Category: Minister

Hespeler, 13 March, 2016 © Scott McAndless – Lent 5

Isaiah 53, Luke 23:13-25, Psalm 22:14-24

very year the National Hockey League, the NHL, pauses in middle of its season to celebrate its very best players. The All-Star game has always been a big fan favorite – a chance to celebrate the players that the fans love most. And, in January of this year, the league really needed a successful All-Star game as it found itself in the midst of a season that many fans seem to find rather uninspiring. Instead what it got was a bunch of really bad mistakes. And I know that you may not think that the story of an All-Star game has much to teach us about the Biblical truths, but I hope you’ll stay with me for a little bit here because I think that it can.

      The first mistake that the NHL made was to include the fans in the selection process of the All-Star team. Now, that was not a new mistake this year. Fans have been helping to choose team members since 1985, but a lot has changed since way back then. Today fans are connected to each other through social media in ways that could never have been dreamed of back in 1985. And this year someone somewhere on the internet decided to disturb the NHL’s plans for a nice little, brand-boosting All-Star game.

      A social media campaign was started to get people to vote John Scott onto the team under the hashtag, #VoteJohnScott. I’m not sure why someone started this campaign but it seems that people lashed onto it as a way to get back at the league for all kinds of reasons. Scott was a player who really had no business being on the team according to any regular measures. Some people have suggested that he had no business being in the NHL at all. Playing for the Arizona Coyotes this season, he has spent as much time in the minor AHL league as he has in the NHL. He had only played 11 major league games, scored no goals, had only one assist and spent about a half hour in the penalty box. An enforcer and big brawler on the ice, he seemed anything but a good representative of what is good in the game.

      But the campaign really took off and before long Scott had not only got on the team but came in ahead of all the other top players. The fans made him captain of the Pacific Team. Clearly the NHL had made a mistake in letting the fans have the kind of power that they could use to sabotage the league’s plans. But it probably would have been alright if they had just left well enough alone. They did not.

      The league (and I think that most people have blamed everyone’s favourite commis­sioner, Gary Bettman) decided that it would be too embarras­sing to allow Scott to play. None of this is proven, mind you, but it seems that they tried any and all means to get him off the roster. They tried to bribe him to decline. They even went so far as to tell him that his children would be ashamed of him. When that didn’t work, they got mean. He was suddenly traded from Phoenix to Montreal and no sooner had he arrived that the Canadiens immediately sent him down to their minor league farm team in Newfoundland. The argument was that since he could no longer represent either the Coyotes or even the NHL because he no longer played for either.

      So all of a sudden, in the middle of winter, Scott and his family are moved from hot and sunny Arizona and into exile in deepest darkest Newfoundland. But, I have to ask, what did John Scott do to deserve such treatment? He is, by all accounts, a really nice guy who loves hockey and loves his kids and is only dangerous if you meet him on the ice. He also didn’t make any mistakes. If anyone did, the league did. But it looked as if he and his family were going to be the only ones to pay the price.

      But isn’t that the way it always goes. It is a story as old a human society. It is certainly as old as the Book of Isaiah. There are a series of passages in the Book of Isaiah that are sometimes called the Songs of the Suffering Servant. These songs are found in Isaiah 42, 49, 50 and 53. We read the final song of the Suffering Servant this morning.

      All of these poems tell the story of an unnamed figure who is simply called the Servant of the Lord. This is a man, called to serve God in the world and to do much good and no wrong, who is nevertheless terribly abused over and over again. As it says in our reading this morning, “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.”

      In all likelihood, when the prophet talks about this figure, he is thinking about somebody he knows personally – someone in his nation whom he has seen God use to do good but who has been terribly mistreated. He may even be talking about himself, in a roundabout way, and how he has been abused despite being a prophet of God. But whoever the prophet was initially thinking about, there is something universal about his description of the Servant of the Lord. He is describing something that seems to have happened over and over again in the history of the world when a good person is unjustly punished for doing good.

      But, as I say, the story of Jesus is just the most perfect example. It is far from the only one. And I told you the story of John Scott this morning because I also see it as an echo – perhaps a dim echo, but an echo nonetheless – of the same universal story. Of course, I would never suggest that Scott’s abuse was anywhere near what was suffered by Jesus or even what was suffered by Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. To suggest any sort of parity would be ridiculous. But Scott’s story is a reminder that nothing really changes in the world – the pattern remains the same. The powers of this world, whether they be kings or priests or commissioners or sports franchises, have their plans. And a key part of their plan is that they don’t really have to suffer for their own mistakes – they’ll always find a way to get someone else to pay the price. That’s what the John Scotts and the Suffering Servants and the Jesuses of Nazareth are for.

      To give another rather egregious example from recent events, when Michigan State officials made the very serious mistake of choosing to save some money by drawing the City of Flint’s water from the terribly contaminated Flint River, who paid the price? Not the officials but the ordinary people of Flint who, for generations, are going to be dealing with the effects of lead poisoning.

      But the best part of the universal story of the Suffering Servant is that it doesn’t end there. It doesn’t just end with John Scott finishing his career playing for the St. John’s IceCaps in the AHL. It doesn’t end with Jesus on the cross. If it did, we might get mad and enraged, but we would in no way see our need for justice satisfied.

      Let me just quickly tell you how John Scott’s story ended. The fans didn’t buy the excuse that he couldn’t play in the All-Star Game because he was no longer in the NHL. They said, “We don’t care, let him play.” On twitter, the hashtag was #FreeJohnScott. The fans said it so loud and so insistently that the league really had no choice. And Scott went and he played as beautiful a game as he had ever played in his whole career. Everyone could see that he had made the game. Yet, despite that, the league wouldn’t put his name in on the ballots for Most Valuable Player. Do you think the fans cared about that?

      No they did not. At the game they started chanting, “John Scott” and “MVP” and before you knew it, John Scott, despite not even being on the ballot at all, had taken the whole thing as a write-in candidate. All of this led to the most beautiful moment when Gary Bettman, commissioner of the NHL and the guy that most people blamed for the whole debacle, had to stand at centre ice and smile and pretend that he was happy as he handed John Scott a check for one million dollars.

      I have heard people predict, in the midst of a rather unimpressive NHL season, that perhaps the one thing that people will look back on and see as the high point of 2015-16 season will be the All-Star game and it is all because of John Scott. We will see, of course, once we get into the post season, but I think that it might be true. John Scott, the guy that they tried to get rid of, may end up redeeming the entire season.

      But, once again, I think that story is most interesting because it contains the merest echo of a story that matters on an eternal scale. Jesus was the ultimate victim of this world’s systems of power, privilege and domination. And they thought that they had beaten him – that they had put him exactly where they wanted him, upon a cross. But it was in the very moment of his defeat that, we believe, Jesus actually defeated the dark powers of this world. The truth of what Jesus accomplished for us is perfectly spelled out for us in the Book of Isaiah: “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

      For that is how our God operates. Yes, the powers and authorities of this world will lay their plans. They will decide that they do not need to pay for their own mistakes, their own sins and their own errors. That is what the “little people” for. And they may even get away with it for a season. They may seem to thrive and get richer and stronger and feel ever more secure. But we have a God of justice. He will not let that stand forever.

      But God has a particular way of making his justice work out in this world. He doesn’t necessarily go for that straightforward confrontation with the powers of this world. That kind of clash often doesn’t make things better and can often make things worse. God’s plan is to stand with the victims, the lost and neglected, those who are not allowed to prosper in this world. And God has a sense of humour – I’m sure of that, because he loves to use those very downtrodden and abused people and win the victory through them. Jesus showed us the absolute power of the seemingly powerless victim and he is the model for all the rest.

      When this world has got you down. When you start to be discouraged and to believe that the weak will just continue to be used and robbed, hold one picture in your mind: John Scott holding that check at centre ice. Sure, but maybe even a better picture – one that gives the model to all the others – Jesus, taking on the powers of this dark world, doing it by dying before their very eyes. He wins, not just the battle, but the entire war.

      This is the message of Easter – the message we get to celebrate in a couple of weeks. And it is a message that brings us hope by exposing the weakness and emptiness of this present world’s power system.

     

John 18:15-18, 25-27, John 21:15-19, Psalm 85

ave you ever made one of those mistakes that just kind of haunts you, the kind of mistake that lurks there in your memory waiting to pounce on you? You can just go along with your life and engage in ordinary activities and, when you get absorbed in what you are doing, you can even forget about that one big mistake that you made for a while. But then you come to a moment when the activity stops and you are alone with your thoughts and the memory is just waiting there for you. You wince, you may physically shudder and think to yourself, “I just cannot believe that I did that thing. How could I have been so dumb?”

      I’m sure that just abou t every single one of us has a few mistakes like that in our personal histories. We’ve all made them and, like it or not we carry them around with us. In one sense, it is probably good that we remember them and even feel bad about them because, of course, remembering your mistakes is one way of making sure that you don’t repeat them. But in another sense, the mere fact that we carry these things around with us can be very destructive to us. As we brood upon them, they can begin to define us and to limit us and what we think we can do or be.

