since, the number has grown to well over a thousand. The legacy of Maria in Puerto Rico may well be an entire lost generation of potential. And yet we proclaim, “The Lord is king forever and ever.” What kind of king permits that to happen to his people?
A man shot a young aboriginal man at point blank range in the back of his head at a moment when neither he nor his family were in danger of violence and yet was found guilty of no crime. Yet we claim, “The Lord is king forever and ever.” Is not a king responsible to see that justice is done?
The list goes on and on. We could cite so many disasters and crimes and injustices that have happened over the last few months. They are all, in their own way, horrible and awful. And each one of them raises a challenge to us as people of faith. They are a challenge because we proclaim a God of providence – that is to say, a God who cares about this world and who seeks the good of the people who inhabit it. This is something that we affirm every time we say, “Thank God,” when something good happens or something bad is avoided. In fact, we are inclined to give God the credit for all sorts of great things.
But here is the problem: if God gets the credit for all the stuff that goes right, doesn’t he also have to take the blame for all of the stuff that goes wrong? I mean, how many times have you heard of someone who got into an accident – who was afraid that they might get killed or injured and just managed to come through it – and came through the other side full of praise and thanksgiving for the God who saved them. But if you are going to thank God for saving you through an accident, how can you possibly object if I were to blame God for the accident even happening in the first place, not to mention all of the other people who didn’t get saved or helped or healed in the midst of the accident or disaster.
With all of this in mind, I am glad to see the three questions that we have from A Catechism for Today today. The Catechism rightly speaks about God’s providence – about how God truly cares about the needs of his creatures and responds to them – and then goes on to consider God’s sovereignty – the recognition that God is in charge in this world which is actually something that makes God’s providence possible. But, most important of all, it recognizes that you cannot have those first two things – God’s providence and God’s sovereignty – without it raising very serious questions about the evil that exists in this world under God’s supposed benevolent watch.
So, the question is, why is there so much evil in this world? I appreciate the response to this question in the Catechism because it acknowledges right away that there are no simple or easy answers to that question. “Evil and suffering are a mystery and fill us with anguish.” Now, calling evil a mystery might seem like a cop-out, but compared to a lot of the other “answers” to the question of evil I have heard, it is actually not a bad answer at all.
Because, if you ask people – especially people of faith – that question, some of the answers you get are not as helpful as they seem at first. One of the answers you might get, for example, when you ask “Why do bad things happen,” is that some people will say, “Everything happens for a purpose.” That sounds good, of course, because it is always nice to think, even in a tragedy, that at least there is some purpose to it all. But the problem is that the purposes that people come up with often lead us to twist our view of God.
If we say that God permits evil as a way or testing us, for example, it turns God into some kind of mad scientist who is running these experiments on us – making us live through horrific experiences – simply as a way of discovering things about us. We require human scientists to design their experiments in humane ways, why wouldn’t we expect the same from God?
Sometimes people will try to justify God by saying that God allows the bad things to happen because he has plans to bring greater good out of them. But that argument tends to lead us into some kind of gruesome calculous – trying to outweigh history’s greatest evils with even greater good. Who would dare to go to the family of 17 people gunned down in a high school eleven days ago and suggest that anything – anything no matter how good – that happens as a result of that crime could possibly make up for what they have lost? (It is especially discouraging when you begin to fear that nothing at all will really change.)
Now, I realize that some might argue that our reading this morning from the Letter to the Romans is making the argument that God allows evil to bring about greater good. Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now.” He seems to be comparing the evil and trouble in this world to the pain that a woman goes through when she is delivering a child, pain that I cannot personally attest to but that certainly seems to be overwhelming in most cases.
He seems to be saying that, just as a woman will find the pain that she went through to be worthwhile once she holds her healthy child in her arms, we too will find that the evil of this world will have been worthwhile when we see what God is bringing into being.
In addition, Paul also writes a few verses later, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” This has also been taken to mean much the same thing on the level of the personal lives of believers, that yes, God might allow bad things to happen to you personally but that you shouldn’t worry because God has a plan to bring even greater good out of that evil.
So, what it says in these passages does somewhat resemble the popular idea that God allows evil in order to bring about a greater good, but I do not think that that is exactly what they are saying. I don’t think that Paul is saying that God causes bad things to happen in order to bring about a greater good as much as he is saying that God works to bring about some good even in the evil that does happen. That is an important distinction that I would make.
You see, the Bible doesn’t really solve for us the mystery of the evil that is found in this world, but it does affirm something that is very important. The Catechism puts it this way: “In such a world – a world filled with too much evil – only a God who has entered into our sufferings can help.”
And I believe that that is what Paul is affirming in this passage. He doesn’t necessarily promise God will solve everything for you, but he does say that, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” He is saying that, in very significant ways and even if we are feeling so lost that we don’t even know what to pray for, God will actually join us in our pain and anguish. God will not leave us alone and that makes all the difference.
Of course, for Christians, the moment when God most decisively entered into our suffering is the Jesus event. “As we ponder our Saviour upon the cross, we know that God is with us in our pain.” This is the central mystery of the Christian faith, that God would not stay safely at a distance and far removed from this world and its suffering and evil but would actually choose to enter into the muck and mire of this world. God didn’t need to, but God chose to experience everything that it means to be human by somehow becoming one of us in the person of Jesus Christ.
That is what the incarnation – the Christmas story and really the whole story of the life of Jesus is actually about. The wonder of it is not, as some suggest, that Jesus was somehow God. The true wonder is that God was somehow human – not just seeming human or pretend human but real human with everything that goes with that.
God does not promise that there will be no evil or suffering in this world. Neither does God offer to explain why the suffering and evil are even permitted. Maybe that is something that you will understand someday when you can look at this life from a completely different perspective, but, here and now, God doesn’t always answer the why question.
But God does promise one thing: he will not leave you alone in the suffering. He is with you in it – and not just in a handholding but insincere way (you know, like you sometimes get from people who listen to your tale of woe and say, “I know exactly how you feel,” when you know very well that they don’t). God is with you in it in the sense that he feels what you feel, knows the depths of your pain and loss. And that is only possible because of Jesus.
You know, it is ironic in some ways. We tend to look at the suffering of the innocent as the greatest evil that you can find in this world. A gunman walks into a school and guns down children who have never done anything to deserve such treatment. A hurricane strikes the countryside, destroying young and old, good and evil in its path. These things are taken by many people to be the greatest indication that God is not there or, if he is, God is not worth worshipping.
And, yes, those things are evils and great injustices. But, for Christians, the greatest proof that God exists and that God cares is in fact, a case of an innocent man who suffered unjustly. His name was Jesus, he didn’t deserve anything that happened to him. There was no redeeming good in the terrible violence that was committed against him on the Friday just before Passover. But there was love – the supreme demonstration of God’s love seen in God entering into our suffering and into the suffering of the innocent. And love changes things. Love brings hope and life and new beginnings.
I don’t have an explanation for why there is so much that is so wrong in this world. If I tried to offer you one, it would fall flat. It is a mystery. But so is hope, and love and life itself. And I will continue to worship a God who doesn’t answer all of the why questions but who isn’t afraid of entering into them with us either.