      I am certain that that was exactly how Simon Peter felt about the matter. For days he had been unable to think of anything else. He just kept replaying the scenarios in his head. When his Lord had been arrested, Peter had wanted to run and to hide like the others, but as he saw them taking Jesus away, he had found a small reserve of courage in himself and he had followed, staying at what seemed to be a safe distance.

      It got easier. The next time he was challenged it almost slipped out without him having to even think about it. The third time, to deny even knowing Jesus seemed like an obvious thing to say – it almost felt true. But then the cock had crowed and everything that Jesus had said at the supper came flooding back to him. Jesus had told him that he would do this even while Peter had protested and said never, not in a thousand years. And now, just a few hours later, it had happened just as Jesus had promised.

      And the words had been said. There was no taking them back. Maybe the actual sound of them would dissipate and fade away, but Peter had the sense that the words themselves would echo on throughout eternity. It certainly felt like they would echo in his own skull for at least that long. There is no coming back from something like this.

      And surely that was why, after he was crucified and after the reports came out of people seeing him alive again, Peter found that he had no desire to see Jesus again. He still loved him, still believed in everything he’d stood for. But if he really was back – and how could he believe that he could be back? – then it was better that Peter stay far away. The mistake stood between them. Never again could there be any kind of positive relationship between the two of them. And so he went away – went back to the old, simple life of a fisherman he had once known. He tried to act like the last three years with Jesus had never even happened.

      I know that we’ve all been there. We have all made mistakes that made us feel that embarrassed. And you’ve probably all known at least one person who has made that kind of mortifying mistake that they feel that there is no coming back from. All of us can feel sympathetic to Simon Peter. But my question today is this: how would you help him? What do you think would be most helpful for someone in that kind of situation to help them get through it and move on with their lives?

      I know what my first impulse would be, and that would be to seek to comfort him by minimizing the mistake. “That’s okay, Peter, it was just a momentary lapse. You didn’t mean it. And it’s not like Jesus probably even knows that you said it. I mean, he was kind of distracted with other things. Your denial was hardly the worst thing that happened to him that day, after all. I’m sure it will be fine – just go up to him and act like nothing ever happened he probably won’t even mention it.

      At least that’s how I’d be tempted to react after a serious mistake like that. And I don’t think I’m alone. Most of us don’t like conflict. We don’t like that awkward feeling that you have disappointed someone. Our most common reaction is just to wish the whole thing forgotten as soon as possible. But, though that is a common impulse, it often only has the effect of making things worse.

      The wonderful thing is that in the Gospel of John we have an example, from Jesus himself, of a much better way of dealing with it when you have a big mistake ruining your life. Jesus, first of all, doesn’t let Peter get away with running from his mistake. When Peter runs back to his old life of fishing on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus follows him – chooses that his next appearance will not be in Jerusalem where he has been previously seen but in Galilee where Peter has fled. What that tells me, first of all, is that running and hiding from your mistakes is not going to work – not in the long run anyways. You may succeed, for a time, in putting it out of your mind, it might seem like it has been forgotten, but a wise person learns that that you can’t just hide from your mistakes. So long as they are not, in some helpful way, dealt with, they will follow you wherever you go.

      So Jesus shows up by the shores of the lake where Peter has fled. And it is there that he helps Peter to deal with his mistake. What Jesus does for Peter there is clearly connected to his mistake – his denial. Three times Peter has denied even knowing Jesus and three times Jesus asks him the same question. It is obvious to everybody that this is no coincidence.

      And none of this is particularly comfortable – in fact it’s downright awkward. By the third time that Jesus asks the question, we are told that Peter is feeling hurt and his response is clearly one of exasperation: “Lord, you know everything,” – in other words, why are you torturing me with this uncomfortable line of questioning? But Jesus continues on because he knows that there are things that are more important than avoiding awkwardness – his friend, and helping his friend to get over his remorse for his mistake is more important than avoiding awkwardness.

      And then there’s the question that Jesus focuses on. You know what we tend to do when somebody makes a mistake or when somebody gets something wrong: we tend to focus on the mechanics of the thing. We focus on procedure. In fact, we do that an awful lot, particularly in the church. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it in a congregation or a meeting of a presbytery or some other church court. You see some people get into a disagreement over something – for example, say that you have one group of people over here who want to bring in a refugee family and another group over there who have a problem with that. You know, there is a substantial difference of opinion that is, at the very least, well worth discussing. But I’ve noticed that, in the church, we don’t discuss the difference of opinion.

      What we tend to do instead is argue over procedure – the opponents to welcoming refugees might complain, for example, that the people who want to bring them in failed to seek the proper approvals or something like that. And we spend all of our time arguing over that rather than about the substantial, and I would say very important, issues about welcoming refugees. I don’t know if you realize this, but we do that kind of thing all the time.

      Did you notice the Jesus doesn’t do that with Peter? In fact, he doesn’t even bring up the specific action that Peter got wrong. Jesus doesn’t ask him, “Peter, um, have you ever met me? Do you know me?” That is what we would likely focus on. But Jesus knows that that is not the issue and goes directly to the heart of the issue. We could learn a lot from Jesus at this point. Deal with the real issues rather than getting hung up over procedure.

      The real issue, apparently as far as Jesus is concerned, is love: “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Jesus doesn’t care about the particular things that you’ve gotten wrong or the particular mistakes that you have made near as much as he cares about where your heart is. That is always where he will direct the question and that is always where the healing that he wants to perform in your life will begin.

      So, basically, Jesus communicates to Peter that he understands what Peter has done, that he cares and that he’s not going to beat Peter up over what he got wrong – that he cares more about what Peter’s underlying motives are than he does about the particular things he got wrong.

      But then, Jesus does something truly amazing. He gives Peter an assignment: “feed my sheep.” It is at this point that God’s grace shines through for Peter. For Jesus, with eyes wide open and knowing completely what Peter has done wrong and why, is calling Peter to be a leader. And he is not calling Peter to be a leader in spite of his mistake. He seems to be calling Peter to be a leader becauseof his mistake.

      This is how God operates. He knows that you’ve made mistakes. He knows that you’ve gotten things wrong. But he also knows if you love him and if you desire to serve him. Jesus chooses not to hold your mistakes against you and he chooses to entrust you with leadership in his church. And here is the secret: there is no leader anywhere in the church for whom that is not true. It was true right from the very beginning – right from Peter. It was true for some of those giant figures of church history. They all got things wrong. They all fell short in one way or another. They were no different from you and Jesus would love to use you too.

      Mistakes mess us up. They hurt our relationships, make us feel bad about ourselves and make us feel like we are disqualified from doing anything that really matters. Basically, what Jesus told Simon Peter by the side of the lake that day was that he had come back to tell him and all of us that that is no longer true. Jesus rose from the dead to set us free from the tyranny of our mistakes. All you need to do is claim the freedom that Jesus’ resurrection gives you.

     

      

Hespeler, 28 February, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Mark 8:31-36, Philippians 3:4b-11, Psalm 49:5-15, (1 Maccabees 6:32-47)

ver a century and a half before Jesus was born, the land of Judea was invaded and occupied by the Greek speaking king of the Seleucid Empire. But the Jews did not like being ruled over by Greeks who were, they felt, destroying their culture and faith, so they rebelled. The Jewish revolt was led by one particular Jewish family, the most famous member of which was a general called Judas Maccabaeus.

      The tales of the Maccabean Revolt are amazing, but they did not, unfortunately, make it into our Bibles. You can read the stories in the Books of the Maccabees which are found in a collection of books called the Apocrypha. These books are included in some of the Bibles of some Christian denominations and they are well worth reading even if we don’t quite consider them to be Scripture. It is in the First Book of the Maccabees that you will find the story of Eleazar and the elephant.

      It happened like this: the Jews were in a great battle against the Greeks. The Greeks had come with far superior numbers of infantry and cavalry. Even more frightening, the Greeks had brought mighty war elephants from India with them. These elephants were terrifying to the Jews who had never fought them before. The elephants advanced on the Jews with great towers built upon their backs – towers were filled with spearmen. The beasts were surrounded by huge phalanxes of infantrymen. The Jews were terribly outnumbered and overawed by their enemy. They were fighting for their very lives.

      In the midst of this battle Eleazar, a younger brother of Judas Maccabaeus, noticed that one of the elephants carried, on its back, a tower that was larger and more magnificent than all the others. He concluded that this must be the king’s elephant and so in a great feat of bravery, he grabbed his spear and single-handedly fought his way through the phalanx of men that surrounded that particular elephant. He killed, it is told, a thousand men or more, and finally arrived at the beast. He knew there was no point in attacking the armored sides of the elephant, so he threw himself underneath its belly. He stabbed upwards, slaughtering the animal with a single blow.

      It was a mistake, of course – actually a number of mistakes on a number of levels. I could find nowhere in the histories whether Eleazer was correct in his conclusions. I don’t know whether it was the king’s elephant or not, but, even if it was, Eleazer had made a significant miscalculation. You see, killing the king’s elephant is not the same thing as killing the king. The elephant died but there is no record of the king being injured in any way in that particular battle.

      The second mistake was that, though Eleazer did indeed perform a reckless deed of bravery, you might well question what it actually accomplished. The Jews were terribly outnumbered on that battlefield, they really had no hope, no matter how brave anyone was, and they soon had to retreat and leave the field in Greek hands.

      But the third mistake was the biggest. It is a simple matter of gravity. If you kill an elephant while you are underneath that elephant, you are going to die too. And so it was that Eleazer, while accomplishing nothing at all, failed and, some might say, did so rather stupidly.

      We have some very particular ideas about how things are supposed to go in this world. We worship success. And success means continuing to live and to grow and it means that things just keep getting better and better. We expect that things should continually get stronger and more prosperous and that anything else is failure. That is the model of renewal that the world offers us and it means that any form of death is to be considered a defeat and a failure. So many of us would not have any trouble recognizing Eleazer as a failure.

      But is that the only way to think about renewal and success? Jesus certainly had a different model. He came to establish this thing that he called the kingdom of God. He started preaching and gathering followers and created quite a movement. I’m sure that his followers, like Simon Peter, were expecting that things would just take off and grow from there – success, success and more success.

      And that is probably why Peter was so shocked one day when Jesus, out of the blue, just started to say, that he had to “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.” Peter was very nice about it and everything, but he felt that he really needed to straighten Jesus out. As soon as he got a chance, he pulled Jesus over for a little private conversation. “Jesus,” he said, “you can’t say things like that. You can’t talk about dying. You have to talk about winning, not losing.” But Jesus had a very different definition of success, a definition that included dying and (though Peter seems to have missed it when he said it) then rising from the dead. Jesus said, “you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” His meaning was clear: if Peter really understood “divine things,” he would have seen how necessary it was that Jesus should die. But, of course, succeeding by dying makes absolutely no sense according to the world’s way of seeing such things.

      Many years ago, when I first began my ordained ministry, I was working in a church on the West Island of Montreal. It was a church that had been in decline for many years before I ever arrived. The reasons for decline were many but had a lot to do with the declining Anglophone population and an oversupply of protestant churches in an area that never grew as much as had been expected.

      When I arrived at the church, we started looking intently at our situation. And before long we came to the conclusion that, unless this church changed in some pretty radical ways, it would not survive long-term. So we set to work trying to find the radical change that would work for us. And we came up with some bold plans. We worked hard to turn those plans into reality, but, one by one, they all kind of fell apart, mostly because of things that were beyond our control.

      The Session and the congregation had decided that if we weren’t able to make one of our plans for radical change work, our other option was to shut down as a congregation and to do it in the best way possible – to do it before we ran out of the energy and enthusiasm that would be necessary for people to go somewhere else and continue to contribute to building up the kingdom of God in this world.

      Now, a congregation, in our Presbyterian system can’t do that. It can’t just shut down. What it has to do is ask the Presbytery to dissolve the congregation. So I found myself in the interesting position of having to go to the Presbytery of Montreal and, on behalf of the congregation and session, ask them to shut us down. And it was at that point that I was accused of being a bad Christian.

      I was told, in front of all my fellow ministers, that the church is supposed to always be successful and victorious. In particular, it is always supposed to be getting bigger and stronger no matter what the circumstances are. To give into institutional death, therefore (to shut down a congregation) was the epitome of unfaithfulness. I was a bad Christian for even allowing my congregation to think of such a thing. Now that I think of it, it was the very same kind of rebuke that Simon Peter made to Jesus.

      The primary path to renewal and new life that God offers us in the Bible is not continual success without having to give up anything. The primary path to renewal that God offers us is resurrection and you can’t get to resurrection without going through death. I saw that firsthand in my first congregation. That congregation did shut down and it was just as painful and difficult as you might imagine it to be. But that painful death also led to a wonderful new beginning – a resurrection. The majority of the members of that church chose, of their own free will, to go and join together with the people of another Presbyterian congregation about ten minutes away. And that congregation went from just surviving to become one of the most exciting and dynamic ministries on the West Island. It was a marvelous new birth for everyone – the kind of resurrection that God specializes in.

      And I’ve seen that same pattern in a number of other situations in the church over the years. I knew a church in Windsor that, for years, struggled to survive. They were right downtown, on the very edge of the university campus, and yet they had consistently failed to attract any students or people from their community into the church. They were too busy just surviving to have any kind of significant ministry.

      And eventually, the people of that congregation came to a decision. They actually had some significant financial assets but what they didn’t have left was any real life. So the people of that congregation let it die. They walked away from the congregation and from the assets that they had. It was a death and it was very hard. But they did a brave thing. They gave their considerable assets to the Presbytery and they asked the Presbytery to build a new ministry to serve the people that they were unable to. And that is what the Presbytery did. They took the assets and created an entirely new ministry called the University Community Church that has since gone on to have some very meaningful ministry to the students and faculty on that campus. It was a marvelous new birth, but it was only possible after a painful death had occurred. That is how God often works.

      In fact, I would go so far as to say that the main way in which God wants to do his work in the church today is by means of death and resurrection. Now, I do not mean by that all of our congregations nor that this congregation needs to shut down. There are cases, no doubt where that will happen, but I don’t mean that it will happen everywhere.

      But what I do think it means is this: that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for [Jesus’] sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” It means that if we cling to life to the point where all we are doing is channeling energy into survival, then we will die for sure. I’ve seen that happen in many, many churches.

      And it also means that, for many churches to find the power of God that they need, they will have to die – they will have to die to something. They will have to be willing to give up something that has been precious and meaningful to them in order to embrace the resurrection that God is offering them. God specializes in offering his people resurrection, the only problem is that you have to pass through death, in some sense, first. Apart from that it’s wonderful.

      Think of it this way: no matter what, Eleazer, brother of Judas Maccabaeus, would be dead by now. He understood that too – that he would die someday. And it seems to me that he decided that, if he was going to die anyway, he might as well die doing something that mattered to him – taking down the king’s elephant. He didn’t fear such a death as it was for the sake of his people.

      And we can learn so much from Eleazer’s so-called mistake. We have all the more reason to be willing to die to the things that God asks us to die to in the pursuit of the kingdom, for we have the promise of resurrection – the promise of a God who gives new life and new possibilities to those who have learned (because Jesus taught them) not to be afraid of death and not to value survival over significance.

      Now, what exactly, do we in this congregation need to die to in order to experience the resurrection that God wants to give us? I’m not sure I can answer that question right now. I have a few suspicions for there are no doubt some things that we have here that we value more than meaningful ministry. But better than for me give my thoughts is for all of us to earnestly seek God in prayer asking him, what do I need to die to in order to experience resurrection – what do we need to die to in order that there be new life. Let’s take some time in silent prayer on that very question.

      

      At one point, during those dark times, the king was taking shelter in a house on the Island of Athelney in the m arshes. He was staying with an old woman who, I suspect, didn’t even know who she was sheltering. One day when she was alone with the king, she made some cakes and put them on the fire to bake. She told Alfred that she was going out and asked him to watch the cakes and take them off the fire before they burned. He agreed and she left.

      So, like any of us would, Paul didn’t like his weakness and he wanted to get rid of it. If his weakness caused him to make any mistakes, I’m sure he would have liked to cover them up. But Paul received a surprising and powerful answer that made him think about his weaknesses and his mistakes in a whole new way. “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” And that answer, that he obviously received from Christ in some unmistakable way, led him to a stunning new way to think of his own weaknesses and to say, “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

      I know that such a statement doesn’t really make any sense in the way that our world understands such things. How could somebody’s weaknesses actually become a foundation of strength for them? The short answer is that it is only possible because of God’s grace.

      This was obviously a lesson that Paul only learned through hard experience and by earnestly seeking God in prayer. But other wise people have also found certain echoes of this same truth down through history. One person who comes to mind is Carl Jung, one of the great fathers of modern Psychology. Jung was a man who felt a real vocation to be a healer in the life of people by developing his methods and approaches to psychotherapy.

      One of the key insights that Jung had had to do with his own weaknesses and woundedness. He had had a very difficult early life particularly because his mother had suffered from mental illness and it left deep scars in him. As a result Carl’s natural impulse may have been to hide or ignore his weaknesses and his scars but, as he began to help other people, he discovered something amazing. The more he ignored or downplayed his faults, the less help he was to his patients. But the more he got in touch with his own weaknesses and woundedness – the more he understood these things about himself – he was able to help his patients in ways that he could never have thought possible.

      I happen to believe that, even if Jung was only using a scientific approach, his vulnerability and courage in dealing with his own woundedness was actually opening the door to God’s grace and healing power.

      Thus it was that Carl Jung introduced to the world the idea of the wounded healer, which he based on a number of ancient myths that featured a figure who was a powerful healer and yet also carried a grievous wound. But, while this figure of the wounded healer was indeed to be found in many ancient belief systems, the main reason for that, I think, is that there is a universal truth behind it. And that truth that is to be found in the Bible as well – like in this morning’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

      The truth of the matter is, my friends, that we are all like King Alfred. We all make mistakes. We all get things wrong. Even worse, we are all like Carl Jung. We have all been wounded and shaped by the bad things that have happened to us. We may not have suffered, like he did because of a parent who is mentally ill, but we have all had to deal with disappointment or insult or loss. And how often have I had people tell me that they are not eligible for any kind of leadership role because of their faults or wounds or their fear of making mistakes?

      I am not saying that God intentionally gives us flaws or that God wants bad things to happen to us. To tell the truth, I don’t really have a great explanation for why the bad things happen in this world. Maybe it’s something that we will understand someday; I don’t pretend to know now. But I do know this: God has this incredible way of taking all of the bad, all of the flaws and all of the weaknesses that we carry around with us and of turning them into blessing. That power is called grace.

      We see that in the story of Alfred and his cakes. Yes, Alfred had his faults and one of those faults was apparently that he had some trouble focussing on minor details like how long the cakes had been in the oven. But that weakness of Alfred was actually one of the things that made him great. His mind was always focusing on the big picture, and that focus on the big picture was actually the thing that got him out of the marshes and on the offensive against the Vikings. It was what allowed him to come up with an overall strategy to build his kingdom in such a way that it could weather the storm that was created by the Vikings. As a result, we have Alfred to thank for the fact that England survived at all. We have Alfred to thank for the fact that we speak English and not a Scandinavian language today.

      Alfred’s weaknesses and his strengths were unbreakably tied to each other. And I think that is probably true of all of us. When we flee from our weaknesses or hide from our mistakes, we may be cutting ourselves off from our greatest strengths as well.

      But even more important than that, when we’re not afraid to face our weaknesses and mistakes, when we can acknowledge them and even embrace them, God is able to take them and use them to bring about extraordinary healing and blessing. That is what Paul was saying to the church in Corinth. One of the reasons for that is that when we are weak or when we fall short, it is like we’re getting out of the way. And when we get out of the way – especially when we get our egos out of the way – that allows God the opening that he needs to let his grace shine through.

      But here is the really amazing part. We assume that God will use us and bring blessing to us in spite of our weaknesses and our mistakes. But that is not how God likes to do it at all. No, God loves to use us and bless through us because of our weaknesses and errors. That was what Carl Jung discovered in his therapeutic work and theories – though, of course, he would not have spoken about it as something that God did.

      That is why, for example, people who struggle with alcoholism or other addictions can often only find a way to break free of the cycles of using with the help of people who struggle with the same issues. The real secret of the success of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous is that they create a community of people who understand each other’s struggles because they are part of their own weakness and brokenness. They are able to come to terms with their own addiction by getting to know others who share the weakness. They are able to bring about healing for themselves and others by directly helping other people who share their brokenness. That’s not just how it works with addiction, that is how it works with almost every form of healing and renewal.

       Many of us have been called to be leaders in this church in various capacities. The temptation, when you are put into that kind of position in the church or anywhere is to run away from your weaknesses, to hide from them. I mean, we think of all the great leaders that were there in the past – gigantic figures who seemed to have no flaws – and we think that we have to be like them. But you know what? Those famous leaders of the past had their flaws too. It is just that we have largely forgotten them over time as we forget the things that went wrong and just recall the things that we loved about them.

      And consider this: God is calling you to be a leader in his kingdom – wherever and however that might be – God is calling you to be a leader and he’s not doing it in spite of your weaknesses, your faults or your mistakes. He is doing it becauseof them – because of everything that makes you who you are. Think about what that does to your excuses.

      I think that our challenge as leaders is to be who we are – to be strong enough to be vulnerable about our weaknesses and our failures – to share those things in the appropriate situations. God promises that, when we do that, it allows his grace to shine through. Alfred was a flawed person who made mistakes. None of that prevented him from being hailed by all as “the great.” Your greatness – and many of you have much greatness – will only be enhanced by you coming to terms with your own faults and weaknesses. Stop running away from them. Stop hiding them. Let God’s power be made perfect in your weakness.

hy did Jesus have to die? That is, you might say, one of the most central questions of the Christian faith. And if you ask that question of most practicing Christians you will likely get an answer along the lines of this: “Jesus had to die for my sins,” or “Jesus had to die to save us” or “so that we could go to heaven.”

      And some people will be happy enough with that answer. But every so often you’re going to come across a really annoying person like me who isn’t satisfied with that simple answer and starts to ask really some tough questions. “Well,” the annoying person says, “I thought that you said that this God of yours was all powerful – that he could do whatever he wanted. And I also thought you said that God was full of mercy and lovingkindness. If God wanted to forgive you and let you go to heaven, couldn’t he just do that? I mean, sure, you may have sinned but God doesn’t have to let something like that stand in his way if he wants to forgive you, does he? Why would the bloody and painful death of Jesus be needed for that?”

      And if you ask questions like that long enough, you’ll eventually find someone who’ll give you a fuller explanation. And the standard Christian explanation these days goes like this: Yes, God is loving and merciful and wants very much to be forgiving to us but there is just one thing: God is also just. In fact, God is so just that he cannot simply let any injustice or sin slide without there being some sort of payment made. God’s justice has to be satisfied with due punishment.

      And that’s where Jesus comes in. God looked around to find someone who could pay the price and take the punishment in our place so that he could forgive us and it turned out that only one person would do. Only someone who was perfectly innocent (and so didn’t need be punished for their own sins) would be able to play that role. So God turned to his only begotten son, Jesus, and chose to send him down, live a perfect life and die as an innocent man. Jesus’ suffering and death would be enough to satisfy God’s need for justice and therefore allow God to forgive us for our sins.

     That, as I say, is the standard explanation these days. The name for it, in case you want to know, is the substitutionary theory of atonement. It is called that because the key element is that Jesus substitutes for us – takes our place and suffers the penalty that we deserve. It is a good theory, really. It makes good logical sense and is a compelling story. It is so compelling that many now think that it is the only way to understand the meaning of the death of Jesus and that it has always been how Christians thought. But that is not true.

      The substitutionary theory of atonement has only been around for about 1000 years – only half the length of time that Christian faith has been around. Where did the theory come from a thousand years ago? Well, it happened like this:

      The year 1066 ad is the only date that all English school girls and boys know off by heart – the most significant date in their country’s history. That was the year that England was invaded and conquered by the Normans who took over the entire government and local administration of the country. The Normans came from France and they spoke a unique dialect of French but they weren’t actually French. They were Norsemen – Viking raiders who had merely settled in France for a little while. And as Vikings, they had their own unique ideas about good government. Every Norman lord was master and judge of all within his domain. He settled all disputes, judged all crimes and punished every offender.

      And it was not an easy thing to appear as someone accused before a Viking lord because they were particularly prickly when it came to judging people. Vikings were famous for many things, but I am afraid that mercy was not one of them. And so mercy was not something that was easily found in a Norman court. Viking lords were very protective of what they saw as justice. They felt that no offence – not even the smallest – could be pardoned without due payment being made in some form or another. Their judicial motto was, “justice must be satisfied.”

      Now what, you might ask, could the Norman conquest of England possibly have to do with the Substitutionary Theory of Atonement? As it turns out, everything. About thirty years after the conquest, the second Norman king of England appointed a man named Anselm to be the Archbishop of Canterbury.  And, a few years after that, Anselm of Canterbury wrote a book. He wrote it, he said, to defend the Christian faith against all those who would scoff at it – in particular the Jews and the Muslims. He called his book Cur Deus Homo in Latin. In English that translates as “Why did God become a human being.” In other words, he was trying to answer the question why did Jesus have to live as a man and why did he have to die.

      The book is important because in that book Anselm gave for the very first time in history the answer that we’ve been talking about – that Jesus had to die in our place to satisfy God’s unyielding justice so that God could forgive us. Anselm invented the substitutionary theory of atonement. It is very interesting to note that, although Christianity had been around for about 1000 years before that, nobody had managed to come up with that theory until Anselm came along.

      And there is a reason why only Anselm could have come up with that theory. As I said, the theory requires a very particular image of God – a God whose sense of justice is so inflexible that he can only forgive when he has been completely satisfied (even if he has to will the death of his only son to be satisfied). How is it that for the first thousand years of Christianity it never occurred to anybody that God would be that inflexible? And then Anselm came along and (as Archbishop of Canterbury) spent a lot of time in the courts of Viking lords watching them make their judgements. It’s not that hard to guess where his strange new view of God came from.

      That’s why it seems to me that the Vikings have muddled up our understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ death. If we buy into Anselm’s explanation of why Jesus had to come, we end up with a God who resembles a Viking lord. And I realize that almost all of the images that we use to talk about God are based on one human model or another and that we can’t really even talk about God without saying, “Well, he’s kind of like this” or “kind of like that.” But I just think that there are some better models for talking about God without imagining him as a Viking lord. The Bible uses many images when it talks about God: a father, a near eastern king, a kind master, a loving mother (yes, that image is used of God in the Bible) and all of those sorts of people were much more ready to exercise mercy in their relationships than your average Viking lord. And it goes without saying that the Bible never describes God as a Viking lord. But somehow, with the substitutionary theory of atonement, that is the idea of God we end up with.

      And so I suggest to you that it is time for us to get past our obsession with Anselm’s substitutionary theory of atonement. There are other ways of understanding what Jesus has truly accomplished for us without starting to imagine God as a Norman lord. The Bible does indeed talk about Jesus dying for us and about him dealing with the problem of sin for us but such talk has little to do with satisfying some Norman sense of justice.

      Instead, the Bible most often talks about the death of Christ as a sacrifice. And sacrifice had nothing to do with substitution in the ancient world. When a family in the ancient world took its year-old calf up to the altar for a sacrifice, there was no sense in which they understood that that calf was somehow taking the place of a family member. Nor did they see the death of the animal as some sort of punishment taken in their place. That is why I wanted to take the time during this season of Lent to understand how sacrifice functioned in the ancient world.

      On a practical level, it was all about providing a means for the people to safely eat meat once in a while. The sacrificial system provided a humane means of slaughtering animals and a professional, well-trained guild for safely butchering them. These people were called priests. And, most important, the system also provided a safe means of disposing of those parts of the animal that they would not or could not eat by burning them up on the altar.

      But sacrifice was not just about meeting those practical needs. It also had a very important spiritual function. The sacrifice brought the worshippers together with one another and with their God. The shared sacrificial meal where the family ate the good cuts of the meat while God shared in the meal by means of the fat, bones, blood and other inedible parts that burned up on the altar was the basis of their relationship with their God. In the sacrifice they came to know their God in ways that would not have been possible otherwise.

      And that is how I have come to see the death of Jesus – as a sacrifice. In his death Jesus does tackle the problem of our sin which is, at its foundation, a problem of separation between us and God. We had wandered far from God and didn’t know how to find our way back but Jesus’ death brought us back into relationship with God just like an ancient sacrifice renewed the ancient worshipper’s relationship with their God.

      We shouldn’t think of Jesus’ death as a mere substitution – Jesus taking our place and suffering our punishment – because Jesus didn’t speak of it as substitution. He spoke of it as participation: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” That is not Jesus’ responsibility in your place that is your responsibility in imitation of Jesus. If you want to be a follower of Jesus, you have to realize that that means following in the path that he has led.  That is where the real transformation begins.

      And, to attempt to answer Anselm’s question, “Why the God-Man,” why did Jesus have to become flesh and dwell among us, I think that the key answer is this: Jesus came to show us the grace and compassion and love of God. He knew that words weren’t going to be enough and so he had to show us what those things looked like. But the world cannot tolerate such love. The world cannot stand to be shown how wrong it is about everything. And so the response to Jesus was predictable. He was bound to end up on a cross sooner or later.

      But Jesus took that terrible and tragic death and, with God’s help, transformed his death into something much more meaningful – a sacrifice – the kind of sacrifice that can renew any and all relationships. In particular, he transformed his terrible death into a sacrifice that is able to renew our relationship with the living God – a sacrifice that is effective for all times and for any person who participates in it by taking up their cross and following him.

      

After leading a Study of "Body, Mind and Soul" within my congregation, I asked the participants what sort of feedback they wanted to give to the Justice and Church Doctrine Committees They asked me to send a summary of our discussions and observations into those committees. I have done that. Since we did not hold an additional meeting to share the report together, I just want to post it here so that the members of the group can read it. 

Hespeler, 14 February, 2016 © Scott McAndless

1 Corinthians 1:18-31, James 3:1-12, Matthew 7:1-11

n the summer and fall of 2012, the attention of the whole world was suddenly captivated by the events that had taken place in a small town in Spain with a population of less than 5000. In this town of Borja, it seemed, somebody had made a mistake. It wasn’t just your everyday, run of the mill kind of mistake either. It was a mistake that was so big that it was like nobody could look away.

In that town there was an ancient Roman Catholic Church and in that church there were various pieces of artwork such as you might find in such churches. One of them was a fresco that had been painted in the early 1930’s by a visiting artist.

The painting was a traditional piece of very common Roman Catholic art called the “Ecce Homo,”which is Latin for “Behold the Man.”It is a depiction of Jesus, crowned with thorns as he appeared before Pontius Pilate just before being sent off to be crucified.

The fresco was quite beautiful (in the traditional manner of such pieces) when it was first painted, but by 2012 it was not in good shape at all. Due to dampness in the walls the paint was fading and flaking away and it no longer looked at all as it once did. The poor state of the painting particularly saddened one of the members of the parish – a very devoted woman over the age of eighty named Cecilia Giménez. She knew that the parish did not have a lot of money to take on an expensive restoration and she was an amateur artist. She decided that she would take on a restoration of the artwork all by herself.

It was the results of Cecilia’s work that got everyone so interested. Armed only with her faith, her best intentions and limited talent, she pretty much botched the job. People criticised her and blamed her for what was clearly a terrible mistake. Cecilia took the criticism that was leveled at her so hard that she went and hid herself in her house – cutting herself off from community and church alike. She was deeply hurt, though, some would say, not without some good reason because, well, look at what she had done.

I think, therefore, that the story of Cecilia Giménez is an excellent place to start our journey during the season of Lent thi
s year because I want to focus on the idea of mistakes. Cecilia made a mistake. All evidence seems to indicate that it was a well-intentioned mistake and that it wasn’t malicious in any way. But none of that prevented all kinds of wrath and recriminations from raining down upon her.

I find the contrast between the work of the original artist and the work of Cecilia to be interesting. Both of them described the work that they did as an act of devotion. The original artist, in his own words, said that Ecce Homo was “the result of two hours of devotion to the Virgin of Mercy.” I take that to mean that the man was visiting the church – a church that was devoted to the mother of Jesus and to her mercy – and decided to donate a couple of hours of his time for the creation of a piece of art.

Cecilia, for her part actually made a very similar devotion. She saw a piece of art in a very bad state of repair and, in an act of devotion that she saw as dedicated to the Virgin Mary, she set out to repair it. And she put in the time in the effort – actually more time and effort that the original artist had done. There was no fault in her effort or in her desire – only in its execution. She simply did not have the level of training and experience that the original artist had had. But which one’s devotion was more acceptable in the eyes of the Lord? Did the artist’s devotion have more value because of his skill and training? Or did Cecilia’s pure heart count in the eyes of the Lord?

So this story gives us an excellent example of the problems that are created by our focus on mistakes. Mistakes cause a lot of damage, but I’m not talking about the damage caused by those well-intentioned souls who sometimes make mistakes. I’m talking about the damage that comes out of our reaction to them. Think of Cecilia. She was absolutely devastated by the reaction. She withdrew from the church. She hid in her home refusing to come out of it. She became a virtual hermit in her own town. It was personally devastating to her.

She said that she did not understand. She had only been well-intentioned. She had acted openly and not hidden her work in any way. She felt targeted and deeply hurt. I’m not saying, of course, that the people who were criticizing her didn’t have any justification. She had effectively destroyed an irreplaceable piece of art. What’s more, it would be almost impossible to calculate the monetary value of what could be called her act of vandalism.

So I’m hardly trying to suggest that her critics were wrong to say what they did. But, just because you can justifiably say something, does not always mean that you should say it? And does it mean that you need to say it in a way that hurts a person? That is an important question in any context, but I would suggest it is extremely important in the context of the church. The church is supposed to be, after all, a place of grace.

I’m not sure how grace-filled the people in that church were. But I do know one person whose grace never fails. And that is the most interesting part of Cecilia’s story. Cecilia’s mistake and the reaction that her neighbours had is not the end of the story. Today there are very few people in Borja who are angry at Cecilia. You see, there’s a reason why we know the story of Cecilia even though it just happened in a small town in Spain. We are living, after all, in the age of the internet and, thanks to the internet, a small event that takes place in a small town can sometimes come to the attention of the entire world. And that is what happened with Cecilia’s painting. Suddenly her picture was everywhere. At first, it is true, everyone was just laughing at her and her story. What a fool they all said.

But then something else started to happen. I’m sure that, at first, it was just a lark. People said, “Why don’t we go to Borja and see Cecilia’s artwork for ourselves? Why don’t we go and have a laugh and take selfies there and post them on the internet?” But then, before you knew it, it became a thing. Everyone started doing it.

And soon, this minor town that had been teetering on the brink of economic collapse had an amazing tourist industry on its hands. The town’s economy was saved and it wasn’t the only thing to revive. The little church also started to charge a little fee for people to see it and take their selfies. It seemed as if Cecilia had saved both her town and her church from possible extinction.

And then there was the work of art itself. No, the art critics never learn to love it or anything like that. But at least some of the observers noted that the piece of art made them think and feel in ways that the traditional art of the Catholic Church had never done. Some noted, for example, that, while the original artwork depicted Jesus lifting his eyes towards heaven, in Cecilia’s work, the Saviour turns his eyes towards you. Perhaps Cecilia had managed to make at least some people think a little bit differently about their Saviour and hers. Art, after all, doesn’t always have to be beautiful in order to help us to see something meaningful that we never saw before.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul explains what I think is the great principle that is at work in the story of Cecilia and her art restoration: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”

You see, we all think we are so smart. We have our plans and our strategies and they can often be very successful. Someone could have come up with a plan, for example, to revive the economy of the town of Borja. In fact, there actually were some such plans in place. And some highly paid consultant also could have been brought in to revitalize Cecilia’s parish church. Such well laid plans could have brought about many good things. And, of course, God does sometimes bless such plans because God wants towns and churches and people to do well.

But if the town was saved by some plan that was brought forward like that, who would get the glory? I’ll tell you who: the planners, the designers and maybe the politicians who paid for the project. That is, according to the letter to the Corinthians, why God likes to step in and shower with blessings the Cecilias of this world – the people who may try to get it right but often get it wrong. That way, not only is the blessing bigger and better than what anyone else could have planned for, it is also abundantly clear who the glory really belongs to.

It just seems to be God’s favourite way of acting. That is probably why no matter what we plan for in the life of the church, it never quite goes exactly as planned. At least, I’ve never seen it. We may make our plans and bring in our consultants and get to work and yet you can be sure that, at some point, some little thing will just go wrong and threaten to blow the whole thing out of the water. But here’s the crazy part: later, when you look back on it, you will realize that it was that moment when it all went wrong that led to some of the most helpful outcomes. It is another case of the foolishness of this world being more effective than all the wisdom and the planning of the wise.

We have a kind of a mistake-o-phobia in the church, it seems to me. We are too afraid of making mistakes and so sometimes avoid even trying something that might be a little bit different. Recognizing that God does bless and even prosper the mistake-makers is something that can set you free to try new things without any fear of what you might get wrong because that is how God wants you to live.

The other way our fear of mistakes comes out is in the criticism we heap upon those who do make mistakes – the Cecilias of the world. And you know how devastating that was to Cecilia. It almost destroyed the woman. And, since we all do make mistakes, that leaves us all vulnerable to such criticism. It can do so much harm. And it can so easily change the environment of the church from a place where we build each other up to a place where we tear each other to pieces. That, I know, God doesn’t bless.

So God sends mistakes into our lives and into our churches and into our towns and he loves to use them to challenge our assumptions about what really matters. Next time you make a mistake – or the next time you see someone else making a mistake – take it as a challenge. God is asking you to imagine what great thing he might have in store for you, or for the church or for some other worthwhile project, in what you or somebody else just got plain wrong.

           

Hespeler, 7 February, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Amos 5:21-24, Matthew 5:1-10, Psalm 82

      Such justice is not always completely satisfying, of course. If a terrible crime, such as a murder, is committed, we may be glad to see the perpetrator punished but we also recognize that even the sternest of sentences – even the death penalty where it still exists – cannot entirely satisfy. After all, no punishment, no matter how severe, can ever bring back a murder victim. For most of us, justice may be a good thing, but it is really only a way to make the evil of the world a bit better. It doesn’t make the evil go away.

      So there you have two words, righteousness and justice, about which we may have some mixed feelings. We would see them, however as two very different words with quite different meanings. Now, what if I were to tell you that the Bible only has one word? There is a word in the Bible that is sometimes translated into English as righteousness and sometimes as justice, but is just one word in the original languages. This is true both in the Hebrew of the Old Testament where the word is tsedeq and in the Greek of the New Testament where it is dikaiosunē.

      Think about that for a few moments. Every time you are reading in the Bible, and you come across the word righteousness, the people who translated that verse made a choice and could have used the word justice. And every time you see justice, it could have been righteousness. How might that change how we read some of our most well-loved passages?

      But an even more important question is what did that word – the original Hebrew or Greek word – really mean to the people for whom the Bible was written? And I think that that question can best be answered by taking a look at our Psalm reading this morning. Psalm 82 is, in many ways, one of the strangest chapters in the entire Bible. It presents what appears to be a meeting of what is called the divine council. God – the God of Israel – is there and is clearly presiding over the meeting. But there are other figures at this meeting and the strange thing is that they are all identified as gods. This is something that marks this Psalm as very strange in the biblical tradition which is generally quite insistent that there is only one God and that any other gods that people identify are merely false gods or idols.

      There are, however, a few biblical texts like this one that speak of the relationship between the God of Israel and the gods of other nations in the way that we see in this psalm. It is perhaps a throwback to older ways of thinking before that strong strain of Jewish monotheism fully developed. Or perhaps it was never really intended to be taken literally. After all, remember that a psalm is poetry.

      The message of the psalm is very serious, whether you take it literally or not, because in it we see God judging the gods of these other nations of the earth and condemning them – even threatening them with death. Why? There is really only one reason: justice, that very special word that is, in Hebrew, tsedeq. God condemns the gods of the other nations for their failure to act in justice. So, when God tells them what they have done wrong, we have a perfect description of what, in God’s eyes, justice is really all about. “How long will you judge unjustly, God asks, “and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

      So here we see what tsedeq – justice and righteousness – really means to God. It is not primarily about individuals being upright and pure and moral, though it does include that. And it is not primarily about criminals being fairly punished for crimes either, though it does include that as well. The justice that God is particularly talking about is mostly about how certain groups in society are treated – specifically the weak, the orphans, the lowly, the destitute and the needy. That is what God is criticising the gods of these other nations about, their failure to protect and provide for those sorts of people.

      So tsedeq (justice and righteousness), as defined by the Bible, is first and foremost about how people are treated in society. It is about treating people fairly and as equally as possible. And since there are some people in society (such as the rich and the powerful) who have certain advantages and often prosper at the expense of the less powerful, justice often looks like someone going out of their way to protect or support the weakest, poorest and most marginalized members of society.

      This kind of justice also has its basis in the very nature of God. The reason why, in the psalm, the God of Israel is able to criticize the gods of these other nations is not because his nation is stronger than theirs. On the contrary, Israel was a rather insignificant nation in world affairs at that point in history. Nevertheless, God may judge and condemn the gods of these other nations because God knows what real justice is. In fact, the very definition of justice is found in the nature of God.

      The Prophet Amos understood that that was what God really wanted. He looked around at the people of his own day and this is what he saw. He saw people who were trying to look righteous. They were doing the kinds of things that made them feel like they were better, more religious and more pious than other people. They were doing the things that, they thought, would make God approve of them – things like observing holy festivals and solemn assemblies to talk about righteous things. They were offering burnt offerings to demonstrate how good and righteous they were. But they were not doing justice. In fact, Amos observed that they were doing the very opposite of justice as God saw it because they were profiting and enriching themselves at the expense of some of the poorest and most marginalized people in their society.

      That is why Amos knew that he could speak to them and rebuke them in the name of God. He told them what God thought of their so-called righteousness: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.” God clearly doesn’t care for what this world often thinks of as righteousness – at least, not for the outward showiness of it all. What God does desire, Amos says, is clear, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

      Just realizing that there is only one word in the Bible that is translated sometimes as justice and sometimes as righteousness is something that can actually revolutionize the way that you read your Bible. For example, take this well-known and well-loved verse that we read this morning from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. We read it in a translation that is probably quite familiar to most of us. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

      You know, I always thought that I knew what that verse meant. It meant that if you sought to be righteous – if you did your best to always do the right thing, to be pure and spotless and maybe better than other people, you would be rewarded. You would get the righteousness you were looking for and you would receive a reward from God for your dedication to what was right. And yes, it does mean that. But is that what Jesus (and the gospel writer) primarily meant for us to understand?

      Remember that that word that is translated as righteousness is the word dikaiosunē– the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word tsedeq. That means that the verse could have equally well been translated as, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.” That is to say that those whose greatest desire is the kind of justice that God was demanding from the gods of the other nations in Psalm 82 – the kind of justice that particularly consisted of protecting the weak and helping the poor and saving those who had no one to help them – that these are the ones who are blessed.  Somehow I think that Jesus may have had more of that side of the idea of justice in mind when he said this.

      I mean look at what Jesus went on to say from there. Jesus ends this whole part of his sermon by saying, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” And, once again, the word that is translated as righteousness there is the Greek word, dikaiosunē.  Now what, exactly, did Jesus think that people might be persecuted for?  Was he predicting that you would be persecuted for doing the right thing, for being pure and better than everybody else? Well, sure, perhaps. That might happen sometimes.

      But isn’t it a little bit more likely that you will run into persecution because you are working for justice? Think, for example, of Martin Luther King Jr. thrown in the Birmingham City jail. Why was he put in there? For his excessive righteousness – for being too pure. No, not him. He actually had some problems along that line. But he sure was thrown in jail for standing up for and demanding change for a certain group that were systematically disempowered in American society. He was persecuted for justice – biblically understood justice – and not really for righteous.

      And I think that this is exactly the kind of situation that Jesus had in mind when he spoke about persecution. That’s why I think that he had the same thing in mind when he spoke of those who hunger and thirst for justice and promised them satisfaction.

      I think that the practical applications of this one are pretty clear and straightforward. We have spent too much of our corporate Christian lives in the pursuit of righteousness. And I don’t mean righteousness in the sense of being the best people that we can be and doing the right things as much as is humanely possible. There is nothing wrong and everything right about pursuing that kind of righteousness. No, the kind of righteousness that gets us in trouble is the kind that makes us go through motions of religiosity and then makes us feel like we must be better than other people because of it. I have it on good authority from Amos that God hatesthat kind of righteousness.

      We need to let go of that and pour our hearts into the pursuit of justice for the sake of the displaced, the homeless, the weak and the forgotten. That is what will bring us closest to the heart of God. This week, your assignment is simply to do that. Find someone who, for whatever reason, is marginalized or disempowered in our society. Look around, I don’t think that such people are too hard to find. Do one thing, however small, to demonstrate God’s love to them and do it without judging them in any way. That is what God is looking for. It is what God calls justice.

     

Hespeler, 31 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless

2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20, John 14:1-17, Psalm 8

ne Tuesday morning several years ago, I was busy, working in my office, crafting a sermon, when I was interrupted by a phone call. The woman on the other end of the line only introduced herself as Sister Eunice. She wouldn’t say who she was calling for or what her goals were, but she wanted to ask me some questions. I, perhaps somewhat foolishly, agreed to try and answer them.

      She started asking her questions and it quickly became clear to me that, in her mind at least, I was on trial and that if I did not give what she saw as the right answers, she would judge me a heretic or worse. Then she asked this question: “Is Jesus Christ God?” She wanted a yes or no answer.
Actually, I guess she wanted a yes answer. But let me tell you something: the Christian church spent a few hundred years trying to figure out how to give anything but a yes or no answer to that very question. The answer it did come up with is something called the Trinity.

      I’m going to confess something to you here. I have never really wanted to preach a sermon about the Trinity. This is not because it isn’t an important topic in itself, but because I have just found that it isn’t all that important to people.

      Oh there was a time when it was considered to be vitally important. Did you know, for example, that there was a time when there were regularly riots in the streets of the City of Alexandria over the question of what was the precise relationship between the Father and the Son? Did you know, that, in the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa complained that he couldn’t go anywhere in the City of Constantinople without someone wanting to argue with you over the Trinity. He said, if you asked someone for change, they’d try to start and argument over whether the Son was begotten or not, is you asked the price of a loaf of bread, somebody would tell you that Father was greater than the Son; if you asked whether your bath was ready, the attendant would go on and on about how the Son was created.

      Now those are people who are really engaged in the question of the Trinity. People today, by contrast, have almost no interest in the issue whatsoever. They want, like Sister Eunice, to declare that Jesus is God and get onto other much more important things. The Trinity has just become this completely theoretical concept that you’re supposed to agree with but that has absolutely no practical application. Yes, you can find places where people earnestly discuss Trinitarian theology, where people disagree, but you are not going to find anyone taking it as seriously as people once did on the streets of Alexandria or Constantinople.

      Now, on one level, I do find that to be a really good thing. I am glad that people don’t feel the need to attack and hurt one another over or cause riots over slight disagreements about the relationship between the Father and the Son. But, at the same time, isn’t this stuff supposed to matter? And yet we behave like it doesn’t.

      The Trinity is not really a Biblical concept. Yes, there are a couple of references to the formula, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the New Testament. We read both of those texts this morning. But those are not statements of fully formed Trinitarian theology. What we do find in the New Testament are reflections on the experience of the people in the early church. These earliest followers of Jesus had experienced something very powerful. Somehow, in this person of Jesus of Nazareth, they had experienced the presence of God in a way that they had never experienced it before. They also knew that Jesus had said a number of things that, at least when they remembered those statements afterwards, seemed to indicate that he also understood himself to be the revelation of God – statements like the one in the Gospel of John where Jesus says, “If you know me, you will know my Father also.”They also knew that they continued to experience the presence of God in the life of the church through the action of the Holy Spirit among them.

      I am convinced that that is about as far as those earliest Christians went with their thinking about the nature of Jesus. They didn’t seek to precisely define the relationship between the Father and the Son or the Son and the Spirit. They just knew what they had experienced. And besides, they were kind of busy doing other things: preaching the gospel, acting with compassion, dealing with some persecution of their faith here and there. Who had time for a philosophical discussion of the internal relationship of the God that they had experienced in three ways?

      And then something happened. A guy named Constantine happened. Constantine was fighting to take over the Roman Empire and, on the night before his greatest battle, the story goes, Constantine received a vision that told him that, if he fought under the sign of a Christian cross, he would prevail. He did, he won, he became Roman Emperor and before you knew it, Christianity had gone from being an outlaw religion to the most important religion of all.

      We have no way of knowing how genuine Constantine’s conversion was but some have noted that it may have been a politically smart move for him to make. For one thing, his army was full of Christians and fighting under a Christian banner was a great way to win them over to his cause.

      Constantine also had another problem. The imperial administration was in a mess. And, as he looked around, the Christian Church was about the only institution that was organized enough to unite and hold together an empire that was falling apart. He was looking to use the unity of the church to build up the unity of his empire.

      But there was a problem: the church wasn’t united. As soon as the persecutions ended and the church found some breathing space, guess what happened. People started to find the time to have philosophical discussions about the internal relationship of the God that they experienced in three ways. And, lo and behold, when it came down to defining it and putting it into words, they didn’t quite agree.

      In particular they disagreed over what was the precise relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Did the Father create the Son? Had the son always existed? Were they equals or was one greater than the other? Those kinds of questions.

     Well, Constantine wasn’t going to have that kind of disunity in a church that was supposed to reunite his empire. So this is what he did: he brought all the church leaders from all of the different parts of the empire together to a place called Nicaea, put them in a big room and said, “I don’t care what you decide, just agree on something. You’re staying here until you do.” And that is when the church basically came up with the doctrine of the Trinity and in particular the statement of it that we find in Nicene Creed that we read this morning.

      So that kind of answers the question of why church came up with the particular doctrine of the Trinity at that time. And it maybe helps you understand why it was important to Constantine that they agree even if he didn’t care what they agreed. What it doesn’t explain is why everyone apart from Constantine was so worked up over the question. Why were they rioting in Alexandria? Why was it the only topic of conversation in Constantinople?

      Well the reason why has much more to do with politics than with theology. This is the thing that people miss: Constantine, and the Roman Empire with him, may have embraced Christianity at least as a political tool, but there were some things that did not change. Most importantly, Roman Emperors had, ever since the days of Caesar Augustus, been seen as divine. They were gods. And Constantine, despite his need of the church, did not, give up his divine status. He was still a god and that was one of the foundations of his political power.

      And, in that political context, the discussion of the place of Jesus within the Trinity takes on a different meaning. If Constantine is divine and Jesus is divine and both are subordinate to God, than it becomes easy to see the emperor and Jesus as equals. It makes it easier for the emperor to act with divine authority over the church and all Christians – to demand their unquestioning obedience. There were many Christian leaders who went to Nicaea and argued for that position, but they lost of course. The final decision that was made at the Council of Nicaea was to make it absolutely clear that the Son was in no way subordinate to the Father – not in his creation and not in his nature.

      Constantine may have professed not to care what the church decided, but he did come to regret it. He and many of his imperial successors ultimately rejected the decisions of the Council and embraced the heretic position that the Son was subordinate to the Father. It was just easier to run the Empire as they wished that way.

      So, in that sense, what the church was arguing about at the Council of Nicaea was not just some theoretical question. It was a vital, every day question that was well worthy of being discussed in every bakery, every bath house and every home. The question was, who do we really answer to: Jesus or the emperor.

      I am a Trinitarian Christian. I believe in a God who is one and yet I recognize that I have, and the Christian body has, experienced that one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I’ve never really worried about the matter much beyond that. I’ve certainly never got caught up in those ancient arguments over what are the precise relationships between the persons of the Trinity. Those seemed to be theoretical formulations that had little to do with the practical needs of a Christian life.

      But recognizing that the people who fought for the decision at Nicaea were fighting for some very practical implications of how God was going to be seen in the empire makes me think that maybe some of those fine distinctions that they made can be useful to us.

      For example, the question that Sister Eunice asked me all those years ago, “Is Jesus God,” could be one of those fine distinctions that matter to us. I know that simply affirming that Jesus is God is something that a lot of people do today, but the Christian faith decided a long time ago that it cannot just be as simple as that. To say that Jesus is just God does not adequately capture what Jesus has done for us.

      Yes, it is true that Christians believe that we have experienced God in this person of Jesus. But we cannot say that Jesus is God without also confessing that he is fully human. We cannot talk about Jesus divinity without talking about his humanity. It would not have been enough for Jesus to simply be God and pretending or appearing to be human. The whole point of having a saviour like Jesus us that he understands what it is to be human with all of the problems, all of the weaknesses and all of the temptations that go with that. If Jesus had not been completely and utterly human, it would not have mattered that he was divine because he would not have connected with us in any way that mattered.

      And when we confess that Jesus is totally human, and yet completely divine (as the church confessed at Nicaea), it also does something else. It elevates Jesus above any authority – including church authorities, civic and political authorities –  that this world can muster. What Jesus asks of us is more important than what any of those other authorities can ask. That doesn’t mean that we cannot choose to honour and respect such authorities when we deal with them in this world, of course, but there is a remarkable freedom that is given to us as followers of Christ, of the one who is, “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made.” We answer to a higher authority to any found in this world.

      My challenge to you this week, therefore, is simply to live as a Trinitarian Christian. What that means, in my mind, is not that you have to wrap your mind around some complex definition of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What it practically means is that, when you come up against very human problems in this world – weakness, temptations, fears – you remember that you have an advocate on your side in Jesus who understands what you are going through. That can make a whole lot of difference.

      And when the powers of this world get you down – the gods of this present age (whether they be the market, the power of consumerism, the power of racism or hatred) – it means remembering that there is a higher authority to whom we answer and that you are set free to serve the one God – the God made known to us in Jesus Christ.

Hespeler, 24 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless

Mark 1:14-20, Ephesians 4:17-5:2, Psalm 32

ccording to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus really only had one sermon – one message that summed up all of the others. “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” That is how Mark introduced the entire preaching ministry of Jesus – essentially a three point sermon: 1) The kingdom of God is here. 2) repent and 3) accept that this is good news.

      And all evidence seems to indicate that his message found an audience. People appreciated it and received it as the good news that he said that it was. Think about that for a moment: the centrepiece of the message is repent. When was the last time you heard somebody telling people to repent and it sounded like good news to you?

  
    If you were walking down the street one day and a little bit ahead of you at the street corner you saw a man preaching and every other word that he shouted was “repent,” how would you react? Would you say to yourself, “Wow, that sounds like he’s got a happy good news message,” and eagerly run forward to hear what he had to say? Or would you cross the street and pass him on the other side, staying as far away from him as possible? I know what I’d do! So I find it actually quite amazing that Jesus expected and received such a positive response. It makes me wonder, are we actually using the word repent in the way that Jesus used it?

      What does repentance mean to you? I would imagine that most of us would say that repentance has to do, most of all, with feelings. Repentance, to most of us, means feeling sorry for something that you have done or in some cases that you have failed to do. And feeling sorry is not a very pleasant feeling. It is one that most of us do our very best to avoid feeling. So, ifrepentance is primarily a feeling, Jesus would be telling everyone, “The kingdom of God is here everyone, you should all feel really bad.” That does not sound like very good news. But what if, when Jesus was talking about repentance, he wasn’t talking about a feeling?

      The other problem with the notion of repentance that is a bit of a stumbling block is its connection with guilt and forgiveness. The assumption is that repentance is something that comes out of our feelings of guilt and that is a requirement before forgiveness is possible. This leads into all kinds of calculations and insecurities.

      For example, say that I have a friend who hurts me in some significant way. Maybe they say something that I perceive as very insulting. But, as hurt as I may be, that person is a friend nevertheless so I want to forgive them be there is this requirement (or at least this expectation) that, in order for there to be forgiveness there must be repentance. So I’m waiting for their repentance.

      So my friend comes up to me and says, “Gee, I guess that you totally got all upset at what I said and you think I owe you an apology. Well, I guess, sorry.” And then, you see, I have a problem because what we normally do at that point is that we judge that act of repentance, don’t we? In particular, we ask if it was sincere – did the person really mean it or were they just saying sorry because they were forced to do it. And the assumption is that, if it is not sincere or heartfelt, that it is not real repentance and so I shouldn’t forgive.

      This idea can particularly mess us up our relationship with God where we make the same assumptions. In the practice of the church, we are regularly called upon to confess our sins and repent of them and so many of us have fallen into the practice of listing out all of the things that we have done wrong and telling God how sorry we are for them.

    But then some of us fall into this cycle where we start to question our confession and repentance. Was it sincere? Did I really feel as sorry as I said I did? And there are Christians who fall into this pattern of being afraid that they are not forgiven and can’t be forgiven because their feelings of remorse just are not strong enough.

      So again, if that was what Jesus was actually saying, how eagerly would people have heard that? Basically, he would be inviting people into endless and fruitless speculations about whether they felt bad enough about themselves (or their friends who had wronged them felt bad enough about themselves) for forgiveness to happen. That doesn’t really sound like good news to me. But what if, when Jesus was talking about repentance, he wasn’t talking about it as a necessary prerequisite for forgiveness?

      You see, we are all raised into certain ways of thinking about and seeing the world. We are also formed by the things that happen to us (both the good and the bad things) that condition us to think in certain ways about ourselves and about the world and about God. This way of thinking and being is the “mind” that the word metanoia is referring to.

      In our reading this morning from the Letter to the Ephesians, we have a really good description of how those early followers of Jesus lived through that experience of going beyond the mind that you have been given: “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,” the apostle writes “and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”That was the kind of experience that Jesus was inviting people into. He was asking them to put aside the falsehoods they had been taught to believe, the delusions that they clung to and the ways of their life that were no longer nourishing them and to embrace renewal in the spirit of their minds. And I can definitely imagine people hearing that as good news – a chance at a pretty exciting new beginning.

      Now, does going beyond the mind that you had involve feeling sorry for and having regret for the mind that you had before and what you did with it? Absolutely, it certainly can and often does. But feeling sorry is not central and not always necessary to the experience of metanoia. So you do not have to waste any more energy judging whether your own or somebody else’s feelings of remorse are sufficiently sincere for there to be forgiveness.

      And what is the connection between metanoia and forgiveness anyways? Well, there is a connection. An experience of going beyond the mind that they previously had can certainly help to put someone in a position where they can really experience forgiveness. But I would not say that metanoia is a necessary prerequisite for forgiveness. Please listen to this carefully: God doesn’t forgive you because you repent. God forgives you because of Jesus and what he has done for you. God forgives you because he loves you. God rejoices when you go beyond the mind that you had, but he doesn’t wait on that to offer you forgiveness when that is what you need.

      Now, one thing that metanoia certainly does include is a change in action. When you change your ways of perceiving and thinking about the world, changes in behaviour will naturally flow from that. But sometimes people do miss that first step and attempt to practice repentance by merely reforming their behaviour. And so we make resolutions. We tell ourselves that we need to try harder to be better and it doesn’t work. You have to change your mind before you can change the behaviour that springs from that mind.

      People also have trouble when they go through a metanoia experience and they decide that they need to make some changes in behaviour but then those changes don’t come as easily as you might think. The ways of thinking may have changed but they find that old habits and patterns ofbehaviour are pretty deeply ingrained even though you don’t see those things in the same way anymore. This can be discouraging, but it is no reason to despair. It is a common experience, connected to the very nature of our humanity, but you will find that if you hold fast to your renewed mind and trust in God, the change that you truly desire will come.

      I know that we sometimes avoid dwelling on the notion of repentance in the church these days. Of course, it is not all that surprising that we wouldn’t want to talk about repentance if we’ve been assuming that repentance is all about feeling sorry and guilty all the time. But I think it is time that we realize that repentance, at least repentance correctly understood, is exactly what we need most.

      But the really big question is, if it’s not going to be us wallowing around in feelings of regret, what does genuine metanoia mean for us today. Do we all have some repentance to do? Absolutely. But what mind do we have to change or go beyond? I would suggest that a true exercise of metanoia really begins with an examination of your thought patterns (and not your actions). Nevertheless, your actions might still be a good indicator of where your mind is leading you astray.

      So I am going to suggest an exercise in metanoia that I want you to try this week. I’ll bet that at some point this week, you will do something that you are not entirely happy with. (I mean, it happens to most of us often enough.) You might do something that disappoints you. Say you act in a way that puts down or belittles someone else. Maybe you act in a way that is prejudiced or mean. Or it could be that you fail to do something – fail to speak up for yourself or someone else who really needs it, fail to help someone when you could have.

      Just keep your eyes open, I’m sure something (small or large) will come up at some point this week. And, like you have probably done before, you will be inclined to condemn yourself for your failure and perhaps make a resolution to do better next time. Well, this is what I want you to do differently this week: don’t do that. Don’t focus on your actions (apart from making any amends for them if you need to).

      Instead, I challenge you to engage in metanoia. Ask yourself, prayerfully and with God’s help, not what you did wrong but what were the thought patterns that led you to act in the way you didn’t like. Did you put someone else down because you struggle with your own self esteem? Is there some event in your past that makes you fearful of a certain group of people? Were you looking for validation? Acting out of fear? Were you afraid to care, to risk, to share?

      Prayerfully seek to understand the mind that made you act as you did and then prayerfully seek a new mind that goes beyond the one that you have. Immerse yourself in the truths that will overcome the lies that we all tell ourselves. That is what true metanoia means. If you begin there and your patterns of thinking change, you may find that your actions change too slowly and that you keep disappointing yourself, but don’t give up. When you practice metanoia, real and enduring change is possible. And that is good news for anybody.